#but also I do trust Jonny to know this and have something interesting to say

[buildoblivionthenwewilltalk]

unstoppable force (rabid hunger for tma content) meets immovable object (15 seasons of s*pernatural)

[ashironie]

I don’t have a good feeling about Celia

I tried to post this earlier but it got deleted so fuck

But from so many standpoints she just irks me

-She has the same character archetype as Alice. Many have pointed out their similarities and while this by itself isn’t much (as is everything on this list) with everything else it makes me weirded out

-She just came out of the blue. We had no warning in the episodes before no build up. We were introduced to the concept she was coming and then she came with little fanfare.

-Her introduction to the rest of the cast is a lot different than Sam’s. A lot understated. Maybe Jonny and Alex just didn’t want to do the same thing again but it felt really rushed and weird.

-I cannot see how she can possibly contribute to the plot in any meaningful way if she is just another victim coworker. She was introduced too late to have her death feel like anything but fridging (when you make a character just to kill them for momentary character drama), once again she shares a character archetype with Alice so the only thing that they could give Celia could be given to Alice perfectly fine, and she once again feels forced

-Celia was also too comfortable too quick for me. She just instantly trusted none of her coworkers would report her for talking shit about their boss. She seemed too genuine about everything even though she was in a completely new environment. And she was just so laid back with everything, like sure she might not know the full scale of things but she seems like she’s been their for as long as anyone can remember (something that might be due to the fact I associate this trait with Alice who has been there a long time)

-idk if I’m reaching or going crazy with this one but Alice seemed off. She moreso just said “I’m Alice” and and Aliced all over the place. But as soon as Celia left she said ‘yeah’ sorta suspiciously? Maybe I’m crazy. Then she’s back to herself replying to Gwen, who we can assume is only less interested in what Celia has to say due to the situation she’s found herself in during ep 4 was it? with Lena. The only time we really get to know her thoughts about Celia when she isn’t in front of her is when she’s bugging Sam about his crush on her, and also literally all conversation she has with Celia she also has with Sam and shifts the conversation (aside from just meeting Celia) to Sam (imo). The only time we get her opinions on Celia away from other characters is the little ‘yeah’.

-We don’t see Colin’s reaction to Celia either, which would mark the third episode in a row where Colin is only mentioned (to my knowledge). Though we don’t have any mention that he’s been hostile to her. The only characters that truly talk to her and that we can see their reactions to her are Alice and Sam. One who I’m convinced is suspicious of her and the other who’s ’in love’ with her (I was completely caught off guard by this due to not even thinking about any of that in the very beginnings of a horror podcast, I’m autistic and demiromantic, and because I was half listening the first time I listened. I sense it more but it still feels like a stretch to me before Alice mentions it though makes a lot of sense due to Sam’s reaction to her mentioning it)

-I feel like I’d be amiss to not mention the fact this is the episode we truly have an Avatar in it. Needles is the first avatar we tma enjoyers know as an avatar (in Norris’s statement in ep1 we have the maybe scammer but it’s unclear weather that’s an Avatar, someone being possessed, or something else entirely). Thematically, this would be a great way to establish a connection with Avatar and Celia. She was introduced exactly when Avatars were. Also the episode name could also be a reference to the fact we are having our “introductions” to Avatars thought this episode, but that’s unrelated.

-People has also pointed out Celia is in Tma, same name and same voice actress (so no Michael situation or helen and Mel’s therapist situation [I think I remember them having the same voice actress and that being a problem] here). Although I don’t know what the could mean but that’s actually the reason I decided to rewrite this mini-notsomini-rant.

I could be wrong about all of this and am prepared to be wrong but still, needed to get this out there.

[jonathankatwhatever]

Giving myself free range this 23 Oct 2023. Every date occurs once a century but this one is in the group that generates 23 in each of 12 months. I can see where this is going but I’m still in the dark because I’m not fully in Joana mode. I’m somewhere in Jonny/Joanie, as signified by the vowel shift which is the I//I of that pair. That vowel shift signifies the m to f shift through raising of the pitch and the shaping of a lighter sound.

Aside: is that why you were sharp, descending toward the harmonics? Because I was flat ascending? I used to be unable to locate a pitch going up, and I kept trying to hear better, and I kept realizing it wasn’t a question of hearing a note but of hearing the process that generates the note because that generates the maps for me. Those maps are in forms like Cantor sets. How can we explain this? I need to get Joana up. She’s engaged with George now, but maybe I can get some time. Hey, yes I love you too. A Cantor set is the fan function and the map is simply the one made by opening and closing gates. Then you can construct any counting across that structure.

To be clear, it isn’t that there’s a Cantor set but that we combine these. As in, let’s say we take a middle third and fan it, meaning we treat it as removed or folded up, but then we do that for each of the thirds. You can see that makes a wave of motion because we need to infer a third ‘behind’ in one direction and a third ‘ahead’ in that same direction. This is also an example of basic gs counting construction, which I can go into now. We begin a Cantor set with the idea of thirds. The motivation for that has never been clear; it assumes the existence of a form of choice. We provide the motivation by constructing Triangular, with the third being the midline, which is folded in a bT or fD, but which expands into any size structure at the End. That then explains another level of beauty in the Bip, which is that as an End constructed out of relations between Ends, meaning it sits on a pole of 1-0Segment interactions, then it acts as a traffic circle for traffic. That is why when you approach an idea, you may suddenly find yourself thinking about something entirely different or why you can be, alternatively, suddenly realize you were completely lost in thought while doing something else, like driving or walking with your phone.

By the time we’re through, that kind of basic idea will be seen as proof of I//I, which is proof of the mathematics. Anyone can take that observation which they surely must have had and begin to understand the HC. That’s the way in.

It’s now fairly easy to see the why behind the reality that there is a pole at the Bip and this pole keeps track of relations. How? It sorts them because this is all a construction of grid squares, and any construction is itself in that same coordinate system of xyszK.

I’m not even hiding this: move the s and it reads sxyzK, and that’s sexy, zK, which is as ordinal as it gets. That led to an interesting observation that one of the sexual aspects of slavery had to have been a lot of oral sex. That’s the way into seeing those people as more complete human beings, because that’s an act which requires trust. That trust could be obtained under the worst force or through any manner which attaches to the idea that you can’t so no so the terms are as favorable as you can get. That’s basic economic analysis: you have a crop and can’t hold it, you make bread, you raise cows, etc. and at some point you need to sell.

Yes, that’s also why young teen girls: their breasts grow before they menstruate so that would be seen as safer. I can imagine that being encouraged to avoid pregnancies. You can see the storylines that come off that. I don’t know which are rational.

For example, I can’t understand how Jefferson’s mind worked because Sally was the child of his father-in-law with a woman who was already half white, so Sally was like ¾ white and yet the Jefferson children she had were slaves. That says he saw slavery as based in race but extending as an abstract label in which he could connect the idea of indentured servitude, which he saw among whites, and the chattel form, which was racial and then extending to those who became progressively less chattel form.

I’ve seen that in the tone cultural issues in the black community. The concept of high yellow or other light tone meant you could marry even lighter to approach acceptance.

Yes, what needs to be conveyed is not that the cultural dominance was white but that it was an expression of the concept of slavery, which existed when African chattel slavery began in Europe. As in, at that time, Europeans were slaves in Arab lands. That form of slavery bridges the idea: those slaves were acquired by force or by money, as slaves were elsewhere because people was a form of commerce. It made money for your people. It could also remove those you didn’t want around. Transportation was a form of ‘slavery’ in that sense: the landowners would transport the poor, thus selling them to a new land under penal terms, with no legitimate hope of return. The ideas link together, like any other set of ideas. They just need to be looked at calmly.

So for example, when slavery established in the British colonies, that culture was British. That culture took a few forms: settler and economic. The settler form is what became the US, while the economic would be Jamaica or any other of their islands. You can see an arc running from African slavery to the Caribbean to the American colonies: in Jamaica it expresses as nearly pure economic, while the American colonies are a mix where the economic meets settler, literally mixing along a north and south divide which solidified by the beginning of the 19thC into such a wall that war broke out.

The first groups to change the mix were the Irish, who existed in a form of serfdom so bad they were fleeing starvation, then Southern Italians also fleeing a form of serfdom and intense poverty, along with Jews, who had only recently been let out of locked streets in Europe. You can see how attributes carried over within the larger cultural mix.

I need to take a break. Received a call because I apparently am selling my house and have to be completely out of it soon, which means no time for work with you. So this may be an End where we diverge after growing so close. I hope not, but it’s existential sadness.

[mongeese]

TMA Meta: Jon’s Ego and Martin’s Lack Thereof

Summary: This is my brain dump about Jon and Martin’s ideas on their own self-importance (i.e. Jon being self-centered and Martin having zero self esteem) and how they contribute to the plot/tragedy of The Magnus Archives, organized into a hopefully coherent essay. I didn’t come up with this all by myself; it was inspired by a meta I read over a year ago about Jon’s ego specifically, but unfortunately op has deactivated so I can no longer access the whole thing. Still, it was a very good post, and definitely made these ideas crystalize for me.

Be warned, this meta is about 2700 words, so it’s a hefty one. And yes, I do know this podcast ended almost 16 months ago, and yes, I do still care enough about it to write 2700 words. What can I say, it rewrote my brain chemistry.

Also I’m tagging @jonnywaistcoat, on the off-chance he sees this and has any interest in reading essays about something he wrote years ago. If you do read this, hi Jonny, love your work!

Now without further ado, the essay, underneath the read more :)

The Magnus Archives is primarily a horror podcast, but as I’m sure we all remember, it is also a deeply tragic story. I believe one of the signs of a great tragedy is a story in which the tragic outcome is technically avoidable, but is actually inevitable when you consider the personalities, ideologies, and behaviors of the characters that inhabit the story. This is true for The Magnus Archives in countless ways, but one that I think is largely overlooked is the egos of the various characters. More specifically, the respective egos of Jon and Martin are hugely influential in the story. Despite having practically opposite perspectives on their own self-importance, each of their egos feeds into the apocalypse and the tragic ending in their own ways.

Jonathan Sims is egotistical and self-centered. That might be a controversial take, and if it is, that would be understandable: he’s up to his eyeballs (pun kind of intended) in self-loathing and sacrificial tendencies. He burns himself out constantly trying to help other people. However, the reason he does that is because he’s self-centered. When I say self-centered, I don’t mean selfish, and I don’t mean vain. I mean the most basic definition of the word, which is that he centers himself in his view of the world. He is egotistical not in that he thinks himself better than other people, but in that he believes, maybe subconsciously, that he is more important and influential they are.

The biggest example of this behavior is the Unknowing. Elias/Jonah tells Jon the world is going to end, and that Jon specifically needs to stop it. Jon is told that he must use his powers to save the world, that he alone has what it takes to see through the Unknowing and destroy it. And Jon does not question this at all. He does recognize that he can’t do it alone, that he needs people to support him, but he never argues the fact that he is uniquely responsible for the safety of literally everyone alive. Now, it’s not an entirely unreasonable conclusion to draw, considering he does have supernatural abilities, he does work for a supernatural institution, and he was being told repeatedly that he was uniquely responsible. But it’s not an inevitable conclusion. He did not have to believe that narrative, exemplified by the fact that when put in a similar situation, Martin rejected the idea that he would be some kind of chosen one (which I’ll get to later). The most logical explanation for Jon wholeheartedly believing he was the only one who could stop the Unknowing is if he already believed himself to be special and unique in some way, even before he knew about it.

It’s not just the Unknowing, either. Jon has massive amounts of trust issues and is very unwilling to confide in others or ask for help. Some of those trust issues were supernaturally induced in season 2, but I believe they existed even before that. Even in season 1, Jon thinks he is alone in his problems, he’s alone in the work he has to do. That is an egotistical perspective. He does not recognize that maybe other people do understand, that they do want to help, that he doesn’t have to be alone in this world. I imagine much of this perspective comes from being an orphan who was bullied as a child; if you spend your whole childhood relatively isolated, it stands to reason that you’d believe yourself to be unique in a way the people around you are not, alone in your situation. It could also be some twisted form of survivor’s guilt from Mr. Spider, because someone died in Jon’s place. Therefore he must be important, otherwise that kid died for nothing. It’s impossible to say for sure what caused it, but what I can say for sure is that Jon has a pretty self-centered outlook on life.

The last bit of evidence in support of Jon being self-centered comes from seasons 4 and 5. This is when he is at his most self-sacrificial and his most guilty, and the reason for that is because of his ego. In season 4, he believes himself to be responsible for all the trauma and death that’s been going on in the archives during and after the Unknowing. In season 5, he blames himself almost exclusively for the apocalypse. And while I can understand to some extent why he believes those things – most of the other characters blame him for it too, for starters – when you look at the actual events, there’s really no reason for him to shoulder all the responsibility. Daisy says so in episode 136, and the rest of the (living) main characters say so in episode 199. With regard to the Unknowing, Jonah was the one who pushed them to stop it, and everyone involved agreed to the plan. After the Unknowing, he was in a literal coma, making it impossible for him to help with any of the Archive’s problems. The apocalypse was planned by the Web, embodiment of manipulation, plus all the characters contributed to the ritual succeeding in their own way. Jon’s conviction that somehow, he alone could have stopped things and so he alone should bear the burden of sacrifice to set things right is hugely egotistical, not to mention entirely false. He’s setting himself on a pedestal, holding himself to a higher standard than the people around him. It’s ironic and tragic, but it’s unavoidable given who Jon is and what he has been through.

So. If Jon is self-centered, where does that leave Martin? Well, he’s pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum. If I wanted to be mean about it, I could say Martin considers himself to be maybe one step above worthless. And that would probably be an exaggeration, but it’s true that Martin prioritizes and considers almost everyone else before himself, and does not consider himself influential or important in any capacity. There is of course his infamous line in 198, “I didn’t really think I was important enough to kill.” There’s also the fact that Peter’s attempt to convert him to the Lonely failed explicitly because Peter placed too much importance on Martin specifically, as is revealed in 158 inside the Panopticon.

The situation with Peter in season 4 is especially notable, because as I mentioned earlier, it directly parallel’s Jon’s position in season 3 with the Unknowing. Peter has told Martin that there is an existential threat to humanity, and that he, Martin, is the only person equipped to stop it. That’s almost exactly what Elias/Jonah told Jon about the Unknowing. Unlike Jon, though, Martin rejects this. He rejects the idea that he could be important enough to save the world by himself, that he could be a “chosen one” in any capacity, and in doing so destroys Peter’s plan. And he was right! Unlike Jon, who was wrong in season 3. There’s something to be said here about how The Magnus Archives simultaneously rejects and embraces the idea of fate: there are no true “saviors”, destined to save the world, but the characters still cannot avoid the final, tragic outcome of the story. But that’s a topic for another essay. The more relevant point to make here is that despite Martin being right, he made this choice because of his low self-esteem and his tendency to de-center himself. It is once again a moment of tragic irony, that the decision Martin makes because he believes himself to be unimportant turned out to be one of the most important decisions of the whole podcast. It’s what led to Jon’s final mark, putting the last nail in the coffin of the world.

(Author’s Note: It’s interesting that despite feeling personally insignificant in the grand scheme of things, Martin’s the one who says “I think our experience of the universe has value. Even if it disappears forever.” It’s sort of like, the “everyone matters and is important except for me” outlook on life that is depressingly common. That’s not super relevant to this essay, but it makes me emotional, so I’m including it.)

Those are the most explicit examples of Martin’s low self-worth, but they are not the only ones. He spends most of the first three seasons trying to help other people, whether that’s by making tea, being a sympathetic ear, trying to play mediator, or whatever else he’s doing. He is pathologically incapable of putting himself first until season 4 at the earliest. As Alex said in the season 4 Q&A, he sets himself on fire trying to keep other people warm, and unlike Jon’s self-sacrificial tendencies in later seasons, he’s not doing it out of a misguided guilt or feeling of responsibility. He just genuinely believes other people’s wellbeing is more important than his own. This almost certainly comes from his relationship with his mother, both due to her being abusive and because he had to become her primary caretaker at a young age. He was never given space to have needs or wants of his own, so as an adult he only knows how to cater to other people’s needs and wants. It takes several years of additional trauma for him to learn how to take care of himself first.

I want to make it very clear that I’m not trying to paint Martin as some sort of soft “uwu” character, which I know some people in the fandom try and do. For starters, he’s a total bitch (affectionate). But more importantly, he’s also a very proactive character. I mean, his first introduction is him bringing supernatural parasitic worms into his workplace to prove a point, and the reason he encountered those worms is because he illegally broke into an apartment building. He willingly (well, sort of willingly) throws himself into the action – but he does so for other people, typically to protect or take care of them. It isn’t until season 4, at the height of his loneliness and depression, that he stops caring for others, and even then he doesn’t replace that with caring about himself. He just stops caring about everything altogether. Season 5 is when he finally starts expressing his own needs, after his character arc is mostly completed.

Jon and Martin’s respective egos also bleed into the way they interact and align themselves with the entities. Jon is egotistical, and Jon is an avatar of the Eye. In order to properly inspire the right kind of fear, Jon has to insert himself into experiences that aren’t remotely about him. The primary example of this is the nightmares: before giving a statement, someone might have nightmares about the experience itself, and be frightened of whatever entity was involved. After giving a statement, however, Jon, the Archivist, is inserted into those nightmares, so that now instead of being afraid of the original experience, the statement giver is afraid of being watched during that experience. The Eye, and Jon by extension (however unwillingly), has taken someone’s trauma and made itself the focal point. The center, if you will.

On the other hand, Martin’s experience with the Lonely is largely an exercise in fading away. He can make himself go somewhere else when other people are around. He’s trying to be as peripheral as possible, avoiding everyone and making sure he is not an important feature in their lives. This is most intense in episode 170, where Martin loses all sense of self in the Lonely domain that he became a victim of and all memory of who he is. I don’t know if there’s an opposite to being self-centered, but “having no self at all” is probably a strong contender.

Also, Martin is not directly Web-aligned, but he is definitely good at manipulation, which I think also comes from his tendency to center other people. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of manipulators who are self-centered, but Martin’s specific brand of manipulation mostly involves telling people what they want to hear, playing into their expectations, using their own preconceptions against them, etc. His methods all require pretty good insight into other people, and they require Martin to step out of his own head and determine what other people will expect or think. He has to de-center himself in order to effectively predict, and thus effectively manipulate, other people. And once again, this is definitely a skill he learned growing up in abusive household. I imagine he had to tell his mother what she wanted to hear a lot, in an attempt avoid the worst of her cruelty. That’s straying into the realm of headcanon though, so take it with a grain of salt. I just harbor a lot of hate for Martin’s mom, and I simultaneously love making myself hurt thinking about them, so I mention their relationship whenever I can.

Anyways. My main point is that Jon and Martin’s egos shape much of the story, and both of them contribute to the apocalypse in their own way. It’d be impossible to list all the concrete examples of this, simply because every decision they make in the podcast leads in part to the apocalypse, and each one of these decisions is informed by their respective egos. Still, I’ll try to summarize the most important moments. First of all, had Jon not believed himself solely responsible for stopping the rituals, had he rejected Elias/Jonah’s assertion that he was some kind of hero, he likely would not have played along with Jonah’s game for so long, and the apocalypse would not have happened. On the other hand, if Martin had believed Peter telling him he could be a hero, he would have joined the Lonely and ended Jonah’s plan. Going back to Jon, if he hadn’t been so insistent on taking all the blame for the trauma and death and disaster that occurs, he probably wouldn’t have been so eager to sacrifice himself. He wouldn’t have jumped into the coffin, most likely, and though this is after the apocalypse, he wouldn’t have become the Pupil (which, btw, Jon becoming the Pupil was quite literally him making himself the center of the ruined world and thus a very self-centered action) and tried to doom himself and the world. And hell, if Martin had a bit more self-esteem he might not have fallen for Jon at all! Because let’s be honest, Jon was pretty shitty to Martin for almost two years. And obviously if they hadn’t fallen in love, the whole course of the show would have been radically different, so who knows what that outcome would have been. Their personal views on their own self-importance are thus massively influential.

Before I close, I want to say this is not me condemning either Jon or Martin. They are both a product of their circumstances; they both make good and bad decisions repeatedly. I especially want to make it clear, once again, that I’m not calling Jon selfish, and I’m not calling Martin a pushover. These are two extremely complex, well-written characters, and I tried my best to acknowledge that in this essay. Also, self-centered does not equal selfish, and low self-esteem does not equal a pushover. And though the extremity of their egos are personal flaws, no character is perfect and no character should be perfect, so really I wouldn’t have it any other way.

And now for a last bit of heartache: in the end, their love for each other is what allows them to overcome their ego or lack thereof. In general, Martin prioritizes himself and his desires more than ever before in season 5, not just because of Jon. But his final decision – voting to pass the Fears to other worlds in order to save their own – was primarily motivated by a selfish desire to save Jon, a desire to build a life with the man he loved without pursued by terror-monsters. And Jon made his final decision to step down from being the final hero (or villain, depending on your perspective), to set aside his guilt and sense of responsibility, to remove himself from the center of the world, because he couldn’t bear to watch Martin die, and he couldn’t bear to doom the world with Martin still in it. It’s poetry. Terrible, tragic, heartbreakingly romantic poetry.

[zodiacrant]

🍩My experiences with each Moon sign🍩

(Cause yall are messy)

I have done this a few times before but for Sun signs and did rank placements but never shared my thoughts and experiences with the Moon signs.

Now I know how this goes, so if you get mad or sad then go off I guess. Aint the first time I get cursed out or attacked in this bitch. Plus, I am a Cap moon so naturally I won’t do well with some Moons and I will be nitpicking everything about everyone.

🍩Aries Moon🍩

My dad’s moon. Yup, that tells you alot without me even starting. Having our Moons in Square shit was hard to say the least. It took a long time for us to be on middle grounds and because I don’t feel comfortable talking about my problems here I will continue on. The Aries Moon that I really like and can think of is Rihanna, so I would say it’s unfair to make a whole judgment but from what I saw and heard they’re not exactly the best to be around. So I give them a 3/10 for being bold and having nerve.

🍩Taurus Moon🍩

Now this Moon right here I know people from ( a close friend and my sister, plus some others) and I don’t have many strong opinions about it. As a Taurus Sun, it can be a challenge to work with a Taurus Moon. I am stubborn at my core and they’re stubborn with their heart, so everytime we disagree it’s like a rope pulling contest. Way too stagnant for me but I think that’s because of my other placements and they don’t take any advice or open up no matter what. On to the good, I never disliked someone with this placement. No matter how much of an asshole they can be, to me it is difficult to hate them or stay mad at them. They’re warm, kind, and sweet but a bit aloof and naive, also they don’t like to touch and hug as some people might think. I will give them a 8/10

🍩Gemini Moon🍩

(⚠️TW⚠️ mention of rape and erratic behavior)

I only had one best friend with this placement and I don’t I want to meet any more, and I am at peace with that if they resemble her in any way. She was a maniac. She loved to lie, create drama, blow shit up, act crazy and basically be shocking. I do find similarities with Gemini Sun where they do shit for reactions but with her, she will take it to the next level. Lie about being raped, act possessed, or pretend that she is being followed. It’s not fair to associate her with people who share the same Moon as her but that was y’all’s representation in my life. She was erratic so it’s difficult to see where her Moon was in effect and where she was just off. I’ll give them a 1/10, would not recommend until proven otherwise.

🍩Cancer Moon🍩

The first that comes to my mind is Taylor Swift and to me she is the ultimate Cancer Moon. It juat makes sense how fast she takes it to the next level with people. Whether getting serious quickly with someone or throwing down and feuding. She just always at a 100. Personally, I never got close with someone who has this placement, maybe it’s because I am a Capricorn Moon myself, but I would say the ones that I have met were nice. I’ll give them a 5/10

🍩Leo Moon🍩

I only had one best friend with this placement but the people I have met with this Moon I still remember. They all had one thing in common and that was being emotionally traumatized and have lost one parent. My best friend was super loyal, very confident in what they believed in and represented, were always there for me and had an amazing ability in motivating others. But they were also super prideful and there’s no coming back with them. Fight once and it’s over. (Yes I am looking at you Jonnie). One of the other people was with me in uni and always had the to urge won up me and my friend. He had scars all over and he doesn’t remember how he got them. But he was super proud of himself and his home country, which I respect and admire. I’ll give them a 6/10

🍩Virgo Moon🍩

I know two people with this placement, my mom and a professor at uni, and oh boy it makes sense that they’re a Virgo Moon. Me and my mom are too alike that we clash strongly at times. She thinks she can do it better and I think I can do it better and we just have like a competition on who done it better basically. From cooking, to how you light the stove, to how you put on clothes, to how you lay down on bed. Both my mom and my professor are super critical and precise, althogh my professor is a double Virgo (Sun and Moon) so she will go even further. They have to do everything as it arises and act like there’s no time and everything is about to go wrong. Like damn sis chill the fuck out for a sec and this is coming from a Cap moon so you know it’s bad. But I really like Virgo Moon, even though people might hate such a personality but I can relate to them in some ways. I’ll give them 7/10

🍩Libra Moon🍩

My only online friend that I talk to all the time got this Moon. Other than her I met only two people and they were something. Okay so for my friend, because I never actually have seen her physically with my own eyes I can’t say how she acts all the time, but she is one of the best listeners I had in my life. She likes to hear me ramble for an hour about a dumb encounter that lasted a second, talking about astrology and some nerdy things and then not so nerdy things. I believe that it’s a Libra Moon quality to be emotionally versatile and attentive. I think because she is a Leo dominant she acts much fiery and fiercely than a Libra would. As for the other people I just thought they were fake. One acted as a friend but then would just disappear so I was over it quickly and the other was super passive and pretentious that I think she shits out plastic. All in all I think it’s a great Moon. I’ll give them a 7/10

🍩Scorpio Moon🍩

One of the hardest Moons I ever delt with but I find that I love them too. My oldest sister had this Moon and she is such a mystery. Because I am a Taurus Sun, it is only natural for me to have a hard time with a Scorpio Moon. Even though she is an extrovert, she rarely talks about herself and her feelings, you will never catch her slipping or show vulnerability. I can see how difficult it may be for her being a Cancer with a Scorpio Moon and have Gemini dominance. But she’s a bitch at heart and I am cool with it. I’ll give them 5/10 cause I am not a big fan of paradoxical people

🍩Sagittarius Moon🍩

A moon that I always babysat. I had two best friends with this Moon and if I was born a second earlier, it would mine too. I don’t know if it’s because of my Gemini Venus or my 0 degree Capricorn Moon but I love Sagittarius Moons. I was fortunate to see some of their weaknesses and for them to trust me enough to be vulnerable. But boy do they get themselves into the dumbest situation because they wanted to see what would happen. I had to babysit them and help them do everything like shopping, cooking, cleaning, assembling furniture, be their body guard when buying weed. (Shhhh it’s a secret). They’re in many ways immature cause they run from things and everytime you try to be real with them, they say “stop being negative”. I’ll give them a 9/10

🍩Capricorn Moon🍩

The grande dame of the Moon signs, sitting at it’s opposite planet. I have met many Cap Moons and honestly we are bitches 😂. The energy of sitting next to a Capricorn Moon is too fucking much like I never knew it’s like that. I noticed the way they stare, talk, walk and sit can be so aggressive and intimidating. I see why people might label us as bullies, cause the energy is definitely there and I myself was such a cunt (still a little but I am more aware of myself now) that I get where both are coming from. Life as a Capricorn Moon is emotionally flat. If wasn’t for my other placements you will never see me even flinch. I think we just take everything and let it process in our head before we let it into our hearts. So to me, we’re not mean, we just don’t see how something might be hurtful. But also that tone and that blank face, goddam! That’s why I try to smile cause bitch no, I didn’t know I was walking with a death stare this whole time. Anyways, I will give us 10/10 cause I am self appreciative like that 😂✌️

🍩Aquarius Moon🍩

I have always tried to understand Aquarius Moon and it was only a month ago that I have realized they themselves are not sure of who they’re. I had one best friend with this placement and three cousins (all siblings). First, my cousins are super competitive with each other on who gets to do what and if it happens that they’re similar in something they will get pissed. The person that was my best friend was like that as well. Only he would drop a an entire hobby, interest, something close to his heart, shit even a personality trait. I find them to be constantly changing and trying, so they shift between one end of extreme to the other until they center themselves. I’ll give them a 4/10

🍩Pisces Moon🍩

Now let’s talk about a depressing placement, in my opinion of course 😅. I don’t know if it’s the influence of Neptune on the Moon or is it the just the demeanor of Pisces, but good god girl get a grip (they call this the five G’s). My youngest sister is a Pisces Moon, and as creative as she is, she is pessimistic and overly cynical. I mean I am all for being critical and real but looking at everything with jacked up black sprayed glasses is just too much for me. Other than my sister I don’t know any Pisces Moon very well but I had a few acquaintances. I noticed that they talked about a specific thing and that’s it. I have found them to be amazing at drawing, painting and have an incredible artistic sense. At times twisted and dark, but I love the art that comes with it. I’ll give them a 5/10

Here’s the tea. It’s Pisces season so remember I am sensitive right now, and also it’s my life and I wish I met someone as amazing as you might think you’re. (Maybe that was a little too aggressive)

Okay love you ❤️

[otakuminami]

Again I’m late to the party

I was prevented from watching this episode because of family. Funny enough, this episode was about family. At least it was about found family which we stand in this house.

So we now know for sure Onyx is not a mole. I love her story. I hope we get to see more of her.

Cass almost had her battle with her mom taken away. Like I understand Artemis didn’t think she could do it. I was just really excited to she Cass fight Shiva. With swords? I was more thinking of hand to hand combat but a fight’s a fight. I’m glad we got to see her not only fight her mom but show that she understands not to be like her. Without saying a word. A kinda good show don’t tell thing. I wonder why she is so obsessed with getting Cass. Like I understand this a foil for Jade and training a human soldier is not a quick process, but like this urgency, there has to be a reason for needing her. Probably there’s not a really deep explanation besides she want her daughter.

The Shade was a real plot twist. I did not see that coming.

More Barbara and Cass please!

Jonny! We get to hear him talk, and we get to see the Kent’s!! Sad considering the circumstances, but since I am almost 100% certain he isn’t dead, I’m not really worried. But I love how they brought up Clark and Conner’s relationship in season 1. They are brothers! I love it.

Jade almost went back. She wants to be with her family but she can’t because she’s scared. I found it really cute that Lian made a “mommy” mask. This means that she knows who her mom is which is kinda good. However she kinda made a mask of a criminal, but it’s so innocent. She wants to be her mom! A strong woman.

Jason, because that is who the Red Hooded Ninja is, talked again. I wonder if this season it will be revealed at least to us that Jason is alive.

What if they just put him in the show just to mess with us?

Also everyone but Artemis bows when Ra’s Al Ghul entered. Artemis isn’t going to give the crazy old guy “respect.”

The whole Ra’s Al Ghul family bootcamp thing is interesting. I trust him because Dick said “Ra’s Al Ghul is many things, but a liar isn’t one of them.” I trust that. I trust that he does want to help them. That’s not what I’m really concerned about. What I am concerned about is why? Why does he want to help them? What does he have to gain? Why did he left the League?

The talk about how the league manipulated people to be zealous to the cause and the way they showed Talia during that scene and at the very end is trying to tell us something. Earlier in the arc we had Talia say she would never give up Damian. I wonder if this will play into Dick’s arc or not. I don’t know exactly what they’re trying to tell us but I do know it has to be connected with Shiva and Jade. There is a connection between Shiva and Talia because they were in the same pose to the camera at the end.

[alexandenigtscreations]

Have a sketch prompt you’d like to see? Send me an Ask!

Anon sketch prompt -> here,  asked about TMA endgame speculations.  And, ho boy, I do have a lot of them.  Though I think I managed to get the core theories down.  

Going to break this into three broad categories: Together, Apart and Fade Away.

Together:

There are a couple of ways that these two could remain together.  1) they can’t turn the world back and just have to deal with permanent Eyepocolypse.  This would mean that Gertrude was right on the tape, that a change of this magnitude can’t be undone.  I don’t think this is likely because Jonah was the one that sent the tapes to Jon.  He’s going to try and play as many mind games as he can to keep the watcher’s crown in his place.  A way out of that would be to make a new ritual to remake the world as best they could (if Jonny wants to give his characters a way out at all).  They could also flat out end the world and everyone’s suffering.  After all, it is a tragedy.  

 2) Martin does what Peter Lucas tried to set him up for in the first place and Kills Jonah’s body, taking his place.  (I’m personally obsessed with this idea).  I think it is likely that Jonah chose Martin to be the replacement for Elias’s body (being that he targeted people with few attachments and were underestimated).  Until Lucas took an interest in Martin that is.  Martin probably is holding a lot of blame for the eyepocolypse too, being that he could have Killed Jonah right then and there and stopped any of this from happening.  There is probably a lot of fear that Lucas was probably being serious with having Martin stop Beholding’s ritual.  Or, we could, potentially, lose Martin as we know him.  That would definitely screw Jon up pretty bad.  Or Martin might be equal in power to Jon.  Do think it’s likely that Martin will surprise us again.   

3) Twisted: where their trials become to much.  They break under the horror of it all and give in to the fear and power.  Martin may take Jonah’s spot with a bit of friendly murder and they take up residence in the Watcher’s tower.  Maybe Martin refuses to let go of Jon; holding on to the promise of not letting bad things happen to him.  Don’t think it’s likely given Jon’s stubbornness and Martin’s steadfastness, but it’s fun :D  

I can see them going into more grey moral areas though, and it will be really interesting to see how they deal.  

Apart: 

Even as an avatar, Jon had been able to go through Helen’s doors.  Now?  He’s far more powerful than a mear avatar.  The old world may not be able to handle someone like Jon.  If they manage to create a new pocket dimension to force the fears into, Jon might be dragged along with them. Martin being unable to stop any of it.  

This could also be separated by death.  Most likely Jon’s.  (In one of the Q&A sessions, Jonny mentioned that things would be “especially bad for Martin”)  This makes me believe that he will live on after the season 5 finale.  Also, the death of the narrator would make for a defined end.

Fade Away:

Following the trail of fear crumbs, I believe that this is the most likely of outcomes.  It would give Martin time to say goodbye to Jon.  It would give them a respite, and a few more tender moments before Jon collapses in on himself.  Jon has mentioned before that he doesn’t want to be a forgotten mystery (I believe this was in the Library of Alexandria episode), but after everything said and done, maybe being a mystery isn’t so bad when compared to an Apocalypse.   I’m imagining two types of fade-away scenarios.  

1) Relating to Mikaele Salesa’s safe house.  Jon just crumbles both mentally and physically in the normal world.  Leaving Martin as a caretaker until Jon dies.  I HATE this one.  Give me blood, murder, bloody worms, but don’t let Jon forget Martin.  Damn it!  This may occur if Jon does something like blind himself and cut off all connection from Beholding.  “Could you even survive at this point?” Martin had asked in season 4, and Jon didn’t have an answer.  

2) John Amherst withering away to nothing.  If Jon is to fade away, I really hope that it’s like season 4 and it’s mostly his body.  John Amherst when entombed in the concrete slab by Gertrude’s assistant, was implied to have died over a period of years after being cut off from frears.  I’m hypothesizing that if they end the eyepocolypse, that they wouldn’t be able to fully extract the fears from the world.  It would be as before, the fears praying on the most vulnerable.  Jon, who was the most powerful being in the eyepocalypse and had been force fed the fears of the Entire World, is probably unable to go back to statements and snaring victims.  (though it would be low key hilarious if the whole world just had nightmares about our archivist and he was actually healthy for the first time since joining the Magnus institute).  He’s not fully cut off, so he gets to keep his mind, but his body deteriorates. 

We might hear Jon’s last moments caught on the tape recorder, ending the final episode.  And I don’t know what to do with that, the final “Statement Ends”

Other Things I have no Idea what to do with:

The Web:  What do they want?  Do they really prefer the world as it was?  Do they want it back? Or do they like things as they are now? Annabelle seems to have no trouble pulling strings from Mikaele salesa’s place, so that may mean that the camera doesn’t work on all the fears.  I mean, Annabelle is being kept alive by bloody spiders and has been living there just fine, even able to dispatch of creatures of the corruption that wander into the bubble.  She’s been there the whole time!  And she’s fine!

I think that the web did want the eyepocolypse to happen though.  Just that manipulators don’t like to get their hands dirty if they can get someone else to do it for them.  

Helen: Love, love, love Helen; but don’t trust her.  I understand attaching yourself to the most powerful being in the hellscape, but, she is a being of lies and deception.  What is her long game?  Does she even think in those terms? 

Mikaele Salesa’s Camera: Either it, or something like it will come back again.  Jon and Beholding have their own kryptonite guys!  Also, he was wandering through the hellscape, looking for a pad to crash in.  The hellscape turned back into the world as we knew it when he passed seeming to indicate that it’s still there, under the fear. 

Georgie and Melony: Being that Georgie can’t feel fear and Melony ex-communicated herself from the damn eye, pretty damn sure they made their own little safety pocket.  What that looks like, and what impact it will have on Jon is unknown.

Basira:  Could still try to kill Jon.  The world ended, so what the hell right? 

Chrysalis: The hell is Jon’s chrysalis?  The hell does that mean?  Is this physical?  Metaphorical?  or Both?

Tape Recorders: Given that these bad boys were able to work in the Mikaele Selesa’s safe house, just want to know what their story is and where the tapes go when they finish recording.  Can’t really picture Jon or Martin carrying around a cassette collection in the eyepocolypse.  

Marked: So, Daisy was able to hurt Jon because of the strength of the mark she made before the eyepocolypse, makes me wonder what other avatars that marked our archivist could do to Jon.  

Statement Ends

[lucky-sevens]

is there any more info on jonny before he was mechanized? i feel like i remember something implying he was nicer before he was mechanized

first off, i want to apologize for taking so long on this ask! i have several pending in my inbox that i have not gotten to, and i’m very sorry for that! i haven’t even been that busy, just procrastinating- that said, i do have a lot going on, so this may be a constant until my workload decreases, which will probably be around winter break; unless i find myself another project to have to do). (timestamp for future reference: this post made november 25, 2020)

but now, let’s get into the analysis! i touch on what you’re asking here, but i have also taken the opportunity to do a full analysis of jonny’s backstory for future reference! (content warning for discussed transphobia, rest under cut)

addressing jonny having a good heart, he says in his crew bio ‘I’m told I had a good heart, but the Doc dealt with that after the whole patricide thing.‘ maki has talked about this more on the mechscord, implying that it referred to him being a good person (rather than a more literal take) and that mechanization directly corrupts morals (more on this in a potential upcoming meta). however, we do not know specifics on how his personality was different. that addressed, let’s continue with trying to figure out what exactly happened in jonny’s backstory.

jonny’s backstory is presented to us in one eyed jacks, however, in his crew bio linked above, he says he made it up. this is with the exception of him killing his father. in death to the mechanisms, there’s the ‘you’re projecting’ exchange, which is a fairly well known joke, but for people who haven’t seen death to the mechanisms-

[JONNY] I mean, in Oedipus’s defense, it’s harder than it looks not to end up in a, emotionally-charged narrative climax where you murder your father. It’s…

[ASHES] No it’s not.

[JONNY] Everyone thinks it’s so easy, “Oh, I’d never kill my father.” But sometimes, life happens.

[ASHES] Most people don’t kill their fathers.

[TIM] You’re projecting.

[JONNY] I…

[IVY] Again.

this piece of banter could definitely be considered evidence towards him actually doing so. in addition, maki has said on the mechscord regarding his backstory ‘the best lies always contain a grain of truth‘ and implied that a lot of it wasn’t a lie, including jonny’s original last name (vangelis).

he did make some of it up, though, and that opens up an interesting pathway of analysis. a very common theory i’ve seen is that one of his lies is about the existence of jack. jack and carmilla fill potentially very similar roles in the narrative, and there are some subtle echoes of each other, like the fact they both only have one eye. the theory proposes that carmilla was the one actually filling the role of jack, and convincing jonny to commit patricide.

there is a song other than one eyed jacks that is likely to have more truth to it. the dr carmilla song homesick is likely a retelling of both jonny and carmilla’s backstories. in fact, it was originally played as a duet between jonny and carmilla. i have no direct source on this, but keep in mind exhumed and {un}plugged, which has the album recording of homesick, is a solo album, with only carmilla on both voice and instrumentals, and there’s actually an echoing voice effect to make it sound more like the recorded duet between carmilla and jonny (which can be found here). the other live gig where carmilla performs it on her own, lashings, jonny is absent, and the toy soldier performs rose red solo as well. as discussed, jonny killing his father is the part of his backstory that i believe can be trusted, and well, homesick has the lyric ‘dear father, i’ve come to kill you’. it also feels more like the truth than one eyed jacks, which is trope-y and sanitized in a way that feels like jonny d’ville wrote it.

from there, further analysis can be done of the lyrics in the context of them referring to jonny. an interesting aspect is that the duet has slightly differently lyrics, and dialogue in character after the song. quoting directly, jonny, likely taking the role of carmilla’s father, says “Get out of my house, never darken my doorway again. I have no daughter. Do what you’re gonna do, son. You’re a disgrace.” the easiest way to interpret this is carmilla being kicked out for being transgender, which has further support in that maki herself is a trans woman and that this iteration of homesick was performed at transpose london. there has actually been a very interesting book about trans culture published that discusses doctor carmilla and the themes thereof.

but i digress- from the perspective of analyzing jonny’s backstory, ‘do what you’re gonna do, son’ echoes the portion of one eyed jacks to the tune of ‘house of the rising sun’, where jonny kills his father. locke’s opinion on this is that billy vangelis is attempting to convince jonny out of killing him, flipping between approaches. (this also implies that jonny is a trans man!) the other change in this duet is that there’s an additional verse about their mothers (again, likely being a line that could apply to both jonny’s mother and carmilla’s), but not very much analysis has been done on this.

viewing the rest of homesick in this lens, it implies that everything in that song also applies to jonny. carmilla’s mother, siblings, and ‘lover’ (loreli) are all mentioned and discussed, and those could also be similar figures in jonny’s life. locke has suggested that ‘dear brother’ and ‘dear lover’ could be referring to the same person for jonny; a very close friend/boyfriend. xe has also conducted further analysis on what the song could mean, and formed headcanons based on that; for the sake of objectivity, and the sake of not making this meta stretch longer than it already is, i won’t go into them, but if you’re on the mechscord and you search ‘homesick from:jenn-locke#4349 in:sad-mechs-hours′ her thoughts are fairly easy to find, and xe is considering writing something up eventually, which i will link if it’s completed.

in conclusion, one eyed jacks has some truth to it, but homesick by dr carmilla is likely the most accurate picture of jonny’s backstory.

[nebulein]

📚🖊️

Hi nonnie! (I always wonder who you are 😆) Thanks for sending something in! 🥰

From the fanfic ask meme if you want to send some in as well

📚 Do you read your own fic?

I very much do. First when I write and edit the fic I'll read it myself about a million times, but then I also often find myself going back to my own writing when someone leaves a comment on ao3 or I stumble across it again for some reason. And lemme tell you, it's always a trip. Sometimes I literally have no memory of putting these words on a page. Sometimes I'm amazed at what my brain cooked up, the phrases I somehow managed to wordsmith onto a page. Sometimes I'm embarrassed, or laugh at myself, or find a mistake and immediately have to go back and fix it. But really, writing what you want to read and having a memory like a sieve is awesome, it means you can actually be surprised and delighted by a fic that someone wrote custom-tailored to your interests (guess what! it was you!) and yet it still feels like someone else wrote it for you. A++, highly recommended. 😂👌

🖊 Post a snippet from a current WIP.

More snippets! I have so many WIPs, I don't know how to choose. Let's see, let's see. Something completely yet unpublished and untalked about before, maybe? How about.. *spins the wheel* this very dub-con winner's room verse concept where the winning team gets to fuck the loser tribute (in this case Pat) with as many guys as the goal differential was (you win 1-3 then 2 guys get lucky), but anyone who wants gets to watch. (The idea is winner's room hurt with 1988 comfort afterwards, rated M for subject matter.)

Jonny supervises. He doesn't always bother, especially not with the veterans, most of whom prefer not to have him there anyway. He'll usually do with the rookies and the transfers, at least the first couple of times, until he's sure they can handle themselves.

Jonny always supervises with Kaner.

They're alone in the room for now. It won't be for long. Everything is set up, waiting to be used. Just like them. Just like Kaner.

"You want the swing?" Jonny asks, thinking of the double shifts Kaner pulled tonight. He must be tired. They all are. Losses always sting a little harder at home.

"Nah," Kaner says, surveying the get-up but not making any move to go near it yet. "I think-- Just the arms tonight."

Jonny nods, reaching up to unhook a couple of belts, adjusting the length of others. Stashing the ones they won't be needing in the hidden cupboard.

"Are you prepared?" he asks. There's some lube here, Jonny can--

Kaner heaves a sigh, long-suffering. "Course I fucking am."

Jonny hums, fiddling with the cupboard. Tries to keep his voice neutral. "Mind if I check?"

It's not that he doesn't trust Patrick, of course he does. It's just that sometimes Pat doesn't have the patience for it, trying to rush things, and Jonny would feel better if he could make sure…

"Yes I fucking mind," Patrick bites back, terse and snippish.

Okay then.

Jonny drops the buckle he'd been toying with back into the cupboard. They're both a little high-strung maybe. Kaner doesn't get to tribute very often anymore.

"Fine."

It's a plain room, not a lot to it. A slightly raised podium in the middle, benches along the walls for anyone waiting their turn and the ones who only came along to watch. There are hooks in the ceiling, above the platform.

Kaner steps onto it now, reaching for one of the belts dangling from the hooks. “These don’t have--”

Jonny turns around, wiggling the cuffs he just grabbed from the cupboard. Walks over to where Pat's on the platform now.

“Ah.” Kaner holds out his hand. “I can do it.”

Kaner could.

Jonny doesn’t hand them over.

Instead, he pinches one beneath his arm, so he has both hands free to open the buckle of the other before reaching for Kaner’s hand.

“I said I can do it.”

“I’m sure you can,” Jonny replies, level, pulling the cuff out of reach when Kaner makes a grab for it. “Let me do it.”

Kaner huffs, annoyed. Jonny pins him with a look, trying to figure out whether he needs to do something about this. Kaner holds out for a heartbeat, two, stares at Jonny with all the arrogance and defiance of 2007, before puffing out a breath and relenting.

Well.

Jonny takes the proffered wrist, buckling Kaner into the cuffs. Making sure they’re snug but not too tight.

“Rotate,” he instructs, watching as Kaner flexes his fingers, rotating his wrists. Looking at Jonny with a look that says he’s very clearly indulging Jonny here. Little shit. “Thank you.”

There’s a knock at the door. For a second they both look at it, even though no one will enter without permission. It’s time. When Jonny looks back at Kaner, he’s already staring back at Jonny.

“You ready?”

Kaner smirks, humorless. “Do I have a choice?”

Jonny bristles at that, the flush of anger rising in his throat hot and instant. “You always have--”

“Yeah, yeah.” Kaner says, waving Jonny off. “Save the spiel for the rookies, I’ve heard it often enough. I’m fine, Jonny. You can let in the hordes.”

[19red]

hello, this is me trying to strong-arm my brain into stopping the constant tweaking and re-tweaking of the same stinking 3k so I can write on and get to the good parts of this project namely p and j having all the sex thank you very much

+

The day after Patrick and Jonny bang a chick together, Patrick wakes to the weight of an alien limb squashing his bladder. The alien limb belongs to a furnace-hot, tentacular mass plastered all along his back. The mass smells oddly familiar, kind of citrusy—as if it stole Jonny’s body wash.

Patrick squints his eyes open. A blade of sunlight filters through the half-drawn curtains and stabs him in the face. Right under the window, Jonny’s suitcase dribbles clothes onto the floor.

It shouldn’t be hard to put two and two together, but Patrick’s really dumb first thing in the morning. Plus, he needs to pee. Bad. Which is pretty distracting.

He paws at the tentacle swung over his waist, fingers catching on—a beaded string. Did the alien mass steal Jonny’s bracelet too? Patrick struggles to lift his head. He wants to see.

The alien mass stole Jonny’s whole arm. What--?

A growl spills in a damp, ticklish huff into the crook of Patrick’s neck as the mass coils itself closer. Something hard pokes Patrick’s ass. His nostrils fill with a waft of scent his hindbrain understands as so viscerally Jonny that recognition smacks him dizzy.

The mass is Jonny. Last night, he and Patrick banged a chick together. That thing wedged between them, growing firmer by the second? That thing is Jonny’s—

Patrick’s heart plummets straight to his dick.

It’s okay. It’s whatever. Patrick isn’t gonna freak over a physiological response. Bodies are also really dumb first thing in the morning.

“Jonny,” he says, wriggling to catch Jonny’s attention. Jonny has always been his go-to guy in a crisis. Except, in this instance, he is also the crisis itself. Jonny’s hips buck forward once, twice—Patrick stops breathing for the handful of seconds it takes Jonny’s sleep-drenched, horny-ass body to lose interest and stutter back into relative stillness.

Fuck, Patrick thinks. Visions of impending awkwardness swarm his brain. If Jonny were to wake up right now, full-mast boner pressed to Patrick’s ass, and discover the tent pitched in the front of Patrick’s sweats, he might rush to conclusions. Their ability to make direct eye contact would definitely endure permanent damage. They’d have to restructure their life with the aim of reciprocal avoidance. Patrick would have to request a trade. Jonny would probably drop out of the NHL. He’d forsake hockey and society at large and end up trampled to death by a giant moose while he hides from Patrick in the Canadian wilderness.

Fuck, Patrick thinks again. When a whole minute drips away and Jonny doesn’t stir, he thanks the hockey gods. With very little, very slow movements, he dislodges the arm pinning him to the mattress. By the times he’s free, the light slanting in from the window changed the angle of its assault to his pupils. Still careful, he slides the covers off himself, sits up, swings his legs off the bed. His feet land on the floor just as a variation in the pattern of Jonny’s breathing alerts him it’s all been for nothing. Jonny is awake. Or, like, as close to awake as Jonny manages to be coffee-free and before noon. Which is not much, thank fuck.

“It’s early,” Patrick reassures him. Jonny gets real pissy when he doesn’t get his full eight hours. Patrick doesn’t want to get stuck with Captain seriously cranky and his legitimately lethal death glare on the flight back to Chicago.

Jonny hums, lids fluttering open and back closed immediately, dark lashes kissing the top of his cheekbones. Patrick expects him to just roll over and sink back deep into snoring, the man is easy like that, instead he plumps an arm over the empty space next to him and mumbles, “Come back,” so low Patrick feels the vibration of it in his belly more than with his ears. Jonny must think Patrick’s some chick, maybe his ex or the one from last night.

“Dude,” Patrick chuckles to clear his throat. This is prime chirp material. Jonny’s such a clingy loser. “It’s just me.”

The side of Jonny’s mouth that isn’t squashed into the pillow tugs up in a smile, then his eyes tremble open, searching the space in front of them for Patrick’s, as if he knew where to find him, as if he weren’t surprised. It’s a bit like being punched but with weird, devastating gentleness. Patrick’s left breathless and dazed, a slow ache spreading below his ribs. “Sorry,” he says, legs moving on their own accord. “Sorry, gotta piss.”

Jonny flops onto his belly and sprawls across Patrick’s side of the bed. With a sigh, he hugs Patrick’s pillow to his face. “Be quick,” he whines—or maybe not. It’s muffled and Patrick is already halfway out the door so he can’t be sure. It doesn’t really matter.

***

“Where’s Tazer?” Duncs asks in lieu of good morning when Patrick shows up at breakfast almost two hours later, no captain in tow.

Patrick chomps on a hunk of strawberry toast and shrugs. Contrary to popular belief, no clause in his contract bids him constant awareness of Jonny’s whereabouts.

Duncs squints, clearly feeling entitled to a degree of eloquence involving efforts of the verbal variety and resenting their lack.

“Don’t tell me he’s sick,” Shawzy says.

The legs of Stromer’s chair screech against the floor as he scoots away from Patrick. He ends up almost in Brinsky’s lap. “It better not be catching.”

“Oh my god,” Patrick puffs the words fat with annoyance. “He’s sleeping. I mean, I guess he...” He is for sure. No chance Jonny is still waiting. If Patrick barged back into his room right now, Jonny would laugh, would tell him to stop trying to make things weird. Patrick knows this rationally. Yet some spiked grip squeezes his insides with the same vicious strength of an anaconda trying to crush itself a snack.

People can’t die from upset conscience, can they? Especially not if the upset is unquestionably misplaced, right?

“I mean,” Patrick snaps after a second, “the fuck do I know.”

Duncs eyebrows shoot halfway across his forehead.

“Whoa,” Stromer gasps.

“Wait,” Shawzy says. “Are mum and dad fighting?”

Patrick grinds his molars. Everyone’s so fucking pressed. It’s not like Jonny is a regular at team breakfasts. In fact, unless attendance is mandatory, Jonny prefers to limit the number of people upon which he inflicts the ghastly spectacle of his slow de-zombification to a minimum.

Patrick casts his mind back to the last time the two of them didn’t resort to room-service during game trips. He dredges up both no recollection of that happening in years and the stomach-sinking hunch that maybe this is weird. Maybe he should have gone back. Maybe that would have been the normal thing to do.  

“Shut up,” he says, to the voice in his head and everyone else. He grabs a pitcher of coffee and fills his cup until it brims. “Don’t talk to me. I’m waking up.”

“He’s rubbed off on you,” Shawzy appraises.

He’s more right than he’d probably care to know—nope. Patrick yanks his thoughts away before they can trip over that precipice and splat into the phantom embrace of Jonny’s body and its heft, its warmth, its neediness.

“Shut up,” he repeats, and with big emphatic motions designed to put a period on the conversation, he whips out his phone. He trusts the mindless scrolling will work its time-warping, mind-numbing magic and when he’ll look up next, all the weird will have been purged from this day.

Between sips of coffee, he pores through the stats for the last game, skims the emails in his inbox and rage-reads a review trashing the new Twilight book. He considers sending the link to Erica so he can vent about the snobby assholes who think they’re smarter than everyone else just because all the books they read are boring as fuck, but she’s probably at work already. He scrolls through his contacts. The one of the chick from last night jumps out. Her name’s Chelsea, which is pretty lucky. She was hot, Patrick recons, and thinking that feels normal. Feels safe. Feels like something Patrick would love to feel more of, thank you very much.

Hi, he types, riding the spur of the moment. This is Patrick from last night.

Stupid and risky, his inner Jonny warns. Never give your number to one night stands. Patrick ignores him and for the sake of clarity and glory, adds, The one who made you see god with his tongue.

“Look who’s joining us,” Shawzy’s voice announces just then.

Patrick’s gaze springs up, landing squarely across Jonny’s chest. Patrick knows it’s Jonny’s chest even though he doesn’t let his gaze climb up to the face attached to it for confirmation. The chest is sailing across the breakfast hall toward Patrick. Well, not toward Patrick specifically. Toward Patrick and the rest of the guys.

“Morning,” Jonny mumbles, dropping his scrambled eggs on the table and his ass between Seabs and Crow.

Patrick’s phone chimes.

well hello patrick 😜

“Slept well?” Shawzy probes, feigning innocence. Patrick’s hackles rise.

“I guess,” Jonny says.

Patrick allows himself another quick glance. Jonny looks good, which means like his usual self, which means nothing like a dude who went through the transformative experience of witnessing his best friend o-face.  It’s kind of annoying, actually. Patrick’s nerves are all fried. He’s half-convinced in the right light anybody could look at him and simply—tell. Patrick Kane got off with another dude in the room and enjoyed it. For a blink he’s fourteen and trying to fight a guy almost double his size who called him a cocksucker, that slammed him against the boards and told him not to bother standing up since everyone knows he does his best work from his knees.

His phone chimes again.

“Tell me the truth.”

totally hit me up again next time ur back here

“What?”

Patrick’s heart rate spikes. Would Jonny even be up for it?

Won’t be for the rest of the season :(, he types.

Maybe things feel weird because threeways are a novelty, maybe they just have to work up an immunity. People have threeways all the time and afterward their lives go on undisrupted. But if you’re ever in Chicago… his fingers are so clammy they smudge the screen when he hits send. He reaches for his cup.

“Did you keep our Kaner up all night?”

Patrick’s head jerks up.

“What?” Jonny says, flat.

For the first time since Patrick sneaked out on him, they make direct eye contact.

Shawzy drones on in the background, “Saw you trying to score that hot--”

It last precisely long enough for a sip of coffee to get its lanes mixed as it plunges down Patrick’s throat and somehow u-turn its way out of his body through the nostrils.

Patrick’s lungs try their best to turn inside out.

“Dude,” Shawzy says.

Stromer slaps Patrick’s back a couple of times, hard.

Duncs throws a handful of paper napkins in his general direction and winces in open disgust as Patrick snatches one mid-air and uses it to dab at the liquid leaking out of him. “Gross.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Patrick informs them tartly between fits of coughing. Some treacherous asshole on his right is fucking cackling. He sweeps the table with an encompassing glare and catches Jonny’s eyes again, all dark with concern. The back of Patrick’s neck prickles with embarrassment. “I’m fine,” he repeats, steadier, and Jonny looks away so Patrick does too, hurriedly withdrawing like from the touch of something scalding.

He zeros in on Chelsea’s new message.

might fly in for a couple of weeks around christmas actually

Patrick latches on to the conversation, blocking out his surroundings, trying his hardest to look busy. Fuck everyone and Jonny too.

We could catch up then if you have time ;)

totally 👅🔥🍆🔥, she texts. And after a moment, say hi to porn dick from me btw

Who?

🙄

Patrick bristles. For some reason, the thought of this random stranger sitting around with her head full of pictures of Jonny’s dick makes him hitch. His chest riots with some misguided protective instinct. Jonny would be insufferably smug if he knew, no doubt about it. It’s not that big.

it is! 100% porn worthy

You don’t know what you’re talking about

???

I’m just saying, are chicks even into that? he writes, just to be an asshole but also because he’s pretty sure chicks hate porn. It’s supposed to be a feminism thing. Erica once made him a whole speech about it or whatever.

big dicks? They are

Haha

their also into porn btw this aint the middle ages AND they have way better taste in it then men

Can you prove it? he asks, hoping it sounds flirty and not confrontational. He wants this chick to bang him again but not over the head with a blunt instrument.

maybe if u stop trying to outdick ur bf with ur personality ill send you some recs

“Who are you texting?”

Patrick elbows his cup off the table and scrambles to catch it before it crashes against the floor. “Fuck,” he mutters, shaking his coffee-soaked hand.

Jonny laughs and at the sound, Patrick’s heart stumbles, then sprints up his throat. “You’re a mess,” Jonny says. He stole Stromer chair.

“Yeah, no, fuck off.”

Stromer is nowhere to be found. He and the rest of the guys must have migrated to the lobby. Patrick picks up the phone from where he abandoned it to make the save and shoves it deep into his pocket just as it pings.

Jonny quirks an eyebrow. He’s smiling.

It feels like Patrick trudged around all morning with a lead rib-cage before the universe caught the glitch. The sudden slack from gravity makes him giddy.  “Don’t be nosy.”

“I’m not!” Jonny protests, all put upon outrage. He flicks Patrick on the hand. “Just saying, team’s gonna suffer if you sprain a thumb.”

A laugh bubbles up Patrick’s chest, loud and easy, and just a little embarrassing.

For a moment, Jonny looks impossibly pleased but then he catches himself. “Everything alright, yeah?” he asks, turning bashful. His eyes drift to the small heap of crumbs he’s sweeping together with his pinkie.

Patrick nudges his thumb against the back of Jonny’s hand. “Yeah. You?”

Jonny’s lips curl up at the corners. “Of course,” he says, looking up, gaze dark and soft.

Of course, of course, of course. Jonny would never let anything happen to them. Patrick stomach flutters. “Okay,” he smiles, dimples out, and Jonny beams back. Time goes fuzzy as they stare at each other in silence—until the ping of an incoming text makes them both startle.

“Again?” Jonny bitches. A moment later, his forehead creases and he puts his serious face on, “Everything okay with your sisters?”

“Yeah, no. It’s not--” Jonny’s eyes flicks to Patrick’s mouth. Patrick hadn’t realized he’d been chewing on his bottom lip. He stops and it tingles, his own breath turning chilly enough to sting as it laps over the bite. “Just-- the chick from last night,” Patrick’s tongue says forgoing any input from his brain. It’s fine. It’s whatever.

“Oh,” Jonny says.

The world keeps rolling. Unfortunately, so does Patrick’s tongue, “Yeah. She’s cool. She was fun.”

“She was okay.”

Patrick can’t believe the understatement. “Okay? Just that? You’ve got some tough standards, man. She was--” as he searches for the right adjective, it suddenly hits him that Jonny has more experience, at least when it comes to threeways. It’s fucking unfair, but entirely possible, the mind-blowingest sex of Patrick’s life would barely chart as okay for Jonny. While he was dating Lindsay, the two of them got up to some kinky shit, Patrick’s pretty sure. Not that he spent any time thinking about it. He licks his lips. “It was hot, right?”

Jonny scoffs. What an asshole.

“Fuck you.”

“It was hot,” he grants. His cheeks are turning pink. He means it.

It feels like scoring the game-winner in the Stanley Cup final. The rush of triumph makes him cocky. “Hotter than the one you had with Lindsay?”

Jonny scoffs again, to Patrick infinite delight. “It was!” Patrick surmises.

“Lindsay’s hotter than her.”

“No way,” he is so offended on Chelsea’s behalf, he barely registers the deflection. Lindsay dumped Jonny. No matter how she looks, her insides must be rotten. Patrick hates that Jonnys is still hung up on her. He kicks Jonny’s foot to make sure he has his attention. “Maybe we should try again. Chelsea’s coming to Chicago around Christmas.”

“Is she?” Jonny kicks him back. “You two move fast.”

“She’s got family there, I think.”

“Sure,” he sounds skeptical. He admitted it was hot, why wouldn't he want a rematch? He and Patrick and some hot chick, she doesn’t even have to be Chelsea, she can be whoever. Small and blonde, like Jonny likes.

“Or we could find someone else,” Patrick says, growing more committed to the idea each second it lives in his brain. “Just go out and see what happens.”

“You think that’s smart?”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “I think you’re boring.” He goes in for the kill, “Captain serious.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’d even let you pick, I don’t care.”

“Starting to sound a bit desperate there, Kaner,” Jonny flashes his most punchable smirk, the one that’s a little lopsided and always makes Patrick squirm.

Patrick starts a mental list of ways to wipe it off his face. Maybe if he shoved two fingers up Jonny’s nose… “What?” he asks, kind of distracted.

“I’m just saying, If you want to see me naked that bad, you only have to--”

“Fuck you,” Patrick sputters. “I was being generous. Bros before hoes or whatever.”

“I’m telling Erica you said that.”

The thought is terrifying. “Don’t,” Patrick shrieks, so loud people in their proximity stop mid-munching to give them the stink eye.

It’s their cue to clear off, a pretty timely one, considering they barely make it on the bus. They’d probably be yelled at, if they weren’t Kane and Toews.

Jonny saunters past Colliton’s glare and flops down next to Seabs. Patrick takes the two seats right behind, stretching out until he’s almost horizontal.

He checks his phone. Chelsea sent him a text and a link. The texts says, one of them looks a bit like your boy. you’re welcome. The link-- Patrick slaps the phone face down on his thigh.

“You okay there, Kaner?” Jonny asks, glancing over his shoulder.

Patrick feels his ears burn redder than the Hawks home jersey. “Yeah, no. Real peachy.”

[schrijverr]

The Great Whale Fight of 326,501

Some of the crew doesn’t believe that whales exists, when this comes to light a fight starts between the two sides, ending in flat-planeters and fun Tshirts.

On AO3.

Ships: none

warnings: none, but tell me if I missed anything or if you want me to tag something!!

I blame @assyer for this whole fic and will deny any responsibility in the creation or origin of this fic.

~~~~~~~~~~~

A whale.

It is a normal animal that most on this earth are familiar with. Hardly anyone has seen one in real life, but almost no one has never heard the word.

But the mechanisms are not from this world, except for Tim, who will tear his own hair out if you mention a whale in his presence.

Tim does not hate whales, of course he doesn’t. Whales are great, sweet animals that he cannot picture in his mind because they’re so big. Tim used to love whales. Used to until the Great Whale Fight of 326,501.

It had all started with Brian getting fished out of the sun. He had been there for a few centuries while the other were exploring the rest of space until the narrative would let them near Camelot again.

When Brain was out of the sun The Toy Soldier asked concerned: “Are You Alright, Old Chap? Not Too Lonely In The Sun?”

“No, no, I had the whales to keep me company.” Brian answered.

“Brian, are you delirious? Is your mechanism failing?” Jonny slapped his face, trying to snap him out of whatever daze he was in, “We both know whales aren’t real.”

“According to my books whales are gigantic seas creatures native to the planet earth documented during the human era.” Ivy told Jonny.

“Of course there are whales, they were in the books.” Tim backed Ivy up.

“Books are rubbish and full of myths, you can’t trust them. Whales aren’t real and even if they were they’re apparently sea creatures, not sun creatures.” Jonny said.

“No, they were there, in the sun. They had puppy eyes, very sweet.” Brian insisted.

“Yeah, okay, Brian is broken. Where is Nastya?” Jonny let go of the lapels of Brians coat, how it had survived he did not know, as the drumbot fell back to the floor.

“I’m here.” Nastya replied distantly from where she was standing at the observation deck, desperately looking to the sun.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jonny asked.

“Trying to see one of the whales. I miss whales.” Nastya replied.

“I just said they aren’t real.” Jonny threw his hands up.

“And since when do you get to decide that?” Tim asked, “You are not really the one I would go to for facts. Whales are real.”

“I’m with Tim here.” Ivy said.

“Hey! When I showed up and said whales were my favourite animals you all didn’t want to believe me, but now we’re defending them?” Marius exclaimed.

“Because it was funny, Marius.” Tim replied, “Besides, whales don’t prove you’re a doctor.”

“I didn’t even say that!” Marius’ yell was ignored.

“I don’t think whales are real.” Ashes said, picking a side despite not having an opinion just for the chaos of it.

“Yeah there are.” Nastya frowned, “There are space whales and water whales. I saw them when you left me after I sunk on that one planet.”

“You mean that time on earth, before any interesting evolution had happened?” Jonny asked, “That was ages ago, you probably don’t remember it right.”

“Exactly, whales aren’t real. They’re made up by not real scientists.” Raphaella mixed herself into the conversation as well.

“See, the scientist agrees. I’m right.” Jonny said smugly.

“You never believe Raphaella, why are you starting now?” Marius protested.

“Because you believe her, so why not now, von Raum? Wanna explain that?” and Marius wanted nothing more than to punch Jonny in the face, especially when Raph send him an inquisitive look and Ashes grinned: “Yeah, Marius, why won’t you explain that one?”

He clenched his fist and then just went for it, sucker punching Jonny right in the face with his metal hand, enjoying the crunching noise his jaw made.

“Whale side started!” Ashes yelled, before charging at Marius.

After that it was every man for himself. Ashes was chocking Marius while Tim was trying to fend off Raphaellas wings, while Ivy was trying to save herself from Jonnys attacks, who was getting help from TS after a quick order. Brian laid forgotten on the floor, still trying to heal, and Nastya smartly heaved herself up into a vent before anyone could drag her into it.

There was no clear winner, even after the whole thing had dragged on for three full days, so each side declared themselves the winners.

In the following days there was no fraternization between them. If before you were friends with someone who did or did not believe in whales, depending on which side you were on, now you weren’t.

Raphaella and Marius no longer did science together, Brian and Ivy were no longer invited to The Toy Soldiers tea party and Jonny was giving Nastya the cold shoulder, while Ashes refused to play cards with Tim.

This went on for a long while, about four months, but it was getting annoying, so Jonny knew that he would have to stoke the fire before it ended.

Taking inspiration from Ulysses he proposed a truce by giving Nastya and Brian both the same shirt that read: ‘I was lefd on a plannet end al I saw was a wale’

The two in question were ecstatic, both with the shirt and a reason to leave the fight that had broken out. Brian didn’t like fighting and Nastya just didn’t care enough, she only wanted to see some more whales. Brian was easily convinced to fly closely past a sun in an attempt to spot them.

Ivy, however, was not at all amused at the shirts. When she saw the two wearing them, she immediately found Jonny and yelled: “A sun is not a planet and there are no whales in the sun!”

“Why not, it’s also flat and in space?” Jonny shrugged, “Besides, Brian and Nastya seem to think otherwise. Thought they were on your side?”

“They were, uh, they are!” Ivy said defensively, “You’re just trying to win them over.”

“And I feel that is going pretty well.” Jonny stuck out his tongue.

“Wait, Jonny, did you just say that suns are flat like planets?” Marius asked, from where he was sitting on the couch. Beside him Ashes smelled Jonnys bullshit they and innocently said: “Yeah, duh, who doesn’t know that?”

Marius gaped like a fish and looked like he was about to explode as Ivy screamed: “We literally fly past planets every fucking day! How the fuck do you not know they are round not fucking flat!”

“Because I have common sense, Ivy.” Jonny told her, basking in the chaos he was creating, “If I stand then the ground around me is flat. There is such a thing called being level that can’t happen if a planet is round, it has to be flat.”

“Yeah, how can you debunk that, eh, Ivy.” Ashes grinned.

“Planets are big, okay? They can be round with a slight slope that you don’t notice and therefore feel flat, but they are not flat, just look outside, just look through any of the windows on Aurora and look at any planet ever.” Ivys cheeks were beginning to match the color of her hair as she got angrier.

“And how do we not fall off then, someone has to be on the underside.” Ashes asked, phrasing it like they were telling her something and she was dumb.

“Because gravity!” Marius exploded, “Tell me you know fucking gravity!”

“No, I don’t believe in that.” Jonny said calmly, backing Ashes up without a blink.

“First whales, now this, what are you going to say next.” Ivy screamed frustrated.

“Fucking nothing if I have anything to say about it.” Marius said, jumping Jonny to kill him so often it would take a month to reform.

And with a cackle from Jonny a new fight broke out again. The animosity from this fight lasted about a year, but was never fully resolved.

The terms whale and flat in combination with planet were banned, with Aurora shooting anyone who brought it up again.

So yeah, Tim used to love whales, Marius too, but the Great Whale Fight of 326,501 kind of ruined it for everyone that wasn’t Ashes or Jonny as well as Brian and Nastya, who now spend about an hour every week together trying to spot some whales out there in the vastness of space.

[thevoidcannotbefilled]

Web!Martin.... Oh boy. Gonna shake the hornet’s nest with this one, but I’ve spent like three days on this editing and re-editing, and I’m finally satisfied with my kind of an essay at this point. 

So, here’s a deep dive as to why I think Web!Martin has merits. (Scroll to the bottom of my essay for my TLDR). 

Introduction

First, to get some stuff out of the way:

Do I think Martin is a sleeper agent? Do I think that he has been manipulating Jon this entire time or even in just season 5 for the games of the Web? Do I think he's a bunch of spiders in a Martin suit? Do I think he's regards the Mother as his Mother and accepts that he is her Son? Is Martn actively Webby? 

No. Absolutely not. None of the above. The Martin we know is the Martin we began with, just with a bunch of trauma and has gained the ability to set his boundaries.

I find the idea of sleeper agent Martin or something similar to be very counterintuitive to the overall narrative. Not only is TMA about choices, and to have Martin be a sleeper agent would be to deny all of Martin's choices this season in particular, but it doesn't really lead to much. At best it's a gotcha and a surprise at worst it's making literally every interaction between Jon and Martin, with Martin himself, and so on mean nothing for the sake of one twist and make it sad. It's not fun in long term, and so at the end of the day, I trust Jonny and Alex as writers more than that. (Plus we already did the "person is replaced" thing).

Does Martin being a manipulator actively mean that he is a Web avatar?

Short answer, no. 

Long answer, I made a post awhile back, and while it was for fandom things, I think it applies well here. What power you choose to align yourself with isn’t necessarily something you’d fully commit to. It is just, if you were an avatar and willing to hurt others for your own gain, what would you find yourself most aligned with.  What I mean by that, just because Martin lies and manipulates doesn’t mean that he is Web, however, manipulation is a tool does fit well with the Web, and if he were to choose to align himself to that, I think he could be Webby. However, he is not necessarily a Web avatar because he has no motivation to hurt people. 

That being said I do think Martin would be a good fit for the Web if he wanted to be, and I think there will be a point in the narrative that there is a potential that he could become one, even if he does not necessarily choose to be in the end. 

Let’s talk about it.

Evidence

I think the best way to describe Web!Martin on my end is this: if Martin had an inclination to be an avatar, he would be the Web because everything from his aesthetics to his skillsets line up with the Web, but he does not have any reason to be Webby and in fact, at the very least as of MAG169, should actively be against the Web’s goals. 

But that doesn’t mean his connection to the Web hasn’t been heavily foreshadowed or built up. Not all of these are of the same level, I admit that, so I’m just gonna bold the ones that are the most important.  These aren’t in any particular order. 

-For season 1 subtext, said he liked spiders In This First Appearance MAG22, in MAG38 Jon says that Martin gives them lectures on the importance of spiders for the environment, and MAG39, “it’s just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too.” 

-IN MAG79, his poem has a line in it that goes, “"the threads of people walking, living, loving" which is very Web-like. 

-During the Web statement he read in season 3, he said “that wasn’t so bad, actually!” (MAG110) when he finished after showing open disdain for the others he read. The only other statement he didn’t think was bad to read was the Lonely one (MAG108), a power he canonical has ties to. 

-The only person in the show so far of the main cast that has had direct contact with Annabelle Cane. The only other people that have had contact with her are her victims (Creature Feature, MAG110) or her people she used as tools (Web Development, MAG123). 

-Let himself be guided to put the tapes on top of the coffin when the tapes, which have shown a direct association with both the Web and the Eye. 

- Martin’s “lo-fi charm” and “retro-aesthetic” (various) versus Annabelle “She dressed like a vintage clothing store exploded on her” (MAG69)

-Uses lying and manipulation as his main tactic against people and is acknowledged that manipulation is a skillset of his. By Jonah mostly, but he was able to successfully manipulate both Peter and Jonah. 

-In MAG117, he said "I’m not afraid for me, though. Isn’t that weird? I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be safe, like my plan’s not dangerous, but it’s, it’s mine. This 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’ll work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but it felt good weaving my own little web." and he then added after it with "oh good lord is Martin becoming some sort of spider person', no, Jon, just an expression.” 

-Martin having a bad relationship with his mother versus Mother of Puppets.

-The Web and the Desolation actively dislike one another (MAG139), and fire is Martin’s most hated pain (MAG169). 

-Martin is the primary investigator in Recluse (MAG59), Arachnophobia (MAG16), and was the one to find and give the Cracked Foundation (MAG114) to Jon. All of which are Web statements. 

-The delivery of the table and the lighter were technically both given to Martin since he was the one who talked to Breekon and Hope. 

-Martin was the first one to mention the Web lighter in season 5 in MAG162. 

What Does This Mean

Now I will admit none of these things on their own mean Web!Martin. They’re something you might describe a Web!avatar yes, but not Martin on his own (like I said just because Martin can be a manipulator doesn’t mean he is a Web avatar).

In fact, with elements like Martin finding fire his least favorite pain, I adore the meta on Martin’s trauma about giving himself up for other people led to him disliking fire and the lack of care from his mother, also leading to that. It is an excellent metaphor that fits incredibly well with his character. That being said, these factors can coexist. Martin disliking fire can both be a metaphor for his own self-destruction for the sake of others and be hints toward Web!Martin. 

HOWEVER, that all being said, even if these moments on their own don’t mean Web!Martin proof, I find it a bit unreasonable to entirely dismiss all of this either. There are too many coincidences lining up with the Web to not be intentional. It could be a red herring of course, but if it is a red herring.....well, Jonny put a hella of a lot of effort into making the Web!Martin red herring considering how much of his little details align so well with the small and big details of the Web. 

But assuming that this info does align together in all its Webiness... does this mean Web!Martin? 

Again, at the moment, I don’t think Martin is actively Webby. 

At his heart, Martin wants to do two things: 1) Protect Jon and 2) Protect as many other innocents he can in the process. 

As ironic as it is: "I want to find out what's going on. I want to save Jon. I want everyone to be fine and, you know what? If we were all happy that wouldn't actually be the end of the world” and “I want them to be safe. I need him to be okay” are basically the sum of Martin’s motivations from here to now. Martin wants a happy ending. And he’ll use whatever tools he can to do that. 

So asking questions from dangerous people like Simon Fairchild? For the protection of the world from what he thought was from the Extinction.

Burning up statements and burning up the cabin? The Desolation would like that, if it wasn’t for the fact he does so to decrease the fear in the world. 

And manipulating others? Peter? Jonah? Both of these weren’t to cause fear. They were at their heart to help others. 

Using the tools that the powers use does not mean you’re of that power. Martin’s most effective tool is to manipulate others bc they underestimate him or they trust him to do what needs to be done. People tend to have a single view of him. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have other tactics, but with both Peter and Elias, it’s clear he knows how to use others’ egos against them. 

Season 5 and Web!Martin

This ALL being said...... Season 5 is a lot about the nature of power (what to do with it and what it means to use it) and what you can do in inherently toxic systems. We just learned that killing its leaders does nothing when the system itself is built to actively hurt others. That smiting doesn’t actively make things better. The Web is actively doing something at the moment and possibly with the Distortion as well that will probably hurt Jon and Martin. 

But..... 

I’m worried about the possibility that the Web can promise a world with a happy ending like Martin always wanted and with no other options within the world, Martin chooses to let himself become a tool for the Web. Now to make this clear: Does Web!Martin give a happy ending or even a better world? No. Absolutely not. Can the Web possibly promise to give him the power to get a happy ending? Depends on if Martin will believe it.

If Web!Martin is a thing, it would be in doing so What He Thinks would be in both of their best interests and most importantly as his lowest point and final resort. That he stops believing that they have power to change the world on their own. When he believes he has no power left and all he can do to make the world better is to go to the one source that always seems to understand what’s going on. Because as of yet, he doesn’t have the motivations to be a Web avatar, but we’re slowly creeping into territory where he might think it is necessary to be one. 

(We already had best case scenario where the Web asks Martin to join him and Martin says no. He could say no again, of course, but I don’t know if the Web will be as understanding of his reluctance in time). 

For me, Web!Martin is on the same level of tragedy as Jon being the Archivist. Yes, there would be choices, but Martin would have been actively been manipulated by the Web just as much as Jon would be hurt by the Eye, even if it’s for entirely different reasons. He would be used as a tool in a greater game. Jon wants to be a good person. Martin wants to have a happy ending. We already know Jon’s desire to help the people around him has gotten him multiple marks. I can definitely see a world where Martin’s desire for a happy ending is used against him by the Web. 

I can see a world where Martin lies to Jon because he thinks that’s what’s best for the two of them. I can see a world where he doesn’t lie to Jon but still accepts the power of the Web anyway despite Jon not thinking it’s a good idea. I don’t think either HAVE happened yet. We aren’t at that point, but... 

Whatever the case, whatever plan the Web may have it highly involves one Mister Blackwood and his Archivist. And for the Web’s plans, Martin plays a key part of in it. 

Other Theories and How Web Martin Plays Into It

So, do I think that’s where the plot will end? With Web!Martin betraying Jon bc he thinks it will be best? Not really. I think a lot of the point will also be that while Martin fits the Web well, his inherent desire for a better world makes it so he’s not an avatar. It’s the same points I made before: aesthetically, Martin fits the Web well and could be a good avatar in association, but he doesn’t WANT to hurt innocents. And ultimately, no matter his potential goals, Martin loves and cares for the world and especially for Jon. There could be a mistake in there made by Martin, where the Web has his clutches in him, but I don’t see a world where that is his ultimate conclusion. 

I’ve also seen a theory where Martin uses Webby shenanigans to his advantage against Annabelle Cane. Where the manipulator becomes the manipulated and the tragedy is the sacrifice of himself for the sake of a happy ending he’ll never see. 

I’m interested in seeing if Jonah making Martin the backup Archivist goes anywhere, especially with the uncertain connection between the tapes, the Eye, the Web, and the Archivist. Does this have anything to do with why Martin felt like he had to listen to Jon? Does this have anything to do with how he slapped Jon out of a statement? Could both of these elements also have something to do with the Web? 

I’m also very intrigued on what Web Development was doing when they have something called a “story-spinner” and yet when the story-spinner was described it sounded almost exactly like an Archivist, but instead when you give a story, the spinner killed someone. Could the story-spinner have anything to do with the previous back-up Archivist? Could they just be entirely separate things? 

Who knows what it all means? I don’t. That’s why I’m not discounting anything, especially with something that has so much set-up and subtext as Web!Martin. Whether Web!Martin means full avatar or not isn’t clear to me, but I’m taking any and all potential red-tape moments and running with them. If it means being pulled by a red-herring, so be it, but I won’t dismiss anything until proven otherwise. As long as Martin wants to do good and have a happy ending, I don’t think the Web can fully get him at least not in the ways that count. But I won’t stop investigating the narrative on what these elements could lead up to. 

Conclusion 

This post was made in frustration. I admit that. There is a distaste for Web!Martin that has been approaching the fandom that I don’t entirely understand. I’m not saying you have to like it, heck I admit, I could be entirely wrong. I also agree it’s a bit annoying that every interaction that Martin and Jon have come up under scrutiny for Martin potentially being Webby by the fandom. That’s why I started this post as I did because I don’t find the narrative of “Martin Is The Evil Bad Guy Manipulating Jon From The Beginning” all that compelling and wanted to put that to rest early. 

I do, though, find it frustrating dismissing all elements of Web!Martin because of this. At the end of the day, I find there are too many elements in the text to entirely dismiss it and an outright rejection of Web!Martin can potentially lead to dissatisfaction with the narrative. I make this post as an explanation and exploration of my thoughts, and a way to show why so many fans like the Web!Martin theory. Take it or leave it, it’s fine, but I wanted to gather all my thoughts clearly in one place rather than in a bunch of snippy posts. I hope I’ve done that well enough. 

TLDR: Web!Martin for me is a potential, a threat, and a possibility, but not something I think is actively happening at the moment. Martin would make a good fit for an avatar if he wanted to be, but at the moment, has no motivation to do so. However, with the ever decreasing options to save the end of the world, I can see a situation where Web!Martin is a thing that he actively thinks could save it. 

That being said, Martin is inherently a character that wants to do GOOD in the world, and as long as that’s the case, even if that motivation is used against him, I don’t think he will be proven wrong that the world can be good and he has the power to make it so, or at the very least, I don’t think his journey will end on a dower note, even if it is a tragic one. The tragedy will be in the cost of saving the world or something similar, and whether or not Web!Martin is the case, I don’t think that will change. That being said, there are many potential theories on what could happen, and I don’t want to miss any of them, Web or not. This post has been made in somewhat defense as to why people like Web!Martin and continue to theorize about it, but also in reassurance that even if we do get Web!Martin that it doesn’t mean a destruction of Martin’s character.

[jonathankatwhatever]

Giving myself free range this 23 Oct 2023. Every date occurs once a century but this one is in the group that generates 23 in each of 12 months. I can see where this is going but I’m still in the dark because I’m not fully in Joana mode. I’m somewhere in Jonny/Joanie, as signified by the vowel shift which is the I//I of that pair. That vowel shift signifies the m to f shift through raising of the pitch and the shaping of a lighter sound.

Aside: is that why you were sharp, descending toward the harmonics? Because I was flat ascending? I used to be unable to locate a pitch going up, and I kept trying to hear better, and I kept realizing it wasn’t a question of hearing a note but of hearing the process that generates the note because that generates the maps for me. Those maps are in forms like Cantor sets. How can we explain this? I need to get Joana up. She’s engaged with George now, but maybe I can get some time. Hey, yes I love you too. A Cantor set is the fan function and the map is simply the one made by opening and closing gates. Then you can construct any counting across that structure.

To be clear, it isn’t that there’s a Cantor set but that we combine these. As in, let’s say we take a middle third and fan it, meaning we treat it as removed or folded up, but then we do that for each of the thirds. You can see that makes a wave of motion because we need to infer a third ‘behind’ in one direction and a third ‘ahead’ in that same direction. This is also an example of basic gs counting construction, which I can go into now. We begin a Cantor set with the idea of thirds. The motivation for that has never been clear; it assumes the existence of a form of choice. We provide the motivation by constructing Triangular, with the third being the midline, which is folded in a bT or fD, but which expands into any size structure at the End. That then explains another level of beauty in the Bip, which is that as an End constructed out of relations between Ends, meaning it sits on a pole of 1-0Segment interactions, then it acts as a traffic circle for traffic. That is why when you approach an idea, you may suddenly find yourself thinking about something entirely different or why you can be, alternatively, suddenly realize you were completely lost in thought while doing something else, like driving or walking with your phone.

By the time we’re through, that kind of basic idea will be seen as proof of I//I, which is proof of the mathematics. Anyone can take that observation which they surely must have had and begin to understand the HC. That’s the way in.

It’s now fairly easy to see the why behind the reality that there is a pole at the Bip and this pole keeps track of relations. How? It sorts them because this is all a construction of grid squares, and any construction is itself in that same coordinate system of xyszK.

I’m not even hiding this: move the s and it reads sxyzK, and that’s sexy, zK, which is as ordinal as it gets. That led to an interesting observation that one of the sexual aspects of slavery had to have been a lot of oral sex. That’s the way into seeing those people as more complete human beings, because that’s an act which requires trust. That trust could be obtained under the worst force or through any manner which attaches to the idea that you can’t so no so the terms are as favorable as you can get. That’s basic economic analysis: you have a crop and can’t hold it, you make bread, you raise cows, etc. and at some point you need to sell.

Yes, that’s also why young teen girls: their breasts grow before they menstruate so that would be seen as safer. I can imagine that being encouraged to avoid pregnancies. You can see the storylines that come off that. I don’t know which are rational.

For example, I can’t understand how Jefferson’s mind worked because Sally was the child of his father-in-law with a woman who was already half white, so Sally was like ¾ white and yet the Jefferson children she had were slaves. That says he saw slavery as based in race but extending as an abstract label in which he could connect the idea of indentured servitude, which he saw among whites, and the chattel form, which was racial and then extending to those who became progressively less chattel form.

I’ve seen that in the tone cultural issues in the black community. The concept of high yellow or other light tone meant you could marry even lighter to approach acceptance.

Yes, what needs to be conveyed is not that the cultural dominance was white but that it was an expression of the concept of slavery, which existed when African chattel slavery began in Europe. As in, at that time, Europeans were slaves in Arab lands. That form of slavery bridges the idea: those slaves were acquired by force or by money, as slaves were elsewhere because people was a form of commerce. It made money for your people. It could also remove those you didn’t want around. Transportation was a form of ‘slavery’ in that sense: the landowners would transport the poor, thus selling them to a new land under penal terms, with no legitimate hope of return. The ideas link together, like any other set of ideas. They just need to be looked at calmly.

So for example, when slavery established in the British colonies, that culture was British. That culture took a few forms: settler and economic. The settler form is what became the US, while the economic would be Jamaica or any other of their islands. You can see an arc running from African slavery to the Caribbean to the American colonies: in Jamaica it expresses as nearly pure economic, while the American colonies are a mix where the economic meets settler, literally mixing along a north and south divide which solidified by the beginning of the 19thC into such a wall that war broke out.

The first groups to change the mix were the Irish, who existed in a form of serfdom so bad they were fleeing starvation, then Southern Italians also fleeing a form of serfdom and intense poverty, along with Jews, who had only recently been let out of locked streets in Europe. You can see how attributes carried over within the larger cultural mix.

I need to take a break. Received a call because I apparently am selling my house and have to be completely out of it soon, which means no time for work with you. So this may be an End where we diverge after growing so close. I hope not, but it’s existential sadness.

[thedreadvampy]

look it's very simple most main cast tma characters (except possibly Basira and Sasha and MAYBE Tim) are reacting to not just supernatural trauma but clear, explicit childhood trauma and I think that's important to take into consideration.

Jon evidently came from a difficult place in the first place, and he was taught that he was an unwanted annoyance who'd derailed his grandma's life, that his intelligence was unpleasant, arrogant and inconvenient, and that the worst thing he could do was get in a grown-up's way. Of course he's bad at talking to people about his feelings. Of course he apologises for seemingly random things and tries to hide big problems and power through on his own. He had a really lonely childhood where he felt like an inconvenience, and now in adulthood it's deeply difficult to believe that anybody will help him and not hold it against him. Of course he comes across staid and aloof - he doesn't believe that anyone will like him if he isn't Doing Everything Right. It's so easy in that situation to worry so much about not being a burden that you freeze your friends out even as they can see you spiralling and you end up hurting them when in fact they'd be more than willing to offer help and get you out. It's why addiction is such an easy hole to fall in, because it feels like a way you can be self-sufficient and deal with your feelings without being a burden. Jon ISN'T a very closed off person naturally, he wants to reach out and be close to people, but he's been taught over and over (as many autistic children are) that he's too much, that he takes up too much space, that it's unfair for him to expect people to go out of their way to help him, so he boxes it away and shoves it down and turns to cigarettes, paranoia and denial in an attempt to manage the problem by himself. He's trying so hard to not be the Weird Kid, he's trying to play the part of what he thinks an archivist and a boss should be and blah his way through; he knows believing in weird shit opens the door to all sorts of stuff so he sticks his fingers in his ears and goes LALALA. he's deeply avoidant which ironically is why he often ends up diving in recklessly - it feels safe to only put yourself at risk (you who think you don't particularly matter, are unloved, and are an annoyance anyway) rather than wait and let others get involved and either judge you or get hurt. He didn't tell ANYONE that his encounter with Daisy had hurt him for SEVERAL YEARS because he didn't want to upset anyone. This speaks to me so much of a kid who growing up was always treated as underfoot, in the way, abnormal and with emotions and problems that weren't nearly as significant as the Important Grownup Things. I don't think anyone knew how to help 5 year old Jon with navigating his parents' deaths, and his grandmother's grief at losing her child probably made it very hard for them to connect whether or not she actually resented him the way he thinks she did. He was treated with bitterness and coldness his whole childhood, and he's never been given space to be angry about that because she was doing her best and dealing with a difficult situation, but it certainly left him with an expectation that trying to turn to anyone for emotional help and support will get you in trouble AND is unfair on them. Being with Martin, and indeed all his friendships and relationships, is hard to navigate when you've been taught for so long that exposing your vulnerability will get you yelled at or will upset people. You try to harden up and develop an exoskeleton but you're so chronically soft and in need of help and love so it spills out messy and you don't know how to take the walls down or build better ones up.

Martin's obvious, because his parental abuse is at the centre of his arc and is explicitly spelled out by Elias. He's so sure it's something he's done that's made his dad leave and his mum despise him, and he's hoping against desperate hope that if he can be Good Enough, little enough of a problem, helpful and invaluable, he can make up for whatever chronic flaw in his personality makes him unlovable. Of course he ISN'T unlovable, and none of his parent's treatment of him is his fault, but it's much safer to believe it's your fault and you can change it than it is to believe people who are meant to love you can just not hold up their end of the bargain for reasons totally outside your control. Much like with Jon, Martin has been taught to believe that he's a Problem - where Jon puts up walls and tries to be aggressively separate, Martin tries as hard as he can to prove himself Useful and Valuable while walling off an excess of humanity. Honestly though Martin's coping with it better than Jon throughout the series because he knows what it is and he's TRYING to push past the impulse to Not Be A Bother and actually let people love him. But he's still seeing the world through the lens of someone who's spent his whole life believing that the only way he'll deserve love is to become invaluable, to be useful, to be caring, to be needed, to be all give and no take, and that's not sustainable. And how much must it knock him back from trusting enough to ask for help when his boss (leave aside the love interest bit) talks about him like he's a buffoon and a waste of space however hard he's trying to be helpful and valuable, just like his mum has for years? Finding out that you matter enough to that person for him to risk his life to save you, and to really truly see you, goes a long way towards showing you that you're not always right to assume that people are lying when they say nice things about you and honest when they say cruel things about you - sometimes you are genuinely loved by people who ALSO see you as flawed. and while obviously after that the circumstances are very different I think we've seen Martin become more comfortable with his own tendency to acidity and sarcasm, anger and messy feelings, around not just Jon but in general (although also I can't talk about this without as usual observing how weird it is that people read Martin as sweet, servile and wimpy when he's consistently tough, sarcastic and brave AS WELL AS deeply lacking in confidence, afraid of conflict, emotionally giving, and terminally people-pleasing. He's right when he repeatedly says people underestimate him and don't see him - it's weird that the fandom is a big culprit of that)

Speaking of characters whose trauma responses are often overlooked, Melanie doesn't talk much about her pre-statement life but she's clear that it hasn't been good, and that other than her dad she's had nobody in the world she can trust. I am positive that her childhood was marked by parental abuse/neglect to at least a certain degree, because she was willing to kill her mum/let her die without much compunction (I THINK that's the implication of Elias' line about her mum's life insurance paying for her dad's care). To me (projecting), Melanie's fear of losing control of her own anger speaks to somebody who grew up in a volatile and probably physically violent home, and I suspect her mother was struggling to cope and lashing out at Melanie and her dad. (I also think that while it's unlikely to be made explicit because Jonny generally shies away from talking it writing about sexual abuse, that it's very probable that Melanie experienced adolescent sex abuse from some source and wasn't protected or supported. That's pure conjecture though based on how she acts.) I think she's definitely had issues with everyone in her family except her dad when it comes to her sexuality and that she's been largely estranged for a long time, and I think those are the kinds of things which, coupled with abuse and sidelining in adulthood, leave you with a lot of rage and nowhere to put it, and with a huge amount of difficulty trusting people. Undeniably, Melanie has been on the sharp end of other people's violent anger often enough to be really, really wary of ever giving her own anger free rein, or losing control of herself.

We don't know much about Daisy's childhood beyond what happened with Calvin (Pretty Damn Traumatic), but I think what I find interesting about Daisy is that she's definitely someone who, like many girls, struggled with that point in childhood where you're supposed to Stop Liking Boy (Fun) Things and Become A Girl. I think it's safe to say that Daisy was fairly subject to bullying and alienation in primary school, and I think people often overlook how badly that affects you your whole life. But also to be severely injured and traumatised, to tell people what happened, and to not be believed? That leaves marks. Marks that teach you that you can't trust that justice will be served, and you have to take the law into your own hands. I think there's also a lot of the Gendered Traumas happening around Daisy - she clearly has a conflicted relationship with femininity - but that's another post.

[ieatmypizzawithaforkandknife]

MAG 019 - Confession (part 1)

Summary: Jonathan reads the first half of the statement of Father Edwin Burroughs, regarding “his claimed demonic possession.”

Our first two-parter! Not that I realized that when I listened to the episode the first time, despite it being right there in the title, because I have the observational skills of a blind muskrat...but I’m excited because I know there will be more multi-parters in the future. I like the episodic format right now, but I know that as Things Begin To Happen, I’ll appreciate the increased breadth and depth of longer stories.

89 Bullingdon Rd is the third street address featured in the series so far, the other two being 93 Lancaster Rd in episode 5 and 105 Hill Top Rd in episode 8. Unlike the first two, however, this one actually exists - kind of. According to google maps, the house numbers on Lancaster Rd in Walthamstow run from about 1 to 85, and the numbers on Hill Top Rd in Cowley run from about 1 to 75. But 89 is right in the middle of the range of house numbers on Bullingdon Rd in Cowley, and while google maps says there’s an 89A but not an 89...it’s close enough. On one hand it’s super cool that these locations are relatively real (the towns are real, the streets are real, it’s just the exact buildings that aren’t). On the other hand 89A is a little too close to 89, and I wish Jonny had picked a number completely outside the range of addresses like he did with the first two, just to avoid crazy fans descending on real people’s houses.

It is definitely worth noting the proximity of 89 Bullingdon Rd to 105 Hill Top Rd. They’re only about half a mile (or about a kilometer, since this is in the UK after all) away from each other as the crow flies. And for both of them, the location itself seems to be tied to the paranormal happenings of the episode(s) they’re featured in. In episode 8, Ivo Lensik feels that unnatural burning start when he’s alone inside 105 Hill Top Rd, which stops as soon as Father Burroughs arrives. In this episode, Father Burroughs feels that same unnatural burning start when he’s alone inside 105 Hill Top Rd, and it only stops when Ivo uproots the tree. And in this episode, Bethany claims her problems are being caused by the Bullingdon Rd house itself, though she doesn’t explain what made her think that. But it’s very concerning that she can’t seem to see the only creepy thing about the house that we’re aware of: the old Latin word written in faded blue paint on the exposed wall.

The word “mentis” is Latin alright, but Father Burroughs translates it as “mind” which...isn’t quite right. “Mentis” doesn’t strictly mean “mind”, it means “of the mind”. The endings of Latin nouns change based on how they’re used in a sentence, so if you’re talking about the word “mind” as the subject of a sentence (or as the word in general) it is “mens”. “Mentis” is specifically the possessive form of the word. I don’t know whether this was deliberate or accidental on Jonny’s part, since if you look it up the dictionary entry shows “mens, mentis”. (It’s standard practice to include both the “subject” form and the “possessive” form in the dictionary since they’re different.) It makes me wonder if this word was part of a phrase and if there were other words hidden under the wallpaper. (Also, small shout-out to anyone reading this who is also a Latin geek, and I hope I explained it well enough that the non-Latin-geeks also understand that explanation.)

On the subject of language, this isn’t the first time Latin has appeared in connection with the paranormal. Ex Altiora, the Leitner found in episode 4, was written entirely in Latin (including the title), and the Lord’s Prayer was written in Latin on that long strip of singed paper found in the second trash bag in episode 5. It’s interesting that the same constellation of details from the trash bag incident are also in this episode: Latin, Christianity, and burning.

Latin isn’t even the only dead language to make an appearance this episode. When describing his experiences performing exorcisms at the beginning of the episode, Father Burroughs recounts: “I was once cursed at in Sumerian by a young man who was illiterate.” In episode 12, the phrase muttered by the hospitalized man that seemed to summon the “lightless flame” contained the word “Asag”, which is the name of a Sumerian demon that could boil fish alive in their rivers. Father Burroughs doesn’t appear in episode 12, but if he had been at that hospital, I think he would have pegged that guy as possessed and wanted to have an exorcism performed. So is there a connection between Sumerian and possession and burning? And how do all the different dead languages that have appeared so far (Latin, Sumerian, and Sanskrit) fit together?

I am also very interested in that nurse, Anna/Annie/Anne Kasuma/Willett. (Seriously, how many names does one person need?) For my purposes, I’m going to call her “Annie” because she seems to go by that. In this episode’s statement (made in 2011), Father Burroughs gives her surname as Willett, and in Jonathan’s wrap-up at the end of episode 8 (which he recorded in late 2015 or early 2016), Jonathan gives her surname as Kasuma. As an older, fairly conservative Catholic (she was a member of the congregation at Father Burroughs’ church, fully believed in demonic possession, etc.), it is highly unlikely that she changed her name for any reason other than marriage or divorce. Ivo Lensik described her as “Malaysian”, and Kasuma is an Indonesian name, whereas Willett is found overwhelmingly in predominantly white countries (the U.S., England, Australia, and Canada are at the top of the list of countries where the name is found). So it would make the most sense to me if Kasuma were her maiden name and Willett a married name. BUT when Jonathan mentions her in the wrap-up to episode 8, he calls her “Mrs. Kasuma”. Since everything else fits with the idea that Kasuma is her maiden name and Willett her married name, I’m thinking Jonathan just messed up the honorific, since he also referred to “Miss Popham” at the end of episode 15 when “Popham” was very clearly Laura’s married name. (This overly detailed surname analysis brought to you in part by my ongoing obsession with genealogy. If anyone reading this has anything resembling a passing interest in the subject, feel free to hit me up about it. I will gush.) All of that nitty-gritty was not without purpose: I think she’s important somehow. I could be reading too much into things, but why would Jonny give her a name change if it weren’t somehow important? Even I realized the nurse from episode 8 and the nurse from episode 19 were the same person on my first listen-through, when I missed or forgot 90% of the details in any given episode, so I don’t think he was trying to trip us up. And she has a direct connection to 105 Hill Top Rd: she grew up on that street, and had a lot of information on the property’s history dating back to before she was born, possibly indicating her family lived on that street even longer. But we haven’t met anyone else with either surname, so for now that’s where it stands: possibly a lead, muddled with a probable mistake.

I was so glad when Father Burroughs made the differentiation in this episode between perception and will: “Bethany told me that her will was still her own, but she could no longer trust her senses, and had found herself doing much that she did not understand.” She tried to eat a small slab of slate, and she apparently couldn’t perceive the word “Mentis” that was literally written on a wall. This might be the first time that the author of the statement calls attention to the recurring theme I’ve been calling “altered reality”. This “altered reality” is a heavy presence in the second part of this two-parter, but I’ll wait to talk about that in that episode’s post. Coupled with this “altered reality” is the “eating of something you really shouldn’t be eating”. In this episode, it’s Bethany trying to eat a slab of slate before being abruptly pulled back to reality by Father Burroughs, only then realizing what it was. Hinted at in this episode, and shown in more detail in the next one (minor spoiler, I guess?), is Father Burroughs eating human flesh and only realizing what it was when the police arrived. The only other time I remember these two themes working in tandem is in episode 3 when Graham Folger ate a notebook. No one stopped him or made him realize what he was doing, so we don’t know for sure that his reality was altered, but it makes the most sense to me that he, like Bethany and Father Burroughs, truly didn’t realize what he was doing. I’m not convinced that the events of this episode (and the next one) are actually related to the notebook incident in episode 3, but it’s an interesting parallel.

On a completely unrelated note, I’d like to talk a bit about Father Burroughs’ “possession” itself. First off, I get that Bethany saying “I’m so sorry...it wants your faith” was supposed to be an ominous line, but why is that the only thing she said throughout the entire attempted exorcism at the hospital? She couldn’t even say, “Hey, man, this isn’t working”? All she could do was look at him with pity and say that? I’d be OK with those being her only words if whatever was “possessing” her also affected her speech the way it did to Father Burroughs later...but she specifically established that she was free to speak and act as she wished, it was only at certain times that her perception of reality was altered. So I’m a little annoyed at her for not giving Father Burroughs (or us) any kind of useful warning or helpful information during the failed exorcism.

I was really confused by the apparent theft of the sacramental wine, too. What was the significance of that? Was it just an example of something weird Father Burroughs noticed that keyed him in to the fact that All Was Not Well, or was there something more to it? (This is only a semi-rhetorical question - if the answer to this was said outright or implied in this episode and it isn’t a post-S1 spoiler, please do fill me in. I sometimes miss stuff that’s super obvious to other people.)

I also find it interesting that he can say “God” towards the end of this episode. He stumbled over it, but by contrast he was completely unable to say “Lord” and “Jesus” at the very beginning. Not sure if this is significant, since there’s no real difference between the words “Lord” and “God” in my estimation. Jesus is specifically Christian, and while “Lord” tends to be associated with Christianity, it’s not exclusive. “God” is the most general of the three terms, yes, but in context he is very obviously referring to the Christian “God”, so his difficulty with getting certain words out isn’t based solely on their contextual meaning. Jonny could have written it without him getting out the word “God” at the end and I think most people listening would have understood that’s the word he was going for. It’s either some kind of clue, or Jonny just got sick of stuttering.

Father Burroughs’ call for protection is the point at which he knows something is Very, Very Wrong, as he feels his lips move even though he himself isn’t moving them. But, as with so many of these stories, Things Were Bad Long Before You Realized It. Bethany told him “it wants your faith” years before the Hill Top Rd incident. He himself admits that his pride led to his downfall, since he initiated an exorcism/blessing on Hill Top Rd when he wasn’t supposed to be doing them at all. But it wasn’t just his pride - it was something taking advantage of his pride. I think that, as much as any person can be, Father Burroughs was a victim of whatever possessed him. He made mistakes in his life - his sins, if you’re looking at it religiously, as he did - but he never wanted to be evil or commit crimes like cannibalism. Like the characters in so many of these stories, I don’t think he deserved what he got, and I mostly just feel bad for him.

His call for protection, he says, was answered by something that was not God, and when Jonathan reads the words that Father Burroughs’ lips were forming (“I am not for you. I am marked.”) we once again hear that creepy static or interference. And I still can’t decide if this is supposed to be some kind of clue or if it’s just to make things creepier. It feels like a clue, but I can’t figure out what exactly it’s supposed to mean. Most of the times I’ve noted it appearing (probably not a complete list - I’m working on it) it appears during a specific quoted phrase or instance of someone speaking: “Can I have a cigarette?” in episode 1. “Isn’t it funny, Amy, how you can live so near and never notice. I’ll need to return the visit someday” from not-Graham in episode 3. “Some hungers are too strong to be denied” from Angela in episode 14. Laura’s sister Elena asking her “how lost I was, in a low, grating voice” in episode 15. If the examples were limited to things like this, then I’d say that it occurs whenever some as-yet-undetermined otherworldly monster is given a human voice to speak through. But it also occurs the first time Ex Altiora is said in episode 4 and the first time The Boneturner’s Tale is said in episode 17, as well as two different moments during the recounting of the story inside TBT. So how is it connected to the Leitners? It didn’t occur when Jonathan read the title Key of Solomon in episode 4, which is implied to be a Leitner. And there’ve been a few other occurrences where something obviously supernatural is happening but that doesn’t involve speech or quoted words at all: When Laura describes the light changing from appearing like an approaching candle to sunlight (which it still wasn’t...) in episode 15, and when Jonathan reads the description of the bleeding books in episode 17 (”red dripped and pulsed from the cart”).

I don’t know what to make of the creepy static yet. But my specific concern with the most recent instance, when Father Burroughs “said” “I am not for you. I am marked” is: Who are the “I” and the “you” referring to? Is the “I” supposed to be Father Burroughs, or the thing “possessing” him? And who on earth is the “you”?

This post is part of a series where I write my thoughts about each episode and obsessively connect dots in an effort to figure out The Big Mysteries of the series. All posts in this series are tagged “is this liveblogging?” Comments and messages are welcome but I have only listened to season 1, so I ask that you not spoil me for anything beyond episode 40. In the words of Jonny Sims…thanks for listening!

[edoro]

i’m too brainfoggy to arrange this as coherently as i want so it’s going to be a For Later Maybe post but like... every so often i see a (well written, polite, not shitty, just someone’s well expressed and understandable personal opinion!) post about like “i don’t get people liking jonah magnus or adding this or that to his backstory bc we already have the whole explanation of him and he’s pretty one-dimensional”

and i feel like... idk. all the information we have about him comes FROM him. i don’t necessarily trust him to be a reliable narrator of his own life story while he’s gloating, you know? i think he’s more pathetic and more scared then he wants to come across as. i think it’s like... he’s afraid of dying and he’s afraid of being powerless, and there are a lot of reasons for that. privileged people who hurt and oppress others are always afraid they’re going to be hurt and oppressed the same way if the people they oppress ever get power. you know.

but there’s something relatable there too, for a lot of people, which i think is why this idea of him being trans and/or queer has caught on so much with people. power and privilege and oppression and fear all rolled up together. being terrified of death, being terrified of being a victim. there’s a dark sort of fascination with the idea of being so afraid of being a victim, so determined to never be one again, that you’ll do absolutely anything to avoid it.

(and like there are any number of ways to interpret why and i don’t think “he was victimized in some way in his life” is any more or less valid a reading than “he’s just a privileged asshole”, tho i know which one i personally think is more INTERESTING, but i think it’s not rly debatable that “i looked around and realized if one of my friends got off a ritual first, then i’d just be another victim, so i had to prevent any of them from doing it while i did mine” is a deep-seated fear of being powerless and victimized)

why does a man seek to destroy the world? well, for power and privilege and immortality is what he says. but maybe also sometimes a man seeks to destroy the world because it sought to destroy him first.

and that’s an idea that resonates with a lot of people, and he’s a well-fleshed out, compelling, charismatic villain, so people are going to be invested in him and then they’re going to relate to him and then they’re going to read into and project on things like that, and the cool thing is that while none of that is IN the text (and i fully believe jonny’s intention is “oppressive privileged man who fears being treated the way he treats everyone else bc he can’t conceive of a different way of behaving”) it can be easily added TO the text without really detracting from what’s going on with the text, and enriching it in a way that’s fun to play around with. so, you know, that’s kind of the thing i guess.