#but also if TMA was in the US so many more avatars would get shot hahaha

[fellpyrean]

Advent Statement 10 - Hospitality

And here we are. The final one I managed to write, though I am pretty sure I only finished it on the 23rd or 24th itself and then promptly fell over dead. Unfortunately, the final intended chapter of this advent was never written, but who knows! Maybe I will write it as a silly goof this year. 

On to this one, I really had to keep beating ideas for the stranger out of the ranking, but they still ended up with two chapters, those showy bastards. They’ve just got such aesthetic, you know? 

This chapter contains a version of an OC of my partner and I’s, and we love him very much. Please, be polite to him. He’s an excellent guest. 

CWs: canon typical violence/peril?? 

___________________________________________________________

You've seen candles in the window, haven't you?

They're popular this time of year; little AA powered twinkling things, plastic and fake leaves of holly to make them pretty and fire-safe. Don't get me wrong - I like them. I think they're charming. I just never really thought of them beyond decor until recently. 

Never really wondered what a candle in the window meant until I put that candle in my window and… formed my contract, it would say. 

My guest.

It’s a welcome, the candle. A bright, flickering beacon at the end of a long, dark journey. An offering of food and shelter and, hah, hospitality. 

I should backtrack. 

The house used to belong to my uncle, but the one I got it from was an old family friend. I’d just gotten kicked out of my old place, so they’d decided it was as good a time as any to pass the place back on to me. And look, maybe it was a horror movie setup from the start, but the reality is, when someone gives you a house, you look past the colonial brick and woodwork and the included cellar and encroaching old-growth and any creepiness inherent and go hell yeah, I’ve got a place to live. 

It’s a lovely house. Sturdy and creaky all at once, with stone and real wood floors and a huge glass door - a much more recent addition - that looks out over the field between it and the forest out back. No ever-present sounds of traffic, no door-to-door salesmen because out there, odds are they’ll be met with a shotgun. It was peaceful and cozy, once I got a few rugs, and I was willing to coexist with whatever ghosts might have haunted the place as long as they were polite. Feels like I shot myself in the foot with that one, honestly. 

This began with a candle. 

I found it tucked away in the cellar, and ignoring the fucking foreshadowing of where I found it - literally behind a hole in the wall, where a piece of stone had been loosely removed and set back in - I was immediately charmed by it. It wasn’t new and neat; it was old and yellowed and rough, obviously hand-dipped, and the smell of clove came faintly from the slightly soft wax. I mean, it’s not wax, but that’s what I thought it was. It was tallow. Rendered fat. Yeah. You don’t need me to say the rest; you’ve already got an idea and so do I, but I never asked.

It sat in one of those old-fashioned metal candle holders with the dish and the little loop to put your finger through, with a little circle of melted ‘wax’ still in the tarnished base, and… And I thought it had an antique charm to it. It wasn’t all neat and perfect like something modern, and it just. Made sense to me that when it came time to decorate my home for the holidays, I put it in one of the windows. The front ones all had curtains but I’d not quite managed to scrape enough together to get curtains for all the ones in the back, so in the interest of fire safety, it went in the narrow little window next to that big, glass door facing the woods. 

No curtains, and I could see it from my usual perch at the kitchen counter. Seemed perfect. 

The sight of it there, burning bright and filling the room with that odd but not unpleasant scent made me feel warm. Cozy. Just old, orange flickering firelight lighting up the space, silhouetted against the black shape of the trees outside. 

A glittering invitation. 

He… it came the next night. 

All day, I was weirdly on pins and needles. I couldn't sit still for the life of me, and that antsiness manifested as the most cleaning that house had probably seen in a century. Even the baseboards got a scrubbing. I can't even claim that I had company coming in like a month, because I didn't; I only had the one couch and my dining table only sat two if you didn't mind personal space. Like hell was I offering to host. 

But it just seemed like something that needed doing. And when I was done cleaning and tidying, I started to cook. Beef and barley soup, if you must know. 

It had just really finished up when I… When I relaxed enough to look up and notice that it was dark - and the candle was lit. I hadn't noticed the scent of clove filling the room, threading through the rich scent of soup, until then. 

And then I noticed something much, much worse than a candle I didn't remember lighting. 

There was someone standing on my back porch. 

I almost screamed from that alone, really. I know I locked up for a moment, breath caught in my chest as I stood there with nothing but a wooden spoon in hand and stared at the barely illuminated… person? Standing just a few feet from the glass. 

It wasn't… wasn't quite shaped right. It was very tall, and the outline was all wrong. This was not helped by the fact that I could see what looked like antlers coming off its head, before I realized there was still a skull attached to those. 

A bare, yellow-white deer skull over its face like a mask. I could see the flickering candle light, the pale moonlight dripping down the prongs, glinting off the teeth. And then it slowly stepped forward. Its outline rustled as it moved, as it stepped closer and raised too sharp fingers and gently, carefully, knock-knocked on the glass. It… it sounded wrong. It wasn’t flesh that made its fingers, and I have never wanted to own a shotgun more than in that moment. 

But it just stood there. That hand still raised expectantly, its unseen eyes fixed on me. I did not move. I watched as it slowly tilted its head, watched something sway and clatter from its antlers, and it knocked again. 

I… I swear, when it. When it knocked again, when it stared at me with that skull’s empty eyes, I felt a sudden… sense of crisis. Like the candle smoke went cloying, like I could hear those… those claws dig into the glass, and abruptly knew that it only stayed behind it because it was being… polite. 

It was the most absurd thought, but in that moment, I knew that it was true and I latched onto that surety like a rope. 

I opened the door for it. 

My terror was probably tangible in the air as I did it, but I lunged over and unlocked the door and slid it open. I was close enough I could smell the scent of pine and dirt and smoke clinging to it, clinging to the… the pelts it wrapped around itself. I could hear the layers of dusty furs rub against each other as it nodded towards me and held out that pale, clawed hand towards me, until I took it. 

It shook my hand and my skin crawled at the cold touch and then it just let go and stepped inside. Each step clunked. I didn’t think about it too hard. 

All I did was close the door, listening to it clunk, clunk, clunk across the wooden floors, and heard it pull out a chair at my tiny dining table. 

I wish it had done something worse, but, no. 

I gave it soup and it wasn’t until it finished eating it with a mouth I never saw that my words came back to my tongue and I could ask who, what it was. 

And it just answered, in a voice deep and rough, “I am your guest.” 

It is the guest, and I. I am the host who invited it in. 

Nothing about it was human. Its joints moved wrong, like… like an animal. But it held the steaming mug of cider delicately in its… fingers that clicked against the ceramic and sipped it almost contentedly, and I just had to watch and host it with a smile as my fear simmered beneath my skin. The longer I saw it under the light, the more I realized just how wrong it was, and it was only with my nerves fraying and my fingers shaking that I guided it back to the door once it stood and thanked me for the meal, and just. Left. 

I watched it walk and slump back out across the field and vanish into the trees and only then did I let myself slide to the floor. I felt wrung out. Exhausted and jittery and I didn't move for a while. 

It was only when I realized I was watching shadows dance on the ceiling cast by candlelight that I found an outlet to act on. I snuffed the candle with fury and marched right back down to the cellar with it. That was really the first time I ever wondered why something so charming had been shoved into a literal hole in the cellar wall, but now I had a feeling. 

The candle called that thing inside. 

So, if. If the candle was in the cellar like that, there must have been a reason. Had my uncle put it there? Had he known? Was that why he'd passed off the house, why the person he'd given it to had never set foot inside while they owned it? I had no answers but I was pissed. Scared pissed. I'd had to sit next to that thing for an hour and act like everything was normal and like I didn't hear way too many things shift and clink-clunk together when it moved or wonder where the soup was going or whether the soup was what it was eating at all. 

I shoved the candle back into the hole, back into that dirty, dark little spot and I found the stone that was supposed to cover it hidden beneath the stairs and rankled at the idea that someone had set it up for me to find. 

All that mattered, I told myself as I hefted the stone back into place and pushed at it until it was more or less back where it belonged, was that the candle was gone now. It was gone and unlit and that thing wouldn't come anymore. 

I think that desperate satisfaction helped lull me to sleep; me telling myself I had fixed the problem. It had worked for the last person, so it would work for me. 

(The last person left. The last person never stepped inside the house again.)

Couldn't really afford them, but I bought the rest of the curtains the next day. I didn't want to see the field in the morning anymore, didn't want to watch the twilight and squint for owls and deer. I didn't want the thing in the forest to see me, to see any light spilling from the windows and take it as a welcome. 

Oh, and a shotgun. I kept it very close as I hung my new curtains and ate my extremely cheap dinner, and the thing did not come back. 

Not for a week. 

I watched every night for it. Jumped at every creak and thump outside, though I was very proud that I hadn't devolved to checking with my shotgun in hand. 

When I heard that heavy clunk on the back porch though, I instantly knew the sound. 

Clunk. Clunk. 

Silence. 

My heart thudded frantically in my chest as I dared not move. 

It was standing on the back porch again. I couldn't see it behind the thick, heavy curtains I had installed, but I knew with utmost certainty that it had come back and the candle was not lit. 

It did not knock. 

It stood there, and then I heard it laugh.

Low and raspy and rolling, and then I heard those claws drag against the glass. 

"Am I no longer welcome?"

The glass wailed. It shook. 

“You no longer wish for me to be your guest?” My shotgun was on the table. I went for it. I’d bought it for this. I ran, and the glass shattered. Something. Something snarled, something came running too fast, its steps disordered and heavy, and I refused to look. Not until I had my shotgun in hand and turned and it was. So, so much worse than I expected. 

It no longer resembled a person at all. It… it had too many limbs. All those pelts, writhing and shifting, too many limp paws and hooves all clawing forwards, all connected to that single, grinning deer skull. Bones and twigs and baubles jangled beneath, a horrid cacophony that howled as it barreled through my kitchen, as that deer skull’s mouth opened - I shot it. 

I don’t think I missed, but I. Didn’t dare wait and watch. 

All I know is that it didn’t stop, either way. I shot and ran and it laughed and cackled and snarled and I. I ran down. 

I don’t think I could have made it out the front door, or my car. I don’t think my car could have withstood it. Upstairs… I would have just been cornered. The only option I had was down. I’d be cornered, but it had… it needed to be my guest. I had to host it. At least until I could figure out some other way to deal with it, at least the candle kept me safe. 

The cellar had a good lock. Sturdy. I just prayed it would be enough as I barreled down the stairs and dropped my gun and scrabbled at that stone. It thudded against the wood. I heard the door splintering. I heard the things horrid hollow laughter, heard something too, too heavy for empty, writhing skins slamming again and again into the door as I struggled and pulled at the wall, swearing as it moved so, so slowly, dragging against old mortar - 

The door shattered. 

The stone slipped and cracked on the floor as I plunged my hand into that awful little hole and grabbed that too-soft candle in the dark and. And felt fur brush against my arms. Felt soft, supple leather draped across my shoulders and rasping breaths at the back of my neck. Cold, long-dead teeth pricked above my spine as I. Shivered. 

But it didn’t move either. 

So I. I pulled the candle out of the wall and didn’t look at the mismatched pelts, at the old claws that capped empty, grasping paws as I held it up. I licked my lips. 

“Can I invite you to sit down for dinner upstairs?” 

My voice was impressively even. I was… specific. As specific as I could be, with its teeth pressed to my skin. 

You can probably guess since I’m here that it worked. It… it didn’t let go of me until I lit the candle. That walk up the stairs was… one of the worst moments in my life, I think. The skins were so heavy as it clung to me. Cold bone on my neck, awful, nameless things jangling as I maintained my brittle smile and ferried my guest back upstairs to my dining room and dug for the matches and lit the damned thing. 

And then it waited politely, pelts shifting and rustling as it literally pulled itself back together into something person-shaped and I made more soup. 

The candle sat in the middle of the table. I watched it burn down slowly as my guest tucked in, content and docile, and ignored the cold breeze blowing into my kitchen from my shattered back door. It made the flame dance. The smoke coiled about the lights and wreathed the room and filled my lungs until it finally left again, glass crunching beneath its hidden feet as it pulled aside the curtain and vanished back into the night. 

I didn’t try to hide the candle again. 

Call me a coward, but I… I shot the fucking thing and it didn’t even slow down. Where would I even aim if I wanted to shoot to kill? The skull? Would I try lighting it on fire? Flames would probably work, but. But I was scared. I was scared and I could still feel the ghost of its teeth and claws pressed tight to my skin. I had a feeling that if I set it aflame, it would drag me down with it, and I… I wasn’t at that point yet. 

I kept the candle in the window and my guest came by, again and again. It brought me gifts, you know? Old pelts. They’re beautifully preserved. Said it was only polite to bring gifts to such a hospitable host. 

And every time it visited, I watched the candle burn. Lower and lower. 

It’s just a nub now. Maybe enough for a single night. 

That’s… why I came now. 

It’s supposed to snow this weekend, you see… It’ll be too cold for it to leave, the snow too deep. 

I can’t turn it out into a night like that. It has such old, weary bones. 

It’d make me a terrible host. 

[player-1]

Anyone who’s been in the TMA fandom (or those who understand the bare minimum of the story) know damn well that whatever was going on with Michael D. Stortion and Gabriel/Worker-of-Clay was not just a simple Avatar/Entity partnership. No, in the twisted timeline of the Spiral itself, the Armageddon arms-race pales in comparison to the romantic tragedy subplot those two had long before Jon and Martin were in the picture.

(This is also going to be a long one, and with some MAG 101 spoilers, so buckle on in...)

Here’s what I mean:

Gabriel (or in this case, Gabe) works with Neil Lagorio (Web aligned special-effects dude) in the mid 1900′s on their first movie The Labyrinth of the Minotaur. Unfortunately for him, Gabe quits in 1972 just as the movie was released. 

Not much is known of this time after 1972 up until the dreaded sculpting class in 2004. Speculation-wise, Gabriel might have been corrupted by the Flesh during his movie-making times or earlier before he came into contact with the Spiral.

Reasons: -The Spiral connects with the unraveling of reality, question one’s sanity and eventually “spiraling” into insanity. -The Flesh, in its literal sense, connects to the fear of people or animals being killed for meat; even the appearance of flesh/bone being twisted, bent, or butchered. But it can also connect on a emotional level, such as being viewed weaker than others, mostly relating to a person’s body image. That’s also the reason why the nature of his death is completely unlike the Spiral simply letting him fade out of reality. -Gabriel displays more Flesh-like qualities in his appearance and work up until the end of MAG 126. He doesn’t want people to judge him by appearance alone (even if his entire body is made up of clay) but he makes up for it with his unassuming personality and amazing talent. In a literal sense, he wants to mold himself into the kind of person that gets praised for his clay-making abilities, not just from his creations alone.  

[Enter Ｔｈｅ　Ｄｉｓｔｏｒｔｉｏｎ: Stage Left] Of course, while there’s no evidence on how, when or why the Distortion would target him specifically, but there is one thing. Compared to all the other Spiral avatars and fear-aligned creatures, they all used to be humans in the past. The Spiral by nature is to cast aside their humanity and submit to the nature of insanity. But since most of the Spiral avatars either faded out of existence or just refused to do anything ritual-wise, how was it supposed to create a new world if all they ever do is destroy? It adopts an artist, of course. There’s nothing more chaotic than the struggles of a budding sculptor such as himself. But while that may be a convincing argument for the Spiral to get Gabriel to join the Dark Side, there could be more to convince him that it’s worth following the unknowable being of delusions. Long story short, there was no reason for Gabriel to judge himself so poorly if he knew how to reshape the world to how he sees fit. it would convince him that, like the archangel he’s named after, he could show the world the coming future; twisting the laws of reality so that there’s no room to judge how something should be right or wrong, imaginary or real.  As if they were said from the Lord himself, Gabriel heard the Distortion’s tell him about a new world and finally found inspiration in them.

Then comes the sculpting class.  It’s worth noting that, even with the angel symbolism for Michael and Gabriel, it could be implied that Gabriel is also a goody-two-shoes Christian boy who regularly attends church, as evidence of Michael having knowledge about Mass in MAG 20, assisting the Flesh in driving Father Edwin to cannibalism (so the Flesh and Spiral have an interesting partnership, huh?).  Besides that, this is where Gabriel takes the spotlight. From Deborah’s point of view, he was a strange little man from the beginning; eyes always jutted out of his face, appearing right in someone’s personal space and disappearing just as fast, and of course, his works of clay. (Also a random headcanon just because: Gabriel may be afraid of water, either because his entire body being made of clay, and since you need water to help shape the material, he does not want to get it melded into his own flesh. Could also be the reason why he has short and greasy hair, cause he would practically melt into a puddle if he was unfortunate enough to get wet.) And apart from Deborah and her friends’ growing discomfort over Gabriel in general, he’s just vibing in the back of the class, trying to make a shape for the unknowable form of the Distortion. And the second Deborah inadvertently gives him a break from his artist’s block, he quite literally takes control of the class; switching over the biweekly schedule it was before into every week, and even manipulating the space of the classroom to further support his artistic needs. 

“Ray told us the lesson was ‘faces.’ I put my hand up to say that sculpting faces was probably a bit advanced for where we were in the course, but he shook his head, and said that we were… a lot more talented than we thought. He said the key was that faces were twisted. All faces were twisted on the inside, and all you had to do was reach into the deepest part of yourself and put that twisted on the outside of the clay, and as soon as you can scream you’ll have your own face staring back at you.”  (MAG 126)

This is also the key to the Spiral itself. With Gabriel’s assistance, he will be able to let the spiral to insanity move in reverse, create the physical manifestation of that fear instead of letting it collapse and destroy itself. And in that lesson as well, Gabriel finally creates a fitting image of the Distortion...A door, the physical entrance to insanity itself.

Then comes the final stretch in Sannikov Land, the nonexistent island that was said to exist between the years 2009 and 2011. And as Michael D. Stortion explains in MAG 101, was the perfect place for their ritual, The Great Twisting. After everything Gabriel had done to appease his good “friend”, The Distortion seemed extremely invested in the Worker of Clay at that point. Nevermind the fact that its telling Jon how its identity was stolen away from Michael Shelley by merging with the Distortion, but there’s more to this origin story.

“Michael was protective of the frail old woman he believed her to be. So… so delicate, so forgetful, yet gently wise. He cared for her. He trusted her. And she fed him to me. She made him to destroy our transcendence. And she did not hesitate.” “And it was me they sought to stop. Me and the others of It-Is-Not-What-It-Is. Our Great Twisting. The-Worker-of-Clay had laboured for decades on that contorted, impossible edifice of doors… and stairs… and falsehoods… and smiles. A thousand staring morsels stood, and not one of them believed themselves sane to look upon it. And in the centre, the door that would open to all the places that were never there, was me.“ “Perhaps I should have realised what was happening; seen those two lonely figures approaching me, but I cannot tell you the existential joys of truly… becoming. Of an entireness finally crossing the threshold into your self. So ecstatic was my completeness, I did not even hear my own door creak open.“ “Even sharper than the joy of becoming is the agony of being opened and remade. To have your who torn bloody from your what, and another crudely lashed into its place. To become Michael. And to do so at such a crucial point in our Twisting, in our becoming, well of course it destroyed it. The impossible altar collapsed. The-Worker-of-Clay tore out his veins to dissolve himself in crimson mud. The others of us were cast to all the places that aren’t; some have still not found their way out again...My very existence tied to my pointlessness. Wearing my failure as the very fabric of my being. Reduced once again to feeding on the unsuspecting and confused. That is who I am.“ (MAG 101)

Even if all of this was to explain how the Distortion became the being it is in the series, it’s easy to see how overjoyed it was during the ritual. All that the Spiral ever did was bring the sense of unreality and paranoia unto people for ages, only breaking down the mind until they eventually spiral into oblivion. It wanted to be something, it wanted to make something twisted and nonsensical from the world, to shape the world itself to the nature of insanity. And after all that time, no matter how many avatars it had in its control, Gabriel was the only one who began creating the ritual. Even if it was for an ulterior motive, The Distortion was pretty giddy as Gabriel worked for years on end to create the meaning of insanity; to create something that the Distortion saw as the perfect vessel for itself. And even as it was explaining it, with all these feelings of joy and ecstasy and very human thoughts and emotions, this was before it was forced to become Michael. So much for not being bound by human nature, huh? But it’s pretty ironic that, as the embodiment of delusions, insanity and lies, it never considered the idea of having an avatar that could make something out of that chaos. Even if the Distortion was explaining how Michael-not-Michael Shelley came into being, it also can be interpreted as Michael just yearning for his best Avatar so far.  So instead of “I’m going to tell you my entire backstory.”, it’s more like “I’m going to tell you how a nosy old woman and her idiotic assistant ruined my chances to be with my Avatar of the Decade who may or may not be my boyfriend.”

In conclusion, Gabriel AKA The Worker of Clay AKA Igor with an art degree became the Hands of the Spiral because the nonbinary embodiment of delusion (who is also a door) gave a miserable struggling artist a shot of self-confidence (and a shot out of the Flesh’s control), eventually becoming its #1 Boyfriend Avatar of all time, and is the only person that would make the “hates gender and existence itself” Distortion yearn for years after his tragic death.

Takes notes people, this is what peak performance looks like.

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘Left Hanging’ (S04E04) Analysis

An episode about the open sky, an Archivist at loose ends, and the return of everyone’s favorite wacky old wizard.  Definitely less happening this week, but still quite a bit to think about.  Come on in to hear my thoughts about ‘Left Hanging’.

One of the interesting things about the opening of the statement is the emphasis of a theme of this show: there is nothing special about the people who get targeted by the powers, usually.  They haven’t often done something to draw attention; they aren’t some Chosen One.  They’re people at the wrong place in the wrong time. I think that feeds into the heart of the cosmic horror of the show: people are small.  Who they are and what they’ve done don’t matter to the powers. They were the nearest person to hand when ineffability strikes, and they therefore experience something horrific. Horror, therefore, is not a retributive force in TMA, nor is it an allegory for something about that person. It is random, hitting good people, bad people, and all the people in between without discrimination.  If the powers do indeed ‘make decisions’ the way that we perceive, those decisions are beyond our understanding.

So we have statements like this, of a guy why just happened to be on the wrong cable car in Austria. A cable car with everyone’s favorite wacky wizard, Simon Fairchild.  As soon as I heard ‘gentle amusement’ and using his walking stick only when he remembered to do so, combined with a cable car suspended miles above the ground? Yeah, I was certain that Simon was going to put in an appearance.

Again, they are above nothingness, and a mist appears, and Simon steps out into nothingness.  Big old wink, and then gone.  Does this mean that Simon is gone, or did he simply go somewhere temporary?  Did he finally find the Vast beings he was looking for?  After that, the rest of them shot up through the nothingness, so it’s possible that Simon actually set them up for their ride, and he was stepping off to let them enjoy themselves.  That seems more his modus operandi.

Especially since a long, spindly creature with a laugh like Mike Crews’ took the cable car driver. It makes me think that this was just another adventure that Simon engineered for hapless people he just happens to be around.  And Simon, much like the powers, will ‘gift’ these experiences to people.

Jon states that Simon is ‘evil’ and likes to torment people to feed the power that sustains him, but that seems less than clear from Simon’s actions.  I do genuinely wonder if Simon might think that he’s giving these people the experience of their lifetimes.  That this is a good thing, not a cruel thing.  That letting them experience the void will be as joyous for them as it is for him.  It’s hard to say, but he never seems … malicious in his glee.  He seems like he’s sharing a joke that everyone he harms just haven’t quite understood.

Or that could just be me, the massive Simon Fairchild fangirl that I am, reading something into the situation that isn’t there.  But I think Jon needs to believe that there is that clear distinction.  That Simon is malicious and evil, and therefore knows that he’s harming people.  Because if he doesn’t know, or even if he thinks it’s doing his victims a favor, then mightn’t Jon do the same?  After all, they’re both Avatars of their powers.  Jon knows that taking statements drags at least some part of his own victims into the nightmare realm of the Beholding.  But he keeps doing it.  At least he doesn’t think he’s helping the people he’s gathering statements from; at least not yet.

But of course, his objection to Compelling Basira was that he didn’t want to burn a bridge, not that it would be the wrong thing to do or hurt a friend, so that’s less than encouraging.

The ending with Martin also really fit into the title of this particular one.  Whatever is happening with Martin, he either won’t or can’t tell Jon about it.  He sounds so distant, barely more engaged with Jon than Basira was.  And for someone weeping in the trailer before making his decision, that’s worrisome.

It’s interesting that Martin implied strongly that he wasn’t working for Peter Lukas (although calling him ‘Peter’ probably didn’t do anything to help Jon’s jealousy).  There’s clearly something going on.  Martin’s been so busy that he has no time to write poetry, or to stop and really talk with Jon.  Maybe he’s afraid.  Maybe he’s been forbidden from really talking to Jon.

I definitely think that what’s happening with Martin and what Basira is up to are going to be ongoing themes, perhaps even the main plot points of the first half of the season. It’s frustrating, because they all know that Peter works for the Lonely, and therefore is trying to isolate everyone in the Institute.  And yet none of them, even those who seem to not be locked into some secret agreement, are going out of their way to stay in touch.  Maybe Basira and Melanie have been sticking together, but from the way that Basira talked about Melanie, that seems less likely.  Unless, of course, she doesn’t trust Jon enough to let him know what she and Melanie are up to.

But it leaves Jon exactly where the Lonely wants him.  He’s isolated, reading statements and doing little else.  With the threat of other powers trying to make a move against the newly-awakened Archivist, I doubt he’s leaving much either.  Martin would be the ideal person for him to turn to, given their history, but Martin has somehow been removed from the equation while still being there.

And interestingly, Jon didn’t compel him.  Of all the times when compelling a friend might be both justified and useful to all parties, this might be it, but Jon is handling his friends with kid gloves. Likely, Melanie’s state and her open hostility have taken him aback, and he doesn’t want to make things any worse with Martin or Basira.  So they’re all in a holding pattern (without the holding).

I want to know why Basira no longer trusts Jon at all.  Is it simply thinking he couldn’t have come back right after six months?  Is it blaming him for Daisy?  Is she just too troubled by whatever’s really going on with her to look too far outside herself?

Conclusions

The emotional situation in the Archives never seems to be anything better than tenuous, and as I said often enough through the past few seasons, this current state can’t stay for long.  There are too many threads about to snap.  Basira feels like the calm before the storm.  Melanie is going to explode in one direction or another, it’s just a question of what’s in her way when she does.  And Martin is keeping secrets.  A lot of secrets, likely because he believes it’s the only way to help Jon and the others.  And if he’s not working for Peter Lukas, I have to wonder what it is he’s doing.  It’s clearly with Peter, but perhaps it’s more of a loan or secondment?  A pledge of time in Peter’s service in exchange for the protection that the archives is now afforded?  Or is Martin more active than we realize?  Does he have a plan of his own?

We’ve been with Jon while he was plotting and planning throughout the show, so it’s interesting to see Jon on the other side of this impenetrable wall that six months of trauma has produced.  He can’t even pick up the pieces, because the pieces are nowhere near where he left them. Everyone has radically changed toward him.

As big a dick as Elias was, I may hate the Lonely more.  With Elias, we knew what he was about.  He wanted Jon to be the ultimate Archivist, and he wanted the Watcher’s Crown to proceed as planned.  But the Lonely’s motives are inscrutable, and without more information, Jon’s stuck. He needs to dig into the Archives, to try and find stories about the Lukases or their patrons and how he might oust the Lonely from the Institute.  

He already sounds defeated. He’s not interested in looking into this current story beyond a cursory glance.  He’s not interested in putting all the pieces together, which to my mind is the ultimate point of the Archivist.  He just reads and feeds his god by rote, without anything more.

Maybe that’s Peter’s plan. Immobilize Jon, remove all his supports and sink him so far into depression that he reads the statements and doesn’t try to research his way out of the problem.  That sort of inert feeding of the Beholding might actually be the most effective way to prevent the Watcher’s Crown, at least for a time.

But like I said, the situation is tenuous.  Something, sooner or later, is going to give.

[flyover-babbleon]

TMA AU

Just a funky little weird horror AU for me, my friends, and our OCs.

Let's start with the setting. The Magnus Institute isn't the only institution for studying the supernatural and strange. So let's say it has some affiliates, and this one is in America. LA or New York or something.

Let's call it the Chandra Foundation.

And let's start by talking about the Archival Assistants.

(The Archivist herself is an NPC, though some of the assistants may or may not have been friends with her for years. They call her Lady.)

Lady is a lucky one. She gets five whole assistants. Tiernan, Tobias, and Sera to start with; Máire and Charlie come in later.

I don't know the details yet, but BOY HOWDY do they Go Through It.

It's a horror-tragedy setting filled with Dread Powers that feed on fear. Our intrepid crew actively investigates these Dread Powers. It's amazing that they last as long as they do without any casualties.

At first, anyway.

They start to get picked off, one by one. They don't die, no that would be too easy. They just get tempted and taken in by the Entities.

(There are Fourteen, but also only One. It is ancient, eldritch, and it is Fear.)

(They can reach into our world and act on their own, but they sometimes they call out to human minds, and make those humans their servants. Their Avatars.)

Sera

I'm actually drawing a big huge blank on her?

I would base Fear Avatar!Sera on VesVes, but if I read any of her threads while SF was still around, then I don't remember them.

What is her MO? How did she choose to terrorize her former friends? Deception? Manipulation? Just taking all their shit and burning it?

So let's skip her and come back later.

Máire

They don't see it coming. They don't see her staring out into empty space. They don't notice her going off to stand on tops of tall buildings or on the ends of long, lonely piers, more and more and more.

They don't notice until the group is out on the open ocean for an investigation.

She laughs, free and bright and terrible as she steps off the boat and into the water.

And then she is gone and the sea is wide and empty.

And they don't find shore for days.

(They could have sworn they were only a few miles out.)

Máire becomes an avatar of The Vast - fear of wide open spaces, fear of falling, fear of being tiny and insignificant in a great vast universe. Often manifests as a wide open sky or a vast sea -- both with no ground in sight. Vertigo is also a big thing with them. Of course it is, you are falling falling falling and everything is too big. Sometimes a great beast is seen; you are smaller than the pupil of its eye.

Charlie

She as well, could be an avatar of the Vast. Charlie and Máire would love the freedom of it, the openness of it.

Perhaps, in true Uranus and Neptune fashion, they go together. Máire disappears into the sea and Charlie disappears into the sky.

It'd be a hard and heartbreaking blow, two in one shot.

But at least they're together, falling or floating forever and sending unsuspecting mortals to do the same.

Tobias

I actually have two options for him. One is more realistic (though of course still fun and horrifying). The other is just pure self-indulgence. For the sake of this storyline, I'll talk about the former, though I'll probably talk about the latter in another post.

So it's down to just Tiernan and Tobias. Sera, Charlie, and Máire are gone. Lady has become even more isolated and withdrawn. And the Foundation director just doesn't seem to care.

So Tobias

Just

Snaps

(He had been angry lately, so mind-numbingly angry. It was only a matter of time.)

Anyway, trying to stab your boss's boss to death is very much a surefire way to get fired. And he does not leave quietly, still raging as he is escorted out.

Tobias becomes an avatar of The Slaughter - fear of pure violence and fear of war. You don't know when the violence is coming, or how. If it'll be soon or later, if it'll be wild and frenzied or cold and calm. (You don't know when you will snap.) Sometimes manifests as music.

Toby is angry all the time, but sometimes when he's calmer, he'll hum to himself... and send everyone around who hears into a violent frenzy.

Tiernan

So that leaves Tiernan alone. By now he's likely feeling pretty disillusioned with the Chandra Foundation and their supposed mission.

But there are still so many monsters, and his friends might have all left, but they're still out there. And they're spreading terror with the rest.

While he wasn't the Archivist herself, he was still sort of the Lead Assistant. I'm sure he felt a bit of responsibility for the others.

And by now? He's feeling almost as angry at the situation as Tobias was. And even more desperate.

So he hands in his resignation letter, and the Hunt begins.

Tiernan becomes an avatar of The Hunt - feeds on fear of being hunted, fear of becoming prey. Its avatars often become monster hunters, hunting down servants of the other Dread Powers. But you know what they say about those who hunt monsters.

Out of all of the Powers mentioned so far, avatars of the Hunt are the most likely to experience more physical changes. They tend to get a bit... bestial. Yeah, I'm talking something vaguely werewolfy. They are the predators now.

Tiernan probably doesn't even realize that he has become an avatar of anything, at first. The Hunt keeps his mind focused on the pursuit, and not on the way his teeth grow sharp and his senses grow keen.

The others are easy to track. The girls and Charlie aren't exactly subtle. And as for Tobias...

Tobias is waiting for Tiernan when he leaves the Foundation for the last time. Despite everything, Tobias thinks they're still friends.

And maybe they are.

So they could continue this thing together. They could hunt down their old friends. They could bring the violence to the monsters.

(Though it should be mentioned that any argument the two of them have is 100% more likely to turn violent. They'd both survive, but still, yikes.)

So off they go, becoming the very thing they used to investigate and record, and spreading some terror of their own.

Maybe Sera, Máire, and Charlie will join them, when they find them.