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soveryanon · 5 years

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Reviewing time for MAG145 X_X/

- Aaaaaaaaaand I had considered it but disregarded it immediately, and yet: the episode was (more or less) about Agnes again, so soon /o/

- The biggest reveal in this episode, for me, was probably to learn that The Web actually had a deep connection with the Archives (and the previous Archivist) waaaay before Jon was even born. We know that Jon encountered it as a kid, we know that spiders have been… extremely present around the Archives and Jon during his era – but we didn’t have anything about Gertrude yet, except for the fact that she was apparently working together with Adelard Dekker, who had been able to bind the Not!Them to the Hill Top Road table (and the whole ordeal was Web-y, though that could have been all thanks to the table):

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Alright. Agnes: how’d you do it? Never did understand it, not really. GERTRUDE: Ah. That’s a fair enough question. [PAUSE] It was… The Web. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, and I would call it an accident – but it never is, with them. It’s only after the fact that you can see all the subtle manipulations. I was very new to it all, of course. I mean, I was, what? Can’t have been older than… twenty-five. […] Like I said, mm, I was young. Naïve. I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck, when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hilltop Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair. Of course, what I thought was a “banishment ritual” turned out… not to be. The circle I constructed was more of a… an invitation. It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house. … It was the most painful experience of my life.

Gertrude uses the phrase “Mother of Puppets”, too! Eugene and Peter had used it so far, so it sounds like it’s a term favoured by Avatars-in-the-known? Oliver had also referred to it as a “she”.

- We have a description of a young Archivist, in her 20s, getting pushed by The Web in a specific direction, made to unwillingly serve Her interests, even though it deeply hurt said Archivist.

… which. Sounds like what might be happening to Jon right now, except he didn’t (can’t?) make the connection.

- Gertrude’s description of her researches and how they had been manipulated is also very much reminiscent of… what is happening with Jon, especially in season 4, when he’s pushed towards this or that tape or statement, which was once again the case this episode:

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: And here? I reached out, I took another tape, eh!, hoping for a bit of guidance, but… [HUFF] To be honest, this hasn’t helped.

We… still don’t know for sure if it’s The Eye guiding him (/something having to do with the fact that he’s The Archivist and the information and statements are his Archives) or The Web. (How many of the statements Jon read in seasons 1 to 3 were actually “sent” to him by The Web, too?) With how The Web made itself transparent in MAG130 (sending one of Gertrude’s tapes covered in cobwebs) and how this statement explained how The Web proceeds, I’m… beginning to expect Jon to eventually get a (face-to-face) visit from Annabelle Cane or a Web-related person? It sounds like these bits are supposed to introduce Jon to the idea that yes, The Web has Her eyes on him, too, and yes, is monitoring him, and yes, has plans for him.

- … But then: Gertrude experienced The Desolation through her binding to Agnes. And The Web encouraged Jon to find an “anchor” to go inside the coffin, where he experienced The Buried, and potentially got Martin to lead him out. Even back in season 1: it might have been The Web which got Martin to come back to Carlos Vittery’s building a second time (MAG022, Martin: “And then I remembered that I'd seen quite a lot of spider webs in the brief time I was down there, and maybe I should check it out again.” + how he didn’t really think when he crushed the first worm), attracting Jane Prentiss’s attention towards the Archives, and it was a spider which unleashed the attack on the Archives (Jon trying to crush it and discovering the worms behind the wall… when they weren’t completely ready yet). Which means The Web is reaaaaaaaaaally not against having Archivists experiencing the other Fears, and Elias has said that it’s supposed to be the Archivist’s role (MAG092, Elias: “It is your job to chronicle these things, to experience them, whether first-hand or through the eyes of others. To simply be told, well…”).

What is The Web’s stance on The Watcher’s Crown? We know it’s involved in ritual-stopping: Peter highlighted that it prefers the world as is, Gertrude evoked the possibility of The Slaughter’s ritual getting stopped by “spiderwebs”, and there were cobwebs in the wax museum at The Unknowing (+ it sent Jon a tape about how The Flesh had been stopped, and possibly monitored his researches about rituals a bit). From what Peter said, it shouldn’t want a ritual to succeed; yet, if Experiencing The Fears is a must-do for an Archivist… the Web is also contributing to this…?

- And same as Jon, re:Gertrude’s powers!

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Shut it! I don’t have to listen to this! GERTRUDE: Hm! [CHUCKLE] Then, feel free to try and leave. ARTHUR: [BEGINS TO BREATHE HEAVILY] GERTRUDE: Mm! Now. Here’s the problem for you, Arthur. […] “Do I…” what? ARTHUR: Have something for me. So I end up like Eugene. GERTRUDE: [CHUCKLE] Why don’t you try to leave and find out…? ARTHUR: [BREATHING DEEPENING, STRUGGLING] [SILENCE] GERTRUDE: Good~! Now, we can have a proper conversation.

… Arthur needed her permission to leave, but what did she do, at that moment? There wasn’t any static, only a bass sound – was it a plain cosmetic sound-effect, or was Gertrude doing something, perhaps similar to when Jon told Breekon to “stop” back in MAG128? I’m still unsure about the whole thing about “giving orders” and “preventing people from leaving” being a Beholding power since it… feels very active, and it’s about entrapment? And we’ve heard Web-victims mention having no choice but to obey? (Though in The Web’s case, it sounded more subtle and “making you think you’re willing”: Jon and now potentially Gertrude are coercing, violently… although there is the case of regular statements, during which people don’t actually have a choice whether or not to tell their story and aren’t aware of it, except for the woman from MAG142. Even Daisy had rationalised that Jon had probably “caught her in a good mood” in MAG061, before she later realised that she hadn’t been willing.)

… And somethingsomething about how MMMMMMMMMM, there is still the Mystery of why Gertrude recorded the specific statements she did (reading aloud or interviewing) – tape recorders have been explicitly associated with Jon in season 4, and they had been used by Gertrude before, and both of them had been entangled in The Web’s schemes, so MMMMMMM…

- A bit of the conversation between Gertrude and Arthur I’m ? about is that “him upstairs”:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: You’ve never really had to bother with it, have you? You got him upstairs to point the way as often as not, and the rest of the time you’re just figuring out people – or things that used to be people. You never try to talk with that Eye of yours. You never had to second-guess a god.

Was Arthur referring to The Eye or… to Elias? Arthur used “it” to referred to his own god (/“them” for the fears), so the “him” was a bit surprising, and Elias’s office is canonically upstairs compared to the Archives… But at the same time, it would be saying that Elias was giving directions to Gertrude/that they were collaborating at some point, and as much as I had thought about the possibility (Gertrude had also mentioned that she could tell Elias about Mary’s visit, and Mary had bitten back that Elias “wasn’t too big on action”, implying that yeah, Elias&Gertrude… were communicating, at least), that would be Big News in the canon…?

- And Gertrude’s way of not Falling Deep into her patron was apparently because she was a bit of a stoic and not curious enough?

(MAG145) ARTHUR: […] That’s the trouble with overthinking any of this: you ignore your gut. And to my mind, that’s the only part any of Them Beyond… actually care about. They don’t give a toss about your “rules”, or “systems”. They only care about what feels right, what freezes your belly with terror. GERTRUDE: Hm. I rather like to think I’ve managed. ARTHUR: [SCOFF] Yeah. … But you don’t actually care about Them, do you? Not really. You forget, we’ve been watching you a long time, and I know you, Gertrude. You don’t actually care about… the Fears. You’re too practical. All your energy is focused down here, on monsters and… murderers, and all the things doing the dirty work for Them Beyond. You know plenty, sure! But you don’t have that obsession, that stupid urge to try and understand and… classify things that use logic and reality like weapons. GERTRUDE: Hm. Per–perhaps. ARTHUR: [CHUCKLE] Always respected you for that. Takes a strong stomach to not give a shit. GERTRUDE: Eh! You’ll forgive me if I’m not overjoyed at the compliment? ARTHUR: Suit yourself.

1°) And Jon is aaaaall about classifying and understanding, and is currently desperate for Answers at the moment, which. Oops. Very different from Gertrude, indeed. (Who occasionally threw out a few hypotheses here and there, indeed, but was also “practical”.)

2°) And Jon is also Very Afraid overall, even reminded us of that in MAG132 when going in the coffin (“When does the fear go away…?”)

3°) If Gertrude wasn’t letting fear get a hold on her… there is still the matter of Oliver’s dream/prediction, which pictured her as absolutely terrified (MAG011, Oliver: “I saw the face was uncovered. It was your face and the expression upon it was far more fearful than any I had seen in eight years of wandering this twilight city. That was when I awoke.”) – still the good old questions of “what happened around Gertrude’s death”…?

- Hello, it’s Arthur hours, I LOVED HIM… WHAT A TERRIBLE MAN… Voice acting was stellar, so funny, so seething, so… carnivorous? Defeated and yet still harmful, still utterly terrible, although he was able to pinpoint some of his mistakes (notably about how they had raised Agnes and how he was missing her). His rant about theology and Diego, and giving Too Much Information was incredible:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: But I was an idiot. Saw it as… attacking my leadership. Burnt the thing. Diego wasn’t happy. [PAUSE] Well, he’s in charge now! Of all of us that are… left, at least. He can look for the answers in whatever books he likes, no skin off my bones! GERTRUDE: I didn’t actually ask. ARTHUR: [INHALE] Figure if you’re gonna pull this stuff out of me, I, I might as well get some of it off my chest anyway…! Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is! Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls The Lightless Flame “Asag”, like he was when he was first researching it. I just want to tell him to get over it – I mean, [FASTER AND FASTER] Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church, we very much settled on burning in terms of the… face we worship, and some… fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it?! Plus, there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is… way too close to Filth for my taste, but, but no, he read it in some ~ancient tome~, so that’s that– GERTRUDE: Well, I can’t say I– ARTHUR: –reckons he always knows best, ‘cause he’s read a few books, well. Big. Deal! Way I see it, if a writer can’t even save themselves, they probably don’t have a lot worth knowing! Find me one so-called “expert” on all of this who didn’t end up regretting all of it! […] Found a mass of the Crawling Rot growing, a while back. Managed to get a hold of the property before it became too big. Gotta wait ‘til it blossoms before we can properly burn it. So until then… just playing landlord. It’s alright, I guess. You’d be surprised the misery and pain you can cause, when you have control over someone’s home….! If you’re careful, if you’re smart, you can burn their life to ashes as thoroughly as any fire, and worse comes to worst, you can still do it the old-fashioned way. Had an elderly tenant last year. Oh, [CHUCKLING] she was in a terrible state. I had her trapped, too poor and immobile to do anything but… sit there. Then, I broke her boiler, so the cold started to get her. Not exactly my usual, but… agony is agony. But then, her son and his wife moved in with her to help her out. Not much I could do against that. So I just waited until all three were home, and set the place ablaze. They went up nicely. Screaming all the way as the flames started to reach them. Doors were locked, and handles too hot, so they didn’t have a hope of escape– GERTRUDE: Yes, that’s quite enough, I think. ARTHUR: Oh, I’m sorry. There I was, thinking you liked the gory details! My mistake. GERTRUDE: I think we’re just about done here.

And OUUUCH, the story about the family was incredibly nasty and… really vicious. Describing the story of how he abused and tortured an old woman right in front of Gertrude? Definitely on purpose to try to get at her.

- Diego was once again associated with books, and mmm, I wonder if we’ll get his statement at some point (though we know that Gerry killed him before beginning to work with Gertrude)? Turned out he had actually tried to use childcare books to raise Agnes, which is… still better than the other cultists:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: You might be right. But Agnes did. That’s the thing about an… “incarnation”, isn’t it? She was a child and… person as much as she was a god. And we messed that right up…! … I still remember when Diego brought us a book on childcare. [CHUCKLING] Roger’s body was still in her room, blackened and smoking from… when he tried to feed her. I thought for a moment he’d brought another one of his damn Leitners, but no! It was just a… regular ol’ book on looking after children…! But I was an idiot. Saw it as… attacking my leadership. Burnt the thing. Diego wasn’t happy.

(I wonder if Arthur didn’t take Leitner as the one writing the books, too? Since his later comment (“Way I see it, if a writer can’t even save themselves, they probably don’t have a lot worth knowing! Find me one so-called “expert” on all of this who didn’t end up regretting all of it!”) was also targeted at Diego. Not sure that Leitner had begun to put his seal on the books in the 60s, though, so maybe Arthur retrospectively associated the books to Leitner although they weren’t bearing his name back then?)

- Eugene had it coming, and WOW did it come for him. Gertrude…

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: Oh! I assume you haven’t checked on… Eugene, then? ARTHUR: … What? GERTRUDE: Eugene. Well, whatever his name was, “Vanderbelt” or some such. You sent him to intimidate me a couple of years ago. You must remember? Of course you know him. Used to live in Beckingham, but moved out to that flat in… Ilford, last year. ARTHUR: Yeah. GERTRUDE: Well! He hasn’t been at your “little meetings” the last two weeks, has he…? I suppose no one’s looked into it yet. Not surprising – he seemed a thoroughly unpleasant little man. ARTHUR: Are you… [CLOTHES SHUFFLING] Di– GERTRUDE: Tell you what. Why don’t you make a few calls? [CLATTERING ON THE TABLE] Check it out, and then we can continue our, er, little “discussion”. Alright~? [CLICK.] [CLICK–] GERTRUDE: Well? [CLATTERING ON THE TABLE] ARTHUR: [INHALE] … How did you do it? GERTRUDE: [SCOFF] You don’t need to know that. What you do need to know is I can do it again, if I need to. To you, or… any of your “lackeys”, if I need to. […] ARTHUR: Eugene. It… hurt him. GERTRUDE: [CHUCKLING] Oh, yes. I’m sure your master was delighted with how… awful his death was.

[…] ARCHIVIST: Apparently, he disappeared in late 2009, leaving behind only one thing: a life-sized statue of himself, crafted from candlewax and sawdust. Missing its head. … I wish I didn’t know how painful it must be, to be alive while your whole being is infused with… agonising grit. But, as I was investigating, it… came to me. Eugene is still alive, frozen in place by the razor-sharp particles that are mixed up into what he chose instead of flesh. I don’t know where Gertrude stored his head. But I do know he desperately wants to scream.

AOUCH. 1°) Sarah-the-Anglerfish had left “sawdust” behind her in MAG096, though grit makes me thing of The Buried… Or it could have been a plain regular thing? 2°) hhhh over the fact that Gertrude, who got told that she had been watched BOTH by Arthur-from-the-Desolation and Manuela-from-the-Dark… was shown to absolutely know about them, too, and to be ready to make her moves when needed. 3°) ………………. Some people have pointed out that hum. Thanks to Patreon bonus content: it’s possible that Eugene’s head is actually in the Institute (and we know where, if it is that). (4°) That “delighted” pun… Gertrude… (And Diego used “burning questions” towards her later! Avatars punning about their patrons and others’.))

- Given how Gertrude handled them and talked about them with such disdain (“And you’re all lazy fools! So used to it being easy, to picking off the vulnerable and the unprepared, you can barely conceive of anyone actively working against you. Of being ready.”), she reaaaally despised them and… was that because of their methods in themselves, the glee they take in destruction? Or because the fact that they were the first she really encountered, in her young years, and that had scarred her deeply? Or because she had a childhood encounter with the Desolation even before that and it was exceptionally personal? Jon had The Web, Michael Shelley had The Spiral, Tim (although he was an adult already) had The Stranger + Melanie had The Slaughter (multiple times), Basira&Daisy got multiple stories… lots of people working in the Archives had encountered the Fears before working for the Institute, so maybe it was the case for Gertrude, too?

- I love how “coffeeshop twit” is Jack Barnabas’s official nickname from everyone.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “Of course, none of us suspected what was actually going to sink it all. I mean, if you’d told me, I’d have laughed at you. … That stupid coffeeshop twit. I honestly don’t know why Arthur allowed it, or why Jude didn’t step in – she’s usually so jealous!”

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Well, that’s the thing about a fall from grace, innit? Makes you look at things from a… “new angle”. … I miss her. [SCOFF] I’ll tell you that for nothing. Wish I… [PAUSE] I don’t know. I’d actually known her, when she was… alive. Maybe that coffeeshop twit did have a point after all. Could tell you what I saw, at least.

You know that there were sessions of collective ranting about him amongst The Desolation folks, and it stuck.

- Arthur’s personal way of referring to the Fears seem to be “Them Beyond”? He used it twice:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: That’s the trouble with overthinking any of this: you ignore your gut. And to my mind, that’s the only part any of Them Beyond… actually care about. […] All your energy is focused down here, on monsters and… murderers, and all the things doing the dirty work for Them Beyond.

… I found his tirade about the lack of direction and the fact they’re just scrambling around to try to guess their patron’s intent really interesting, but at the same time… presenting their life as So Hard And So Tragic, when they choose to hurt and abuse and torture and kill to feel good and make their patron feel good? Meh. Which is probably why Gertrude, too, was exceptionally unimpressed? Given Oliver’s and Elias’s insistences on choice and free will, I doubt that the bottom line of it is that the Fears change you (“warp you”) into someone else entirely; I think there are still many choices to be made when avataring, and that each victim… is a conscious, deliberate decision?

(… Gertrude’s reaction was also Wow., since, saving the world or not, she herself wasn’t against causing civilian casualties and sacrificing people to achieve her own goals. Maybe that’s the thing with Gertrude, and she thought of herself as the better person since her actions had, in theory, nothing to do with elation, but were about sheer practicality? The way she described the explosion of The Last Feast, however, was… strikingly gleeful. She felt good about hurting avatars and stopping rituals, too.)

- The bits about Agnes were very sad, once again:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: What was Agnes like? ARTHUR: … What? GERTRUDE: Well, for all The Web bound us together, I never actually met her. What was she like? ARTHUR: I… [PAUSE] I don’t know. Not really. You got as many answers to that as… folks who met her. Never really knew what she felt ‘bout any of it! Not really. Not in her own words. Guess that’s the thing about being the… Chosen One, or… I mean, Agnes was always quiet; but even if you spend all day, every day, throwing out commandments and… laying down parables… At the end of it, you’re always just the… point of someone else’s story. Everyone clamouring to say what you were, what you meant, and… your thoughts on it… all don’t mean nothing.

Agnes is… still a character who was born (/birthed) without a choice. We saw how Gerry had made the most of it, despite his education: he chose to neutralise Leitners, saved civilians here and there even when he was doing it passively. Agnes had never chosen this life, and although Arthur highlighted the fact that there were as many Agnes as people who met her/wanted something from her… I’m really feeling like we’re missing her voice about all of this. She’s a tragic figure, but it would sound a bit off to never have access to her voice, to her thoughts, when all the people describing her so far have been male characters and/or people romantically interested in her (Jack Barnabas, Jude Perry, Eugene, now Arthur).

But, unless she lied, Gertrude never met or discussed with her before she died, so… there probably isn’t any recording of her anywhere. (Unless we could somehow have a tape of Agnes talking with someone else? Ivo Lensik also had visions of a little girl at Hill Top Road before she even died, and we know that the place was messed up: maybe there is still a trace of her left behind, who could speak…?)

(- And YES, OBVIOUSLY, I was “wow.” and welcoming the Agnes/Gertrude as a new Fated By Fears ship. She was calling Gertrude “her anchor”!! They were soulmates!!! The Desolation protected Gertrude to make sure that Agnes wouldn’t suffer from it!! Gertrude was curious about her!!)

(- AND ALSO, YES, OBVIOUSLY, HHHHHHHHHH GERTRUDE HOT WHEN IN CONTROL AND LOOKING DOWN ON AVATARS…)

(- Of course, Arthur’s words about the perception one has of someone… was also very reminiscent of Jon’s whole being…? Though, at the same time, we have a direct access to his voice thanks to the tapes. He can lie, he can dissimulate, he can be a hypocrite… but it will always be a bit more “him” than second-hand accounts.

Presumably.

Because the woman from MAG142 had a very different version of Jon to share, someone we… got a glimpse of in MAG141, but it seems that others Archival characters haven’t noticed a change or that he’s been acting different lately…?)

- !!! So the circle from MAG037 was made by Gertrude, initially to banish Agnes, and in the end a bit modified to alleviate “side-effects”:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: I really thought you were unique, special, an infernal cult raising their demon Messiah to bring about hell on Earth…! […] I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck, when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hilltop Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair. Of course, what I thought was a “banishment ritual” turned out… not to be. The circle I constructed was more of a… an invitation. It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house. … It was the most painful experience of my life. I mean… I’m sure it’s nothing to you, but I’d never had my lungs try to burn me alive from the inside out before. I survived, though. And you know the rest. I’m not sure exactly how it manifested on your end; you certainly seemed to get the message. I kept the circle over the years, laced it through with signs and symbology of The Desolation to ward off the worst of the side effects and… keep its attentions elsewhere.

And with Jason North’s description in mind:

(MAG037, Jason North) “What was inside each one seemed to vary, some had pine needles and twigs, some were full of dirt, and one or two even held what appeared to be rainwater, though looking closer I could see that it bubbled very gently inside those bottles in an endless simmer. In each I could also see a small photograph, half-buried in dirt or almost boiled clean. They all looked to be the same photograph, though it was hard to tell for sure. An old woman, probably in her fifties or sixties, wearing reading glasses and grey hair curled into a tight bun. She stared out disapprovingly from every bottle. Weirdest of all, on the bottom of each was tied a lock of hair. It was long and grey, in poor condition, and I reckon it must have belonged to the woman in the photograph. It was tied up with the same new string as held the bottles, except for the fact that it was burned, ever so slightly at the ends.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: Mr. North did include with his statement the picture he found in the bottle. It is a photograph of Gertrude Robinson, my predecessor at the Magnus Institute, circa 2002 as best I can tell.

So: 1°) it wasn’t Gertrude’s hair! (And did they grey because Agnes was dead? Or because the hair aged “normally” once removed from her?), 2°) Was Gertrude regularly changing her pictures with updated ones, or were these… updating themselves in the bottles?

- Alright, so, actualising the timeline of events around Agnes and Hill Top Road/Lightless Flame cultists’ involvement with Gertrude:

* Agnes was sent to Hill Top Road to deal with The Web sometime around 1965, when Ronald Sinclair was turning 18 (he said he was born in the late 40s). Agnes was described as “younger than the other kids, maybe ten or eleven years old, and didn’t talk much”. She (playfully) freed Ronald from Raymond Fielding’s influence. (MAG059)

* The house got slowly depopulated until only Agnes and Raymond remained; Raymond disappeared when Agnes “must have been 18 or 19”, Agnes claiming that “he had gone away and that the house was hers”. (Ivo Lensik, MAG008)

* In 1974, a five-year-old boy goes missing in the area. People are suspicious of Agnes, the house burns, Ray’s body is found, missing his right hand, and there is no sign of Agnes. (MAG008)

=> It must be around that time that Gertrude tied her existence to Agnes, as she mentioned “ashes” and her own young age:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: I was very new to it all, of course. I mean, I was, what? Can’t have been older than… twenty-five. […] I somehow found just the right books, made just the right connections, and even got what I thought was a piece of blind good luck, when I found a tin box in the ashes of Hilltop Road, containing some perfectly preserved cuttings of her hair.

(+ in MAG137, Gertrude pointed out that “The Risen War failed a few years before I was even born.”, and that was one was in late 1942. So all this would put Gertrude’s date of birth at 1949 or after, but not before.)

* Gertrude entwined her and Agnes’s existences – was it related to the fact that Agnes also got tied to Hill Top Road, or was that binding unrelated? On the one hand, Gertrude only mentioned that Agnes was connected to her and compared that binding to Fielding and the house; on the other hand, Eugene insisted that Agnes had been “tied” to Hill Top Road, and Agnes indeed clearly felt something when Ivo Lensik killed the tree that was still there:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “As far as we could tell, she had destroyed the place utterly. And yet, she remained bound to it, tied to it in some vital way. I knew, when Arthur told she had kept Raymond Fielding’s hand, that he was worried.”

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: Of course, what I thought was a “banishment ritual” turned out… not to be. The circle I constructed was more of a… an invitation. It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house.

* Agnes began to frequent the Canyon Café in the 90s as, by November 2006, she had been visiting for “a decade and a half” (MAG067). She waited, they all waited.

* In autumn 2006, Jack Barnabas confessed to Agnes and they went on a few dates. (MAG067)

* On November 23rd 2006, Ivo Lensik uprooted the tree at Hill Top Road, freeing spiders from the apple buried under it; Agnes felt it, said that she had to finish something, gathered the members of the cult, and at her request, they hanged her, with Ray’s hand tied to her waist. (MAG067, MAG139)

* On November 30th 2006, Arthur sent Eugene Vanderstock to give his statement to Gertrude, threatening her about the fact they didn’t have any more reason to keep her alive (MAG139: “As for you… Whatever you did, and whatever protection it might have afforded you is severed, with Agnes’s death. Arthur has told us not to harm you yet, but this whole thing has really rather weakened his authority, and many of us are now looking towards Diego for leadership. But we shall see, I suppose.”)

* In January 2009, Gertrude took care of Eugene (MAG145, Gertrude: “Well! He hasn’t been at your “little meetings” the last two weeks, has he…? I suppose no one’s looked into it yet.”)

* On February 2nd 2009, Arthur and Gertrude “discussed”, with Gertrude threatening the rest of the cult with what she had done to Eugene if they were to try and harm her. (MAG145)

* On August 6th 2009, Jason North gave his statement about disturbing a ritual site near Loch Glass in Scotland. (MAG037)

* Eugene was officially declared missing in late 2009 (MAG145, Jon: “I did some more digging into Eugene Vanderstock. I thought he was still alive and… working at the steel plant, but it looks like he’s just listed on one of the old directory pages on their website. […] Apparently, he disappeared in late 2009, leaving behind only one thing: a life-sized statue of himself, crafted from candlewax and sawdust. Missing its head.”)

* Until late February/early March 2014, Jane Prentiss, Arthur’s tenant, got taken over by The Hive. On the day of her hospitalisation, Arthur called Pest Control Service to take care of the “wasps’ nest” (whatever the price would be); Jordan Kennedy went, pumped insecticide into the thing, and witnessed Arthur setting himself (and the whole house) on fire. (MAG032, MAG055)

- So, two main things. First, the… dates, once again. I can believe that Eugene’s disappearance wasn’t discovered by public authority until much later than his actual “death”, no problem. But the dates around Gertrude’s circles are a bit weird, since Jason North had mentioned that his wife had burnt not even a week after he had disrupted the site (and before that, his car had broken, etc.); it… doesn’t sound like he had encountered the circle months or years before he gave his statement and tried to find a way to protect his son Ethan – he immolated himself shortly after giving his statement, he was pressed by time, it was an urgency happening in the Summer 2009. Yet… Gertrude and Arthur had been referring to someone disrupting the site some time before… in February 2009.

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: Mm! Now. Here’s the problem for you, Arthur. The way I see it, you came here believing that whatever defences or… assurances I might have had, died with Agnes, or had broken along with the circle. […] I kept the circle over the years, laced it through with signs and symbology of The Desolation to ward off the worst of the side effects and… keep its attentions elsewhere. ARTHUR: [CHUCKLING] Don’t envy whoever broke it! GERTRUDE: Yes. It went very badly for them, indeed. ARTHUR: So where was it, in the end? I spent years looking for it. GERTRUDE: Hm! Nowhere special. The middle of a forest, in the Scottish highlands. Furthest place I could find, from anything, and anyone.

So…? Had Jason North been cursed for a few months before giving his statement, and Ethan had somehow managed to escape The Desolation curse? Is it Jonny mixing dates again (and MAG037 took place in 2008 instead of 2009 or something)?

Is it that… someone else had disrupted the circle before Jason?

… Or has someone/something been messing with dates in the Archives? We’re getting a lot of cases of Potentially Impossible Timelines in season 4 (Neil Lagorio’s two deaths, Jason North’s; there is the matter of Gertrude’s tape from MAG087, when she was supposed to be dead, etc.); is or was someone/something trying to conceal information this way…?

(- Relistening to Jason’s statement and. Hum. About the circle’s location, he finished with:

(MAG137, Jason North) “I asked about who might have gone to the area, but aside from some middle-aged businessmen on a hiking trip, no-one’s been anywhere near that clearing for years. There is no reason this is happening, but I’m still going to lose everything. I am so scared.”

I’m not banking on it, but. Elias was confirmed to be meant to sound “middle-aged” in the season 3 Q&A. So. Uh. Uh. Were these people, like. Peter and Elias on a hiking trip.)

- Regarding Arthur’s connection to The Hive: I… have much trouble picturing that Gertrude did not use what she had learned in MAG145 to somehow make him regret Everything.

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is! Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls The Lightless Flame “Asag”, like he was when he was first researching it. I just want to tell him to get over it – I mean, [FASTER AND FASTER] Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church, we very much settled on burning in terms of the… face we worship, and some… fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it?! Plus, there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is… way too close to Filth for my taste […]. GERTRUDE: So. Now, Diego has taken over… Where does that leave you? ARTHUR: [SNORT] Slumlording over a nest. GERTRUDE: Oh. A nest of… what? ARTHUR: Found a mass of the Crawling Rot growing, a while back. Managed to get a hold of the property before it became too big. Gotta wait ‘til it blossoms before we can properly burn it. So until then… just playing landlord.

I would be really surprised if no one (Gertrude or someone else) had used the fact that Arthur hated Corruption and wanted to wait a bit before killing one of its monsters because it needed to get big enough (practical reasons or hubris there?). Because there is the Question of why did Arthur set himself ablaze when Jane Prentiss got taken over:

(MAG055) JORDAN: At one point, he shook his head and mumbled something about hoping it wouldn’t get this far, but he didn’t seem to be saying it to me. […] Time seemed to move slowly as he reached for the ashtray on the arm of the chair and picked up a pack of matches. He struck one and without even looking at me, he gently pressed the small flame to the centre of the scar. His flesh caught fire, immediately, the flames spreading across his body like rippling water. The armchair caught, then the floor, and then I was running out of the building before the rolling inferno could come at me as well.

Why couldn’t Arthur just… leave? Unless he was fearing that The Hive would come after him, and he was too weak nowadays to be able to properly face it, and he decided to bow out on his own terms? No idea what Gertrude could have done, though; tossing Jane Prentiss in the direction of that house? Or… maybe binding Arthur to the house itself, as revenge/torture, since she did know the ritual to tie herself to someone and had compared it to the binding linking Fielding to the house…?

- Surprisingly, Arthur didn’t mention that he was there the night Agnes had died:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “They were all dressed in rough work clothes and wore severe expressions. One of them, a big guy with a shaved head, was holding an unlit lantern, and speaking to the others that I think was Spanish or Portuguese. Another held a bag that seemed to be full of candles, while a third had a clear plastic container filled with hundred of tiny spiders. None of them paid me any attention, and I was rapidly feeling like I was falling into something that I really didn’t want to.”

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] If the bald man with the lantern is as I suspect Diego Molina, it would indicate a link between his notable obsession with burning, and… Agnes, who apparently had not inconsiderable abilities in that area. I can’t help but wonder if Arthur Nolan, The Hive’s landlord, was one of the other members of that little group.

(+ the man holding candles would be Eugene Vanderstock, as he was revealed to have a thing with candles in MAG139.)

… Same as with Eugene: how come Arthur… barely mentioned any spiders around Agnes? Eugene had been able to point out that Hill Top Road had been a “stronghold” of The Web, but Arthur didn’t mention them at all in his conversation with Gertrude (it was Gertrude who connected her actions to The Web, but Arthur made no reference whatsoever to Agnes’s) – and especially not… the spiders he (if it was indeed him) was carrying on the night of Agnes’s death. Did those spiders do the same trick as with Jon through his lighter, making people’s attention slip right over them…?

(Especially given that! Jane herself had mentioned that there were spiders in the house:

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) “Was it the spiders? There were webs in the corners, around the entryway into the attic. I would watch them scurry and disappear in between the wooden boards. ‘Where are you going, little spiders?’ I would think. ‘What are you seeing in the dark? Is it food? Prey? Predators?’ I wondered if it was the spiders that made the gentle buzzing song. It was not. Webs have a song as well, of course, but it is not the song of The Hive.”

To what extent was Arthur tangled in threads, too…?)

- Arthur confirmed (after Eugene) that Desolation folks had mostly No Idea What They Were Doing. We saw it with The Dark, too (when… they just put Faith in things and hoped it would work out), a bit with The Slaughter (given how things didn’t proceed as they should have) – Arthur did highlight that becoming an avatar meant being burdened with the craving of getting closer to their patron, and Jon, judging from how he echoes some of Arthur’s arguments (about cultists fighting over how to act), couuuuld be implying that it’s the same for him nowadays:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: You never had to second-guess a god. ‘Cause that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? We feel Its joy and Its… anger; It warps us, and changes us, and feeds on us, though not in the ways we expect. The one thing It never does is just… tell us what to do. It seeds us with this… aching, impossible desire to change the world, to bring It to us. Then, It leaves us to guess and bicker and fight over how the hell you can actually do it. … If it’s possible. Sometimes, I think They understand us as… little as we understand Them. We don’t think like They do.

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] The more I listen and learn, the more it seems to me we’re all just… “groping about”. Trying desperately to find out what we’re actually meant to be doing. [PAUSE] These things that… loom so large over our lives trap us, and push us, and… sometimes kill us. But they never actually tell us what we’re supposed to be doing. So we scheme and we plot, lash out at each other without ever really knowing why. … I think Gertrude knew this. Knew to… focus her attention on those parts that could be understood, and… Well. And killed.

1°) … But at the same time, Not All Avatars: Jared Hopworth told us in MAG131 that he was perfectly satisfied with the world as is, and actively refused to participate in his own ritual, with no apparent adverse effects on him. So… it’s possible to go “Nop.” over those.

2°) Again, I don’t think that the main point is that no ritual is achievable: it… would lower the stakes too much? Sarah/the Anglerfish had also told Nikola, in MAG119, that the in-between wasn’t comfortable for all the monsters, and to hurry up with the Dance to complete the ceremony. Some things went wrong here and there, we didn’t get the whole stories… but I still think that it must be possible to carry a ritual until its culmination, and that The Watcher’s Crown is still a very real looming threat…?

3°) And what is Jon’s actual stance about The Watcher’s Crown and being responsible for hurting people nowadaaaaays…?

- It was… a weird thing to experience: Gertrude, practical, cold-blooded, doubtless Gertrude was the one actually… more or less on the side of protecting innocents, here? While Jon did not care at all, even included himself amongst Other Avatars:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: And you’re all lazy fools! So used to it being easy, to picking off the vulnerable and the unprepared, you can barely conceive of anyone actively working against you. Of being ready. You honestly thought, when she died, I’d just be struck dumb with terror – just waiting for one of you to finally get around to revenge, paralysed with fear, because that’s all you’ve ever known. […] You tell the others. Make sure they know what happened to Eugene. ARTHUR: Sure. Can’t make any promises, though. ‘Specially for Jude. She really hates you. GERTRUDE: Tell her she’s welcome to try. Oh…! And tell them I’m extending my protection to young Mr. Barnabas. They hurt him any more, then what happened to Eugene will seem like a mercy. ARTHUR: … You’re really pushing it. You know that? GERTRUDE: Hm! Feel free to push back. But until then, get out of my Archives.

Gertrude neutralised Eugene, she talked Arthur down, she protected Jack Barnabas (and in the same breath: acknowledged that it had gone badly for the one disrupting her circle, but didn’t sound too heartbroken about it).

Meanwhile, Jon? Still hasn’t shared a word about the new additions to his collection of traumatised victims, and is sighing and complaining about his own whole situation.

- And worse: in this episode Jon actually humanised… avatars, of all people???

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: We’ve been back in London for just over a week, now. I’m… more or less recovered physically. It’s just this nagging sense of unease that won’t leave me. … I was so sure I’d find something up there. But instead, it was just another broken person trying to come to terms with the wreckage of their life.

I’m not sure if by “up there”, he was talking about the Svalbard trip and Manuela, or if it was about the new tape and Arthur, but…??? It definitely doesn’t seem like it’s about Floyd??? And whether it’s Manuela or Arthur, who both confessed to multiple murders and torture and absolutely Do Not Feel Sorry About That Part Of Their Life, how do they deserve to be called a “broken person” – what about the persons they broke, what about the persons YOU are breaking, Jon???

(And there was the whole “we avatars”, including himself in it, at the beginning of his rant, which… sounds very much like Jon feels more connected to Their Tragic Situation than to the people they wreck, which is… ew.)

- Overall: I’m really surprised at how abruptly casually unsympathetic I’ve been finding Jon since MAG141, how I’m absolutely unable to feel sorry for him now? Because, lamenting about his lack of direction, his place, his whole existence was delightful and very sad and tragic, indeed! … until we got the reveal that oh, he himself was currently torturing people and feeding from them.

Jon hasn’t had one word about his victims, since then. No concern, no regret, no preoccupation. And I find it so hard to like him right now? It sounds like a string of me-me-me, which… only works as long as he’s not actively hurting others, or as long as he’s trying to find ways to stop it or to mitigate the damage? And it was the same with his string of lies to Georgie (not acknowledging, until she pressed on, that no, he was in “deep”; pretending that Melanie had “told” him about her therapy when the truth is that he had compelled her, although on accident; saying he had some “close calls” when UUUH… I wouldn’t say Floyd and the woman from MAG142 were “close” calls, at all????):

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: A–all right. [SPLUTTERS] W–why are you, uh… well. Here? I–if it’s not too personal a question. [SILENCE] GEORGIE: … It is a bit. It’s not really my place to discuss it. ARCHIVIST: Oh, uh, therapy! You’re taking her to therapy! GEORGIE: She… told you, then? ARCHIVIST: Uh, yes. Yeah. […] GEORGIE: So… How are you doing? ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m alright. I’m trying to, uh… rest up a bit. Take it easy. [HUFF] GEORGIE: Really? ‘Cause… I’m pretty sure I heard talking about a screaming headless corpse just now. ARCHIVIST: Oh… Oh. W–were you… listening? GEORGIE: Oh, uh. Didn’t mean to. You know. These… doors are not that thick. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Fine. I’m deep in it. Had some… “close calls”. [SILENCE] GEORGIE: I’m sorry to hear that. [PAUSE] … You should probably get some therapy too. ARCHIVIST: [HUFF] Would you go with me as well? GEORGIE: … No. ARCHIVIST: Yeah. … No, I thought as much.

And… bitterly highlighting that Georgie wouldn’t Hold His Hand And Lead Him Through Therapy (and a bit implying that he would go if she was helping him, but only then)… felt like a really… bad thing to say? What has he done for Georgie for the past year and a half? She housed him for months! She gave him advice! She watched over him while he was in a coma! I find it astoundingly rude of him to even word the possibility of her helping him to get therapy because… yeah, he clearly was expecting a negative answer, but he put her in a position when she was the one who had to officially shoot him down. I understand the sadness and the bitterness but, honestly, with the knowledge that Jon is actually hurting people to feed on the sideline in order to feel good… it gives me the same vibe as entitled males expecting you to do their emotional labour and to sob over their life, who expect you to Accept Them For Who They Are although they’re doing terrible shit here and there.

(And it was… a typical Jon thing, too, but: he didn’t really ask Georgie how she was doing lately, on her side. And the more I see of them, the more, yeah, I understand perfectly why they might have broken up, or why Georgie just… doesn’t want to take care of him anymore, because she used to, and it’s always a one-sided relationship.)

(And it’s so easy to forget, also, in the way Jon interacts with Georgie… that he pulled her into his nightmare zoo. He might have still been unaware at the time he took her statement, but still: he did that to her, and never acknowledged it to her, although we had confirmation that He Knows about it, and knows what causes the dreams now. How could Georgie trust him, if he doesn’t even acknowledge it nor apologise to her for it…?)

I’m still really hoping that there is a twist, that this is all leading to something (Jon was awful in season 2, too! (Though called out on it, and it was in self-defence, because he thought a murderer was after him) – and the point is, he hurt Tim in the process, and this is why it was important narratively for Tim… to never forgive him), though ;; I’m fearing that it’s just wishful-thinking from me, because I… don’t… like… Jon… at all… at the moment… and am hoping that some bits are fake and/or will get improved… (It feels like… such a step back, with all the character development he had gotten in season 3? And it happened around the time he was getting closer to Daisy, who was helping him lighten up…?)

In that vein, the nagging about Elias could lead to something:

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: Elias always seemed to know what was going on, to have a plan, but… I sometimes wonder how orchestrated some of it really was. … [SIGH]

(Every time Jon lamented about his lack of direction in this season, Elias pointed in a direction: removing Basira to get Jon to go inside of the coffin, sending Jon&Basira to Svalbard after Jon had been unable to See if The Dark was still a threat. So Elias might react to that one jab, and I would like to hope that Jon has picked up on the pattern and is beginning to guess that Elias is Basira’s intel… But at the same time, it’s Jon, he tends to Miss Big Points.)

- Georgie did the “Knock-knock”! ;w; It was something Melanie had done to Elias, and Elias did it to Tim&Martin afterwards… Melanie and Georgie are friends, is that a habit they got from each other?

- Jon dramatically minimised his own current actions to Georgie (pretending, at first, that he was… more in control and taking care, although LOL, it’s been a Power Feast since he woke up – even without taking into consideration the statements he has extorted recently), casually hid the fact that he only knew about Melanie’s therapy because he had compelled her… but Georgie also lied about the fact that she had “accidentally” walked on Jon:

(MAG145) [KNOCK–KNOCK–KNOCK.] [DOOR OPENS.] GEORGIE: Knock–knock! ARCHIVIST: Oh, G… G–Georgie… Wh– GEORGIE: Oh! Uh… ARCHIVIST: What a… You… GEORGIE: Sorry, I thought, em… Is Melanie about? […] ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m alright. I’m trying to, uh… rest up a bit. Take it easy. [HUFF] GEORGIE: Really? ‘Cause… I’m pretty sure I heard talking about a screaming headless corpse just now. ARCHIVIST: Oh… Oh. W–were you… listening? GEORGIE: Oh, uh. Didn’t mean to. You know. These… doors are not that thick.

So she knew he was inside, and pretended otherwise to get a pretext to talk to him a bit… and yet, we clearly see that the bridge is broken between them at the moment. They’re still curious about the other, there is still something, that would need repair… and I’m not sure it ever will be. (And at the moment, I can definitely understand why it doesn’t work between them: because Jon is craving for a clutch, and doesn’t have… much to give, to people who are not having an Exceptionally Great Time either, and are survivors themselves. It’s one thing for them to offer their help, like Daisy did (and back then, Jon had been able to tell that the Archives team was “traumatised” and that a lot of is was because of him). But they don’t owe Jon anything, especially if he’s not working on improving or healing himself, and it’s really not their fault if Jon is allowing himself to sink at the moment – especially after Daisy had worked on pulling him up.)

- Hey! It’s “sad about Sasha” hours.

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: I did some more digging into Eugene Vanderstock. I thought he was still alive and… working at the steel plant, but it looks like he’s just listed on one of the old directory pages on their website. … I really miss having people who know their way around a computer better than I do…! [PAUSE] A bit more digging found a rather… bizarre case.

Hacker of the group who used to dig things up so easily… ;; (And Tim could flirt his way into info.)

- Melanie is doing Amazing, sweetie ;w;

(MAG145) GEORGIE: Sorry, I thought, em… Is Melanie about? ARCHIVIST: Melanie…? Uh… Yeah, I… saw her a couple of hours ago. Uh, in the other office, I–I can show you…? GEORGIE: Oh, I’m… sure I can find it. Don’t worry yourself. ARCHIVIST: A–all right. [SPLUTTERS] W–why are you, uh… well. Here? I–if it’s not too personal a question. [SILENCE] GEORGIE: … It is a bit. It’s not really my place to discuss it. ARCHIVIST: Oh, uh, therapy! You’re taking her to therapy! GEORGIE: She… told you, then? ARCHIVIST: Uh, yes. Yeah. GEORGIE: … Well, you don’t need to sound quite so psyched about it. She gets… nervous travelling there alone. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Yes, o–o–of course. I–I forget you two know each other.

On the one hand: yes, that therapist gave me the creeps, the whole tape recorder thing was suspicious as hell, we haven’t heard from Melanie directly since then, she’s been described as “quiet”, the fact that she doesn’t like to go there alone… all are worrisome and screaming “Web!” a bit.

On the other hand: Melanie has been going outside, is calmer, is able to call on a willing friend for help… and it sounds like Actual Therapy Actually Helping Her To Get Some Inner Peace?

So wait&see, but I wouldn’t rule out (entirely) that it might be actual therapy at work, here.

(A detail on the Archives’ landscape, too: there are actually two offices! Jon’s and… another.)

- HMMMM, so: the whole episode contained the fact that The Web manipulated an Archivist, an Archivist who was resisting against their own patron and got tied to another avatar who also might have had Reservations about their own god (so two Fears neutralising each other?); avatars who were roughly the same age; one of them being described as an “anchor” for the other, despite the distance…

… Martin, where are you, and does The Web have plans for you and Jon, too…

MAG146 is out and OUUUUUUUUUUUUUFFFFF, siren alarms, I guess??? Especially when it’s about the potential second meaning (… though, at this point, with Jon-since-MAG141, I’d think we’re way past “that point” from MAG146′s title, and deeper than this).

Interesting concept because it appeared on multiple occasions: it was because of it that Naomi started to see the Lonely field in MAG013, Albrecht had noticed a change around it in MAG023, Jason North’s doom started with it in MAG037, Philip Brown pointed out that The Dark was beginning with it in MAG052, Tim mentioned things changing starting around it in MAG104… And, of course, it screams Jon-Jon-Jon (heck, Elias even described Jon’s behaviour around metaphorical ones in MAG092 in his Speech about how Jon had chosen everything (INFORMED CONSENT SAID HI, BASTARD.)); or The Distortion, since the concept had appeared a lot around it (things changing with it in MAG047; Michael using it to describe his Becoming in MAG101; Helen mentioning it in relation to Jon and his fears in MAG143).

So. Spiral statement? Or something about resistance/tolerance? … Jon visiting Elias in prison? *weeps* (Second meaning potentially ;; if it is about Jon…)

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #mag145 #the magnus archives #tma liveblog #tma season 4 #long post/#tma spoilers/#*insert megumi hayashibara's 'midgnight blue' here*

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radchaai-latte · 5 years

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This isn’t really a “theory”, in the sense that I think it’s a direction the show is actually going to take things, and I’m sure someone’s brought it up at some point before, but there’s a thought that keeps recurring to me, basically ever since 134.

(Since I have yet to do a full relisten, and I listened to most of the episodes for the first time while at work, it’s very possible that something’s come up that makes all of this moot, even for a crack idea, and I just missed it...)

134 is when we learned that the End and the Web have never (to Peter’s knowledge) attempted a ritual. According to Peter, both have a preference for the world the way it is in canon because it doesn’t matter to the End (so long as whatever world exists has entities capable of fearing their own death) and because the Web likes being able to manipulate things the way they are.

But that leads me to a question... if it’s possible for entities to choose not to have their followers attempt a ritual, why would the Beholding want its own ritual to go down? Because a lot of the fears of the Beholding require at least some, if not all, of the other powers in order to function at optimal capacity.

(More under the cut because this got a bit long...)

Maybe I’m missing something, but the fear of being watched/having your secrets exposed is not usually motivated out of, well, the fear of being seen, full stop. Because some people are scared of their secrets being revealed because they believe it will make their loved ones shun them (Lonely) or because they believe they could be used to manipulate them (Web), maybe they’re afraid of being tracked down for some reason (Hunt), etc.

Moreover, if the Beholding is the infinite drive to know more, regardless of the cost to oneself, what world could be better for that than the one that exists in canon right now? There’s so much unknown to explore and catalogue, and so many dangers and things to be afraid of in the process. Having things like the Dark, the Stranger, and the Vast is beneficial to the Beholding because they inherently cannot be fully known, and, thus, must be eternally quested after at great personal risk.

Not to mention the fact that the Eye apparently literally feeds off of the experiences the other powers enact on people. That makes sense if it’s also the fear of something watching you suffer for its own amusement, but it doesn’t explain what the Beholding would get out of its ritual that it doesn’t currently have.

And, I absolutely do not trust that the Web has no interest in its ritual. Unlike the End, which, as Peter points out, gets everybody eventually, the Web has to at least do some work for its prey. It could definitely get something out of a world where people were more easily manipulated or had more to fear from manipulation (and spiders) or whatever would happen if its ritual were completed.

And, in all honesty, Peter isn’t the most reliable narrator in regards to anything the Web. He’s an avatar of the Lonely. What does he really know? He assumes that the Web hasn’t attempted a ritual because it likes the world as-is, but assuming anything about a power that is blatantly associated with manipulation seems like just about the worst plan anybody could possibly have.

So, alright. Maybe the Web doesn’t have a ritual it intends to enact, or maybe it does and it’s just keeping it on the down low so no nosey Archivists step in and blow it up. Makes sense.

This is where my brain gets over excited and goes a little off the rails, because I can’t stop thinking about the connections between the Archives and the Web.

There have been a lot of theories about the recorders being Web-aligned, rather than Beholding-aligned. Jon’s first encounter with the fears was in relation to the Web. Martin loves spiders to the point that Web!Martin is a popular fandom idea. Jon carries a web lighter. The table that housed the NotThem (and was therefore, by proxy, protecting the archival staff from it) was of the Web. There are a number of theories about Jon having to collect a scar/experience from every power in order to bring about the Watcher’s Crown, and the Web seems to be playing both sides of that fight... although, by (seemingly) brining the Flesh to the Institute, it did lead to Jon losing a pair of ribs to Jared, so who knows what that really means.

(Not to mention, Gertrude mentioned being able to recommend a statement-giver the name of a good psychologist and now Melanie is seeing someone in that capacity who certainly wants to use a recorder, and Annabelle Cane was a psych student, I think, or at least was aware enough of psych experiments, as a student, to participate in a rather frightening and long-term one... it’s all very coincidental, if it’s not directly connected.)

Basically, for the Beholding’s seat of power, there’s a lot of Web stuff going on. Like, down in the coffin, it was the Buried and only the Buried, as far as we saw. But the Archives have lots of Web stuff and, unlike when other powers attack the place, nobody seems particularly interested in even trying to kick the spiders out.

And, you know who an archive would be really good for? Someone who needs/wants a record of past information in order to use it for future gain. Say, in order to manipulate someone.

Elias’ demonstrated powers include seeing things remotely (which he uses... to manipulate people) and implanting experiential memories into people’s heads (which he uses...... to manipulate people). Jon’s demonstrated powers are having “weird” body parts (whatever that means), manifesting tapes (maybe), and pulling information out of people’s heads, sometimes so hard it kills them (which he generally doesn’t do on purpose but, one very notable time when he did, he immediately used the information he got out of it for blackmail). All I’m saying is, their powers definitely make sense for the concept of being able to “watch” and “know” the world, and strike fear with those abilities, but... they also make sense in terms of being extremely useful as methods of working out exactly how to make someone do as you tell/blackmail/ask them to.

We currently believe that there are fifteen fears, because Smirke came up with a list of fourteen and we’ve added the Extinction to that. But when Gerry talks about it, he talks in terms of colours. Why isn’t pink a shade of red, when pale blue is just another shade of blue? Which mirrors what Leitner said about all of them being part of something incomprehensibly large, like a human sticking multiple appendages into an ant hive. So Smirke labeled the fears where he thought the labels ought to go, and everybody goes along with it because it’s handy, but just because Smirke saw distinctions doesn’t mean that those distinctions necessarily exist on a cosmic level.

Before we had that list, there were ideas about the things that became known as the Web being the “active” component of the Beholding. The things that went out and used the Beholding’s knowledge.

The fear of having your secrets revealed and turned against you.

And, what better trick? Convince the entire world that your entire fear is, in fact, two smaller ones. One that draws all the attention by being the annoying nerd who can’t stop asking questions (the Beholding) and the other that hangs out in the shadows, carefully pulling all the threads so everything works out just right (the Web). Why bother informing an Archivist who is more comfortable with the limits of the Beholding than they might be with the Web (Jon, possibly also Gertrude) that the distinction between those powers isn’t real at all?

(Though if the Web and the Beholding were one and the same, that could lead to a really fun payoff for Jared having Jon’s rib, where Jared turns up again, and it’s Jon who uses the fact that a part of him is inside the Boneturner to puppet him in some way.)

Also, the other, dumber reason that I keep thinking about this is because the Watcher’s Crown just makes me think of some sort of crown of eyes, and there are real life spiders with eyes arranged like that (a couple pictures of the peacock spider are in the link below-- I didn’t want to just add images to the post on the off chance that someone somehow made it through my ramblings to this point and didn’t want to be surprised with a sudden closeup of a spider). https://geyserofawesome.com/post/125967598482/peacock-spiders-are-awesome-creatures-theyre

tldr: I have a crack theory that I can’t stop thinking about which basically amounts to “the Beholding is fake news made up by the Web”.

#the magnus archives #tma #wash writes #this is probably dumb #tma spoilers #sorry forgot to add that since I guess I reference the new episode?#not sure I need to add that anyway #since it's been released to the general public #but still

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ryukyuan-sunflower · 7 years

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Do you think there is any significance to the painting "Backward's Beauty?" I noticed recently that Fuu often does that pose throughout the show. Often looking contemplative or worried.

Hello! Thanks for your question! Actually, yes. I find it very significant. I recently found some more information on this topic that I am using for my Samurai Champloo story. I think the contemplative/worried look of Fuu is meaningful to the term itself. To begin with, let’s talk a little bit about the actual meaning.

The Japanese words for “Backwards Beauty” are “Mikaeri Bijin”. Another better translation is “Looking Back Beauty”. The term was popularized by the artist Moronobu Hishikawa when he made this Ukiyo-e (woodblock print) painting in the Tokugawa era, titled “Mikaeri Bijin”:

It was later printed on the first commemorative Japanese stamp in November of 1948. Having made drawing styles of his own creation, he is considered a forerunner for many future Ukiyo-e artists. He even inspired Vincent van Gogh. Samurai Champloo watchers will better know Moronobu Hishikawa’s work looking like this for the sake of mashed up history and an anime plot twist flair:

…Very little similarity besides the title. And anime viewers will see Moronobu Hishikawa looking very different than actual history. I highly doubt he was so flamboyant with long manicured purple nails, and purple lipstick. But hey, ya never know.

Since the making of this painting and many other prints by Hishikawa, the idea of Mikaeri Bijin has influenced Japanese culture for years to come (to the point where Samurai Champloo references it). There is a song by pop group Morning Musume using the title. Mikaeri Bijin refers to a woman who looks beautiful when looking behind her. It is considered coquettish, as she does not turn around to flaunt herself, but rather shyly glances over a shoulder. It also reveals a woman’s nape of the neck which is a sexual yet not raunchy display of the body in Japanese culture. The term itself has romantic undertones too, as it can refer to a woman looking at the man of her affections without expressing her feelings. Modern day Japanese people will use the term as a joke. As it can mean, “a woman who looks beautiful from the back…who turns around and is ugly”. Of course, this was not the case in old Japan.

Mikaeri though, as a word, is simply “looking back”. Looking back can represent looking back at the past, but pressing forward. I think this heavily describes Fuu as a character. She is searching for her past, and yet is forced to look onward as she travels across Japan. And yes, you are correct in saying Fuu is shown many times looking back. Even the opening credits has her doing so.

We can safely say, just as Hishikawa said in the anime, she is truly a beauty looking backwards. Now from here, I’m going to diverge a bit. But I promise this will connect to the concept of “Mikaeri” or “looking back”.

Many people wonder where Mugen, Fuu and Jin grew up. And while the anime never states it, it is very apparent for Mugen and Jin due to actual history. The Miyako Islands had a penal colony known as Taramashima in the Ryukyuan Islands during the Tokugawa time period, where Ryukyuan criminals were put. The paantu black figures that watch Mugen as he almost dies three times in his life are a Miyakoshima deity that chase off evil spirits during an annual festival. This is obviously Mugen’s birthplace. The Takeda clan, or more specifically, the real Mariya Enshirou owned the Kururi Castle outside of Edo. Since this was Jin’s caretaker, and teacher, and Jin was supposed to be heir to the dojo, we can assume Jin grew up there.

What about Fuu?

There is very little information to deduce where she grew up. We know nothing of the town. There is no recorded information I can find about an actual person names Kasumi Seizou. And we see she didn’t live in Nagasaki because that is where her father fled. But…her hometown could quite possibly be handed to us in the very first episode.

Or should I say…the very first ending song.

“Shiki no Uta” or “Song of Four Seasons” is the ending song for the majority of the anime. A collaboration of the singer Minmi and the composer/arranger Nujabes, it was made specifically for the anime itself, and not by the artists separately. This is considering the anime’s first episode aired on May 19th 2004. But the song was only released in the album Samurai Champloo Music Record: Masta on June 23rd 2004, a whole month later.

The lyrics describe the seasons passing by from a girl’s perspective. And there is the repeated mention of someone they wish to follow, or the way they felt when they were “being held”. It can sound like a romance song, pertaining to Fuu’s relationship with one of her bodyguards. However, I think the song is more about finding her father, as that is the theme of the entire show. The montage of pictures for ending credits display memories of Fuu’s childhood, and her mother and father.The reason I bring this up is for a very specific lyric. Again…the song was made for the anime itself.

Lyric: “Summer comes to Uji, and in the fields are patterns of grass set out to dry.”

Uji is a town southeast of Kyoto that dates back to over a thousand years ago. Uji held no significance in the anime. Never did the trio go there. Never was it mentioned, nor is Uji a a super famous place to the rest of the world. But, Uji, despite being a small city, is pretty notable in history. For one, the last chapters of the Tale of Genji take place there. The Tale of Genji was the first novel. By first novel, I mean FIRST novel. Ever. So Uji has many landmarks and statues referencing the book for tourists.

Uji is also well known for being a key producer of tea in Japan, as there are many tea leaf fields in the past and even now. The Tsuen Tea Shop still stands, and is the oldest tea shop in all of Japan. This perhaps explains the lyrics “Summer comes to Uji and the patterns of grass (plants/shoots) are set out to dry.”

Grass, being tea grass.

These are women during the Tea Harvesting Festival in Uji:

I’m no expert on botany, and I would like if someone could give more info…but it seems to me that these plants by Kasumi Seizou could quite possibly be tea plants. They look very similar.

So now, we can theorize based on the anime credit’s lyrics and pictures that Fuu was possibly born/raised in the town of Uji.

Here’s a little bit about Uji that will help clarify why this pertains to “Mikaeri Bijin”.

Long ago, the kanji for Uji was written to mean “The Way of Rabbits” or “Rabbit Road”. Rabbits… Seems pretty random right? Well, like anything Japanese, there is of course a legend surrounding this:

Prince Wakairatsuko once got lost in the woods trying to find the way back to Uji. Upon walking, he saw a “Mikaeri Usagi” or “Looking back rabbit”. The rabbit would look at him, then hop along. It would stop again and again every little while, as if to tell the prince to follow him. Eventually, after following the rabbit for a time, he found himself in Uji again.

This would be an example of a “Mikaeri Usagi” or “Looking back rabbit”:

Since then, the “Mikaeri Usagi” has been the motif of Uji, as well as the guardian of the Shinto Shrine Ujigami-jinja. The Prince the rabbit helped is also one of the three deities of said shrine. The Ujigami shrine, thought to be the oldest shrine in all of Japan, sells an array of rabbit trinkets.These rabbit charms hold fortunes for the future.

The meaning of the“mikaeri usagi” is that it will help you find your path in life, if you ever feel lost. Just like the legend. Rabbits are also symbolized with this, because despite looking back. they do not ever leap back. Only move forward while contemplating the past. Across from Ujigami shrine, is another shrine called Uji shrine. Before the 1800s, The two shrines were connected labeled “upper and lower” Uji shrines… But…they were separated during the Meiji Restoration. Here is Uji Shrine nowadays, still preserved:

…Could it be?

There’s always the possibility Fuu once prayed to the guardian spirits of Uji shrine for her future.

If Uji could very likely be Fuu’s hometown, and the “looking back rabbit” is a town icon…and she is called the “looking back beauty”, I can safely say that it described her perfectly. She looks back on her past, and from there forges her future. Mikaeri as a term both describes her and could reveal the location of her possible hometown.

Thank you for your question and I hope it interests everyone who takes the time to read or research this topic! ^^

~Ryukyuan-Sunflower

#samurai champloo #fuu samurai champloo #fuu kasumi #mugen #jin #backwards beauty

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tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Text

Ch. 2: “World Enough and Time” Analysis Doctor Who S10.11: Fish Metaphor Foreshadows Doctor’s Fall & Hope for Future

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Fish Have Many Meanings

I’m sorry about not getting this chapter finished before Season 10 started because, as you’ll see, fish foreshadow so much of what the 12th Doctor is about. In fact, they show up in surprising places, like the Library, because all roads and Fish lead to the metaphors of the Library, Rome, and Vikings. For the 12th Doctor, they also lead to prison, Library metaphors, Hospital metaphors and more.

I started putting Religious symbology related to fish in this chapter, like the Christian fish a.k.a. ichthys here before Season 10, along with the symbolism of water, which is mostly what I didn’t finish. For the most part, I’m going to skip the symbology for lack of time.

I didn’t get a chance to talk about the Fish in “The Eaters of Light,” so we’ll examine it below.

Since Fish hold a lot of meaning, it’s no wonder that fish, fishing, eating fish, representations of fish, or mentions of fish and shoals are common throughout DW. In fact, live goldfish show up in at least one episode of each of the nuWho Doctors. Also, fish people are either mentioned or show up multiple times in 11th and 12th Doctor episodes, along with some Classic Who episodes.

Here is an image showing an example of a live goldfish with Dr. Moon and CAL’s dad from “Silence in the Library.” This is in CAL’s virtual reality.

In fact, fish are so important that they show up 3 times in the Library in 3 different ways. We’ll look at this more in depth in a bit.

Fish As a Metaphor

Fish and other sea and river creatures (which I’ll collectively refer to as “Fish”) are one of the most important metaphors of the 12th Doctor. They can symbolize, among many other things, mystery, transformation, and the unconscious, which we’ve looked at in depth in the pre-airing chapters of TRODM, starting at Chapter 9 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.

However, Fish represent so much more. Because they hold great significance across many cultures, groups, mythologies, and religions, DW is tapping into a rich set of metaphors for these normally watery creatures. For example, they can represent the following: knowledge, wisdom, eternity, creativity, femininity (we’ve also looked at how the Doctor, through integration, is both male and female), and fertility (we’ve looked at the plague associated with the 12th Doctor in Chapter 17). We’ll revisit this.

Note that some representations may seem contradictory, such as good luck, happiness, and freedom. Fish are contextual, depending on how they are used. I see Fish as good luck and happiness symbols for the Doctor once he is freed. Right now, they are promises for the future. Bill represents a face of the Doctor, so I am also referring to her.

In the meantime, they represent the undoing of the 12th Doctor: prisons, hospitals, universities, and libraries, important themes for him.

Because Fish are so important, we had to see more than the Harmony Shoal scar-faced people in Season 10. I’m betting, because they are so significant, that we should see more in either the finale or Christmas Special.

The 12-step Great Work: Transformation, Projection & Pisces

We’ve examined how the Doctor’s transformation follows the original 4-step process of the Great Work. However, the Great Work can involve additional steps. Since we are dealing with the 12th Doctor, the 12-step process, describing 12 chemical operations of the Great Work, becomes ever more important.

Tip: Matching up numbers, like the 12-step process, 12 chemical operations, and the 12th Doctor, is an important part of making connections and reading subtext.

Projection & the 12-step Great Work

The 12th step is projection – the ultimate goal of Western alchemy. Once the Philosopher's stone or powder of projection has been created, the process of projection can transmute a lesser substance into a higher form, which tends to be lead into gold. In fact, this is why the Doctor could be called Living Metal. This was a term used in “Silver Nemesis” a 7th Doctor story, although “Living Metal” was never defined.

And we know from our look at the 4-step process, the Doctor is a being of pure consciousness and is returning to be what he was born to be. The question is what does that mean? That’s where the 12 steps begin to help us tie a lot of things together to answer.

Great examples of projections are the Cloister Wraiths in “Hell Bent.” The Time Lords are quite scared of them, so the ghostly Wraiths have real power. I see the Raven, the Quantum Shade, in “Face the Raven” as the same thing.

Watch Marvel’s Dr. Strange for an understanding of fighting on a ghostly level. We most likely won’t see it that way, but that’s the way I envision it because this is what projection means. It’s pure consciousness – ghostly beings. Also, it refers to CAL in the Library metaphor and Morbius. She uses tools in her dream. However, she has great power and can move things with her mind in the projection.

12 Steps & Pisces

The 12 steps not only have a chemical operation, but also they have a Zodiac designation. And Pisces, the fish, which is the 12th Zodiac sign, represents it. This is why the symbol for projection, shown below, is the symbol for Pisces, which represents 2 fish. In fact, there is a symbol of Pisces in the Doctor’s office in “The Pilot.” I know I mentioned it, but it might be in a later analysis

In fact, Pisces also represents self-undoing: being one’s own worst enemy. That certainly describes the 12th Doctor. But that’s not all. According to Wikipedia, Pisces represents the House of Undoing, which includes

· Places of seclusion such as hospitals, prisons and institutions, including self-imposed imprisonments

· Mysticism and mystery

· Things which are not apparent to self, yet clearly seen by others

· Elusive, clandestine, secretive or unbeknownst matters

· Privacy, retreat, reflection, and self-sacrifice

· Unconscious/subconscious

· Unknown enemies

This all sounds like what has been happening with the Doctor.

Pisces = Prison & the Library Metaphor

Pisces, among several things, is associated with prison. After all, fish have to live in water, or they will die, unless they have developed special survival skills and have become amphibious fish, like mudskippers.

12th Doctor & Prison

Here’s an image of half of one of 12th Doctor’s faces. Below we see that he is looking into Clara’s fishbowl in “Time Heist” that contains a castle, a goldfish, and some water plants. Because the setting of “Heaven Sent” was a castle within the Doctor’s confession dial, and the Doctor spent 4.5 billion years imprisoned, tortured, and dying there, the castle and prison are metaphors for him. The fishbowl, itself, is a metaphor for prison.

So the Doctor being imprisoned in a castle was foreshadowed before the mid-point of Season 8. That also goes along with the island castle factory issues we saw in the “The Eaters of Light” analysis.

But he’s also looking into the bowl in the image, so one of his faces is watching himself.

But that’s not all. Check this out. In this image below, the Doctor is looking into Clara’s dryer. Because his face is spinning around in the reflection at the beginning, he represents all Doctors. However, check out the 2 different Eye symbols (red and yellow arrows) that represent beings watching him. Who is watching the Watcher? That’s the subject of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Anyway, there is also an open door (white arrow), representing the Door metaphor, and foreshadowing the future of being a Door.

Most Fish Need Water The problem with being a Fish is that most of them need water to survive. River, Amy Pond, and even Clara, since she is associated with a lake, provide the Water metaphor that Fish need.

This is why the 12th Doctor has been having such problems. He hasn’t wanted to live without the women he cares about and loves, in whatever capacity that is. We’ve seen how this has been driving, in part, his self-destructive behaviors. In “Heaven Sent,” he sacrifices himself over and over, dying over and over. He almost let himself drown after he jumped from the castle into the sea. It was only thoughts of Clara who kept him going.

The Mudskipper I’m fascinated by mudskippers, amphibious fish, so I was really happy but surprised to see one at the beginning of “The Lie of the Land” with a Monk’s foot next to it. This image, shown below, is making a statement that the Monks no longer need the Water metaphor to live. This foreshadows that the 12th Doctor will be able to live without the Water metaphor, at least for long periods of time. Mudskippers can spend a lot of time out of water. This is a sign of healing.

Prison & River

Prison is also associated with River, who, as we looked at early on, is a mirror of the Doctor. She spent a lot of time locked up in Stormcage for killing him.

The first time we saw River in an 11th Doctor episode was “The Time of Angels.” She was associated with the 12th Doctor, as shown by the timer in the image below. She is from the 12th Doctor’s timeline and is a face of the 12th Doctor. Please keep in mind that people, including Doctors, can take on numbers of other Doctors temporarily. We’ll look at this quite a bit in “World Enough and Time.”

Fish, Pisces & the Library Metaphor

Religious symbology shows up a lot in DW, especially with the Doctor because he was born to save the universe.

Christian Fish & Projection (Pisces) Symbols in the Library One of the symbols associated with the Doctor is the Christian fish or ichthys, colloquially known as the “sign of the fish” or the “Jesus fish.” It has 2 intersecting arcs with extended arcs at one end for the tail.

Check out this image below from “Silence in the Library.” Not only is there a Pisces symbol on the 2 doors, but also there are the additional arcs to create an ichthys on each of the 2 Library doors. In fact, the Dr. Strange movie uses almost the same projection symbol that is on the doors.

The Doctor, alone, doesn’t equal 2 fish, though. It takes at least 2 people to pilot the Boat. An integration. It’s why the puddle in “The Pilot” was looking for a pilot and got Heather. Here’s where Clara came in and Bill, too. We examined Clara with the Boat metaphor at the beginning of “Deep Breath.”

The 3rd fish reference in the Library is in Donna’s dream. Donna and her dream husband go fishing, shown below.

Prison & the Library Metaphor Mean Djinn Traps

While I’ve mentioned the Library being a prison, I never showed you the 2 djinn traps. The first, shown below, is very close to the beginning of “Silence in the Library” before we see the 10th Doctor and Donna enter the Pisces doors above. As you can see by the patterns on the floor with patterns in circles inside other patterns and circles, it’s a complicated symbol. There are 2 concentric circles. However, if we count the inside and outside borders of circles of the outermost circle because it has a multiple of an 8-pointed star, the extra circle gives us 3 generations and 3 Doctors.

Looking back to the prison ship in “World Enough and Time,” we can see in the image below that is much less complicated. This means the Doctor is close to breaking free from all of this.

In case, the Library didn’t catch enough djinn, it has a second trap, shown below. CAL is represented by the floating security ball, which has shut itself down, and dropped to the center of the smallest circle. She is deeply trapped. We get confirmation of that when we realize she is really a child cyborg, the control node of the Library computer.

Fish, a River Metaphor, “Human Nature” & “The Family of Blood”

Episodes with lots of wall hangings and items in scenes scream subtext objects. So it’s no surprise that “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood” have so many connections to other episodes and are outline episodes for the larger story.

Here’s the 10th Doctor, who is playing the 24th Doctor (a multiple of 12). Behind the Doctor are 2-framed fish on the wall. I think they are probably paintings or prints/copies, rather than dead, preserved fish, which could change the meaning of the subtext. The Doctor, Martha, and Joan are all associated with the fish at points in the episode as they stand near or cross the path of the fish.

Being human is a form of prison for the Time Lord part imprisoned in the watch.

We also see Joan with a pocket watch, shown below. Like the Doctor, she has hidden her identity and is living as a human, so we know she represents an imprisoned Time Lord.

And “The Family of Blood” shows us who Joan represents. Below, she is outside the little Library area, but inside is a picture of a river. The painting of the river is best viewed not in this image below but from the next one, which doesn’t have Joan. The odd thing about this scene with Joan was that Joan had her eyes closed for several seconds, even though she was talking to Martha. That most likely is significant, given we’ve seen that the Doctor has had vision issues and that River is a mirror.

Below is a better view of the river painting. Joan, in the above painting, is being associated with this river painting. Therefore, Joan is a mirror of River.

BTW, River didn’t realize why she needed separate bathrooms from Hydroflax in THORS, so I’ve been wondering, given the mirrors, if River is visually impaired, too.

Fish, Romans & Slavery

Fish, Romans, and slavery come up in 3 different episodes that I can think of off the top of my head in addition to Rory’s imprisonment in an android body.

“The Eaters of Light” In “The Eaters of Light,” there is a carved fish in a rock, shown below, although it’s hard to see. Simon tells Bill the Romans are close to the rock with the fish. The Romans, then, are associated with the Fish, and so is Bill. Since the Fish represents imprisonment, the Romans, themselves, are imprisoned.

“The Fires of Pompeii” We saw previously that Peter Capaldi’s character, Caecilius, in “The Fires of Pompeii” has a chain around his neck, so he’s a happy slave.

The first words of the episode take on new meaning, knowing that fish equate to the Doctor.

VENDOR (OC): Fish! Get your fresh fish!

Pompeii is not what it appears to be even beyond the surprises in the episode. The fish vendor is selling bodies and body parts, which is consistent with the half-faced man and the butcher/pig metaphor. It’s consistent with all the brains in the big “C” room that are enslaved in TRODM.

The fish vendor isn’t the only one involved in the slave trade. Another vendor sold Caecilius the TARDIS, which is the Doctor’s wife metaphor.

When we first see him, he is admiring the TARDIS in his home.

CAECILIUS: Modern art! Out of the way, that's it. Oh, Rombus, I'm a little bit peckish. Get me some ants in honey, there's a good lad. Ooo, maybe a dormouse?

Caecilius is admiring the TARDIS as art in a similar way that Vastra admires her wife, Jenny, in “Deep Breath,” when she has Jenny pose as a living statue while Vastra works.

Caecilius is peckish, which is interesting, especially since we see him eating snacks in TRODM and now even more in Season 10. That mirrors the Master. The only time I’ve seen the Doctor eat a lot is in “The Two Doctors,” when the 2nd Doctor was mutating temporarily.

Rombus is an interesting name. Besides being an equilateral quadrilateral, it also means flatfish, magician’s circle, or spinning top, all of which have been in the text and subtext in various episodes.

The dormouse was considered a delicacy in ancient Rome. The most interesting thing about it is that Elizabethans believed Dormouse fat could induce sleep since the animal put on fat before hibernating. Since unconsciousness is a huge factor with the Doctor, the dormouse seems to suggest he wants to sleep or continue sleeping maybe because he doesn’t want to give up his human family in the dream or because he is being controlled.

Caecilius’s son and daughter are slaves, too. His daughter, who is part of the Sybilline Sisterhood, is wearing gold and turning to stone like the rest of the sisterhood. She is a mirror of the Doctor in that she can see into the past and future. And his son is wearing, what looks like a gold pocket watch around his neck, and he has a chain pattern on his sleeves. His tunic is purple with gold accents. The son is a mirror of the Doctor because we learn at the end of the episode that he is studying to be a doctor.

BTW, there is a lot of subtext that says the Doctor is trying to free himself and the other slaves. Here’s an example, and we’ll look at more in the future. The 10th Doctor and Donna introduce themselves to Caecilius.

CAECILIUS: Who are you?

DOCTOR: I am Spartacus.

DONNA: And so am I.

CAECILIUS: Mister and Mrs Spartacus.

Spartacus, a former gladiator and an accomplished military leader, was one of the escaped slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major failed slave uprising against the Roman Republic.

The 1st Doctor, Slavery & Fish in “The Romans” The 1st Doctor is involved in the slave trade in the shocking subtext of the 2nd season 4-episode story called the “The Romans.” Nero is his mirror, and Nero is the one who gives Barbara the gold bracelet that enslaves her to the Animus’s control in the next story. Is this planned by the Doctor? Or is he also mind controlled? I haven’t seen enough of the 1st Doctor to tell.

Near the end of “The Romans,” the Doctor sets fire to the map of Rome (says it’s by accident, but it’s not. The 10th Doctor mentions it in “The Fires of Pompeii.”), and Nero decides that it’s a good idea to burn Rome. Later, Vicki, a companion, tells the Doctor that he should get credit for the fire in Rome. The Doctor likes that idea, and once Vicki leaves, the Doctor laughs maniacally. This morphs into Nero’s maniacal laughter, as Nero plays the lyre while Rome burns.

Backing up to the beginning of the first episode of “The Romans,” there is an exchange reminiscent of Caecilius’s exchange above. However, the 1st Doctor mentions a goldfish when he, Barbara, and Ian are discussing the Roman meal. Like “The Fires of Pompeii,” ant’s come up in the conversation, which is interesting because the next 1st Doctor story is about ant-like beings and living larval weapons, controlled by the Animus, who are fighting butterfly-like beings.

BARBARA: Ant's eggs in hibiscus honey. DOCTOR: Oh, absolutely. What did you say? IAN: Ant's eggs, Doctor. DOCTOR: Yes, that's what I thought she said. Ant's eggs. What do you think I am, a goldfish, hmm?

BTW, the insectoid war symbolizes what’s happening with the 12th Doctor.

Pisces, Season 10 & the Library Metaphor at the University

Since Pisces represents a prison and other institutions, the university represents a prison, too. In fact, the Vault is a representation of the prison, the Library metaphor, and the Doctor’s mind, which we’ve examined, so the Vault also represents his own prison.

Season 10 has been playing out in the Library metaphor since “The Pilot.” In fact, in the opening scene in the Doctor’s office, shown below, the clock (white arrow) says it’s 4 o’clock. We’re in the Library. But that’s not all the evidence…

In “World Enough and Time,” at the beginning of the episode, we see various windows go by. This window, shown below, is from “Smile” with the hayfield and 2 sets of tracks (white arrow) in the foreground. The strange thing about this is that there is no city in the background. So how can the hayfield be there? Where are the Vardy? This is another item that says something isn’t right. Also, it tells us that we’ve been in the Library metaphor the whole time.

There Doctor being a professor and teaching at a university has quite a few similarities to a 4th Doctor story “Shada,” written by Douglas Adams, but was never completed due to a labor situation. There have been quite a few references in Season 10 to Adams. According to the TARDIS Wikia:

The story revolves around the lost planet Shada, on which the Time Lords built a prison for defeated would-be conquerors of the universe. Skagra, one such inmate, needs the help of one of the prison's inmates. He finds nobody knows where Shada is anymore except one aged Time Lord who has retired to Earth, where he is a professor at St. Cedd's College, Cambridge. Luckily for the universe, Skagra's attempt to force the information out of Professor Chronotis coincides with a visit by the professor's old friend, the Fourth Doctor.

I nearly mentioned this in “The Pilot” analysis, but I forgot about this. Thanks to Difficat for mentioning “Shada” in the comments on a past analysis.

Pisces & the Hospital Metaphor

Being that Rory is a mirror of the 12th Doctor, it’s not surprising that he is connected to prison (being imprisoned in a Roman android body) and a hospital, which we saw him first working in during “The Eleventh Hour.”

Now, Bill, a face of the Doctor, is also associated with the Hospital.

Hospitals, though, can be both negative and positive. We saw how Bill was in a hospital nightmare.

However, in the long run, it is meant to heal. In “The Pilot” analysis, we looked at how the St John Ambulance symbol was both a symbol of torture in DW and healing. Therefore, it’s not surprising that a face of the Doctor is in both a torturous situation and one that is healing.

Femininity

We’ve seen how the Doctor in TRODM was a male on the outside but female inside. In fact, we examined how his watch in “Human Nature” had a woman’s voice as part of his Time Lord consciousness. She said she was hiding among men.

He gave us more information in “World Enough and Time”:

(Night. Sitting on a bench, eating the chips from polystyrene trays.)

DOCTOR: She was my first friend, always so brilliant, from the first day at the Academy. So fast, so funny. She was my man crush.

BILL: I'm sorry?

DOCTOR: Yeah, I think she was a man back then. I'm fairly sure that I was, too. It was a long time ago, though.

BILL: So, the Time Lords, bit flexible on the whole man-woman thing, then, yeah?

DOCTOR: We're the most civilised civilisation in the universe. We're billions of years beyond your petty human obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes.

Fish = Fertility While a Sun

Being a Sun metaphor, the Doctor is very fertile, which we’ve examined, especially in relation to “Heaven Sent.” There are Y-shaped symbols, meaning plague crosses, all over the castle. Nearly every time he moves gears, he is unconsciously creating more ghostly beings. He is powering a factory, creating an army. We’ll look at this more in depth in another chapter and how it relates to the factory of Cybermen in “World Enough and Time.”

Fish: Food for the Soul

This is the section I really had to update since we hadn’t seen the Doctor eating much, except TRODM. He eats a lot in Season 10. Anyway, in TRODM, the 12th Doctor was eating sushi. Eating fish is a 12th Doctor metaphor for self-sacrifice and self-destruction.

However, Fish is also food for the soul. For the 12th Doctor, it is both deathly and healing.

In contrast to the sushi, the Doctor’s burger snack represents unhealthy food since it is wrapped like a fast food burger. One hallmark of the 12th Doctor is that he represents duality (healthy/unhealthy, sushi/burger, “Heaven Sent”/”Hell Bent,” life/death)

Of course, fish are especially prominent in 11th and 12th Doctor episodes as food. How can we forget the 11th Doctor’s favorite food: fish fingers and custard? And I loved seeing the 12th Doctor eating sushi, upscaling his consumption to purer food. This exemplifies, for one thing, his own purification through the Great Work, at least that was true in TRODM. (We’ve gone back in time since I wrote this.) BTW, fish fingers, because of “fingers,” represent body parts. Eating fish does too.

Fish People

Of course, eating fish isn’t the only prominent thing in in 11th and 12th Doctor episodes. We heard mention of fish people, like Jim the Fish, in both 11th and 12th Doctor episodes. Also, Clara and the 12th Doctor went to visit the fish people in Clara’s dizzying excursions with the Doctor at the beginning of the “The Caretaker.” However, we didn’t actually see them.

However, we actually saw fish-like people in “The Husbands of River Song.” Here’s the maître d' of the Harmony & Redemption restaurant, shown below. He actually was going to ask the chef to prepare the Doctor for River to eat. River gave the Doctor the advice to try the fish.

Fish, Vikings, and Ashildr

Even though we’ve talked about this, to be inclusive to the Fish metaphor, I’m leaving this in.

The Fish metaphor gives us part of the connection to the Vikings, who shows up in at least ½ the 9th season episodes of the 12th Doctor, whether it is Ashildr or other subtext.

The image below shows an example of the Fish metaphor/Viking connection in the 12th Doctor ghost episode of “Under the Lake,” and it shows up again in the second part “Before the Flood.” The sea creature is Jörmungandr, the sea creature of Norse mythology, and is a symbol of Ragnarök. In the ship, under the Roman cross are 3 Star Trek crewmembers from the original series. They look like Captain Kirk, Spock, and a poor red shirt, who will probably die.

Anyway, the Viking connection goes back to Classic Who. It hasn’t showed up much in nuWho, except one time I can think of outside of the 12th Doctor. Rory gave the 11th Doctor a Viking funeral after River killed him in “The Impossible Astronaut.”

Much of DW is based on the Viking concept of anthropomorphizing objects.

Neptune, Roman Mythology & Fish

According to Wikipedia, “divine associations with Pisces include Poseidon/Neptune, Christ, Aphrodite, Eros, Typhon and Vishnu.”

The Season 9 episode “Sleep No More” had a reference to Neptune.

According to Wikipedia,

Neptune (Latin: Neptūnus [nɛpˈtuːnʊs]) was the god of freshwater and the sea in Roman religion. He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. In the Greek-influenced tradition, Neptune was the brother of Jupiter and Pluto; the brothers presided over the realms of Heaven, the earthly world, and the Underworld. Salacia was his wife.

Depictions of Neptune in Roman mosaics, especially those of North Africa, are influenced by Hellenistic conventions. Neptune was likely associated with fresh water springs before the sea. Like Poseidon, Neptune was worshipped by the Romans also as a god of horses, under the name Neptunus Equester, a patron of horse-racing.

Neptune is the creator of horses and is the god of the sea as well as the owner of a powerful weapon, the Trident. Poseidon is the Greek Neptune and is one of the big three gods Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. He accidentally created horses when he had an affair with Medusa, and also created a boy who roams the seas as a pirate past the pillar of Hercules.

We’ve seen that horses, water, and Medusa, among other things, have been important.

Danny (Doctor mirror) was associated with Neptune’s trident, shown below, on the flag of Barbados after he integrated with Clara.

Also, the 11th Doctor also was associated with Neptune. He’s playing a face of the 12th Doctor here because Neptune is associated with the Pisces. We’ve already seen how the 12th Doctor has been associated with Jupiter/Zeus.

It could be that the 11th Doctor could be Neptune, while the 12th Doctor could be Jupiter, and Missy with her relationship to the Nethersphere and the dead would be Pluto. They would all be faces of the Doctor. River might represent the dead, too, being in the Library.

It’s interesting that Clara was wearing seaweed in “The Caretaker.” While we didn’t get to see the fish people, she met Danny in a taxi for a date with seaweed on her shoulder, shown below.

Neptune’s wife had a crown of seaweed. While Clara doesn’t wear a crown of it, seaweed is symbolic. Clara represents all companions, including River. I’m mentioning all of this, too, because of the significance to the title “World Enough and Time,” which we’ll examine in the next chapter. It could go along with what Wikipedia says about Salacia:

The god Neptune wanted to marry Salacia, but she was in great awe of her distinguished suitor, and to preserve her virginity, with grace and celerity she managed to glide out of his sight, and hid from him in the Atlantic Ocean. The grieving Neptune sent a dolphin to look for her and persuade the fair nymph to come back and share his throne. Salacia agreed to marry Neptune and the King of the Deep was so overjoyed at these good tidings that the dolphin was awarded a place in the heavens, where he now forms a well known constellation Delphinus.

Salacia is represented as a beautiful nymph, crowned with seaweed, either enthroned beside Neptune or driving with him in a pearl shell chariot drawn by dolphins, sea-horses (hippocamps) or other fabulous creatures of the deep, and attended by Tritons and Nereids. She is dressed in queenly robes and has nets in her hair.

Next Chapters

We’ll look at the meaning of the episode title; the Doctor’s OMG hair; the significance of the Doctor using the title “Doctor Who”; the Master and other mirrors; how “Face the Raven,” Heaven Sent,” and more fit in; the hospital from hell and various aspects of it; various references, and much more.