#i was relistening and man that shit is terrifying

[thedgeofsleep]

me: is excited for the edge of sleep tv show

also me: realizes that we're probably gonna see the moobles incident irl

[cult-of-the-eye]

Mag 81 A Guest for Mr Spider

FUCK FORMER HEAD ARCHIVIST

Wait I need to check the timelines - this was 2 days after leitner's death

New spooky music???

My man is so fucking dramatic I love him so much "grand of sand behind my eye" love the way he speaks

Yeah FUCK JURGEN LEITNER

Omg the greying hair is canon??

Child in the 90s makes him at most 27 GOD DAMN. I was imagining like mid 30s...can you imagine a fucking 27 yr old using words like "ilk" when talking to you

Oh shit he's an orphan poor guy

Yeah ok a lot of his personality seems to make sense if you realise he was raised by his grandma

You know those memes that are like people raised by their grandparents are exceptionally polite but in a brisk way, talk fancy and are super posh? Yeah that's him.

Getting such neurodivergent vibes

Yeah he sounds like a main character from the start Jesus Christ he's such a kid who got traumatised and then grows up to be a horror protagonist vibes

My First Leitner lol like kids had to be introduced to them at a young age like those my first toys

He's so funny I can just imagine him as an 8 yr old getting super like affronted at this like how dare my grandma think I am of subpar intelligence he's such a little bitch from the start

"The eponymous Mr spider" even talking about his childhood trauma he's busting out the vocabulary

Fuck that story actually kinda rattled me I had my hand over my mouth in shock for most of it

I think it was the bit where the horsefly brought his son and they were both crying that got me, I could definitely imagine it scaring an 8 yr old

The way it drags out as well, with the pages of the same scene it really heightens the suspense

Is his childhood bully someone we should keep track of?? Love how he says Michael probably cause he sees him as a bully lol

It's interesting how despite him bullying him (quite badly seeing as though he beat him up) he's still like yeah but he saved my life and that means he deserves to be remembered

My bro didn't save your life on purpose, he was just trying to make it worse and happened to come to a terrible fate cause of that

I guess underneath it all he was still a kid who watched someone die, knowing they'd get eaten by a fucking spider, he still held him in some regard

The way he specified the guy was his bully even after he was being eaten though lol

He was desperate to get the book back? That's a leitner thing I guess, the book makes you want to keep it so it can finish whatever it wanted to do to you

On my relisten (which I will do once I've finished the series I'm sure of it), I'll have to look out for any reaction of leitners name

I wonder why Jon didn't react more to Carlos vittery's statement, like it must've terrified him? I saw a post a while back explaining Jon's thoughts and IT WAS GENIUS it was like of course he doesn't react, he must be terrified that someone knew about his experience and somehow did this to mess with him or it was a joke and he can't let anyone know that the Head Archivist is not Good at This ugh it's so good I'll tag it if I can find it

AHHHHH HE REGRETS DISMISSING THE OTHER STATEMENTS AHHHHHH

HE FINALLY ADMITS THAT HE NEEDS HELP WE LOVE THIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT YES YOU FUCKING DO BITCH.

yeah at least he's right about Elias killing leitner

GEORGIE THE EX GIRLFIEND

ITS SO WEIRD TO SEE HIM ACTUALLY NICE TO SOMEONE WOW HIS VOICE CHANGES SLIGHTLY AS WELL HES LESS ACADEMIC

THE ADMIRAL

Awwww he's so cute with georgie

GHOST PODCAST GHOST PODCAST

THE WHAT THE GHOST T SHIRT IS CANON???? AHH THATS SO CUTE

Can he not go back to his own flat?? Did he bring all his clothes to the archive and then subsequently leave them there? Does he even have a flat??

God Georgie is so nice I would kill for her

It's so funny that an apparent supernatural cynic dated a ghost podcaster

WOW SEASON 3 OFF TO AN AMAZING START I CANT WAIT TO KEEP LISTENING IM GONNA TELL MY THERAPIST ABOUT THIS TOMORROW!!!

[llycaons]

so I'm relistening to one of my favorite podcasts, kingkiller chronicles, where a group of people (re)read name of the wind and critique it. in the first episode they most talk about the author, patrick rothfuss. highlights so far

the host who likes his books the most reported that when she met him at an event, she asked him for writing advice. he looked at her and went "I'm patrick rothfuss. who are you?"

that time (admittedly quite a few years ago) he wore a shirt that said "joss whedon is my master now" I found the picture on his blog and you can too if you google it

the fact that his twitter profile is art of himself and his protagonist standing epically next to each other, which isn't even a bad thing but it's very funny. it's pretty clear his cool oc is his cool oc, and that's fine

what's not fine is the fact that his Rromani-inspired main character is apparently generically incliined towards being a genius musician and stealing

another host reported that he witnessed an author meet and greet during which rothfuss, standing 20 feet above his fans at the top of a staircase, asked them not to record him, and then proceeded to talk shit about tolkien for like 20 minutes

this...very bizarre essay he wrote about the new hobbit movie, which he wrote 10 years ago in fairness but he never took down or apologized for. it's like...I can't describe it you'll just have to read it for yourself. this is deranged. this man is incapable of being normal about women. I'm pasting the most relevant part of it under the cut because I need everyone to share my pain. Be ready for a really creepy description of a teenage girl, hatred for sex workers, and unmitigated misogyny

It will be a good movie. Maybe even a great movie. But it will also be, at best, a moderately okay adaptation of the subtle, sweet book that I grew up loving.

You know that it’s going to be like? It’s going to be like wandering onto an internet porn site and seeing a video of a girl I had a crush on in high school. You probably knew someone like her. The smart girl. The shy girl. The one who wore glasses and was a little socially awkward. The one who screwed up the curve in chemistry so you got an A- instead of an A.

She was a geek girl before anybody knew what a geek girl was. And that was kinda awesome, because you were a geek boy before being a geek was culturally acceptable.

You liked her because she was funny. And she was smart. And you could actually talk to her. And she read books.

And sure, she was girl-shaped, and that was cool. And she was cute, in an understated, freckly way. And sometimes you’d stare at her breasts when you were supposed to be paying attention in biology. But you were 16. You stared at everyone’s breasts back then.

And yeah, you had some fantasies about her, because, again, you were 16. But they were fairly modest fantasies about making out in the back of a car. Maybe you’d get to second base. Maybe you could steal third if you were lucky.

And maybe, just maybe, something delightful and terrifying might  happen. And yeah, it would probably be awkward and fumbling at times, but that’s okay because she’d be doing half the fumbling too. Because the only experience either one of you had was from books. And afterwards, if you make a Star Wars joke, you know she’ll get it, and she’ll laugh….

That’s the girl you fell in love with in high school. You didn’t have a crush on her because she was some simmering pool of molten sex. You loved her because she was subtle and sweet and smart and special.

So you stroll onto this porn site, and there she is. Except now she’s wearing a thong and a black leather halter top. She’s wearing fuck-me red lipstick and a lot of dark eye makeup. Her breasts are amazing now, proud and perfectly round.

Someone’s taught her to dance, and she does it well. She’s flexible and tan. She has a flat midriff and walks like a high-class Vegas stripper. Her eyes are dark and smouldering. She has a riding crop, and she likes to be tied up, and her too-red mouth forms a perfect circle as she sighs and moans, and tosses her head in a performance designed to win any number of academy awards….

And what’s the problem with this? Well… in some ways, nothing. What you’ve found is perfectly good porn. Maybe even great porn.

But in other ways the problem is blindingly obvious. This girl has nothing in common with your high-school crush except for her social security number. Everything you loved about her is gone.

We loved the sweet, shy, freckly girl. We still remember her name, and after all these years she lives close to our heart. Seeing her in lipstick and stiletto heels dancing on a pole is like watching Winnie the Pooh do heroin and then glass someone in a bar fight.

It just isn’t something that I look forward to seeing….

[Image of naked Frodo on a stripper pole. I am dead serious. Click the link to see it I don't want it on my blog]

And that’s how I’m going to feel when I watch the Hobbit.

I’ll be one part entertained, two parts nostalgic, two parts irritated, three parts outraged, and one part oddly titillated.

And I’ll watch it, and I’ll enjoy it, and afterwards I’ll go home and feel more than slightly sad….

pat

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 177 - Wonderland

Jon: When did I become everybody’s satnav?

Hasn't he also complained about being used as the supernatural Google before? Jon, I think you're just everyone's entire smartphone at this point. You even do entertaining little podcast segments about local sights!

Martin: What? No, no, that can’t be right. I thought people weren’t even allowed to die any more.

I mean, that's not strictly true, though, is it? Didn't Oliver Banks explicitly say that the End can't exist as a fear without death remaining real? And really, there's no particular reason why "some people can still die" would only be true in that particular domain...

Martin: He needs to make a statement. Basira: Is that like a euphemism or…? Okay, this is getting very silly, but also I still sniggered.

Hi. How are we doing? - Jon's statement

Oh, the doctor's 'we' is a beautiful touch. So wonderfully condescending, immediately made me feel trapped (and why the FUCK do doctors irl keep doing that anyway? I've never had a doctor who used the 'medical we' who turned out to be any good!)

Well, I’m afraid I’ll have to disagree with you there. That’s not your name at all. Now don’t get agitated, I’m sure we’ll get there.

Oh, and that. That hurts! "No, you're crazy, so you no longer get to decide anything about yourself, not even your very identity. And if that upsets you, that's just another sign of your illness". The ripping away of any autonomy. Yeah, no, that's suitably nightmarish. (You could also read this from a transphobia angle, couldn't you?)

I’m here to help you, to treat you, to make it so you’re less of a… burden to everyone.

AAAAAH!

Jon: Satisfied? Basira: Fuck.

Just, Basira's delivery here. This is the most matter-of-fact way you could possibly say "Fuck".

Jon: It’s sort of, like… gaslighting, but in reverse. This place, it’s built on the fear that your mental health problems aren’t actually real. (...) Bad therapists. Let’s just say it’s the fear of bad therapists, filtered through The Spiral.

Okay, Johny, just, why this? Who in the audience needed the explanatory notes??? Trust your audience to do basic media interpretation. You have so far!

Jon: What, you think he ended up in Wonderland House at random? We’re just going to ignore it, and write him off as a ‘nasty piece of work’? Basira: We don’t have time for this.

It's the fucking apocalypse, you're literally on your way to KILL Daisy because she didn't want to live as a monster, and you still won't even stop to consider that her victims might not have DESERVED the monstrous shit she's done to them? Denial sure runs deep...

Jon: Then we should make time. You want to hear how he ended up blinding that man? Because it wasn’t a robbery. He was running away from Daisy, lashing out in a panic. The court believed it. But you believed her…

Oh, now that's a gut-punch of a revelation if I've ever seen one!

Helen: Not to sound like a squeaky hinge...

... a door metaphor? Really? Pffffft!

My impression of this episode

This episode has some genuinely terrifying moments. The concept of "Let's take the worst parts of the medical / mental health care system and say the quiet parts out loud, then combine that with the worst things your brain tells you" is perhaps a bit on the nose, but also genuinely, deeply, nauseatingly unsettling. This episode just kind of ruins itself by then proceeding to explain the point (which was already pretty obvious) in detail. Just ... there are a lot of episodes that I don't personally connect with, but TMA very rarely makes decisions that I would call "bad writing". Unfortunately this is one of them. YOU HAD A GOOD (and horrifying) THING GOING THERE! Mind, that's still not enough to ruin the whole episode for me, particularly not when that "And now for those in the audience who weren't paying attention" bit is immediately followed by a genuinely hard-hitting conversation about Basira and Daisy.

[noa-nightingale]

Things I Liked About The Asmodeus Song

I relistened to the Asmodeus song from the Puppet History season finale a lot the past few days, so here is another one of my lists:

the song just slaps - it is just an incredibly fantastic song. which is why I’ve listened to it on repeat for days

the puppet itself. it is terrifying, I love it. i also love that Madison Girifalco (who made the puppets for this season) created it - and all the other puppets - in a way that felt coherent with Shane’s way of creating the puppets. it just seemed to fit, even if two different people made them. chef’s kiss.

Ryan’s shoulder moves when the song started

Ryan’s little Joker tongue thing

the lyrics!!!

the rhythm!!!

Shane’s voice??? so great. could listen to it all day

ASMOOOOODEUS (i have that stuck in my brain now, thanks Shane! 😘)

“Except my claws stretching through your veins” the lyrics in general are just so good but I liked this one especially. it is so... visceral. (i don’t think that you could call this body horror but it has the same Vibes, and I just love body horror stuff, y’know? delicious)

Ryan’s self portrait shirt (i got one for myself after that Too Many Spirits season btw. this is probably the autism talking but that thing is Tactile Heaven. feels really amazing. i had feared that the feeling would go away after washing it but it still feels great under the hands, has a great texture. love it. also, the Watcher merch - at least the one I have - seems to be very autism friendly to me. i have several of the little pins: the Wallman pin, the AYS laptop pin and the gay oars pins of course. and they are all so nice and well-made and heavy. idk it’s just very sexy, you know? 😊)

“my man”

“I’ll take your vessel for a spin” while the nuns are spinning across the floor. eheheheheh

the visuals! the editing! the quality!

the background music and background vocals! like, I don’t know shit about music (I can read sheet music and play the keyboard a bit, that’s about it), is that a synth being used there? don’t judge me for not knowing, I just love the vibes and the music in general is good for stimming

i could not appreciate the song the way it deserves the first time I watched because I was so anxious about how the season finale would end, that’s why I am glad I revisited the song. it’s a very good song

Thanks for reading! 💜

[bubonickitten]

Relistening to TMA yet again (new hyperfixation, what can I say), and I can’t emphasize enough how much these early episodes kill me.

Because for a long time, Jon doesn’t realize what he’s becoming. And yeah, that’s obvious -- but it’s even more heartbreaking on a relisten, because he senses that something is off, but from his perspective the changes are so incremental that he doesn’t realize how much he’s changing until he’s in too deep. 

He finds himself getting attached to this tape recorder (even when he initially hated it), but tries not to think too hard about that. He’s becoming obsessed with recording everything, and tells himself that he’s doing it for posterity’s sake. Jon is adept at using outward denial to hide his inner, nonstop, overthinking doubt. (Eventually it escalates to full-blown paranoid information gathering, which I think is where the Eye’s influence really starts to show, but more on that later.)

At first, it’s a safe half-lie (or at least not full-truth) to tell himself. He’s an academic, a researcher. He no doubt has a deep appreciation for the preservation of history, for the documentation of human experience -- that part is probably true. It’s how he makes sense of the world (and that started when he was a child, when the main way he interacted with the world was through books). And let’s be honest, the man is a nerd, and (I say this lovingly and with a tendency to infodump myself) he was probably prone to infodumping long before he became the Archivist. (Giving a Wikipedia summary of emulsifiers at a coworker’s birthday party, anyone?)

But beneath all that, Jon is just... scared. And Jonathan Sims comes to fear a lot of things, but one of his first fears was being forgotten. So it’s no wonder he takes so well to the compulsion to record, document, archive. 

Makes sense; he was, by his own admission, emotionally neglected as a child. And sometimes harassed. He chalked it up to being “a deeply annoying child,” which -- oof, no wonder he acts like an ass sometimes. Even if he was adept at social interaction (which he’s not), keeping people at arm’s length can feel a lot safer than letting them close and risking rejection when they decide you’re too much to handle. 

Point is, being ignored or ostracized was already painful, but it became his normal. Being forgotten, though, would be a existentially terrifying step beyond that. 

All of this is put into even starker relief after “A Guest For Mr. Spider.” At 8 years old he witnessed someone get snatched from the world without a trace – someone ten years his senior, who died because he made the choice to torment Jon and just did so at the exact wrong moment (or perhaps right? Maybe the Web decided that early that Jon was more useful alive). But despite the fact that it was his bully, Jon has survivor’s guilt over it. He feels responsible. He admits that it’s illogical for him to think he could have done anything  differently—he was eight—but he still comes out of that experience with the fundamental belief that being forgotten would be a unique kind of punishment that he believes even his bully didn’t deserve.

It’s such a raw, vulnerable moment when he finally admits it out loud: “Because I’m scared, Martin!” All that denial was external, and so fragile that it took one panicked moment for him to drop the veneer. But internally? Jokes about his obliviousness aside -- and, yes, in a lot of ways, Jon is that smart dumbass -- he’s got some self-awareness. He’s put two and two together, realized that the “real” statements don’t record digitally. He’s seen the artifact storage. He’s had a Leitner-based trauma, like so many statement givers. He’s just scared and he Does. Not. Want. To. Talk. About. It. 

He tries to hide it early on behind a cold, stoic academic demeanor, but that… doesn’t last long, and once that veneer drops, he absolutely spirals into open paranoia and fear. And going forward, he really doesn’t hide his terror much. When he’s threatened, we hear him beg for his life. Even when he thinks the world might be better off without him, he still doesn’t want to die. He’s afraid of death, and after S1, he doesn’t try to pretend otherwise. (I really appreciate a horror protagonist who shows fear even when they’re trying to be brave.) 

So, by the end of S1, we get to see him start to admit that his new obsessive behavior is not just a detached academic interest, or his workaholic urge to do his job well. It’s because he’s scared. But beyond that, through S2 and into S3, he starts to admit that beneath that, there’s something else going on. His rapidly escalating paranoia spiral is due to trauma, as well as the realization that Gertrude was murdered, as well as the general sense of uneasiness and distrusts that permeates the Institute (the Eye loves that shit), but also, honestly?? I think this is where the Eye starts to really get a grip on him. The Ceaseless Watcher, the fear of, in Gerry’s words, “needing to know, even if your discoveries might destroy you. The feeling that something, somewhere, is letting you suffer, just so it can watch.”

Beyond the tape recorder obsession, Jon doesn’t seem to notice early on that when he reads statements, it’s almost like he’s in a trance. (I think one of the first episodes where he starts to notice this is actually in MAG 32, when he’s reading Jane Prentiss’ statement. His introduction to the statement is shaky, stilted, like he’s dreading it; when he’s reading Jane Prentiss’ words, it’s like he’s channeling her tone and delivery in a far more extreme way than he has before; and when he’s done, he’s clearly unsettled by the experience.) 

(Another thing that stands out to me on a relisten is his tone shift when talking to Elias in MAG 40 -- he has an almost dreamy, trancelike delivery of the line: “Tens of thousands of... things without mouths screaming as one.” Like he’s reliving a flashback, yes, but there’s something else in his delivery of that line that continues to show up in his later spooky-Archivist-powers moments. And Elias pauses, and I can only imagine him thinking in that moment, all smug and conniving, Good. Jon is starting to become The Archivist.)

And, of course, Jon also doesn’t notice when he starts being able to compel statements--which is kind of funny, because my first thought when listening to early statements was, “How are all these statements so detailed and coherent? Did all these statement givers take creative writing classes or something?” But Jon doesn’t really seem to question that at first. It becomes more clear when the archive assistants try to take statements -- the statement givers can’t stay on topic, can’t remember details, can’t relive the moment in the same way they can if they’re forced to through compulsion. Adelard Dekker mentions that in one of his letters to Gertrude, too. It’s also sad, though, because he kept getting accused of forcing people to answer questions when he didn’t realize he was doing it (e.g. his interviews with Basira, Daisy, and Jude). 

It’s just... such a gradual downward spiral. And yeah, there’s something tragic about that--and it isn’t going to end well; this is a horror-tragedy story after all--but one of the things I like about Jon is that he works so, so hard to change and become a better person in spite of what the Beholding is trying to turn him into. 

I’m getting way off-topic. Basically, Jonny Sims is... very good at character development, and it’s fun to relisten and start to pick out the moments when things start to go wrong, the little details that maybe didn’t stand out so much on my first listen. Admittedly I, much like Jon Sims, have my own little conspiracy corkboard flavor of overthinking, so some of this might just be me reading too far into it. But still, I like all the layers going on here. 

[purekesseltrash]

Chapter 9 of Bury Them Deep is out!

Fave Excerpt:

They had been discussing one of Aoyama’s pieces as it hung in the corner on a mannequin and Mezou had needed to lean down to better hear Tokoyami talk.  He’d launched into a surprisingly passionate lecture about the role of silk in human evolution and Mezou had found himself frozen in place as he stared at the stubble on Tokoyami’s chin, his bangs falling into his face.  That was when the other man had stopped talking, the look in his eyes sharp and steady as ever.

If he kissed him, would he taste like clove?

There was nothing stopping him.  He was at an art show, for god’s sake.  No one would care.  And anyway, they were in a corner by themselves.  That was a thing that people did on dates, after all.  They held hands and they laughed about stupid things and they kissed.  Mezou had never been on one, of course, but he imagined they had to feel like this.  His breathing sped up and he knew his cheeks were blushing but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to pull away.

Fun Facts:

- FINALLY THE ERASERMIC ENTERS THE PICTURE.  Not gonna lie, the scene with the two of them playing was one of the first things that I wrote for this fic.  My brain was still HARD in Rooftop Necromancy mode and I swear to god, I almost just scrapped everything else and just wrote about them two.  I already have a chapter written of the prequel to BTD going over how Hizashi and Shouta handled things, not even gonna lie.

- Legit right after I wrote the first 'Put Your Sticks Up' segment, it came out that we could have had a transwoman playing in the NWHL but the Toronto Six, the Toronto NWHL team, decided to be TERFs.  Very, very frustrating to put it mildly.

- Ken Dryden's book, 'The Game', really is the quintessential hockey book.  Ken is a brilliant, thoughtful man and is writing is absolutely superb.  This fic is much better because I relistened to it in the middle of writing it.  I can't recommend it enough.  There are parts of it that legit make me rock back and breathe every time that I read/hear them.

- The Stanley Cup is a wild trophy.  It has a Keeper of the Cup, whose job it is to basically not let the damn thing out of his sight.  Why?  Because the Stanley Cup has SEEN SOME SHIT.  Children have been baptized in it, it has been thrown off of roofs, it has been drowned in Mario Lemieux's salt water pool, it has been through a LOT.  It needs a babysitter.  It deserves one.  Hockey players are morons and I love them but they are what they are.

- It will never fail to confuse me about how Carhartts are cool now.  Their coveralls though?  So fucking warm holy shit.

-  I did so much research on pottery for this fic.  I have never made pottery once.  You are welcome.

Spoilery shit under here:

- I did not have the art show scene or the next chapter in my original outline and midway through writing it, I realized that there wasn't a whole lot of... consequences, I guess.  It didn't feel authentic.  Because what Shouji and Tokoyami have been doing is frankly reckless and stupid.  They both know that they can't do this, Shouji in particular but Tokoyami grows to see that more clearly.

- Hawks was coming from a place of serious and valid concern.  Basically going 'my dude, what are you doing, you are going to get yourself hurt.'  And he was right to do that because they were both avoiding the big issue here.

- Hizashi is number 19 because that was Beau Bennett's number.  No one but Penguins fans will get the reference and I'm okay with that.  We all called Beau Sunshine after the 'Remember the Titans' character and I thought that was appropriate for Hizashi, given what his name means.  I based Hizashi's style of play off of Beau's partially too.  I thought WAY too long about how Mic would play.

- I hope I'm getting across just how good Shouji is at playing hockey. Because he is really, absurdly good at the game. Which is something that he knows and takes both a great deal of comfort in but which also absolutely terrifies him.

[ghosty-schnibibit]

multiple days early taz grad liveblog! ^u^

ngl this took me completely by surprise and i didn't end up listening to it until around ten o'clock, it’s a bit before one in the morning as i’m posting this lol. managed to avoid any spoilers tho!

how's everybody doing in quarantine? i've mainly been playing minecraft and doing relistens of various podcasts, and just generally staying home :P

anyways, on to the episode!

i was not expecting that intro holy shit, this is so meta

as much as i loved the sillier intro i missed the pretty music the last couple episodes, i’m glad trav’s found a way for us to have both 

"the offending skeletons" pfff

oh man this sounds so pretty, wow

griffin w h y

well that's terrifying

"your creepy panopticon continues to function" gary serves the eye

yeah who fucking died to make their room available 

awww, is fitzroy scared of ghosts?

does firbolg have ghost hunting abilities???

... that's probably just from the spectral cats tho right

"they're steps of the mind" travis what does that even mean

:o!!! fitzroy the cussing boy

um??? fitzroy wtf are you talking about

yay! crepes for my boy! :D

better than i could do lmao

oh great, more creepy buckminster time :|

... dang, that's an interesting choice. i'm trying to think in-character of what would lead fitz to not telling them, and i've come to four main possibilities: a) fitzroy doesn't trust anyone at the school, even his friends, b) fitzroy hasn't found a way to tell them w/o being in the presence of a gary, c) fitzroy is worried that if he tells anyone they might get disappeared like leon, or d) a combination of all of the above.

kumquat? oh it's those little orangey guys, okay, continuing argo's citrus fixation then lol

"my new hero" can't wait to see all the maplekeene fic that comes out of that line lmao

well fuck that's sad :(

aww firbolg my sweet baby

ilu firbolg :')

OH FUCK, did leon send the broach as a message?

i have never gone from laughing to worried so fast holy shit

... so he's not just mind-wiped, he's being actively controlled

good idea fitz, this is very smart

another moment reminding me of how much i love the firbolg's character and how the other boys interact with him 

yay! my favorite girl is back :D

my sweet boys, these are such bad puns, absolute morons the lot of you

argo my dipshit son ilu

she is a necromancer lol

oh fun! dad lich!

... i need art of rainer as a blupjeans baby stat

"he's not not dead!" i love this description

i cannot tell if that's a euphemism or if he's insinuating rainer is some kind of frankenstein

oh dang :O

fiztroy you absolute ding dong ilu

oh fun, new npc :D

go firbolg, nice

so leon actually managed to get through to the guild before higglemas did whatever he did to him, and hieronymus and higglemas appear to be on the same page vis-a-vis wanting to keep the guild out of the school... fuck

althea, good to know, i'm so bad at spelling, i was hearing it as alfia

yay! i missed the money zone :D

aww, thank you trav

wait is that the end? does taz just not have ad reads anymore???

hey what the fuck, i am worried for my boys trav you can't just drop that on me apropos of nothing

how trippy for the rest of the staff do you think it was that all of a sudden jackyl's creepy voice suddenly turned into a lilting brogue

argo my sweet boy

IT'S AN ANTI GARY ZONE

... is he going to- yep, he's telling him about the hot mint

argo my sweet boy you are a valued member of the group

"hot mint is nothing new" oh my darling

ilu jackyl

what do you mean not from a person? do they think fitzroy is somehow linked to the demons in the forest?

thank you for that trav i am bad at remembering scenery details

i get what jackyl's saying here but like... there are ways for argo to ask fitz about his magic without being suspicious. they're pretty okay friends at this point, i don't think it's too much of a stretch to bring up magic in conversation like “hey, i have magic from my parents, do you think your magic could have come from yours?”

argo that's kind of a hollow threat, i don't think you can leave, they'd probably kill you :/

ilu argo my sweet boy

yikes, goddamn, the bad roles are back for argo

what was the end of that line clint

NICE, good rolls are back :)

clint you absolute dipshit

it's not boring! i'm very proud of clint getting so many good rolls in a row!

i love this so much lol

ooooh, this is some pretty music

fitz is on supplemental levels of paranoia

i can get that rationale, he can't solve anything if he can't trust his own perceptions

so he's taking a crack at artificing, fun times

this is an extremely good interaction, i am loving this

what does your little high pitched HMMM mean fitzroy? what are you doing my dipshit son???

oh fun, drawf then i'm guessing

green and gold were my university colors trav don't do this to me

fitzroy sounds like me every time i fall down the rabbit hole of metalworking videos on youtube and think “i wanna make a sword!”

... huh. i have to go back and listen to ep. 7, but is crabtree part of the unbroken chain? i'd be more inclined to trust her if so, i don't know if fitz would be safe crafting a mind protecting charm with her if there's even the slightest possibility that she's in on whatever higglemas is doing

fitzroy my dipshit son, you are an absolute dummy, you are the worst

griffin you planned an entire campaign around magical items

i don't like the sound of that "oh!"

oh this has gone just about as bad as it could have gone

that is absolutely not going to happen

nice thinking griffin, holy cow

not a fan of the foreshadowing implications of that

precision is certainly something fitzroy doesn't have

yes thank you for not doing that griffin

this is probably a bad idea and i am worried for firbolg

"let the wiki show, your honor" i want to check the wiki now to see if anyone’s added that lol

jesus that's a creepy feeling

griffin you have no right to make me cry like this

justin you've murdered me

welp, this is extremely bad :|

what are you doing fitzroy, what is the end game here fitzroy

okay, okay that's a good idea but this music is very terrifying

maybe also talk about what's going on with buckminster please, i am so worried about leon

i am at odds with myself because i adore the friendship development that's going on here, but i'm also so worried for literally all of them and poor argo is being left out

oh nice, very excited to see how that goes next ep

thank you for lifting the mood some griffin lol

clint you've killed me

oh i am so looking forward to this conversation

so a lot went down this episode, huh? compared to how lighthearted and silly the last two episodes were we got a ton of plot development, and in retrospect i’m glad we had an emotional buffer before things got too hairy. i am very worried for my boys, i personally think travis is nailing the build-up of suspense and mistrust between characters while keeping the danger factor mysterious enough that there’s no obvious solution as to who’s right not to trust who. i can’t wait to head into the tag and see the kinds of theories people are coming up with because dang if i don’t have some thoughts.

see you guys whenever the next ep comes out i guess!

[polaris-australis]

6 Horror Podcast Recommendations For Quarantine

I’m bored, you’re bored. If you’re interested in looking for new audio dramas to listen to (because I’m bad at the nonfiction ones, sorry), especially if you’re a fan of scaring the shit out of yourself like I somehow am, then I have a few I’ve been meaning to talk about. Note that I will either give warnings for each one or they can be found in the descriptions of the episodes themselves. These are all my opinions on them, though I will try to stick to basic summaries. I just think these are good content. 

I’m also willing to make a part 2 for this people are interested, because there are so many more and I haven’t even touched on most of the more popular ones (namely Magnus Archives which I’m not going to talk about because literally everyone is so it’s not hard to find a summary about it). 

2 Short Podcasts

1. The Hyacinth Disaster: This is the shortest show on this list, being only seven episodes long, each being about 20 minutes long, but it’s amazing and I love it. It centers around a group of asteroid miners trying to strike it rich on an asteroid in order to bargain for the life and safe return of their friend, who is being held hostage by a rival company who claims the ship was in their territory. However, it turns out the asteroid is kind of sentient, and over the course of the show, every single character dies. This isn’t really a spoiler, so I feel like I can say it. It’s masterfully done, being very character focused and emotional. I can’t think of any major warnings here besides death (which aren’t explicit or particularly gruesome), but there should be some in the episode descriptions as needed.

2. Limetown: We’re only counting season one of Limetown because season two is absolutely garbage and hardly anyone I have seen actually considers it canonical. This one is also one of the major ones on this list, as it was one of the early audio dramas that really showed what the medium could do and brought in new listeners the way WTNV did for many people (including me). It surrounds a journalist named Lia Haddock who is investigating the mystery behind Limetown, a fictional research town for the top scientists in the country where, within a single day it seems, every single resident vanished. When she begins her investigation, a survivors start to come out of their hiding places, revealing exactly what was going on and some of them dying in the process. It’s six episodes total with mini “announcements” in between that are part of the show, though are usually about 3-5 minutes. Episodes average out around 30 minutes, sometimes more or less. It’s interesting and in-depth and I did enjoy it - however there are major trigger warnings that I wish someone had given me. At the end of episode 2, there is a man who people refer to as “The Manic Man” who is very much unstable and frankly pretty ableist and gross, but I won’t get into that here. He basically bangs his head on Lia’s door screaming her name and that she needs to stop investigating Limetown. He appears again at the end of episode 3, having broken into her parents’ house and is ominously saying her name into the phone. He is not heard from for the rest of the season, nor in season two if you listen to that disaster. Episode 3 also involves animal death, and in “The 911 Call” there are gunshot noises. Again, it’s an enjoyable podcast, but please be careful is any of these things are triggering for you.

3 Medium-ish Podcasts

3. Academicasaurus : This one is a bit different from the others, but I’m considering it horror because a) someone is listening in to all the phone conversations, which is how we’re hearing them, b) it does end up surrounding the supernatural, and c) it just has a creepy vibe to it. This one surrounds two English literature professors and the head librarian, who help run Academicasaurus, the school arts journal that combines older aspects and elements of literature with modern pop culture. It begins when they begin getting wildly inaccurate articles dropped at their office doors, and then strange things begin happening around the school, including a fire in the library and a missing person case. In season 2, the supernatural aspect to the school starts to unveil. Episodes are about 12-20 minutes for season one, which is 7 episodes, then start hitting the 20-25 marks in season 2, which is 8 episodes. Season 3 is starting May 25, 2020, so I’m probably going to relisten before then. It’s fun content, and yes goes along with the grey academia aesthetic.

4. Janus Descending:  Listen. Listen. This was so close to being my jam. The twist just ended up screwing me over and I hate so much that it was ruined for me. It’s another space podcast where two xenoanthropologists head to an unknown planet where there were signs of an ancient civilization and things go terribly wrong. It’s told through alternating perspectives and audio logs, but the real kick is that Chel’s tapes go in normal chronological order and Peter’s go backwards. So you get the sheer whiplash of going from “everything is going to be amazing!” to “sobbing because one is dead and the other is about to die.” I personally just didn’t enjoy the main twist at the end but that was just me. Episodes are about 20-30 minutes, there are 13 total. The main warnings are for lots of paranoia, crying, and major character death/some violence. Not bad horror wise overall.

2 Longer Podcasts

5. What’s the Frequency?: This is a much weirder one that I have found is a hit or miss with most people. It’s set in 1950s LA and at first surrounds two private investigators searching for a missing typewriter, but then expands into a world descending into madness due to a strange radio show. It’s a bit gorey but there are trigger warnings, and the aesthetic is honestly terrifying. The audio effects are amazing, distorting and making it sound like an old radio. Episodes are around 20-30 minutes except for the finale I think which is longer. Only the first season is out for now but season two is supposed to be out soon, which is why this is going here instead of above. Regardless, this is a good time to listen.

6. The White Vault: This is a podcast I’ve referenced before on my main blog. It’s an isolation horror podcast about a team sent up to a research outpost in Svalbard to fix a transmission issue, but they become stranded by an unnaturally brutal snowstorm. They discover a vault (literally) in the bunker that leads into a cave system that isn’t as abandoned as they thought. This one is honestly terrifying, it’s just the anticipation and slow build up that then becomes actual horror as the monster hunts them down one by one. Three seasons are up right now, and the final season comes out in October, so this is a good time to catch up if you like. Episodes can be from thirty minutes to almost an hour, each being told through the “found footage” format with a separate narrator putting the pieces together. Each season has about 10 episodes. I adore it to bits.

Feel free to tell me if you try any of these shows and your thoughts on them! Again, I’m totally willing to make more posts like this touching on other horror podcasts or nonhorror ones, but I felt like making this one first. Hope you’re all having a good day, and, if not, that it gets better soon < 3

[strixa]

On the TBTP-relistening Discord chat, I was asked by the wonderful and brillilant @surely-you-jess to try to answer this question:

[T]he one theme I love in Tanis and TBTP is the protagonist dying for a deeper world of demons, supernatural horrors, mystery, etc., but also being terrified if it were real. I love that dichotomy so much in both Alex and Nic and I’d love your take on developing further.

I’ll be honest: I don’t know if I can do this. And the reason why probably is at the heart of why I’m both Team Strand and cheering for Alex to be a BAMF.

These things-- demons, supernatural horror, what’s vaguely defined as “occult”--  don’t scare me.

I mean, they’re scary, yes, in the sense that they can be dangerous, but human beings are both terrifying and dangerous, too. Flying in an airplane is dangerous. The fact that humanity has smallpox stored in a vault in the Center for Disease Control is outright horrifying. But it is exactly for that reason our responses should not be panic. Do you let the fear of a car wreck prevent you from ever traveling? Of course not. Most of us buckle our seatbelts, get insurance, and drive defensively.

We must face our fears, or be ruled by them. This is the theme of The Black Tapes Podcast.

Marie Curie provides adequate perspective here:

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Compare this to Strand in 211:

“[The Gospel of Thomas] describes how it is knowledge, rather than faith, that grants salvation, which constitutes eternal rest, describing ignorance as a nightmare.” 

When Richard Strand maintains that he created the Strand Institute to continue his father’s work, I suspect what he meant is that he, like his father, wants to free humanity from its fear of the unknown. I don’t think he wants to take away our fears-- he strikes me as sensible enough to understand that fear is necessary to our survival. He just wants to show us that most things we fear, when we see them for what they are, can be overcome.

People bitch all the time that Strand doesn’t show empathy or compassion, but I go back to the Strand Institute letters, and I do hear a man capable of compassion. What he doesn’t offer to Maria Rodriguez or Robert Torres, though, is pity, or telling them what they want to hear (like Alex does). Neither of those things will help them, and the first is outright insulting.

That’s one of the many reasons why I mostly don’t get supernatural horror-type entertainment. Sure, there are ghosts and spirits everywhere, including demons. Why should that be frightening? Why do we need to have an exterminator mentality: “Ghosts in my house! OMGWTFBBQ221111!!!!1eleventy CALL AN EXORCIST!” when it can just be, “Look, just don’t sneak up on people or break shit, and stay out of the bathroom when my kid is in there, but you’ve got the run of the place, and let me know if you need something.”

I suppose it’s frightening if you believe as Clara Simone and Alex do, hemmed in by Christian hegemony: that’s it’s humanity’s world, that it was made for and given to us, because we’re the special beings chosen by its creator. But is leaving that belief behind such a terrible thing? Are we so greedy that we can’t share the universe with innumerable other entities?

I don’t know if it’s canon, but early in the TBTP universe, Alex interviewed Aaron Mahnke, the creator of Lore (and the even better show, Unobscured; I left Lore for Unobscured quite awhile ago). I can’t quite find the point exactly where it was mentioned, but they both talked about how fear of demonic possession can be a stand-in for fear of loss of control. I suspect at the heart of Alex’s fear of demons (she also seems to have a mild blood/injection fear) might just be a fear that, as a matter of fact, the world as she’s taken for granted isn’t what she thinks it is. That there might actually be things she doesn’t know, can’t explain...

That she might be capable of things she thought impossible.

That’s honestly terrifying, when you think of it. I’ve mentioned on my blog elsewhere, but the idea that you’re actually in control of your life is rarely a pleasant one. “The devil made me do it” is a surrender of agency, an excuse. If you’re in charge of your life, that means you actually have to fix the shit you broke, be it yourself, an object, a relationship (Alex, and her friendships with Nic and Strand), or a family (Strands, both pére and fils).

Strand has to do this, too, of course-- the entire workings with DaivaCorp (DaevaCorp? Whatever. Thomas Warren’s Project for World Domination.) and it being wrapped up with a supposed “family ability” that got him singled out and that he may have been denying for years means that, sure, his paradigm is broken, too. But the existence of his black tape collection indicates he knew something like this was on the horizon anyway. He was already fixing his shit, however he knew how.  Alex, on the other hand, had to confront her own misconceptions and fears, fast and out of nowhere.

And that? That, my friends, is fucking overwhelming.

And it’s why I think Alex’s personal drama, Alex’s struggle against her own fears, is the most compelling story of TBTP. It’s why this podcast is Alex’s story, not Strand’s. It’s honestly why I don’t want to believe Strand is a Big Bad: because early on, he sees that in Alex, and that’s why he likes her.

Give ‘em Hell, Alex.

@surely-you-jess, does this answer you?

[knife-dad]

King Falls AM Ep. 93 Thoughts

*SPOILERS*

1. Live listen! There's so much going on today. I'm nervous.

2. Oooh this is weird. I sense Jupiter will not like this episode much... I however, am having a lot of fun

3. OH! they had a conversation! Oh good!

4. Also this is a very fun scenario. I always did wonder if we were ever gonna hear an actual Jazz Corner

5. FR*CKARD >:(

6. I'm so glad he's suffering.

7. Ok see, there's a reason I like Chet. He has potential. If he were less of a slime he could be a good person. Maybe.

8. "Little tadpole man" :D

9. Ah! I hate that hotline. Thank goodness its just Ben

10. AHHHHH WAIT

11. oh Tim. Please be a good robot for once. Just... Fight the programming. Please. AAAH

12. HERSCHEL! Herschel rescue mission. Good. Also hello im crying

13. This is so wild. This is so so wild. Music is great though!

14. TROY! i'm so glad he's here. I'm also terrified he's here. Too many people are getting hurt and I do *not* need more of that

15. REAL TIM! In a big ole robot suit apparently. Nice!

16. Ok. Ok. They got the book. That's... Good? Gods above. I'm so scared and so much is going on aaaah

17. OH SHIT ANOTHER ROBOT?!?!? WHAT

18. This was a really good one. If I didn't have to get up early I'd do an immediate relisten. Wow.

Ok well, time to sleep... If I can sleep that is. This was a lot of excitement for 1 in the morning x)

[astronomifier]

Magnus Relisten Eps 31 & 32

First Hunt and Hive

Episode 31: First Hunt Case #0100912 Statement of Lawrence Mortimer, regarding their hunting trip to Blue Ridge, Virginia.

I like this episode. It feels as though tma has followed up its terrifying take on vampires with a terrifying take on werewolves. Both examples feel like a truly threatening version of a monster that has in other works become too cliche to be scary. Granted, this wolfman is not as monstrous or gruesome as some of the other monsters we’ve had on this show. I’m not sure if that was the right choice. They’re clearly going for a creature that can act as a predator to humans but while its actions and physical capabilities get that across quite well, its physical description seems... too close to human for me, i guess. I get what they were going for with the Sharpness, but we’ve gotten much more creative than just “human, but athletic/resilient enough to hunt humans down with ease”. However, I do quite like that, much like in yesterday’s Killing Floor, we have a theme of “human finds themselves facing a death that usually humans are inflicting on animals”. It gets down to a primal fear that is very powerful. Most Magnus episodes rely on unsettling ambiance or disgusting descriptions to scare us, which makes sense as it is hard to get panic across with only words. Especially words that must be delivered in the methodical tone of an after-the-fact Magnus Archive statement. This episode, though, gets at it, even if only for a moment here or there. I think its because it taps into the listeners imagination quite well. We can all i think imagine what it would be like to be prey, instinctively, and all the episode needs to do to scare us with it is to get us to start that imagining. I do question the ending, though. I think this is one of those cases where the format in the show gets in the way. Mortimer needs to survive his encounter to make a statement about it, but allowing a gun to even temporarily take out the wolfman makes it a bit less scary, as does letting Mortimer survive. If both humans had been completely helpless, and perished, it would be a lot scarier, but the show’s conceit makes that narrative thread impossible to do. Also, i think its a bit funny how clearly this episode is based on a British view of America as a land of massive wildernesses and lots of guns. The scene with the gun locker nears parody, honestly.

I don’t think I’d get along with today’s narrator. military background, loves guns and hunting, frequents “skeptics forums” despite being a 50 year old man in 2010? sounds like one of those right wing apocalypse prepper type assholes. Probably wishes Britain had the second amendment. Though, ill note that this makes me no less able to feel for him in his torment. That shit is cruel, to be hunted is as i said a primal fear and not one i would wish on my worst enemy, let alone a guy whos only crime is being too macho and gun-loving for my tastes.

Im going to start seperating out post statement meta-plot stuff into is own paragraph alongside narrator watch, now. At least in episodes where its applicable. Its becoming much more of a Thing, in recent episodes, and this will continue. This time around, it seems the worms are really starting to wear on the institute. Jane seems to have taken to an attrition tactic, using her seemingly endless supply of worms to wear away at the Archival staff’s limited stamina. You can hear it in Jon’s voice at the end, for gods sake. Good acting there, by the way. This all is to say that im starting to feel emotions about Jon and his plight here, in a way that i don’t think this show has done before. I think this episode is where we actually start to worry for the snob.

I’m gonna give this episode a 7/10. Its got some really good bits, especially how it gets the primal fear across for me, but thinking about it holistically theres just not all that much actually going on. It really focuses on a single idea, that of the hunter becoming the hunted, and while it uses that idea very well it doesn’t really take it in any directions that are all too new or groundbreaking.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH: this is kiiiinda sorta our first Hunt episode? by that i mean, Vampire Killer is officially the first hunt episode, yes, because it describes how Trevor becomes a Hunter, but the focus of that episode is really on the vampires, who’s allegiance is a bit unclear. I will say though, in case you couldn’t tell from how i was talking about them up above, this episode is making me lean more Hunt for them. you’re afraid of the vampires because theyre your predator more than you are because of their mind control, which puts them more Hunt than Web... Though, spiders are predators... Anyways, the Hunt is actually the least used entity on this show by a pretty wide margin, as evidenced from the fact that we’re on episode 31 and only now getting an indisputably 100% hunt episode. Its a pretty solid one though, much like Killing Floor did with the Flesh, this one gets the Hunt’s thesis across in a very clean way. It is the animal’s fear of being hunted, and humans can experience that fear just as well. Done. Interesting that its in the Americas, by the way. Jonny tends to use America for only a few specific fears: the buried and the hunt come up here far more than anything else. For the Hunt there is this, the South American “Dead Horse” and Julia+Trevor’s significant time spent in America. There’s also a Flesh episode, Trail Rations, that is set very close to the Flesh’s emergence and has some Hunt-ish undertones, which kinda-sorta counts? It has a similar emphasis on America having massive wilderness, at least.

Episode 32: Hive Case #0142302 Statement of Jane Prentiss, regarding a wasp’s nest in their attic.

So, yeah, a Jane Prentiss statement. This episode is oddly beautiful, actually, and quite fascinating. Almost a full-on stream of consciousness, but not quite there yet. Jane’s emotional state is... far from normal, and yet you understand it. She itches, and she is afraid, but she is also fascinated. You can feel it in the writing, and in Jon’s voice performance. Kudos to the actor for this one, by the way. Its a great performance. Janes world is becoming bugs and crawling things, as though infestation is of cosmic significance. That is i think the main point that this episode is making. That for Jane, to be infested with crawling things is a poignant, significant thought, one that she holds in reverence to a degree that it begins to become religious devotion. The supernatural occurrences here are fascinating too... an infinite wasps nest, perhaps a even a dimension of Hive. I don’t know, im having a hard time explaining what i like about this episode. Its more like a mood than a narrative, really, though there is plenty of narrative here. On a metaplot level though, we do get some interesting clues. For one, the idea that the Institute is something that the supernatural has definitely noticed, and at least in Jane’s case, despises. Also the line about how Jane is “not one of those fools chasing fractals”. Reminds me of Ivo Lenik’s father from Burned Out, who’s madness drove him to become obsessed with fractals... a lot of what Jane says here feels like clues that we can’t quite understand yet. Outside of the statement, we get a bit more detail from Jon about Jane’s condition, though. Specifically a detailed description of how Jane ended up hospitalized and then killing a bunch of nurses, which gets just a bit of the Prentiss grossness into an episode surprisingly light in it. Well, that's not quite true. The bit about skin picking was pretty nasty.

Nothing really new to say in Narrator watch. This is another one where the narration is the statement. In meta-zone, though, Jeez Jon, you’re even worse than last week. this Jane stuff is really getting to him, isn’t it. You can hear it in the voice once he finishes reading, and the fact that it literally took so much out of him that he had to lie down...

I’m giving this an 8/10. I can’t explain why that's the number, it just feels right relative to the other 8′s we’ve had. But if you absolutely need me to justify, ill say: I like it a lot, but I cant point out anything that blew me away to the level that our 9′s have.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH: this is a really hard episode to write about without bringing in spoilers, so i erred on the side of caution. We get, among other things: the institute referred to as Beholding as well as hints that it may be part of the show’s supernatural ecosystem, a reference to the Spiral as a distinct power, a reference to the Web as distinct from the Corruption, and a reference to Antonio Blake/Oliver Banks, who seems to have worked at the same magic shop as Jane and predicted... well, did Jane die? maybe. certainly whatever happened to here showed up in Oliver’s death-o-vision. We also get some pretty strong hints that Jon inhabits the statements as he reads them. He really gets into character, and then describes it taking a lot out of him. Of course, at the time of first viewing we assumed he was just exhausted by thinking about Jane so much, and made a few jokes about his dramatic flair during statement reads, but clearly this is STRONG forshadowing of the fact that Jon’s statement reading is supernaturally able to get into the mind of the statement giver. One more thing: we get the philosophy of the Hive laid out, though i’m not sure exactly how much of this can be extended to the corruption as a whole. Certainly, though, this reflects the very common Corruption motif of community, what with how Jane feels the bugs singing to her and begins to respect the things living inside her. This “community” theme will get much more obvious in the future, most notably in Love Bombing, where the Corruption latches onto an existing cult community to spread itself.

[silver-spider-art]

Borderlands Head Canons

Okay so I have horrible depression writer's block rn and have been replaying all the borderlands games while also daydreaming all the stories I want to tell with these characters. So I’m just going to write out my head canons for shits and giggles cuz I have a lot of thoughts.

Handsome Jack:

Jack is such a wild card. He’s an overgrown toddler and an impatient genius. Also sexy as hell and a problematic fave. I spend so much time playing the game sassing and back talking him (like he can fucking hear me) but I still adore him. And relistening to some of the dialog lines I’ve built up a variety of head canon and AU ideas for him. 

So canon vs fanon is a little squishy in my head but Moxxi claims his face is plastic surgery and I’m taking that to be more than the mask. He’s definitely ADHD and neurodivergent. Plus a good helping of PTSD and paranoia thanks to Grandma and trauma from his ex-wives. Those are all his starting points but he breaks into 3 categories based on Angel. Bad Dad, Okay Dad, and Good Dad.

Bad Dad is canon and tips the point of no return for Jack’s mental instability when Angel brutally (but accidentally) murders his wife/her mom. Afraid of his own daughter and horribly betrayed and without “the one good force” in his life, he starts down the path of ultimate Sheakspearian self-destruction. All relationships end tragically and he’s his own greatest enemy. As far as the wife goes, I’m 100% that she is on a pedestal in his head and while he can think no ill of her, the relationship wasn’t all roses. 

Okay Dad, in AUs this would be where however his wife died or was lost it didn’t result in his fearing Angel (I normally leave this idea for modern!AUs without Siren powers). He is still overprotective and “doing it for your own good” but without the torture or horrific manipulation. Because of this, while Angel might still resent or hate him, he still has something to live for and is capable of somewhat decent relationships. Still, he rather sucks at it and more often than not is self-destructive. (my fave for writing and reading)

Good Dad, this is a strange and mysterious creature that is nearly unheard of. So often this feels so out of place. So much would have to change to create a catalyst in his life for him to turn out healthy. I mostly see this as a redemption arch thing. Where he might be able to turn it around and make amends given the right people around him. 

The other thing I’ve been growing ever found of is trans!jack. He wears a ridiculous number of layers of clothing which is definitely hiding his soft gut, but I’m very fond of the idea that much of his bragging and defensiveness is overcompensation for his fear and trauma both from childhood abuse and gender. There is quite a bit in game dialog on the Jack vs John thing. For the trans!jack I’m actually loving the idea that when he came out and remade his life, he chose John and was hired in at Hyperion with them only knowing him as John. But as he got more comfortable with his new life (and Tassiter made him start hating his new name) he wanted to reclaim his birth name. That he’s always gone by the nickname Jack (born Jacqueline) and was now confident enough in presenting male (and helped by Nisha) that he would even let friends call him Jackie without feeling less masculine. (super self-indulgent reasonings for this)

Other random head canons, Jack is polysexual and pansexual. He prefers women romantically but usually has longer last relationships with men yet rarely thinks of them in the same light. He’s mostly into women powerful enough to crush him and while he is aggressive and into being on top, he’d make a shit dom. He’s impatient and easily losses himself to pleasure. He is, however, a very good sub but it takes a huge amount of trust for him to allow that. (this is also why he is so angry at his attraction to Rhys. Rhys is a soft nerd who can’t even fire a gun, the exact opposite of Jack’s type and he falls for him anyway.) Jack’s vanity knows no bound and he spends way too much time of his look every morning to look perfectly disheveled and like he doesn’t care. Also extremely attached to his favorite things with huge possessiveness (partially caused by aforementioned childhood trauma). Jack actually likes cats but hates being around then cuz old childhood pain. Jack is also complete and utter crap at taking about his feelings or opening up to people.

Timothy Lawrence: 

So for dear Tim, my beloved favorite, I have 2 main categories, canon doppelganger or au brother. 

Doppelganger: needing money he took a job as Jack’s body double and had plastic surgery to look like Jack. Depending on Jack (Bad/Okay/Good) his relationship turns out drastically different. 

Bad ending poor Tim gets branded and has to fell his possessive and deranged boss and spends his life masked on Pandora as a mercenary. Always hiding his face for fear of those who want revenge on the man whose face he wears. 

Okay fate, he and Jack are lovers. They fight a lot and Tim’s most often catchphrase is “damn it, Jack” but in the end, Jack is his asshole. Their relationship is polyamorous and stable. But Tim is often in the shadows and overlooked, partially by choice. 

Good end? This is so rare I have no idea.

Twin/Brother: having grown up together they get Jack’s asshole and abusing Grandmother and Tim’s “laughs at your death” mother. Having one family member and someone he can always fall back on to help him and someone to be a hero for, Jack never goes full Bad ending. Despite all their fighting and issues, they balance each other out. Always falls in the Okay category of Jack’s relationship to Angel. 

But I’ve been working out the redemption arch to lead to a Good Dad ending. Jack actually being self-sacrificing for once and giving up something he wants for his brother's happiness. One idea is that both he and Tim are both pursuing Rhys but after some inciting incidents, Jack comes to realize that his family and friends are happier with Rhys in their lives and Jack knows that he’ll just ruin it like he’d started to do. I can see this beautiful scene of Jack seeing Tim and Rhys talk at a party and seeing Angel come up to join them. His heart aches because he wants that to be himself in Tim’s place but knows it would never happen. That in the end, he’s poison. So he chooses to give up. To let that peaceful scene be reality. That he can accept his claim on Rhys just being as family and not as lover. And that moment of clarity and change of focus helps get him on the path to repairing his relationship with Angel and his brother. Never a smooth ride and he fails a lot, but it does get better.

But back to Tim. 

Tim/Rhys is life. I love these two together like nothing else. Jack/Tim and Jack/Rhys is always unstable and huge potential for unhealthy. But Tim/Rhys is heaven and precious and good.

Tim loves cats and sweaters. He wants to write an epic fantasy story but has no faith in his abilities. He’s anxious and terrified of heights but he will be it anyway even while white with fear. He has a huge cybernetic kink he doesn’t want to admit to. Tim dated Wilhelm until the end and still deeply cares for the huge quiet man. While Tim dislikes blood and guts, he found he was actually really good and fighting. After he started the body double gig he got swoll and has stayed in shape since (his own vanity showing). He’s covered in freckles and tans dark in the sun. His voice can be very awkward and scratchy but confidence and vocal training helps that in the non-canon or modern!au settings. Tim is a much better fighter than Jack and can handle any weapon thrown into his hands (I mean just look at his skill tree in game) but he always holds himself back outside of combat and thinks of himself as weak. Despite his skill, he lacks confidence and in the bad endings always believes Jack is actually stronger than him.

Rhys:

My boy. Rhys is trans and autistic. He works very hard to make sure it doesn’t show. He volunteered to get the eye and experimental echo port in order to help compensate for his mental limitations and further enhance his positive skills. His cybernetic arm was also technically voluntary and for badass points he always claims so, but he wasn’t giving up a “perfectly good arm” but a barely functioning arm that always caused him chronic pain due to a poorly healed childhood injury. He stared in Data Mining and while he refused to act in violence to advance, Rhys has very gray morals and had done plenty of shady things to advance in Hyperion. He never had a problem with killing in the vague sense, just not wanting to get his hands dirty directly. This does change slowly, but he still hates guns. They are just very hard for him. When he must fight, melee is the way he goes. Rhys got his chest tattoos after his top surgery to disguise the scars. like his flashy cybernetics, his main goals are “if I have to stand out I want them looking at me because I’m too pretty to look away from”. He tries to fake it till he makes it with confidence even when he has no idea what’s happening. 

He always looks everything up on the EchoNet and panics when his connection to it is cut off. It’s his safety net/blanket in many ways. The more the situation is out of control and not following his plan, the more his anxieties act up and leave him vulnerable. This is how Jack easily manipulates him when everything is going to hell. He needs more time to think through things then the chaos of Pandora allowed. Once he’s used to the wasteland and it’s people, this is less of an issue. (Hyperion Rhys vs Atlas Rhys)

His special interests are colorful socks, Handsome Jack (he regrets that deeply after meeting the man), and his new interest is A.I.s. Though Rhys is very into his cybernetics and has moded them some, he can’t build them. His skills are haking, programming, and coding. His old goals where to get a job in digital security or programming once he could get out of data mining. Now as Atlas CEO his pet project has been building and refining A.I.

Random: Rhys is bisexual and leans a bit poly. He is sex positive but doesn’t have to have it in a relationship. He will follow along with most all his partner's kinks as it’s most important for him that they are having fun together. Soft fluff and cuddles are what he lives for though. (everything about this is super self-indulgent)

Angel:

Angel is autistic. It puts her in an especially dangerous/vulnerable position with her powers and Bad Dad Jack doesn’t know what to do with her without his wife to help. He loves his baby girl dearly, but he’s lost and doesn’t know how to help her. In the end, he uses her to fuel his own obsessions and the veneer of childhood is stripped from her eyes as resentment sets in. She lost her father long ago and now only wants release. Like Tim, she could have tried to kill him herself, but while she can and does betray him, he’s still her father in the end.

Okay Dad Jack, (mostly modern!aus) struggles with how to raise Angel but genuinely tries his best. His second marriage was entirely to have a mom for her, knowing he was a shit parent. That wasn’t a good marriage and Angel still didn’t get a mom out of it. Angel goes up angry and resentful of her dad and often refuses to call him anything but Jack. She’s angry that he still treats her like a child. She can’t live on her own and needs assistance in common tasks due to her limitations, but can’t stand being treated childishly like his always buying her unicorn themed things and his insistence on not swearing. She struggles to understand that Jack needs these things for himself too and they both just suck at communicating to each other. They circle around each other, in a strange dance, more like roommates than family. Angel works for Jack as his security expert and hacker/spy. She was instrumental in him taking over Hyperion.

Good Dad... like beforementioned, this is hardly a thing. The good times are mostly in her early youth.

Angel is a lesbian and in okay or good settings falls for Gaige. Jack is very not okay with his daughter dating an openly Anarchist Anti-Cooperate Terrorist who has built death machines. They met online and spend nearly every night having hour long conversations. Gaige makes her feel more normal and nonbroken than anything else in her life ever has.

Random:

Tiny Tina is trans. I read this in a fic and it’s just canon now.

Zer0 is a nonbinary cyborg. They have had most of their body replaced and generally don’t want to be human, so they took matters into hand to make that happen. They feel kinship for Rhys because of this and are growing fond of the awkward man and proud of his bravery foolishness for going into battle despite having no skill. Zer0 and Tim fight well side by side but they do NOT get along outside of combat.

Nisha is aromantic and pansexual and only doms. Her whip very much is used in the bedroom. She and Jack are always off again on again.

Maya is aro/ace and a total badass.

Sasha and Rhys date for a while but end it mutually finding they fit better as friends than lovers.

Gaige helps Rhys make his new cybernetics and he has to argue with her to not install more than one weapon in the new arm or lasers in his eye.

Wilhelm was always going to die of Bone Waste and the surgeries and cybernetics were just delaying the inevitable. Jack set him up to die, but it was willingly on Wil’s part because he didn’t want to die in a hospital but in a huge and epic fight that would be the stuff of legends. 

Vaughn is aromantic and sex nonpulsed and he and Rhys are platonic bros for life. Rhys is 100% okay with this and anyone else in his life has to accept his deep love for his bro.

(I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot, but this is long enough for now, oops)

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 91 - The Coming Storm

Jon: I… Where did you get that scar? Mike: (amid sound of rushing air): And I was trying so hard to be polite.

This is such a "Woah!" moment given what precedes it is - well - a brief conversation about tea that kinda had me going "Huh, well, this is not what I expected to happen when Jon meets Mike" but this moment is exactly what I expected to happen when Jon meets Mike and somehow I still ended up being surprised by it because of the way the episode started.

Have you ever been struck by lightning? No. No, of course not. Not unless that’s what happened to your hand, but I’m guessing that burn came from sticking it somewhere it wasn’t wanted. - Mike

Well, technically it came from sticking it somewhere clearly and obviously unwise yet where it was explicitly requested, nay, demanded.

It… never hurt me. Not once in all the years I was chased by its… malevolence. Of course, I know why that is now, but at the time it did nothing to dull my fear.

Wait, why is it the Spiral never hurt Mike? To keep his fear going, sure, but also ... the Entities are usually not shy about doing permanent damage!

The trees were long and spindly, their branches bare and reaching, as they grew down towards me out of the sky, their roots pulsing upwards into this roiling mass of clouds; the scorched and shattered trunks reeking of ozone.

So basically trees like lightning strikes!

And more than that, my eyes were opened to the powers that might save me. Might protect me from a past that followed me so brightly I could barely see it. But I knew that Filth was not for me. Buzzing flies and rot disgusted me, but they never spoke to my soul. I threw the book into a sewer, and began my hunt.

I think I mentioned before how Mike is kind of remarkable for basically going ... Entity shopping? Here he is, actively discarding the Corruption...

The Boneturner’s Tale was next. Found tucked away in a waterlogged library basement, and deposited back in another. I played with it, but when I tried to shift the bits of myself I thought might set me free, the only shapes I could form with them were laced with that horrid, hunting fractal.

The Flesh, also not Mike's thing.

I spent some time with a small grey volume, I think it was in Cyrillic, that decided it was at home amongst my bookshelves. I couldn’t read it, of course, but… when it tried to read me back, I buried it on a lonely stretch of moorland.

Whatever the Entity of this book is?

Finally I found what I was searching for. In the back of a Chichester bookshop, I found my release. Ex Altiora. ‘From the Heights’. The owner didn’t want to part with it, a nasty, grubby little man who stank of sweat and self-importance, but I got it. And at last I had what I needed.

And at least two, probably three failed potential patrons later he settles on The Vast. (Also reading Mike's description of Herbert Knox and knowing how different those events must have looked from Mike's perspective is a little funny.)

There are echoes of resignation, I think, almost desperation. That can’t be right, though. What reason would I have had not to jump? Not to become as I am now.

Ah shit, I didn't remember this little line but it just hit me like a backhand slap! How creepy is this? He doesn't even really remember what feeling ... not of-the-Vast is like!

Daisy: Is this man human? Jon: I… Er, no, I, I don’t think so. Not anymore. Daisy: Right. What does it do?

Yikes, that exchange is really fucking scary actually, the immediate switch to 'it'... This whole exchange with Daisy is horrifying, actually, the speed and efficiency of it, not a moment's hesitation before putting Mike out of action in order to kill him.

Jon: So… so what now? You kill us? Daisy: You think he’s going to save you? Jon: What? What, no – - GUNSHOT AND THE SOUND OF JON GASPING IN SHOCK AND HORROR -

And just like that, after being touched by at least four, possibly five Entities, Mike is shot. Just like that. ...

Okay, okay, technically it's the meeting with a sixth Entity that he doesn't survive, the Hunt, but the way the Hunt presents here in Daisy is so, so very human.

Daisy: That’s how you want it? Fine. You brought a knife. So we go through the voicebox.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Daisy is fucking terrifying.

Daisy: You don’t know what he is. You don’t know what it’s like to have your secrets pulled out like teeth, just because he asked? Jon: (panicking, sounding somewhat tearful) I’m sorry, I didn’t –

I think this is the most obviously terrified that we've seen Jon to date, which is interesting because it's not actually the only time he has been this close to death. Maybe it's because he's just so helpless at that moment, because he can't even run anymore?

My impression of this episode

Well, this is rather intense, isn't it? First Mike's statement, which, as I said, fascinates me, the entirety of his extremely colourful life and then ... his sudden and brutal end. And very nearly Jon's, too, if Basira hadn't intervened. Yeah, this is just ... a lot.

[sysig]

TAZ Ep. 57 Liveblog

The episode isn't even out yet and I'm going to Actually Die

IT'S HERE

FRICK

RED ROBES RIGHT OFF THE BAT JUST KILL ME NOW

GAME OVER

MAGNUS REMEMBERS

I'M DYING ACTIVELY RIGHT NOW I'M DYING AND WE'RE ONLY 30 SECONDS IN

CAM IS HERE IN THE REMINDER

Aight aight aight

We're back to being caught up

I AM ALREADY CUSSING INTRO MAN

*aggressively hums along*

Abso-fricken'-lutely

Someone get this man some wooden dice

Well frick??

Dexterity saving throw please

Uhm

WOAH

Right right

Hot dang why are you here RR

Of course you have Taako, you are TV

Why you laugh

"Burly"

MORE HECKING MUSIC

Oh gosh

IS THIS WONDERLAND ROUND 3???

It's hecking good that's what

Oh good

Thank, at least you're taking care of my boy's body

But you can heal Magnus tho, I think that'd count?

Oh! Stats, good

HAHAHA

Good one Griffi

I mean

Oooh

In a tiny wooden body vs. the arm-pulling Mango body

Well

Are you ticklish

Oh nice

Ruff boi, that's what

What a shocker

Oh shit

Please no, my boy is made of wood

Hmmmmmm imagine

I mean yeah

Mango is going to die in a mannequin, and then I'll die

Not against Railsplitter thank you

Aw Merle ;;

Hey no, trees are wood

FRICK

NO

MY BOY

I KNEW IT I CALLED IT

MERLE'S DEAD

NO HE'S DEAD SHUT UP

HNG

Pretty much, you're right

HAH

HOT HECK NICE

GRIFF YOU WERE RIGHT

I just noticed how long this episode is, nice

Yeas

100%

Heh, nice~

Well if one didn't work, let's try 10

Hot dang, cast that on Magnus, he'll be great

WAIT NO DON'T ATTACK MANGO'S BODY

Okay 2d6 isn't that bad, and he was just healed I guess

Jeez tho

I think Taako's made a death save once

I mean yeah, you're right

Why is this exactly what somebody said once, why is this accurate

No ;;

I mean I'm glad he saved but like

Please no more fives Merle

What the heck

JEEZ

JEEZ

I

Heh

While the other mannequins are there?

That's cute

Oooh nice, get to see the Magnetic Charge, that's neato

I'm not dying yet, this is either a good sign or a terrible terrible sign

Carey taught you so well <3

Clipped into the belt, got it memorized

Hahah, he just like floats the armour

Poor mannequin

Bye glasses, I didn't know you were metal

Don't need glasses if you're dead *touches temple*

Taako

It's time to stop

Vocal chords are? Physical?

Haha, you have to charismatically call the Lance

FRICK YEAH, that's awesome

Stop smiling, Edward, you lost the Charisma roll

GRIFFIN

DON'T

I DON'T TRUST YOU IN THIS VERY MOMENT

THE MOMENT YOU STARTED CLAPPING

Okay nevermind this is good and I trust you

I hate this but this is very good

FRICK

"Is Magnus going to tear off his own arms" this still counts okay

What the frick

He literally unarmed you

What

Uhm

More music and now I don't trust it

"Great pain" inner peace?

Oh hey I know that thing

Alright...

Wait but it didn't come back? Either way I like

Like two moons?

I

You mean Faerun? Not Magnus' home?

Who said shit, but I agree

Great thanks

Six rounds, s'all good

She float

Merle is dead, be quiet

Hahah

Noice, good work Taako

Why are we still attacking Magnus' body tho, please stop?

Merle

Both of you, you need to stop

I mean according to Clint you're not wrong??

Protection from both? Why

That sounds wildly helpful, maybe shoulda led with that?

Hey maybe don't

What??

You're still floating, how long does Levitation last

Why are you talking to the Red Robe this is the weirdest thing

HE ONLY NEEDS 1HP GIVE IT TO HIM PLEASE

Hey maybe don't die tho?

What, why, he only needed 1 please maybe don't?

You said you had 4, he literally only needed 1, why are you like this

Frick you Cam

HAHA NICE

Gross X3

Ooh

Bless you Merle

Don't kill my son

He doesn't have thAT MANY HP STOP ROLLING DICE

And now Taako is dead, great

Sleepy soul boy

I like how "the" is not part of Chance Lance's name

HEY MAYBE DON'T DO THAT??

3d10....

Okay good, yes

DOG PILE ON EDWARD

I can envision that so well, thank you Griffi

Oh

Is Edward gonna be eated?

Oh shit

WHILE DEAD

So badass

JEEZUS EDWARD IS DEADWARD

I can't imagine why

Well jeez, wish we could stop that but ah...dead

Ohp

WOAH

Yeah man same

"Wrong with her" Hmmmm

How 'bout that Suffering there Lydia?

Damn...

DAMN

WHAT??

NO

HOW COULD YOU

FRUK

HEY BBY NOT READY FOR THIS ADVERTISEMENT ZONE

You are definitely my clock, thank you

HNG

Aight time to check the tumblees and see how much everyone else is dying

We can't have gotten to the point where Griffi's heart was beating super fast...can we? It's gotta still be up the line, I'm scared very thank you

I love this fanfic in the Shout Box, this is great

No it's great Griffi, we've got it, we got it five years ago

Thank, all I ask is that you give my boys their proper resolutions, thank again

Ah man, please record it, I want to see that please please please

On Tumblr - there was a vore thing? I missed it very much? It did not register I have to relisten to this immediately

"Oh btw MBMBAM TV" It's good bby, I want to watch it so much

Griffin

GRIFFIN

WHEN YOU SAY THINGS LIKE THIS I GET 20% MORE SCARED EVERY TIME

I TRUST YOU BUT ALSO FRICK YOU

March 2nd, hnnnggg

THIS MUSIC IS POPPIN' THO IT'S TOTALLY ROUND 3 HOLY

Taako's dead and Magnus' body is gone and Merle is frickin' almost dead again

LICHES GET STITCHES YUP

Magnus

Yay ;u; Steven the fish is fine

I believe you Mango

Hahah

"Heal't"

Red Robe hey, shut up

Can mannequins be enthralled

Hahaha

Magnus would hate that, it's true

Well shit great wonderful good

Thank, yes, thank for explicitly breaking my heart

Kill the building, kill it

Save Rowan and co.

Hmmmmm that doesn't sound good

Ayyyyy

Good job boys

Only problem is MAGNUS' BODY IS GONE

MAYBE DON'T

Woah??

Thank you Antonia ;;

Yeah just a little

Hahah, "I lost my pinkie" "Are you a mannequin?"

Hahaha

Antonia you are lovely

But where is Rowan and Sterling, I'm concerned

HAHAHAH Oh Taako, friendship wins the day

Ay there's Sterling

Now where's my other son

What

Woah, too much

But the halflings?

But why Merle? Taako was the most hurt?

I'm just confused, gotta relisten

YAY ROWAN

But yeah, no, this is kinda important I guess

"Having a fit" accurate

"Your arm is wood, my whole body is wood AND I'm missing an arm"

More memories, frick

OH SHIT

Hide something............terrifying

HNG

Insignia

What does it look like tho

Also music

JUNE AND JACK

OH MY GOD IT TOTALLY IS THO???

FRICK

FRICK FRICK FRICK FRICK

FRIIICK

Yeah no

Magnus I can think of things for you to lose but uh

Oh yeah, they're out of Wonderland now

MY SPECIAL BOY

How long has he been calling ;;

Hahah

FRICK

RED ROBE

Taako please

Ango, gone already no ;;

There's only 10 minutes left, what's gonna pop off

Tomorrow hahahahahahahahahaha

Hold up, gotta whisper into a coin

Aw Merle ;u; The beach dwarf leading the party

Oh how homey

Wait is this

Oh gosh, oh man, ahhhh nooo

Finally my boys rest ;;;;

Mannequin dreams anD THE MUSIC RETURNS

Okay, yeah, the Voidfish touched on this

Is this because his body is dead?

Ohh shoot, a whole book

Larry Burnsides

OH SHIT THERE IT IS

HOLY SHIT

~We're following the Red Robe~

IT'S THE PLACE??

IT'S THE PLACE

WHERE'S THE POD

THERE IT IS

SHIT

EPILOGUE IS HERE

DOUBLE SHIT

TRIPLE FRICK SHIT I KNEW IT

WOAH WHAT

"I P R E"

Yeah by like seven years

WAIT WHAT

WELL OKAY THEN, GREAT

How the heckle do you attach a Lich to a body

I'm

Hey y'know what I'm super into that, I love the truth from the BOB

Also hey, amnesia, the hardest thing to successfully pull off

Shit

A humanman

You can frickin' hear that smile

ALSO HEY I HATE THAT LINE 

I HATE THIS

I HATE THIS SO MUCH

I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIIIIIIIIIS

JEEZUS I HATE YOU GRIFFIN SO MUCH

I HATE THIS OH MY GOD

BARRY'S FRICKING BACK AND I HATE EVERYTHING

FRICK YOU

Well alright then. Here’s to another two frickin’ weeks

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 89 - Twice as Bright

Jon: Right. But no more abattoir metaphors, please. Jude: Suppose it’s not really me, is it?

Yeah, too Fleshy.

Jon: I just have a few questions. Did you burn down a section of Gwydir Forest last year? Jude: Not alone, but yes. You should have seen how devastated they were, such a loss. Jon: I’m sure the Forestry Commission were mortified. Why? Jude: Stop that! And it was because Nikola Orsinov asked us to.

Jon doesn't even know what he's doing and Jude is getting all bristly, like a scared cat hissing.

Jon: I just… er, you were a friend of Agnes Montague, correct? Jude: She’s not one of your little stories. Jon: According to the statement of Jack Barnabas, she very much is.

Anyone going to throw things at me if I say "Oooh, burn!" in this context? Because, this is very much an Ooooh burn sort of situation.

Jon: Yes, yes, I understand, you could easily kill me, I’m at your mercy, blah, blah, blah. I have heard it before. And from things much scarier than you.

Jeez, Jon, where's all THIS coming from all of the sudden? Man, I wish I ever went from 'exhaustedly done with the world's shit' to 'I'm giving the world its shit right back!' like that!

Jude: Are you trying to talk me into killing you? If I wanted, I could reach through your chest like runny wax, and hold your heart while it cooked. No-one would even notice, if I didn’t give you time to scream.

Oh god, I love Jude. Every other avatar we've met is all quiet menace until they go full-monster and even then they're just 'JooOoon, coming to fiiiiind youuuu'. And here's Jude just CHEWING the goddamn scenery with relish, cutting things asunder with her edge. I've said this multiple times to people while discussing TMA but Jude is just basically the navy seal copypasta of avatardom and I'm enjoying her so much right now!

Jude: Hard to say. When I look at you I feel that burning liquid pain, eager to flow out and purify your rotten carcass, but I feel that a lot. Jon: Oh. M-More or less than normal? Jude: Hard to say when every nerve ending’s on fire. Hard to tell degrees. Jon: Third degree, maybe?

I cannot tell you which of the two I want to squeal at more right now. I adore this entire dialogue so much.

Jude: Oh please, your god is nothing! The Eye, Beholding, Ceaseless Watcher, whatever you call it, that’s all it does, it watches and knows, sitting bulbous and comfortable in the ignorance of infinite knowledge. I serve a reckoning, a surging tide of destruction and pain.

Okay, but you still react like a cat that's been sprayed with water whenever Jon asks you a question, Jude, love, you're not fooling anyone...

Jude: The unfathomable contest of eternal forces is not the only reason I might want someone dead.

This is important right here. Obviously the idea that avatars are still their own people, regardless of the Entity they serve, became really obvious somewhere along the line, but at this point in my first go I was still basically thinking in terms of "Hm, well, this power and that power interact in this way... wait, that makes no sense..." and sort of discounting that it's not always ABOUT the powers, despite how obvious that was!

Jon: Statement of Jude Perry, regarding… some advice.

Jon just vacillates wildly between fear and being so DONE with Jude's bullshit and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Jude: The pain is sensational. You feel your flesh cooking, your nerves screaming out as they die exquisitely. Your whole body changes texture as you become that which feeds the fire. In that agonising, beautiful transformation, you can feel it ignite again and again and again.

Okay, now she's just making self-immolation sound tempting...

It was Agnes, of course. I don’t know where she found me, I only remember sitting in a booth with a beautiful young woman who smelled like matches and incense.

Well, someone's certainly smitten...

And with each act of glorious, hateful destruction, I felt my god’s love embrace me, consume me, give me life. Any feelings of pity or mercy I might have had for the poor woman I fed from were cauterised.

Ah, come on, like they existed to need cauterising in the first place...

And so I ended it. For all the agony and pain on Gretchen’s face, she didn’t seem surprised when I doused myself in kerosene and set it alight. I think she screamed. She must have screamed.

Tbh, Gretchen may have been traumatised for life but Jude seems to have lost interest in her after, so that was probably fucking lucky for poor Gretchen here.

Jon: Michael? (...) Corridors, weird limbs, laughs like a… headache? Jude: What? No. He’s pale, got a big, weird scar. Smells of, um… Jon: Oh, ozone! Jude: Yeah, that’s the one. Hangs around with the Fairchilds sometimes.

I love that the podcast is lampshading the fact that they've got two recurring characters named Michael (AND one Mikaele on top but at least he's usually referred to by his last name). I wonder at what point Johnny went "Whoops, I may have created a confusion." (I mean, not that it's unrealistic, my UK friend group-and-adjacent-people had enough Andrews, Johns and Matts that they basically all ended up with weird nicknames but it's just a bad idea to have identical names in fiction.)

Jude: Come on. It won’t hurt. (...) I lied. Jon: - SCREAMING IN INCREASING AGONY -

I mean, first of all, duh, yeah, OF COURSE SHE LIED! But also, Johnny is not a bad actor. The scream reminded me a little of that one time that my partner managed to scald a hand with boiling water while making tea (one of the worst sounds I've ever heard, incidentally, would like to not hear that again.)

My impression of this episode

First of all, I adore Jude. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean I'd be friends with her (I mean, duh, she was despicable as a human being and is now a fully devoted servant of the Entity-of-torment-and-loss, having near-orgasms over the idea of making people suffer, so...) but as a character she's just so beautifully over the top! It's fun! And Jon's interaction with her is incredibly interesting because, well, this may be the first time that Jon meets anything Entity-adjacent that is actually afraid of HIM (and yeah, Jude may be putting on a tough act, but she seems fucking terrified.) That was just really fun to watch, to be honest. A little bit of ... vicarious power fantasy, perhaps, at least until Jude turns the tables again. This was just a really enjoyable episode!