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soveryanon · 5 years

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Reviewing time for MAG157! ;___;

- … I’d been making fun of the fact that The Corruption was the unloved Fear of season 4, since we hadn’t had any statement since MAG103… and consecutively, we got a small talk about Jane Prentiss at the end of MAG152, a Corruption statement in MAG153, and now… another one, which dealt with an identified avatar, and was, I felt, the most gruesome Corruption one we ever had. Somethingsomething about how season 4 is the “be careful what you wish for” season, uh. (Well. You never wish for a Corruption statement, you mostly note that there hasn’t been one for a while.)

Jon was suspecting that Jane Prentiss’s attack on the Institute had been a ritual attempt:

(MAG152) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … It’s all that left of her now. Apart from a… jar of ashes in my desk. Just a circle of rotten stone on an otherwise… unremarkable wall. HELEN: More of a legacy than some people get. ARCHIVIST: … It was meant to be a gate, I think. A hole that she… rotted into The Corruption itself. Maybe the start of a ritual. HELEN: Hm. Not exactly impressive, is it? ARCHIVIST: Less complex, certainly. But I think that’s the thing about– … what did Elias call it… “Filth”. I don’t think it really plans much. It just starts to grow wherever it can get a foothold and… if no one stomps it out in time: Game Over. […] I’ve been wondering what they were doing down here.

And it’s a bit terrifying to think that technically, Jane Prentiss was quite… low scale, in the harm she did during the attack on the Institute, compared to what we saw in “Love Bombing” (a whole cult minus one getting eradicated) and Amherst’s actions (contaminating the entirety of Ivy Meadows, and it probably could have spread through Nicole Baxter if she hadn’t lost/cut her hand, and eradicating the entire population of Klanxbüll):

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I knew at that moment that there was nothing that could be done to save the town. […] I found the source of this sickness in the Parkplatz opposite the train station. The cars had been pushed to the side, clearly at great cost to the bodies of those that pushed them. And in the centre was a figure from whom the rot clearly flowed. He was sat upon a most dreadful throne, formed from a dozen, two dozen bodies mixed together like putty, eyes staring out like horror-stricken stars twinkling in the night – and their hearts beating for all to see. A moaning came from that awful seat, voices trying to scream through things that weren’t their throat – and it is a sound I shall be glad to leave behind me when I go to my rest.”

What kind of music was Amherst hearing in his dreams, to go for mass-damage like this every few years? Ivy Meadows happened during summer 2011 or 2012 (dates were a bit inconsistent in MAG036 itself, Elias said in June 2017 that it had been “five years” since the death of Melanie’s father), Amherst’s actions in Klanxbüll happened in 2013, that’s… such a short span to cause so much damage… ;; Really hoping that this concrete lasts forever ;;

- Chronology time, regarding Adelard’s actions since we began hearing about him in season 2:

* 06/02/1991 or 06/07/1991: Adelard had left a statement about the “NotThem”, calling it as such. Although it was referenced in MAG077, Jon explained in MAG078 that he had found another statement in the file:

(MAG077) GERTRUDE: Based on the interactions and effects, I suspect this to be the creature that Adelard Dekker refers to as the “NotThem” in statement 9910607. […] Based on Dekker’s statement, it would seem Polaroids are also relatively stable.

(MAG078) ARCHIVIST: I found this in the folder marked 9910602, where Gertrude’s tape had indicated I would find the statement of Dekker himself. There is nothing else in there, but I think it tells me what I need to know. This thing, this… “Not Sasha”… it’s tied to the table.

(… With an inconsistency regarding the month. Either Gertrude messed up (unlikely.), either Jonny messed up, either Jon messed up in his panic and fortunately still found a Not!Them-related statement despite going for the wrong file with the wrong month.)

* Sometime between 1991 and 1996 (since Eric knew Elias but didn’t know he had become Head before his own quitting&getting murdered): Adelard was identifiable as Gertrude’s collaborator and, amongst other things, threw a “screaming box” in the Thames:

(MAG154) ERIC: She never played dumb when I was stalked by bloated, blood-sucking things, or told me I was “imagining it” when I saw your friend Adelard drop a screaming box into the Thames.

* 04/11/1996: Gertrude recorded Lucy Cooper’s statement (given in September 1994) about the Not!Them taking her mother’s place. In her Final Comments, she mentioned a statement previously left by Adelard:

(MAG077) GERTRUDE: Based on the interactions and effects, I suspect this to be the creature that Adelard Dekker refers to as the “NotThem” in statement 9910607. If the pattern of behaviour is consistent with what he establishes, then further follow-up on this case is pointless: the thing has finished with the Cooper family and will not be revisiting them. It rarely seems to stay in the same place or with the same people for long, though it’s hard to guess at its motives. Personally, I suspect it to be an aspect of The Stranger, though that’s entirely conjecture at this point. […] It is at least reassuring to know that magnetic tape seems to escape being overwritten, so if I get changed, you can be sure this is my real voice. Based on Dekker’s statement, it would seem Polaroids are also relatively stable.

* Shortly before 12/06/2001: Lawrence Moore’s statement described Adelard Dekker, binding the Not!Them to the Web table which had previously been in Raymond Fielding’s ownership at Hill Top Road until the 70s. We don’t know how Adelard acquired the table, nor what happened to explain that he left without it and that Breekon&Hope were the ones to retrieve it afterwards:

(MAG078, Lawrence Moore) “He was black, dressed in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a thin necktie. For a moment I had the idea he might be a Jehovah’s Witness, but one look at his face dispelled that idea immediately. It was hard and stern, set in look of determination, and his short hair was iron grey. He was very thin, with aging skin stretched tight over wiry, corded muscle, and though he was slightly shorter than I was, it seemed like he towered over me. He asked if I knew the man who had left my house earlier that evening. […] At this, the old man’s eyes lit up with excitement, and I took an involuntary step back. If he noticed, he didn’t show it, walking past me into the house and ordering me to get any photos that hadn’t changed. […] He told me his name was Adelard Dekker, and that he was an exorcist, of sorts. […] Adelard Dekker stood in the corner. He was straight and motionless, his lips moving rapidly, though no sound came out of them. In the centre of the room, next to the empty box, stood a table carved from dark wood and wrapped all over with a sprawling, intricate pattern. And in front of that table was the thing that had said it was my cousin. It was long and thin, the tops of it bent against the ceiling and its stick-like limbs flailed from too many joints and elbows. Wrapped around it were thick strands of what I think was spider’s web, stretching back into the table, which I now saw pulsed along its carved channels with a sickly light. The face at the top of that gangly frame was like nothing on earth. […] I didn’t return to my house until the next morning. Dekker’s blue van was gone, and in its place was another one, dirty white. There was something printed on the side, but I couldn’t make it out under the grime. I watched two men in overalls carry that same box out of my house, load it up, and drive away. That was about two months ago, and it was the last time I saw them, the table, Adelard Dekker or the thing that wasn’t my cousin.”

(MAG079) NOT!SASHA: Once upon a time there was a monster, but no one realised. Sometimes someone did and then they were scared, so that was good. But one day a nasty man came along. A nasty man who tricked the monster and wrapped it all in webs and tied it to a table. So the monster got its friends to carry the table all around, and it still got to take faces and scare people.

* 22/01/2006: Adelard sent a letter to Gertrude regarding Garland Hillier’s disappearance in 1867 (the year of Robert Smirke’s death…) and describing Bernadette Delcour’s discovery of his old sealed flat, leading to an encounter with the Inheritors from The Extinction.

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Sorry I can’t be there in person to go over all this with you. I still have a few things to clear off over here, but I thought it would be best to let you know as soon as possible. I am now certain my theory is correct: there is something new emerging. A fifteenth Power. […] Now I know what you’re going to say, Gertrude: odd doors are signs of The Spiral, empty worlds tend towards The Lonely, and eschatology is almost literally the study of The End. But this is different. I feel it. This Fear is new. This is a fear of extinction. Of change. It used to be part of The End, perhaps, when The End of humanity was to be the end of all things; but now, the fear is not of a rapture or a revelation; it is of catastrophic change. A change in our world that will wipe out what it means to be “us”, and leave something else in its place. […] These are new fears, Gertrude, and a new Power is rising to consume them. The Extinction. The Terrible Change. The-Future-Without-Us. […] I know you don’t credit my theories, and I’m sure you’ll have plenty to say on this one, but I’m going to need your help with this at some point – I’m sure of it. I don’t know how you can stop the birth of something that has no life, or mind, or… substance, but if anyone can figure it out, it’s you. I’ve never met anyone so gifted at understanding that… strange, dream logic of the Fears, and if what I suspect about this new Power is true, it could be catastrophic. Until then, I’ll keep searching for evidence, trying to find… instances and manifestations of The Extinction. I’ll keep you updated.”

* October 2008: Dekker had helped Gertrude stop The Flesh’s ritual – suggesting she use explosives? Providing them? Helping her set them up in the gnostic church?

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: When I heard there’d been survivors of “The Last Feast”, I was rather concerned that one of them might be able to positively identify me, [CHUCKLE] which could land me in all sorts of trouble! But she doesn’t seem to remember me at all. […] Dekker really came through with the explosives! It almost felt like cheating. Sad about the loss of history but Miss Wright didn’t seem to think the old Gnostic church got many visitors anyway. […] At least we know for sure that these “grand rituals” can be disrupted by conventional means, though a more… nuanced approach will be needed for some of them, I’m sure. Also… I can’t rely on having this much lead time.

* 04/01/2009: Adelard sent a letter to Gertrude describing an unnamed man’s experience in the Bright Lake amusement park in Colorado, with something Adelard identified as an Extinction occurrence.

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “Gertrude; I wanted your opinion on an encounter I’ve had described to me recently, and given your recent dealing with Viscera, I would very much value your input. Good job on that, by the way […]. So: what are your thoughts? I’m keen to hear your own interpretation of this account. My first assumption would have been The Flesh, based on the cannibalism and strangeness of the bodies involved, but… something about this idea of some sort of “famine world”, its location within a made-man ruin, the whole… societal aspect of it… I’d be inclined to chalk this up as a genuine Extinction manifestation. But I don’t know. Am I drawing wild conclusions, trying to fit the account into my own preconceptions? Keen to know your feelings on the matter.”

(* 03/10/2009: Gary Boylan gave his statement to the Institute, about the destruction of his village following a signal he had deciphered. No mention of Adelard Dekker in the notes.)

* Undated letter, likely circa 2012: Adelard sent a statement to Gertrude about an avatar of The End encountered when he was tracking The Extinction (without naming it), through a string of people dying by carbon monoxide poisoning in their sleep. Adelard also mentioned that Gertrude had asked him to move out some plastic explosives (he hadn’t been her provider, Gertrude had got them elsewhere).

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “I was pursuing my researches into the new emergence I mentioned earlier. I know you are dismissive of the possibility, but if I’m right, the sudden urgency of these “immediate dangers” you are so focused on could very well be a direct result. But that’s for another day, as this particular instance turned out to be unconnected. The point is, I was alerted to a series of deaths by a coroner friend of mine. […] I don’t know if my little “theoretical” is strong enough yet to start taking avatars, but this one, as you’ve no doubt guessed, turned out to be Terminus.”

* 13/05/2013: Judith O’Neill gave her statement about (mostly) unmoving creatures made of garbage, killing a researcher. Judith had been explicitly sent by Adelard:

(MAG149) MARTIN: There’s… hum, a, a note here as well. [PAPER RUSTLING] Looks like Gertrude’s handwriting? Start of a letter to… Dekker, thanking him for sending Judith to her, though… it doesn’t look like it was ever finished or sent. [PAPER RUSTLING] I assume this is another one he was trying to use to prove The Extinction? It… certainly has something in it. Mankind’s trash giving rise to something terrible. And again, fear of the other, inanimate humanoid figures. That’s all very… Stranger, isn’t it?

* Before August 2013: Adelard had apparently been the one to suggest explosives to disrupt The Unknowing. Gertrude made the following comment on 09/10/2014:

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: Another one to cross off the list. Doesn’t help with The Unknowing, though. [HEAVY SIGH] We still have Dekker’s back-up plan, of course, but… it’s very risky. To be sure, I–I think the detonation would need to happen from within The Unknowing, while it was going on.

* 14/08/2013: Adelard Dekker sent an email to Gertrude regarding his suspicion about an Extinction activity in the town of Klanxbüll, which turned out to be the work of John Amherst, from The Corruption. Adelard was poisoned during the fight, and told Gertrude what had happened and how he was choosing to die, ultimately expressing doubts about the reality or the shape of The Extinction:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “You must forgive me, Gertrude, for any typing and spelling errors that might be in this message. My hands are shaking quite badly and my fingers… aren’t what they were. […] But I shall not wait for it to putrefy as the rot overtakes me. I have dragged those other afflicted I could find into the Parkplatz, laid them at the feet of that appalling throne, and… taken the last gifts of that… generous construction site: a dozen cans of petrol. I will sit upon that seat, and release these poor souls from their suffering. [INHALE] And hopefully make things simpler, for the ECDC clean-up crews. But it did not seem quite right to leave without letting you know what happened. And… Herr [Becker?] was kind enough to succumb to the sickness without signing out of his computer, so… perhaps you were right about The Extinction. I’ve been hunting it for decades now, and… while I have seen evidence of its influence in other Powers, I have never found anything to genuinely prove its emergence as a true Power of its own. Perhaps it is an existential fear that flows through the others like a vein of ore; or perhaps the birth of such things is longer and more complicated than I believed. For all that though, I cannot regret the time I have spent seeking it. I have done my duty; and none may ask more of me.”

So… although he sounds absolutely dead-dead, I don’t think this is the last we’re hearing from Adelard. I guess it could be possible that he had just left the Web table binding the Not!Them behind him around 2001 (though quite uncharacteristic), but we’re still missing his statement from 1991, and given that Jon had acknowledged that he hadn’t found Dekker’s own statement, I think it’s safe to assume that we could be hearing about it later (in season 5? Or in MAG160, as a “closure” to Dekker’s own story and investigations, since he was quite important through season 4?), in a written statement or through a recording with Gertrude.

- I’m a bit interrogative about the way Adelard mentioned his investigations regarding The Extinction:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “… perhaps you were right about The Extinction. I’ve been hunting it for decades now, and… while I have seen evidence of its influence in other Powers, I have never found anything to genuinely prove its emergence as a true Power of its own. Perhaps it is an existential fear that flows through the others like a vein of ore; or perhaps the birth of such things is longer and more complicated than I believed. ”

Because the earliest he tried to summarise and essentialise what he felt was the New Power, labelling it “The Extinction”, was in 2006 (MAG134), so only seven years before his death. Was he exaggerating when he said “decades”? Or will we learn more about his genesis, as an addendum, and it was truly a long-time conviction / a dissatisfaction with Smirke’s categorisation? I had already noticed that it was strange (ha) that, although the Not!Them presented itself as a creature from The Stranger (or at least allied to it), the earliest things we know about Adelard was that he was after it… when his description of The Extinction feels very close to some of the Not!Them’s effects (although in lower scales, for the latter); so maybe he had trouble categorising the Not!Them, back then, hence his conviction that a New Power might have been emerging…? Adelard also used some of the names inherited from Smirke’s work:

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “There was… an inevitability to his movements, and I think that is when I realised he was simply serving The End, which I won’t pretend wasn’t a disappointment.”

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Now I know what you’re going to say, Gertrude: odd doors are signs of The Spiral, empty worlds tend towards The Lonely, and eschatology is almost literally the study of The End. But this is different. I feel it.”

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “So: what are your thoughts? I’m keen to hear your own interpretation of this account. My first assumption would have been The Flesh, based on the cannibalism and strangeness of the bodies involved, but…”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I’ve spoken before about how keenly I have watched news of possible pandemics, which is where I suspect The Extinction may pull away from The Corruption during its emergence. […] So, it seemed it was not The Extinction as I had anticipated but simply a new and awful strain of Corruption.”

But he was also occasionally labelling them in unique ways:

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “I don’t know if my little “theoretical” is strong enough yet to start taking avatars, but this one, as you’ve no doubt guessed, turned out to be Terminus.”

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “I wanted your opinion on an encounter I’ve had described to me recently, and given your recent dealing with Viscera, I would very much value your input.”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I have spoken to you before of Christabel, my… contact within the ECDC. She had a run-in with the Crawling Rot some decades ago, and has since then kept me up to date with any incidents they have encountered which display “unusual” properties.”

(Though that last one was also used by Arthur Nolan in MAG145: “Found a mass of the Crawling Rot growing, a while back. Managed to get a hold of the property before it became too big. Gotta wait ‘til it blossoms before we can properly burn it.”)

It is curious that, of all people, we didn’t get Adelard’s story of his first few years, how he came in contact with the Powers, with Gertrude, why/how he came to tracking down avatars, so I think there is a good chance we could get a statement about it, indeed. After all, we keep hearing stories of/from people who have been dead for a while; what I’m curious is when/how it could be done in a way that would “add” something else to the current storyline, if we’re done with The Extinction after the season 4 finale…? (Unless we aren’t.) Or it could be about categorising, or the concept of “Faith” against the Fears, I guess.

- There is something heart-breaking putting together his ways of addressing Gertrude in his messages:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Gertrude; Sorry I can’t be there in person to go over all this with you. I still have a few things to clear off over here, but I thought it would be best to let you know as soon as possible. […] I’ll keep you updated. Stay safe. Adelard.”

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “Gertrude; I wanted your opinion on an encounter I’ve had described to me recently, and given your recent dealing with Viscera, I would very much value your input. Good job on that, by the way; I’m sure the gnostic temple was a great loss culturally speaking, but I can’t help but admire your directness when it comes to dealing with this sort of thing. […] So: what are your thoughts? I’m keen to hear your own interpretation of this account. […] Keen to know your feelings on the matter. […] Oh – one more thing: if you do try to follow up with my source – and I know you have your own ways of finding him should you wish – please be careful. He told me, near the end, that he had recently been worried he was being followed. He keeps catching glimpses of a thin figure in the distance, or disappearing around a corner, and I can’t quite get past the detail that there was no reflection at all in the mirror he used to return. If my suspicions are correct, there’s little either of us could do for him; but do take care, should you make contact.”

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “Gertrude; It should all be here, though god knows I was tempted to take a block for myself just in case. […] Anyway, you owe me a favour. And… maybe another one once you read this. It might come to nothing, but it’s something you should probably be aware of. […] I’m sure you can take care of yourself, of course, but I thought it would be worth letting you know. Good luck, Gertrude. And enjoy the fireworks.”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “You must forgive me, Gertrude, for any typing and spelling errors that might be in this message. […] This is the last time you will hear from me. You must trust me on that and not come looking. Not that you would; I know you’re too smart for sentimentality, especially after what I have to tell you, but I feel it worth saying nonetheless. […] I’ve wondered, Gertrude, whether you are truly as fearless as you seem; or if you are simply a master of disguising your terror…! I suppose I’ll never have a chance to find out. I rather hope it was the former. However much I disagree with some of your methods, it feels good to believe there are people in this world who can stare down the devil without flinching. […] But it did not seem quite right to leave without letting you know what happened. And… Herr [Becker?] was kind enough to succumb to the sickness without signing out of his computer, so… […] I am proud of the work we have done, and it has been an honour to do it alongside you. Goodbye, Gertrude. May you find your rest where no shadows are cast… and no eyes may see you slumber.”

Politely beginning all his letters with “Gertrude”, except for the last one, which began with apologies. Ending each ones with little words of encouragements and concern (“Stay safe”, “do take care”, “good luck”)… up until that “goodbye” in the last one.

Something that MAG157 put into a new perspective, too: in MAG137, Gertrude had mentioned “Adelard’s back-up plan” to thwart The Unknowing. That recording had happened in October 2014; Adelard had been dead for more than a year at this point. When she sighed right before mentioning him, was it only a pragmatic sigh, linked to the fact that she was a bit at a loss to counter The Stranger? Or was it also because she had lost her closest ally, and someone she had been seeing as a friend despite herself, and who wasn’t there anymore…?

(And in the end, Gertrude didn’t have the time to stop The Unknowing and to follow through with Adelard’s plan. Jon, Tim and the others followed in her footsteps and, without knowing, also in Adelard’s, accomplishing the plans of two dead people…)

(- There is still The Mystery Of Gertrude’s Death and thinking again about MAG113 made me realise that, UHOH???

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “Anyway, you owe me a favour. And… maybe another one once you read this. It might come to nothing, but it’s something you should probably be aware of. […] I cannot make any guarantees Justin Gough will remain in the state I left him. And it seems that, as he deals in dreams, it may be worth your while to keep an eye on the statements you take, in case he finds his way here. I’m sure you can take care of yourself, of course, but I thought it would be worth letting you know.” […] ARCHIVIST: This was found tucked into a hard case containing… many blocks of plastic explosive, kept by Gertrude Robinson in a storage unit that I can only assume has… extremely lax oversight. It is unclear if she ever read it. […] I know there are more important things to be doing, but I did ask Basira to have a quick search for Justin Gough, see what might have happened to him. There are records of his residence in an East London care facility until 2015, when he disappears from their records. Several deaths among the staff apparently occurred at roughly the same time. And it will come as no surprise that the inquest returned a verdict of carbon monoxide poisoning in each case. I’m not too concerned, to be honest, my dreams are, uh... well, let’s just say I don’t think they're going be letting anyone else in any time soon.

… Adelard had explicitly warned her about an avatar from The End who dealt with dreams, who went loose again in 2015.

… And Jon wasn’t sure that Gertrude had read this message.

… And in March 2015, Oliver, End-touched person, soon to become avatar, had described his own dreams of Gertrude, terrified, being the target of the vines usually announcing people’s death…

We know that Gertrude didn’t die when she should have (she was still alive in April 2015, if she didn’t lie on the date), and Elias confessed to her murder, and she had plain mundane bullets in her body… But it’s actually extreeeemely suspicious that Justin Gough escaped the year she died? Was The End involved in her death a bit more actively than just through Oliver’s visions…? Or was Oliver’s vision the fate awaiting her if Justin had managed to kill her?)

- One Nice Thing (aesthetically) is that I really experienced Adelard’s realisation right along with him? I assumed that the town was under a new Extinction threat, assumed we were on the verge of meeting our first Extinction avatar… and then, as Adelard already introduced the idea that he had been Wrong and began describing the cause of the town’s downfall, I suddenly realised that OH NO, LANKY AND BROWN COAT, IS THAT–

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “No pale spectre in a lab coat, or twisted golem of petri dishes and test tubes. No; he was… lanky, wearing an ill-fitting brown suit and a smile. I’d never previously had the misfortune to meet him, but I knew the description well enough to recognise John Amherst.”

… and it was.

(MAG036, Nicole Baxter) “The door to the reception opened, and a tall man stepped out. He was rail thin and wore a faded brown suit that seemed to have been cut for a much fatter man. His eyes were a watery blue and his dark hair stood on top of his head in an unruly mess. He must have been around forty, but had a nervous sort of energy to him.”

(MAG055) JORDAN: He was tall, maybe 6ft5? But it was hard to be sure of his shape inside the huge, brown suit he was wearing.

(Extra funny thing is that “ill-fitting brown suit” + “a John” also feels really close to how Jon probably looks like from the outside.)

- I’m so sad for Adelard, but also so proud of him in a way?! It’s a really strange feeling because we’ve never heard him live (so far?), but he was still a reassuring figure in some way. I was anticipating that he could have snapped, because I Remember Oliver, but no: although he was giving up pretty fast when it came to saving their potential victims, Adelard was simply someone who would fight what he identified as evil, putting his life on the line when it came to stopping threatening avatars. It’s interesting to compare what we heard of him with Gertrude: Adelard was firm, a bit callous at time, but not keen on sacrificing people to reach his goals, and was personally involving himself in the cases he was investigating… to the cost of his own life, as it happened in MAG157. (So it was not “like Oliver”, it was “like Gerry”. If you like a character, and you feel like they could be helpful/do some good: either they’ve turned into a monster since then, either they’re dead. … Though, now: we… have no Characters Who Are Helping left still alive at the moment – hoping that it could mean that Team Archive will more or less try to go that way but ;; Not very optimistic about it.)

Adelard had expressed that he was afraid of the idea of dying in his sleep:

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “I’ll even make it a statement. Give your patron something to keep it satisfied. It’s not like I sleep enough to worry about dreams. […] It’s odd, isn’t it? Sleep. That you can never remember or fully pin down the exact moment you lose consciousness. Just lying there, waiting to find yourself in a dream without the first clue or interest in how or when you got there. Or to find your eyes closed and force them open to sunlight and morning, only realising that sleep has happened in retrospect. I wonder if… death is the same way? No clear dividing line, just… gone, only to realise after it’s happened, except for the fact that there isn’t an after. Is that a comforting thought or a terrifying one? Depends on who you are, I suppose. It bothered me when I was young. If I thought too hard about the concept of sleep, of exactly what it was, I would worry myself, and end up having to turn the light on, and read for an hour or two. Everyone always talks about how they want to die in their sleep, but honestly, I think that’s the death that scares me the most.”

So ;; Best outcome you can hope for really is dying on your own terms, uh. We got it with Tim, and Adelard got to face his own death awake, in a situation he chose to put himself in, also turning it in one last “good” action (putting an end to the suffering of the villagers who… indeed couldn’t be saved at this point):

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “This is the last time you will hear from me. […] Perhaps I’m simply prevaricating, trying to cling on to a few more precious minutes of life – but that’s not me. I know what awaits me, and must have no hesitation in going to my reward. [SCOFF] I know you’ve never had much patience for my faith, but perhaps it will provide you some small peace knowing I face my death gladly, knowing I have done my duty before God. […] For all that though, I cannot regret the time I have spent seeking it. I have done my duty; and none may ask more of me. I am proud of the work we have done, and it has been an honour to do it alongside you.”

“Faith” was present in more than one aspect in his last message: as his religion, which had driven him (and in hindsight, I realised that there had been a few words from that lexical field in his past statements) and in which he found comfort in his last moments; as his belief in Gertrude and their “work” together. And, in parallel, there was also a loss of faith, as he was hypothesising that he may have been wrong all along about The Extinction as a Fifteenth Power:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “so… perhaps you were right about The Extinction. I’ve been hunting it for decades now, and… while I have seen evidence of its influence in other Powers, I have never found anything to genuinely prove its emergence as a true Power of its own.”

So, it was a bittersweet ending, but one that didn’t feel utterly crushing either. On the one hand, it’s still a death; it’s upsetting that Adelard died while neutralising a dangerous menace who had caused harm to many people, it’s sad that his death was caused from a Corruption avatar while Adelard had been running after The Extinction all this time – he did something brave and amazing in his last actions, but it would have had more meaning, for him, if it had been against The Extinction… and precisely, John Amherst was a tipping point making Adelard lose faith in his theory. But it’s still honourable, and fits Adelard well, as someone who made that world a bit less dark, who was keeping in mind circumstantial victims without always getting lost in the Big Plans and the Big Picture like Gertrude:

(MAG078, Lawrence Moore) “Then he instructed me to go to my bedroom, and not to leave until he told me it was safe. I did protest at that, and I asked him how my locking myself upstairs would help save Carl. There was no sympathy in his voice when he told me my cousin was dead, that nothing would bring him back, and that my best chance to not join him was to stay in the bedroom until everything was over. He did not seem inclined to tell me what he meant by “everything”.”

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “I may try to interview her again later, though I have my suspicions she may find herself disappearing. She has that… quality about her, I’m sure you know what I mean, o–of an unfinished meal. And I can only hope that when the second course starts, she can remember her way back to Garland Hillier’s apartment once more.”

(MAG156, Adelard Dekker) “… Anyway, I was following up on a young man who had apparently had a nasty experience whilst exploring the ruins of the Bright Lake amusement park in Colorado. You will forgive me if I withhold his name, as I have all the verification I need to be convinced he’s telling the truth, and I find it hard to believe any follow-up you’d be interested in doing would be beneficial for him. He’s earned his anonymity. […] He keeps catching glimpses of a thin figure in the distance, or disappearing around a corner, and I can’t quite get past the detail that there was no reflection at all in the mirror he used to return. If my suspicions are correct, there’s little either of us could do for him […].”

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “I think that is when I realised he was simply serving The End, which I won’t pretend wasn’t a disappointment. But still, I thought if I could deal with him and save a few lives, I might as well. […] I was not quick enough to save the man who lived in that house. Truth be told, I didn’t especially try. I didn’t think I would be able to move quick enough to do so, and was more concerned with being quiet and thorough. […] I knew it wouldn’t kill him, he’s too far from human for me to do so, but I thought that scrambling his brain a bit was probably my best bet. And I was right, as far as it goes. He survived what I did to him, and when the police picked him up after an ‘anonymous tip’ about a break-in, he was barely able to speak, and I very much hope I managed to sever his dreams.”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I knew at that moment that there was nothing that could be done to save the town. But I could perhaps identify the cause – and identify it I did. […] So, it seemed it was not The Extinction as I had anticipated but simply a new and awful strain of Corruption. Still. It was not something I felt I could leave to run its course unopposed. […] I have dragged those other afflicted I could find into the Parkplatz, laid them at the feet of that appalling throne, and… taken the last gifts of that… generous construction site: a dozen cans of petrol. I will sit upon that seat, and release these poor souls from their suffering. [INHALE] And hopefully make things simpler, for the ECDC clean-up crews.”

And it’s so soft that his last words were for Gertrude, not berating her, but almost… comforting her?

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “For all that though, I cannot regret the time I have spent seeking it. I have done my duty; and none may ask more of me. I am proud of the work we have done, and it has been an honour to do it alongside you. Goodbye, Gertrude. May you find your rest where no shadows are cast… and no eyes may see you slumber.”

(Wishing her the best, uh. I can read the mention of “shadows” as innocuous, but I also wonder if it might not be a direct reference to something of Gertrude’s personal history with The Dark?)

(- I also mean: gdi, what is it with season 4 and the way it’s offering me New Ships For Gertrude. We got Gertrude/Agnes, a bit of Web/Gertrude, I was wondering if she didn’t used to have some Feelings for Eric, now I’m REALLY digging Gertrude/Adelard, gdi.)

- Adelard died in August 2013, Gerry in late 2014. Gertrude had previously lost Michael sometime after late 2009 (MAG126 mentioned the upcoming “Great Twisting”), although in his case, she had minutely planned his sacrifice. I’m not sure Leitner was a good judge of character (was Leitner good at… anything.), but he had gotten the feeling that she was getting lonely:

(MAG080) LEITNER: I think she was lonely. I didn’t meet her until about six years ago, after she’d lost the last of her own assistants. She would mention them sometimes. I believe she missed having someone to talk to on occasion. ARCHIVIST: I… I didn’t know Gertrude had assistants. LEITNER: Of course. Three of them, each meeting an unpleasant end.

(During her last year, Leitner was apparently her last “ally”. That’s telling how low she was, and how bad the situation was, I guess.)

Those were rough years for Gertrude, uh? I wonder how much Adelard’s death impacted her – if she took it in stride, or if it almost made her crumble; they had been allied for at least twenty years, at this point, and it really sounded like she trusted him; there was a very specific enthusiasm when she mentioned the explosives stopping The Last Feast in MAG130?

… on the less bright side, I wonder if Adelard’s death was what pushed her to try and seek out Gerry? She had promised to find him in August 2008:

(MAG154) ERIC: I want you to find my son. If Mary is… if she’s gone, or worse… I want you to make sure he’s alright. GERTRUDE: [HUFF] I’m not exactly a mother figure. ERIC: You could hardly do worse than her. GERTRUDE: Fine. But I don’t know what growing up with Mary has done to him. If he’s… gone rotten, I can’t promise anything. ERIC: I understand. GERTRUDE: I suppose he might be useful. ERIC: Oh, sentimental as ever.

But we know she didn’t do it right away:

(MAG111) GERRY: In the end it was Gertrude who saved me. She came to me when I was desperate, nowhere to go, and she offered to help. […] I think you know the rest. I joined Gertrude’s work for a few years. Didn’t realise how ill I was until it finally caught up with me. Then I died.

Gerry mentioned that they had worked together for “a few years”, but Mary Keay ~died~ in 2008 according to MAG004 and haunted Gerry for “five years” according to him in MAG111, so that would put Gertrude finding him around 2013 – so, they worked together for a bit less than two years, before Gerry died. It could be that Adelard’s death was the reason why Gertrude finally decided to honour the promise she had made to Eric, and if so, yikes. Still utilitarian until the end, uh.

(Though: did Gerry remind her of Adelard, at least a bit, in the way he was waving his way through the Fears and neutralising supernatural occurrences and/or begrudgingly helping people to get out…?)

(- Adelard wondering about whether or not Gertrude felt fear reminded me of Arthur’s comment about it:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: [SCOFF] Yeah. … But you don’t actually care about Them, do you? […] All your energy is focused down here, on monsters and… murderers, and all the things doing the dirty work for Them Beyond. You know plenty, sure! But you don’t have that obsession, that stupid urge to try and understand and… classify things that use logic and reality like weapons. GERTRUDE: Hm. Per–perhaps. ARTHUR: [CHUCKLE] Always respected you for that. Takes a strong stomach to not give a shit. GERTRUDE: Eh! You’ll forgive me if I’m not overjoyed at the compliment?

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I’ve wondered, Gertrude, whether you are truly as fearless as you seem; or if you are simply a master of disguising your terror…! I suppose I’ll never have a chance to find out. I rather hope it was the former. However much I disagree with some of your methods, it feels good to believe there are people in this world who can stare down the devil without flinching. [SHORT SNEER]”

And 1°) it obviously puts Georgie to mind, though in her case, her inability to feel fear was inflicted on her, and 2°) … Oliver had seen Gertrude terrorised in his dreams:

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) “Getting closer I realised that there was a person sitting at that desk and it was them that all of this scarlet light was flowing into. I could see none of the figure’s body beneath the flesh that enclosed them, but as I moved around I saw the face was uncovered. It was your face and the expression upon it was far more fearful than any I had seen in eight years of wandering this twilight city. That was when I awoke. […] If you do see this in time and read this far, then to be honest I don’t know what else to tell you. Be careful. There is something coming for you and I don’t know what it is, but it is so much worse than anything I can imagine. At the very least you should look into appointing a successor.”

… so I don’t think Gertrude couldn’t feel it, which means she was probably just really good at hiding it. On the other hand, creature and monsters feel fears and are fed by it, so would it even be possible to fool them if she wasn’t truly fearless?)

- ;; Something bittersweet, too, is that… Gertrude apparently Learned from Adelard and took a page from his book when it came to concrete:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I can’t deny some pride in my solution, Gertrude. In all our discussions of how to contain a being that we could not destroy… I’m not sure we ever hit on a method quite so neat…! I am no builder but, by the end, I think you would have been hard-pressed to criticise how well that concrete had been laid – and Amherst four feet beneath it.”

(MAG103, Dylan Anderson) “If you hadn’t turned up that evening, I don’t know what I’d have done. I know a monster pig wasn’t what you were looking for, but I do appreciate your advice. When you explained the situation, I hoped you’d have some special trick for dealing with it, but I suppose welding scrap metal around the pen and filling it with cement just about works, even if I do owe Mason a favour for borrowing his mixer. I’d have thought the thing would at least try to break free while I did it, but… thank heaven for small mercies, I suppose. A huge block of solid concrete. What ought to do with it? Some sort of engraving, maybe?”

Monster Pig happened in July 2014, so eleven months after Adelard’s message. And Jon had also noticed that Gertrude’s computer had receipts involving “petrol”:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “I have dragged those other afflicted I could find into the Parkplatz, laid them at the feet of that appalling throne, and… taken the last gifts of that… generous construction site: a dozen cans of petrol.”

(MAG066) ARCHIVIST: There’s also the matter of the products she was ordering. There were several online orders of petrol, lighter fluid, pesticides, and high-powered torches. They are sporadic, but notable in that she did not drive, smoke or work in pest control.

… So maybe it was also an idea she got from Adelard’s last actions. Utilitarian, and/or an homage, in a way.

- I’m also HUMMMM re:Adelard, because if there is one thing that’s been recurring when he was depicted fighting avatars or monsters, it’s that he tended to notice what he could use in his surroundings and improvise a lot…

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “Truth be told, I didn’t especially try. I didn’t think I would be able to move quick enough to do so, and was more concerned with being quiet and thorough. The cutlery drawer was largely empty, but after a minute’s searching I did find what I was after: a long, metal skewer. Did you know there are certain forms of brain injury that cut you off from your ability to dream?”

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “At first, I was struck almost with despair, having nothing to hand with which I might attempt a confrontation with this creature. But upon retreating some ways, and considering my options, I realised I actually had… almost the exact resources to hand that I might need. A few minutes spent scouting the surrounding streets even revealed a small construction site, almost precisely suited to my requirements. I returned to the cordon and took what I needed: a stretcher, as many quarantine sleeves as I could carry, and a syringe. […] I loaded the gear into a wheelbarrow I had taken from the building site along with a thick metal chain, and began to head back towards the Parkplatz, stopping only to fill the syringe from a can of garden pesticide I had noticed during my earlier sweep of the houses. […] I dragged the thing over to the building site, and with the last of my strength threw him into the hole that had been left. By this point, the concrete truck I had turned on earlier had been mixing for some time, and it was a simple matter to open the pump and… pour the contents of its hopper down on top of him.”

And isn’t it a bit like Basira?

(MAG142) MARTIN: Would have thought Basira would’ve had more sense, though. DAISY: When Basira and I were partners, I’d see this happen sometimes. She can read a… situation like no one I know, always seems to know the right move, but for all her research, she never wants to put a plan together. I think she just hates all the unknowns, the… variables. [SIGH] Contingencies. If she spots an advantage, she’ll… grab it, and trust herself to figure out the details as she goes. MARTIN: Hm. DAISY: It’s worked so far.

- Aaaah, so confirmation/a few more things about The Eye’s effect!

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “My hands are shaking quite badly and my fingers… aren’t what they were. Even so, just knowing where this is going, this… statement [CHUCKLE], I can feel The Eye’s power on me, be it ever so slight. Steadying me; helping the words flow. Is it strange that… here… now… that seems almost a comfort…?”

I was wondering if something wasn’t at work in the same way as for live statements since people’s letters were so articulate too – it sounds like just being conscious that you’re sending a message to the Institute and/or an Archivist and/or to an agent of The Eye is enough to put you under The Eye’s spell, because your tale interests it? GOSH, it was so sad that Adelard was aware of it, but also that he was potentially stalling since, as long as he was giving a “statement”, he wouldn’t drop dead or reach a state of too much pain to continue…

I’m curious about the fact that the letters Jonah Magnus was receiving were of the same kind – clear enough to be read as statements. Was it “simply” because his penpals from the XIXth century were quite educated and used to sending long, articulate letters? Or was the fact that they knew they were sending them to Jonah influencing them? If so: was it because he was under The Eye’s effects… or because, specifically, he was an Archivist at the time…? (We still don’t know where Jonah fit, back then, if he was more like Elias, or more like Jon… He was collecting supernatural stories, at least.)

- More on the medium Adelard used to give this statement later, but it was explicitly an email:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “You must forgive me, Gertrude, for any typing and spelling errors that might be in this message. […] But it did not seem quite right to leave without letting you know what happened. And… Herr [Becker?] was kind enough to succumb to the sickness without signing out of his computer, so…”

1°) It… worked on a computer. It went through. We only know for sure that statements don’t record digitally in audio form but I was wondering about written ones, whether they could be typed down… Not sure if that’s a confirmation that yes, they can; or if there is something wrong with this statement; or if it’s that somehow, “something” (Web?) helped Adelard’s message to go through.

2°) … There was no static at any point of it during Jon’s reading. I don’t know when statement-reading static has happened for the last time during narration, but there were many moments in this statement at which there could have been, when describing supernatural things…? Why didn’t the tape recorder react to anything at all during the statement, even though Adelard described his encounter with a very powerful avatar? There were no quoted words or verbal exchanges, yes, but the tape recorders don’t only go All Staticcy at those. Overall, I realise that Jon’s last readings haven’t produced a lot of static? Iirc, there was nothing since MAG148, except for a few lines in MAG153 (“Love Bombing”), when there were direct quotes. Is there something hidden in the fact that the tape recorders are reacting less lately…?

- Adelard’s death was Sad News, but I’m so glad that we learned that John Amherst was actually neutralised a few years ago… in the same episode in which we got confirmation that Melanie is alright, is not regretting her choice one bit, and that it didn’t go supernaturally “wrong” or anything.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … No, you’re right, I’m sorry. A–are you alright? MELANIE: Yes! I’m, hum… actually doing okay…! ARCHIVIST: That’s good. MELANIE: [SOFT CHUCKLES] My therapist isn’t happy about it, you know? Uh, unsurprisingly. Tried to have me put away, but they, uh… they let me come here. It’s, it’s been good for me, though! I… I feel alright. I’m, hum… I’m not scared anymore.

I was so afraid that John Amherst would be re-emerging, thus giving Melanie an incentive to go back to business in order to avenge her father? But nop! John Amherst was sealed under concrete five years ago! We’re not safe from him freeing himself, but it’s a hypothetical, not an active threat. Melanie is just free to… enjoy her life. Really free from All That (at least right now), and she… really sounded like she had found peace ;w;

I do also like that it seems like she’s back to the world. The Institute was a closed universe, with its personal rules – only Section 31 officers go when something happens, the Archives team has been isolated (Jon also mentioned that the regular staff didn’t want to talk with him much lately); but now, Melanie is back to another world, with its own rules and workings. Yes, gouging your eyes out is self-mutilation, and means you need help (although in practice, institutionalisation can make things worse); yes, your therapist is going to get worried about it. (The fact that Melanie still said “my” therapist also said, to me, that she was still seeing her? But aouch for the therapist; she must be used to compartmentalising, she must be used to patients self-harming, but probably not to the point of what Melanie did…)

I’m not absolutely sure it was the intended impression, but I reaaally felt that Melanie was currently on painkillers and/or tranquilisers? Her voice sounded almost too relaxed, she sounded like she had just woken up together with The Admiral, and Georgie was insistent on her resting. Nothing negative there – I would find it a bit reassuring for her to be medically handled right now, actually! Doesn’t have to be forever, doesn’t invalidate her words about feeling fine. Just. Melanie is not isolated; she needed help, she sought it, she did something that is understandably perceived as self-harm by society, and she is being tutored to make sure she can relearn to function. (I also wondered, at first, if Georgie was talking to The Admiral or to Melanie because she sounded a bit too cautious rather than tender and concerned, to me? So that would fit, if Melanie’s under treatment right now, and really not needing the extra strain.)

- We lost Tim and he left… so many… Bi babies… in his wake…

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Look, is she here or not? She–she said she was staying with you. GEORGIE: Yes, she’s here. ARCHIVIST: Really? Where’s all her stuff? GEORGIE: Bedroom, why? ARCHIVIST: … No, I just– [STATIC] Oh. Oh! I’m sor– I didn’t– I didn’t realise you were… to–together… GEORGIE: That’s ‘cause it’s none of your business. Now leave.

(MAG086) MELANIE: Then there are some old cuttings about Robin Patton. […] Hmm, wasn’t bad looking, before… well… that.

(MAG106) MELANIE: I don’t think so; Georgie Barker? She does What the Ghost?. […] Well, she and Jon, they… dated. BASIRA: Yeah? MELANIE: I mean, it was years ago.

(That’s also putting another light of Melanie’s discomfort when she mentioned that Jon&Georgie had dated – I was assuming it was mostly because Urk, Don’t Wanna Think About Jon’s Romantic Life since she was Eww at the concept of thinking about him sleeping with Martin, but. (ALSO, the beauty that in the same breath, we had Melanie talking about Georgie, describing past Jon-Georgie, and mentioning Martin’s ~fussing~ over Jon.))

“What’s the Ghost?” is officially queer culture! ;w;

I’m SUPER GLAD for Georgie to get a girlfriend, very !! but a tiny bit less over Melanie&Georgie being together at the moment – but that’s mostly because 1°) I also REALLY love Deep And Very Important Platonic Relationships, and Melanie&Georgie had been that to me so far with Georgie helping her, and we… don’t have a lot of deep friendships at the moment (quite the contrary, we have a lot of pairs who are (not all confirmed but STILL) romantic in nature: Martin-Jon, Basira-Daisy, now Georgie-Melanie), and personal taste but I would have liked to hear about Melanie re-learning to function outside of the Institute before learning that she’s actually romantically involved with the person who had supported her in her steps towards recovery, 2°) … I’m super concerned about Basira&Daisy because, if one romantic relationship had to be canon-canonised, I was expecting them to get that first, and I’m Still Super Afraid About Daisy’s Chances Of Survival By The End Of The Season, so a bit heartlessly strategical here, but thinking that giving us Georgie/Melanie miiiiight be a way to not… destroy all the wlw romances. If Daisy dies, I’m also losing the only Intense Platonic Friendship we have at the moment (hers with Jon), so, sob.

… But then, Melanie is saying that JON IS A FRIEND

(MAG157) GEORGIE: Melanie, you don’t have to do this… MELANIE: It’s, it’s okay. He’s… welcome. As a friend. But that’s it. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Right. MELANIE: But you’re not after a friend, are you, Jon?

AND I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS NEW CHALLENGER!! IT’S SUCH A WILD DEVELOPMENT THINKING BACK TO THEIR FIRST INTERACTIONS…………………

(MAG028) MELANIE: I knew you guys were a bit… slapdash, but this is absurd. ARCHIVIST: No doubt you’re used to a higher calibre of equipment when pretending to see ghosts in old churchyards and mental institutions. MELANIE: People like a show. People like our show. And, even if we do ham it up a bit, even we do add a bit of sparkle, we’re still more respected and evidence-based paranormal investigators than you and your lot. [NERVOUS, DISPARAGING LAUGH] ARCHIVIST: We are not “paranormal investigators”. We are researchers. Scholars. MELANIE: Whatever. […] ARCHIVIST: Hmm. And you’re sure you weren’t… dreaming? MELANIE: Are you serious? ARCHIVIST: I just have to check every possibility. Obviously working in your field, you must have quite a powerful imagination. MELANIE: Great! Great! I should have known this was a complete waste of my time.

(MAG063) MELANIE: You look like hell. ARCHIVIST: It’s been a hard few months. Look, can I help you, because if you’re just after another shouting match… MELANIE: No! I… I actually do need your help. ARCHIVIST: Hm. Interesting. MELANIE: Alright, can you not be an arsehole about it? I just need access to your library. […] I don’t exactly have the “academic credentials” you guys demand. So I apparently need someone to vouch for me. And you’re basically the closest thing I’ve got to a friend here. ARCHIVIST: We’ve spoken once, and we ended up screaming at each other.

So yes, losing a platonic relationship but getting a new friendship in the process ;w;

- I’m not sure the scene actually played this way? But given how The Admiral purred:

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Ah– [DOOR OPENS] MELANIE: Oh? What’s go–, what’s going on? You… you woke The Admiral… GEORGIE: Hey, hey, easy; it’s–it’s alright, he was just leaving. ARCHIVIST: Melanie, I… MELANIE: Jon…? ARCHIVIST: Yeah, it’s… me. GEORGIE: It’s alright, Melanie. Jon, leave. [ADMIRAL STARTS PURRING] ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry, I just… […] I suppose not… GEORGIE: Okay [ADMIRAL MEOWS IN PROTEST], you’re done. [PURRING CEASES] ARCHIVIST: Yeah. [INHALE] Yeah, I am.

I pictured The Admiral rushing towards Jon as soon as Melanie opened the door, more or less climbing on Jon until Jon secured him in his arms. The Admiral’s purrs were loud, so he had to be close to the tape recorder, right? And given his protest when Georgie cut in, she removed him from a comfy place, so that wasn’t Melanie’s arms.

(So: I pictured it as The Admiral in Jon’s arms AND Melanie petting it, able to find him through his purr. Melanie’s voice sounded like she was doing something else at the same time, to me? So yeah. Very close, very intimate, very comfy.)

(Kudos to Georgie for stepping back once Melanie began to talk about herself, without interrupting! She’s a good! Jon also has learnt his lesson from MAG131 and did not interrupt, listened to her! Sadly, Georgie is losing Awesomeness Points because… she retrieved The Admiral before he was done purring? D: Kitty crime??? Georgie, how could you do that to the cat? D:)

- I found Georgie a bit less harsh about Jon, too: not saying that her stances in season 4 haven’t been valid, far from it! But she’s still fair, and she didn’t blame him for Melanie’s injuries, she only pointed out the sacrifice Melanie had to make in order to flee, and wanted to make sure that Jon wouldn’t undo it, which was… extremely legitimate.

(MAG157) [CLICK–] [MUFFLED SOUNDS OF THE STREET] GEORGIE: No, Jon, you’ve done enough! ARCHIVIST: I just need to talk to her. GEORGIE: What don’t you understand? She mutilated herself to get out of that place, and there is absolutely no way I’m letting you involve her again! ARCHIVIST: Look, is she here or not? She–she said she was staying with you.

(And she was right about Jon threatening to pull Melanie back in, since Jon acknowledged he wasn’t really after a “friend” in current circumstances.)

Since Melanie did acknowledge that it might have been hard for Jon to tell her about Eric’s statement, I wonder if Georgie won’t mellow down about Jon a bit, given that Jon has indeed been trying a bit more, lately…? That will depend on Jon’s state at the end of season 4 (are we “losing” him forever? Or will he still try to not totally give in to The Eye, without cutting their link?), but it could be a possibility…

(I liked what we saw of Jon&Georgie’s friendship in season 3 a lot é_è Jon had remembered their break-up as having been a bad one, and despite it, they were getting along in season 3, and Georgie could be harsh and fair with him, so… I still want to cling to the hope that they’d manage to get back on speaking terms at some point, if Jon doesn’t fall entirely and keeps trying like he has begun to do… Maybe there could still be a way for them to build something again… maybe…)

(- At the same time: yes, Melanie&Georgie are legitimate to want to stay out of the supernatural business and to not participate in it anymore.

… On the other hand: if “bad things are coming” and an apocalypse is launched, and the world is changed, and monsters are let loose into the world because what was left of Team Archive wasn’t powerful/competent/numerous enough to prevent it… they won’t have any right to complain about what happens. But that’s interesting, because still “nobody is right/wrong” in their situations, even when they’re not directly harming anybody; if nobody is there to stop powerful avatars, like Adelard did, or to prevent rituals, then what would happen? More victims, probably. So, at the same time, it feels like it’s nobody’s and everybody’s responsibility to step in when they can.)

- Okay, so Basira&Daisy were unavailable, and Jon didn’t have anyone else, but still SOBBING that “someone I can trust” turned out to be Melanie, because gnnn. After learning about Eric’s statement, they made different choices, but I’m so soft for the fact that Jon still valued Melanie’s opinion and…

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Melanie, I… MELANIE: Jon…? ARCHIVIST: Yeah, it’s… me. GEORGIE: It’s alright, Melanie. Jon, leave. [ADMIRAL STARTS PURRING] ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry, I just… It’s Martin. MELANIE: Jon… don’t… Please. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … No, you’re right, I’m sorry. A–are you alright? MELANIE: Yes! I’m, hum… actually doing okay…! ARCHIVIST: That’s good.

… wanted to make sure she was fine!!! Even in the midst of urgency, of the fact that Martin was very likely in Big Danger and Not Fine, Jon still took the time to ask Melanie about it!!

- Jon Learned but at the same time, so many poor choices of words…

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Look, is she here or not? […] Look after yourself. Both of you.

jON… Being an Eye avatar doesn’t mean you have to be insensitive about it…

- ;; Overall: I’m sad that… Jon has indeed learnt. He didn’t dash to the tunnels, trying to find the centre on his own, or to go fight Peter. He immediately understood he needed to think about the broader picture, about who could have wanted him to listen to the tape and read the statement, and his first instinct was to want to talk about it with people he could trust.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Am I just hearing what I want to hear? I need a second opinion, but… Basira and Daisy are… “out”, somewhere. […] I need someone I can trust. [LONG SIGH] […] Please, Georgie, it’s not– … I just need to know I’m not overreacting to something, I need an outside perspective.

It’s mostly that, due to circumstances, all his options have been cut. The timing of Daisy&Basira leaving is definitely too suspicious to think that it was unrelated and had nothing to do with getting Jon isolated, worried, and prone to being easily manipulated into doing something… so I’m guessing that the point was that someone/thing (Elias, Peter or Annabelle) is trying to get him to reach the centre. But Jon did try, and indeed, what other options would he have at the moment? Waiting for Basira&Daisy to come back, while Martin could be getting sacrificed? With the current configuration, I can understand that Jon is not keen on risking it… although, yeah. It’s undoing all the “trust” he was forcing himself to give Martin from afar during this season – his understanding that Martin had a plan, and that Jon had to hope Martin knew what he was doing to ensure Martin’s success. Jon made a mistake once when he tried to “Know” about Peter’s plans at the end of MAG139… and is probably doing a new one right now, confused by urgency. (“A tiny… hairline fracture, which destroys everything.”, to quote MAG139 orz)

… and hum. You know what had previously claimed to bank on Jon’s worry for someone to get him to level up a bit more?

(MAG135) ELIAS: Fine. Consider it a test – things are… coming, things that will need Jon to be far stronger and more willing to use his connection to our patron. His performance during The Unknowing was… disappointing. I needed a way to force him to harness his ability more acutely than he had before. The coffin was a useful tool; Daisy an adequate bait. BASIRA: Then you messed up. Way he tells it, he doesn’t know how he got out of there. ELIAS: But he did. And his powers were no small part of it. Even if he required some assistance, they were what saved him. And he’s still achieved what no one – mortal, monster, or anything in-between – has ever been able to. He climbed out of The Buried. BASIRA: [DRY SIGH] What was the point? You won’t be getting your ritual off from in here so, what do you need him for? What’s so important you need him stronger?

Still squinting very hard about The Bastard and the concept that ~no, he’s not getting his ceremony off from his prison~.

- Amongst all the exchanges, this moment was probably my favourite:

(MAG157) MELANIE: It’s, it’s okay. He’s… welcome. As a friend. But that’s it. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Right. MELANIE: But you’re not after a friend, are you, Jon? ARCHIVIST: I need an ally. MELANIE: Then I can’t help you. [SHORT SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I suppose not…

Because it immediately conveyed that… Jon wasn’t seeking an opinion about whether or not to try to get involved and help Martin – that opinion would have been a “friend’s”. No; at this point, Jon had already decided to go in. And I like that Melanie, of all people, was immediately able to pinpoint that.

- Laughing forever, though, that YESSS, rule of three re:Jon and wlw:

(MAG089) ARCHIVIST: I just… er, you were a friend of Agnes Montague, correct? JUDE: She’s not one of your little stories.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: I think Basira is the same, she's coming along to back-up Daisy, or so she says. I–I– I don't quite get those two, I suppose. What they’ve done, seeing what they’ve seen… It’s a hell of a bond.

I can’t believe it took Beholding’s powers for him to realise. (Though, to be honest: he knew Melanie&Georgie were friends, Georgie was going on dates with other people in season 3, we don’t know whether Georgie is poly or not, so it wasn’t a given that they had gotten together sometime before this episode.)

- You know things are dire when, in the last few episodes: 1°) even Jon said “fuck”, 2°) Jon knocked on a door, not only once but twice.

(MAG146) [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: [BREATHING HEAVILY, FRANTICALLY BANGING ON A DOOR] [A DOOR CREAKS OPEN] [DISTORTION SOUNDS, BRINGING CONSTANT STATIC] HELEN: You rang~?

(MAG157) [CLICK–] [FRANTICALLY BANGING ON A DOOR] [A DOOR CREAKS OPEN] [DISTORTION SOUNDS, BRINGING CONSTANT STATIC] ARCHIVIST: Helen…! HELEN: Jonathan~?

(Well. Banged on a door that wasn’t there.) Reminder that there is few knocking around Jon, and he still diiiiid it, times are… what they are.

(- When was the last time that someone called Jon “Jonathan”? I only remember Georgie’s “Jonathan Sims, are you trying to save the world?” from MAG093, and Elias in his first appearance:

(MAG017) ARCHIVIST: A complaint? I could just as easily complain about her wasting my time! ELIAS: That’s not how it works, Jonathan.

Helen had been generally replying to Jon on the same level when it came to names/designations, so was she just playful, or was this a way to point out that “Helen” is technically as formal as “Jonathan”, and not something someone close to Jon would call him? Even Melanie calls him “Jon”. Why “Jonathan” suddenly? Just for the variety?)

- SAD for Jon that his option as “ally” was… Helen, given what we’ve seen of her lately:

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: I need to know that’s in there, what’s at the centre, it’s–it’s important, Martin… I need to know. HELEN: [CONTAINED TITTER] That’s a shame. Because I’m afraid I’m not going to tell you. ARCHIVIST: What…? Why not? HELEN: Because I have a good enough sense of what’s going on to know that it will be much – more – fun – without – my – involvement…! [HELEN LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, ECHOING] […] ARCHIVIST: Just tell me what’s going on – please! HELEN: Bad things, Archivist. [HELEN LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, ECHOING] Really – bad – things!

It sounds like she’s going full Distortion lately, uh? She seemed comparatively so stable and straightforward, in MAG131…

- AHHAHA, Helen had reminded Jon about her sharpness recently:

(MAG152) ARCHIVIST: Huh? You’ve got hands. HELEN: Sharp enough to pull out worms. Kill a few old men. Maybe stab an overeager Archivist… ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] HELEN: But my physicality is as much an illusion as everything else about me. Think of me… as a bear trap. Not a sword.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: I don’t have time for this! [STATIC] What is at the centr– [SHARP SOUND AS HELEN GRABS HIM BY THE THROAT] HELEN: No. We are not playing your game now. ARCHIVIST: [PAINED SOUNDS] HELEN: Don’t forget how sharp I can be, Archivist. Perhaps here, now, you’re powerful enough to learn what you want from me. But if you try, I promise you I will resist, and only one of us is going to survive the attempt. [SHARPING SOUND, RETREATING]

“Not a sword”, uh.

And we’re back to Jon getting whumped and threatened by everyone. It’s… interesting that Helen felt that Jon’s compulsion was an actual threat – it had annoyed Jude, too, but Helen directly went for the throat (… apparently, it was actually truly the throat in the script, Anil said). Would getting straight answers from The Distortion cause it harm on an essential level, like it potentially happened with Breekon when Jon “extracted” his statement and got to “know” him?

- Also interesting that Jon’s compulsion is apparently getting stronger? You would think that Jon’s powers would begin to crash and burn since he’s quit taking live statements, especially since Helen advised him to get a victim to replenish himself, but nop. Is it still from the power-boost Jon got when he chose not to die? Is it because of the new Fears he experienced over season 4 (Flesh taking ribs out of him, going and getting out of The Buried, staring at the Dark Sun)? Is it because we’re in 2018, and it’s supposed to be kind of a zenith for Beholding given that it’s the Institute’s anniversary…?

- … I was very scared that Jon might have forced a statement out of someone on the way to Georgie’s, but given how Helen invited him to find one right now, doesn’t seem to be the case!

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Fine. [PANTING] Can you take me there? To the centre? HELEN: I honestly don’t know. But I’m not inclined to risk it. ARCHIVIST: Damn you! HELEN: Run home, Jon. Find a victim on the way~ Chaos is coming, and I think you’d best be ready.

Which is a relief ;;

I’m… super worried about Basira and Daisy, who left Jon absolutely unsupervised, and with Jon proving that he is able to go outside. Melanie is not there anymore either to check on him, and Jon had told Martin juuust a few episodes ago that:

(MAG154) ARCHIVIST: Honestly: thank you. [EXHALE] It’s been hell, but… I–I did need to hear it. MARTIN: Oh, hum… Uh, g–good. Heh. Are the others… helping? ARCHIVIST: Oh! [DRY CHUCKLE] They’ve been keeping a… very close eye on me…!

… but no, it’s really not the case right now ;; And I’m worried again. What’s the point of Jon getting caught and made to stop in the last third of the season…? I still feel like if he makes new innocent victims, then it’s indeed over for him (there would be nothing to differentiate him from other avatars who feed and prey on innocents to stay alive); is his withdrawal a step towards something else…? Or is it to exemplify that there could have been another option, that Jon didn’t hold to it and crashed himself down in the end…?

- From their point of view, I’m REALLY worried that Daisy&Basira left suddenly, leaving Jon unsupervised and alone because… why would they.

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Am I just hearing what I want to hear? I need a second opinion, but… Basira and Daisy are… “out”, somewhere. They left in a hurry and didn’t tell me why; now, their phones are going to voicemail. Maybe they’re just… on the Underground, and probably th– … That doesn’t help me now. [SIGH]

The way Jon phrased it, it seems like he saw them leaving (it wasn’t that he couldn’t find them or anything), so? Why would they choose to not tell Jon? What could make them leave together, Daisy included, when Daisy was still “weak”? They could be trapped in Helen’s corridors right now (like Tim&Martin at the end of season 2), or in The Lonely because Peter wanted to get Jon absolutely isolated, but I’m still a bit baffled about why they would leave Jon unsupervised and without telling him anything.

1°) Is it that Basira managed to convince Daisy to Hunt again (nooo, Basira, don’t…), and to go after Trevor&Julia… ;; (Or Julia&Trevor were spotted somewhere, and they left to get them with Daisy trying hard not to Hunt.)

2°) Same thing, but with Annabelle Cane?

3°) Maybe they left for the tunnels on their own because something’s happening down there/Basira found something about it in the Archives, and it was really important to not talk about it (because Elias Watching, or The Web having its many eyes on him) and/or because Jon is still an avatar of The Eye…?

4°) Or plainly: they read Adelard’s statement, were the ones who left it on Jon’s desk, and are trying to stop Peter&Martin. … Would still be very stupid, tho, because OF COURSE Jon would panic about it ;; Unless they read it, hid it, and something else pulled it out to get Jon to panic. Could Martin have contacted them about something they need to do without Jon knowing? Basira knew that Martin was planning to go for a self-sacrifice; if it’s tied to this, it could explain why they didn’t tell Jon anything regarding their departure.

5°) … It would still go back in the “but why not tell Jon!!” category, but I’m really worried that there is something very wrong with Elias’s prison right now, hence why they left in a hurry – that either he has disappeared (and/or was “Peter’s map”, so Peter got him out), either the prison is unresponsive and it turns out it has been under Elias’s control for a looong while. He didn’t seem too upset about the prospect of going in MAG120, the Institute was built with strong ties to the Millbank prison (so it’s not an unfamiliar place for The Eye to thrive), and we still don’t know what he’s “eating” (/how come Elias is fine, as an avatar of The Eye, while Jon is suffering so badly from withdrawal? Is Elias himself really under withdrawal?)…

(MAG120) POLICE OFFICER: By all means, mister Bouchard: why don't you have a look in my head, and see exactly what will happen to you when you mess with me. ELIAS: [GRUNT] There will be no need for that, inspector, I’m sure we’ll get along famously. POLICE OFFICER: Good. ELIAS: Best of luck, Martin. Ah, let the others know I shall be thinking of them. MARTIN: [SIGH]

(MAG127) BASIRA: Can we cut the bullshit? ELIAS: What “bullshit” might that be? BASIRA: The part where you pretend you don’t spend your whole time watching us. ELIAS: … Sometimes I’m eating.

+ There is the fact that Elias spent this entire season in prison, and I have trouble picturing him still inside at the beginning of season 5. He’s getting out before that.

- ;; GODS, Jon listening to Martin&Peter’s exchange was so tense and heartbreaking… we knew that Jon had listened to previous tapes, but it was something else to hear his deep breathing, really heavy and conveying how much he was… upset? Worried? Angry about Peter?

(MAG157) [CLICK–] [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION] MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “… Will I be coming back?” PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “You’re not going to die–” ARCHIVIST: [LONG, SHAKY INHALE] PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “–if that’s what you’re asking–” ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “–but… no. If all goes well, you won’t be.” ARCHIVIST: [DEEP, SHAKY BREATHES] MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “[LONG INHALE, EXHALE]” PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “How does that make you feel?” ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “… Nothing.” ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “[SNORT]” ARCHIVIST: [LONG EXHALE] MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “Nothing at all…!” PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “Excellent. I’m so proud of you, Martin.” MARTIN’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “I really don’t care.” PETER’S RECORDED VOICE FROM MAG156: “Perfect.” [CLICK.] ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] This… tape was left on my desk.

1°) I was wondering, but Peter’s voice indeed records on tape!

2°) Complete with the squeal of distortions that are his trademark when we’re hearing him live. So it’s indeed something that tampers with the recording a bit, but not to the point of being inaudible.

3°) It was the worst pre- and post-supplemental to hear when it came to Martin… the one when he sounded the most “lost into the Lonely”…………. And he had said he wasn’t sure whether he still cared about ~Jon hearing his voice~ at the start of it…

And at the same time: given how Martin had been so self-aware of being recorded, of Peter being potentially in the room… the question is still open. Elias did acknowledge that Martin was manipulative:

(MAG138) MARTIN: … What? [HUFF] That’s it? No, no monologue, no mindgames? You love manipulating people! ELIAS: That makes two of us. MARTIN: [HUFF]

And was it only about keeping tapes from Jon behind Peter’s back? How much can we trust of what we heard from Martin during season 4? Even Jon had managed to hide that he had attacked people from his recordings; it took Jess’s complaint and Helen calling Jon out for him to admit what he had done. Does Martin truly not “care”, as Peter was glad to hear, or was Martin feeding Peter what he wanted to hear, too…?

(tl;dr Web!Martin is not dead as long as Martin is still alive :|)

(- I'm Still Not Claiming That It’s Romantic On Jon’s Part Until We Get A Very Explicit Confirmation Because I Wanna Raise The Bar Higher, but: Jon… Jon, you big worried bi…

Urk… The fact that he went “Martin” first, before giving Helen a formulation that she probably wanted to hear (=> Jon as an Eye-avatar Wanting To Know…))

(- Last minute Extinction speculation, but I wonder if Adelard’s most important speculation in his last message wasn’t this one:

(MAG157, Adelard Dekker) “while I have seen evidence of its influence in other Powers, I have never found anything to genuinely prove its emergence as a true Power of its own. Perhaps it is an existential fear that flows through the others like a vein of ore”

… what if, indeed, The Extinction had never been a Fifteenth Power… but a kind of enhancer? Every time Adelard was prone to label an occurrence as an Extinction one, it felt like it was operating on a big scale. What if The Extinction is indeed something new, but mostly boosting good old Fears into something bigger, scarier, more effective – and a few of them, such as the Corruption, would obviously be more compatible than others?)

- There are indeed so many options about who left the tape and the statements, and why:

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] This… tape was left on my desk. I don’t know by who, but to my mind there are… three options. Martin has left it here, to let me know that… whatever the situation is with Peter Lukas, it is entering its final act and he needs my help. Alternatively, Peter may have left it here to… goad me into action? Or just to gloat, to highlight my helplessness and everything. [SIGH] Or Annabelle Cane is trying to manipulate me into thinking it’s one of the other scenarios. Previously, the Spiders have made their presence clear when they’ve sent me… “hints”, but I can’t take that for granted. I don’t know what to do…! [SIGH] There’s a statement with it. It looks pretty recent – hm! First time in a while I’ve been… wary of reading one. … Still. I guess… [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] [PAPER RUSTLING] […] This, uh… this changes things. I–I think. … If Martin found this, r–read it already, then perhaps he’s having… second thoughts about, about Peter and The Extinction, this… this could be a cry for help, his way of asking me to follow him without Peter knowing, or… [EXHALE] Or what? I don’t understand – Martin’s been quite clear he doesn’t want my help…! Am I just hearing what I want to hear? I need a second opinion, but…

1°) But Jon casually ignored the fact that the statement was a last message, sent to an Archivist, to say goodbye, and that… that could have been what Martin was aiming at. (I’m not really digging that Martin would have done that without leaving a message on his own, though; even if he were to stop caring about Jon, he would still keep in mind that Jon would be prone to doing drastic things to try to save people, or to run into danger. He got a whole discussion with Daisy about it in MAG142, and asked Basira not to tell Jon that he wasn’t planning on coming back just a few episodes ago.)

2°) The tape and the statement have been left by different persons/things, and had different purposes, and/or one of the factions could have subtilized something else to prevent Jon to connecting dots.

3°) A big question is also who was aware of Adelard’s last message (and of his death). I lost my bet that Peter had killed him, but still: it’s extremely suspicious that Peter never mentioned in front of Martin the possibility of getting Adelard’s own help… so he must have known it wasn’t an option. We never heard Martin questioning about it, so… Martin might have found out, or guessed about it, too.

4°) Adelard’s message was explicitly an email:

… And Peter’s not good with computers:

(MAG126) PETER: Anyway, I’m very excited to see this rota you’ve put together. Never had much of a gift for– MARTIN: Okay. PETER: –administration myself; too many variables. Now, this box on the left, that’s the library stuff, yes? MARTIN: What? N–n–no, th–th–that’s, no, those are the dates, I– … Look, are you sure you don’t want me to teach you? It’s, it’s a very simple program– PETER: No. No. Can’t stand computers. Besides! That’s why I have an assistant, isn’t it? MARTIN: [SIGH] Yeah. I guess so.

Unlike Annabelle (who was very interest in the www in MAG123), and unlike Martin. Who printed it out? Gertrude? Or someone else, very recently?

- ;; Is next week Jon trying to reach the centre of the tunnels already (and unknowingly being Peter’s map, being tracked when thinking he was tracking Peter&Martin?), using or not using Leitner’s supernatural copy of The Seven Lamps of Architecture, or going to ask Elias for help because he’s desperate………………… I don’t see many more options for Jon at this point… There is still the Threat of Jon’s inner door looming here:

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] It’s… hard. It’s like there’s a–a–a door, in my mind. And behind it, is… i–is the entire ocean. Before, I didn’t notice it, but now, I know it’s there, and I can’t forget it, and I can feel the pressure of the water on it. I, I, I can keep it closed… but sometimes, when I’m around p–people, or–or places, or… ideas, a drop or two will push through the cracks, at the edges of the door. And I’ll… know something. BASIRA: … What happens, if you open the door? [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: I drown.

… and I’m dreading that yes, he would try to open it to find the centre, in order to find Martin… ;; (And that there is actually no centre; only Jon, with his sea of knowledge, in the middle, thus precipitating the bad things Helen was cackling about.)

- As usual: what are Elias/Annabelle/Peter’s plans and aims, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgggg

(- Hi, guess who was there at every 38th episode of a season so far:

(MAG038) ARCHIVIST: Urgh. Urgh. [SOUND OF CHAIR SCRAPING] I see you… [THUMP… THEN SOUND OF COLLAPSING SHELVES] [NOISES OF EXCLAMATION] [DOOR OPENS] SASHA: Alright? ARCHIVIST: Ah… Yeah. A… spider. SASHA: A spider? ARCHIVIST: Yeah. I tried to kill it… the shelf collapsed. SASHA: I swear, cheap shelves are… Did you get it? ARCHIVIST: Ah… I hope so. Thinks so. Nasty, bulbous looking thing. SASHA: [CHUCKLES] Well, I won’t tell Martin. ARCHIVIST: Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem.

(MAG078) ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERED] It is remarkably easy to buy an axe in Central London. Harder to sneak it into Artefact Storage but not impossible. I don’t know if destroying this is going to kill that thing… but I am damn sure it’s going to hurt. […] Hollow. Just cobwebs and dust.

(MAG118) DAISY: Shut. Up. BASIRA: It’s just cobwebs. ARCHIVIST: There’s no such thing as just cobwebs! I don’t like it. TIM: Tough.

MmMMmmmMMmmmMMMmm.)

Title for MAG158 is… ouft. F–finally, I guess?

So, hum. Beholding, I guess? (It would be the 5th one this season if we count MAG138 as mostly Eye’s… ;;) And probably tunnels stuff. Depending on how the groups are split, could be Peter&Martin, Basira&Daisy&Elias or Elias&Jon, I guess… I’m mostly expecting no statement and a two-part climax like in season 3, but if there is a statement, I guess it could be read/told by Elias, whether alone or ~in company~ (a letter to/from Jonah Magnus? Another thing from Smirke’s earliest days? Something related to [the title itself]?).

Regarding the… less concrete aspect of the title, it… could be either about Elias (is he really confined.), either about Jon and his powers, I guess……………… could be Jon opening his ~inner door~ to try to find Martin/the centre of the maze, too……………….

#mag157 #tma liveblog #tma season 4 #long post/#5 #tma spoilers #the magnus archives

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centaurianthropology · 5 years

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The Magnus Archives ‘The Architecture of Fear’ (S04E18) Analysis

ROBERT SMIRKE EPISODE! ROBERT SMIRKE STATEMENT! My excitement knew no bounds heading into this episode about the side character I find the most intriguing of all the side characters, and the result was even better than I’d hoped. Come on in to hear what I have to say about ‘The Architecture of Fear’.

Holy shit, we kicked it off hard with that conversation between Elias and Martin. Elias confirmed that everything Peter was saying about the Extinction was ‘true’ (though I want to know the value of that truth, because the way he said it definitely seemed to imply a degree of equivocation), that Peter is trying to stop the end of the world, and that for some reason Elias can’t directly help. Instead he gave Peter the Institute and Martin to use to stop it, which is … a lot. Giving up the seat of his own Power’s influence to the Lonely in order to stop the Extinction’s emergence either means that Elias really does take the threat seriously and is helping as much as he can, or he wants to make the emergence take place in the tunnels for some reason. My money is on the latter, as Elias plays too many games, and I can’t imagine his assistance to Peter wouldn’t come without a great big catch.

He also confirmed that Peter does want Martin for the Lonely, and that Martin is the only one who can make that decision. In fact, it’s such an important decision that Elias won’t even try to manipulate him (and I was very intrigued by his dig that Martin also loves manipulating people, either indicating that they’re more alike than Martin likes to admit, or that Martin still has some affiliation with the Web as well). The weight of this one decision is clearly enormous, and I think there’s a third option that no one has mentioned, but might be the single most important option of them all. I’ll get back to that, however, after I talk about the statement itself.

In the meantime, Elias and Martin��s conversation also seemed to imply that either Martin really did go into helping Peter fairly blind and came to Elias for help extricating himself (possible but disappointing), or it means that Martin does have alternative plans, and is trying to manipulate Elias as well. Elias certainly implied as much, and honestly I would love Martin to be using Elias as a means of indirect communication with Jon, all while knowing that Elias would tell Peter, and further solidify Martin’s cover that he’s following Peter without any direction of his own. But, unless Martin really is orchestrating a masterful manipulation, it seems very possible that he really is simply in over his head while trying to protect the others. He hasn’t told Jon about the Extinction because he knows Jon’s penchant for suicide runs. So he may well be making one of his own. Again, I’m hoping it’s not so simple as that.

And Elias, in spite of his inability to try to influence Martin on his choice regarding allegiance, was otherwise happy to try to manipulate right back. I do believe Elias peppered useful information throughout the conversation, but couldn’t resist doing so in such a way that Martin would miss a great deal of it. I do like that they’re far more on the same page about that these days, and that Martin has grown enough spine to tell him to fuck off, but Elias still needs that upper hand. He needs to hoard his information, and dole it out in drips and drabs. It makes me worried about what manipulations he’s running on Basira, who is working most closely with him at this point.

As much as I could go on about their conversation, the real meat of this episode was the statement itself. Because there are statement givers who know nothing about what happened to them, statement givers who know a little, and then there’s Robert Smirke: perhaps the best authority on the powers in the last two centuries. A man with such a breadth of knowledge and influence, he might have invented the rituals, or given them shape enough to let the powers try them.

And apparently he wasn’t the only one with that sort of power. He spent his life trying to get others to follow him on the path of neutrality, and I was very surprised to find out that the person who may have lasted the longest before he, too, fell to a power was none other than Jonah Magnus.

That’s a hell of a revelation! Jonah Magnus has always been the original adherent of the Eye in London. We know that Von Closen was the original Archivist of this era, but I had assumed that Magnus filled Elias’ role from the moment he acquired Von Closen’s books. But apparently Magnus resisted that call for decades. Despite founding the Institute in 1818, he was still an independent entity as of 1867, or at least very recently fallen to the Eye due to his own fear of death. Both he and Smirke were courted for years by the Beholding, but both apparently resisted, even after whatever falling out they had (and I want to know a lot more about that).

And that makes the Institute even more interesting. It houses the Avatar of the Eye, the Archivist, but it’s possible that the Institute itself was established to be an independent force. Whether that’s still true is debatable. I think that, given both Elias’ words and actions, he is very much a high priest of the Beholding. He definitely seems like he wants the Watcher’s Crown to succeed. He wants the Archivist to fulfill his role. His actions are far more trustworthy than his words, and he has always been very Beholding. Is it possible that’s a lie, and he’s more independent than he wants to let on? Absolutely, but I think it’s telling that he murdered Leitner almost as soon as he found him, even though Leitner was the only other person who actively succeeded in staying neutral.

So the Institute was founded to be neutral ground, but it was taken over by the Beholding at some point, whether during Magnus’ life or after. That’s why it was built on or near Millbank. It was an extension of that neutrality. Is that why Peter thinks he can use the Millbank tunnels to stop the emergence of the Extinction? Jon thinks he mapped those tunnels fairly thoroughly, but I get the feeling those tunnels shift, and that they can hide themselves as needed. Jon saw what he needed to see, and they might be totally different now.

And speaking of Jon, isn’t it interesting that Smirke experienced all the powers in his dreams? While it’s possible that power is granted by something outside the Eye, I have to wonder if Smirke wasn’t a fledgling Archivist. But instead of embracing that role, Smirke turned his visions and dreams to neutrality. He used his head for architecture to try to balance all the powers against one another, and it seems like he may well have succeeded for quite some time.

But there was, apparently, a side effect. By detailing the powers, creating his taxonomy, and explaining them in a way that apparently no one had before, Smirke might have given form to the rituals in a way that made them performable as they never had been before. His extrapolations, based on the words of Maxwell Rayner, created the architecture by which the powers could become ascendant. His balance was a double-edged sword. Even as his building could contain the powers, they could also concentrate them. The Avatars of those powers were either repurposed, or new avatars emerged specifically made to enact the rituals. The Dancer, I would think, didn’t exist before the Unknowing existed. And even now the Dancer is crafted when the Unknowing draws near, using the life of another avatar as the fuel for its emergence.

This is probably why there’s been such an acceleration since the 1800s of attempts at rituals. I had wondered how, throughout all the history of humanity, no one had managed a successful ritual. It seems as though it’s because they either didn’t exist or hadn’t been given form before Robert Smirke.

Robert Smirke tried to save the world with balance, and instead gave every power the means of destroying balance forever. There’s a real tragedy in that, which is probably why I love his character so much, despite barely ever seeing him.

And as for Jonah Magnus, it turns out he was terrified of dying. Which, again, bolsters the notion that he might have, in the end, abandoned the road that he and Smirke walked together in order to save his own life, after a fashion. If he did give himself to the Eye, creating an immortal being that assumed the identities of others … well, I really don’t think it’s coincidence that Elias was in this episode. And I think that the ‘Elias is Jonah Magnus’ theory just got a great big boost. And if he was Magnus, and Magnus fell to the Eye at the end of his life, it makes sense that he would also fall to the temptation to use the Eye to prolong his own existence. And the longer he lived, the more and more tempted he would be to finally don the Watcher’s Crown. I had thought for a time that Jon would have to be the one to wear it, but now I’m almost certain it will be Elias.

But unfortunately, Jon doesn’t have this information, Martin does. And Martin is in a unique position. He’s apparently being used to try to stop the emergence of the Extinction, and is collating his information on it to pass on to Jon as a backup in case he can’t prevent the emergence of the Extinction (or if he himself is supposed to be the sacrifice) alone. He also has a better grasp on the nature of emergences, and on neutrality, even if he dismissed it at this time.

And that finally leads me to that third option I mentioned earlier. The Beholding and the Lonely and Web are all pulling at him, but can’t coerce him. For some reason, Martin’s choice needs to be totally his own, and I have to wonder if that isn’t because there is an unspoken and even more powerful option available to him: reject them all. Follow not Magnus or Lukas or the Web, but follow Smirke and Leitner. He’s one of the only characters we know to be actively courted by multiple powers. Despite being at the Institute for over a decade, he’s never fallen to the Eye. Despite being isolated by Peter, he’s, if anything, even more resistant to the Lonely. He’s had the Web hovering in his periphery for years, and has never given in.

Could this statement, given to him by Peter to show him that the emergence of the Extinction was possible, actually have a double, perhaps unintended meaning? Robert Smirke had power. Ridiculous amounts of it, really. He potentially CREATED the rituals. He used human architecture to harness the powers and establish a balance of them in London during his lifetime. It may have been fleeting, but that’s insane power. And all done because he refused the siren call of any individual power, relying instead on his own ingenuity.

Could Martin do that? He’s not Smirke, with his architect’s brain, or Leitner with his collection. The only thing Martin has in that abundance is compassion and—though he wouldn’t quite say it at the end of the episode—love. He’s driven by the need to protect those around him, and driven by his awkward, unspoken love for the Archivist.

Is that enough for balance? Is balance even a possibility? Martin seems skeptical at this point, but both Smirke and Leitner have shown that it can be done. Both of them seem to have died in the balance, even if they were killed by agents of a power. And isn’t it interesting that in both cases, it was the Eye that killed them, even though they were both allied strongly with agents of the Eye? Makes me worried that Elias is pushing Martin toward neutrality because neutrality is a necessary component of the Watcher’s Crown. Certainly it seems like Smirke’s death was a component of Magnus’ attempt at it (if indeed he did attempt it, and wasn’t simply using Smirke as a means of prolonging his own life, as Smirke also implied.

Conclusions

We were given a lot to mull over this week. A lot of confirmations about what Robert Smirke did and who he was, as well as implications about Jonah Magnus, the Watcher’s Crown, Elias, and the nature of neutrality. Martin is both maneuvering and being maneuvered, and seems to be avoiding Jon to protect him from himself. Which is both stupid and exactly what Jon did throughout season 3. The role reversal is aggravating, because you’d think that Martin of all people would have figured out that communication, or a lack thereof, was what caused so many catastrophes for them before.

I still don’t trust Peter, or his plan. I don’t trust Elias, either, and though I trust Elias to tell more truths than Peter, I also trust him to phrase them in such a way that people constantly get the wrong impression. Especially if he’s really Jonah Magnus having succeeded, at least in some way, at making himself immortal, then he’s been running a very long game. His complicated relationship with the apocalypse is likely because he needs some component of the Extinction’s emergence to power the Watcher’s Crown. He needs aspects of all the powers to subsume them. And he’s been waiting centuries for all of these things to line up just right.

And, perhaps, he needs another neutral party. Maybe Leitner was too dangerous, but Martin might just fit the bill. Elias could not tell Martin what to do, wouldn’t even try to manipulate him on that front. And I think that speaks to the nature of free will and choice in this universe, which has become a more and more prominent part of the story. Martin really does have to make the choice to fall to a power or retain his neutrality on his own for it to mean anything. He has to be willing. Whatever Peter and Elias and every other power under the sun have planned for Martin, they can only nudge. Peter has isolated him, but cannot simply claim him the way he’s claimed others. Elias will spin his stories and manipulate Martin on every other count, but on the choice, he has to remain silent. Even the Web, though it clearly appeals to Martin’s more manipulative side, has made no overt overtures to him. I’d be very interested to see what a conversation between himself and Annabel Caine would look like, because I think she would both understand him very well, and also need to remain silent on his alignment.

A true-neutral Martin is something I’ve thought about before, and this episode simply confirms how much I want to see it. I want to see him reject all the powers, and gain both independence (a huge thing his character needs for his arc) and strength through it. But, of course, his own neutrality may secretly play into Elias’ own plans regarding the Watcher’s Crown, positioning them both for season 5.

I haven’t been this excited about an episode in quite some time, and I’m very glad to have the old passion for this show back. The writing was top-notch, the two performances were fabulous (I really also like how Martin’s gone from terrified defiance to almost equal footing with Elias, and neither of them indicate that they notice the shift in their relationship). We’re only two episodes away from the mid-season finale, and I have absolutely no idea what it’s going to be about.

I suppose we’ll see in the next two weeks.

#The Magnus Archives #analysis

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