#the most i’ve managed to get out of gerry is ‘oh god does she have to come in?’ and josh just says ‘she’s scary :(‘

[fingertipsmp3]

Getting notifications from the work group chat and it’s that one person you hate

[myhockeyworld87]

Nervous Regrets - Tyler Seguin - Part 22

Word Count: 6489

POV: Reader

Warnings: None

Notes: I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas today if you’re celebrating! I’m so excited for you all to read this one, it’s the proposal; and it’s so soft. I hope you guys enjoy it as much I enjoyed writing it. I’m also going to do a 22.5 which will be from Tyler’s pov, so you can see all he went through. With that, happy reading everyone. Peace, love and hugs to all!

Tyler didn’t get to stay home long after Thanksgiving, in fact he was back on the road in a couple of days. This trip was extra hard as he was gone for another ten days. These long stretches were killer on you both, for lately it seemed like you just wanted to spend all your time with each other. Though he did call you several times throughout the day and always at the end of the night before you both would fall asleep.

You kept yourself busy looking into new charities for Tyler to endorse. Most game nights you spent with the wags, either at one of their houses or at yours. It was always fun hosting the ladies at the new house, and they always made sure to have some fun non-alcoholic beverage to include you in toasting the teams wins. The only strange thing was when you’d talk about the Fire and Ice gala that was coming up, no one seemed to have any information on it or what the event was even about. Most of the time the Stars foundation would at least reach out to one of you with all the details, though this time it seemed very hush hush. However, you, Alandra and Andrea all made appointments at the salon that day for a day of pampering and to get all dolled up.

 Tyler was still pouting that he hadn’t seen the dress you’d bought, but just as Candace and Cassidy suggested, you’d wanted to wait till that night to show him. You’d actually caught him snooping around in the spare bedroom closet looking for it one day. “I just want to see it.” Or so he explained when you caught him rummaging around.

 “You’re just going to have to wait until tomorrow night.”

 “Fine.”

 “What are you wearing by the way? Do I need to have any of your suits cleaned before tomorrow?” The two of you were still in the closet. Tyler seemed antsy, but you chalked it up to him being caught looking for your dress.

 “You’re just going to have to wait until tomorrow night.” He teased you back, then ushered you out of the spare closet.

 “Ha, ha, you’re so funny. I’m being serious. Do any of your shirts need cleaned from the road trip? I can run them to the cleaners now and they’ll be done by tomorrow.”

 “Umm…actually, I’ll take them myself. I’ve got a few errands to run anyhow.”

 “Oh perfect. I’ll come with you; I need to pick some things up from the store as well.” You were almost out of the moisturizer you used, so why not head over to the store with him as it was on the way.

 “No!” You cocked your head at his sharp tone. “I mean…well, it’s just going to take me a long time and we probably shouldn’t both be gone from the dogs that long.”

 You quirked an eyebrow at him. It wasn’t like you were leaving the dogs for days, just a few hours. “What are you talking about? They’ll be fine. We’ve left for a lot longer than to run errands.”

 “It’s just they’re used to you being home now…and I think they’ll miss you if you leave.”

 “Ty, they’ll be fine. They’re not that attached to me.”

 “It’s just…Gerry hasn’t been feeling well.”

 “Huh?” You glanced over at the three dogs, who were in the room with you. “Gerry’s fine, I just spent the last seven days with him, and he was fine the whole time. Well except for…” You shut your mouth before you got the pup in anymore trouble.

 “Wait what did he do?”

 “Nothing, he didn’t do a thing. Now come on let’s go. So we don’t leave the dogs too long.” You said sarcastically.

 “I really think you should stay here with the dogs. They just seem lonely today.”

 “Tyler, what is your problem? Why don’t you want me to go with you?” A pit formed in your stomach as you started thinking of reasons that he wouldn’t want you to go. Things had been going so great between the two of you, though the ten day stretch was hard; you didn’t think it put that much of a strain on your relationship. He’d seemed fine when he got home, in fact so fine that the two of you made up for those ten days apart by having sex no less than three times in the last twenty-four hours. You didn’t want to think about him cheating, but it popped into your brain anyway. What if he was going to see someone else? You tried to squash the uneasy feeling in your stomach, but with each passing moment he didn’t answer you, you grew more and more fearful. Finally when the silence stretched too long you said, “Just go do whatever it is you have to do.” With that you walked out of the spare bedroom and down the steps, tears starting to form as you left.

 By the time you reached the kitchen, a few tears had slipped out; you swiped at them angrily, then grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and walked outside. You knew that Tyler would be coming downstairs any minute, and you didn’t feel like speaking with him at the moment. Instead you wondered around the outside in the cold November air. It helped cool the anger boiling through your veins. About ten minutes past before you heard the garage door open and the sound of the car engine, as it pulled out of the drive. It was then, that you finally broke down. Tyler left without even trying to look for you. His “errands” were more important than you were, and the more you thought about that, the harder you sobbed.

 How could you have let your guard down, and believe that you and Tyler would have a perfect life together? Things were just too good to be true, and honestly you should’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. The question now was, what did you do? You knew you had to confront him about the issue and find out if he really was cheating. Your heart didn’t want it to be true and neither did your mind. When you thought about it, there was no real proof; other than the fact he’d been acting strange since he came home. Grabbing your phone out of your pocket, you sat there deciding whether or not to look online for any information. Finger hoovering over the Instagram icon, you debated with yourself on what do to. Then Andrea Bishop’s word echoed in your head; you needed to tune out everything that was on there. So instead you called your friend Jenna. As one of your best friends, she was always the voice of reason and would hopefully be able to help tell you what to do.

 “Oh no what’s wrong?” You hadn’t even said hello, but Jenna could tell by your light sobs something was off.

 “I think Tyler might be cheating on me.” Somehow you managed to get it all out before you sniffed loudly in the phone, then broke down crying again.

 “Oh my god, calm down. Tell me why you think that?” When you continued crying into the phone, she said. “Things have been going so well between the two of you; maybe this is just a misunderstanding.”

 “I don’t know maybe.” You finally choked out.

 “So tell me why you think he’s cheating.”

 “He’s just been super strange since he got home…and today I asked him if anything needed to go to the cleaners for the gala, that I could take it for him.” A hiccup escaped you as you told Jenna what happened only a short time ago. “He told me he would do it, because he had some errands to run. I said I’d go with him because I had some to do too; yet he insisted I stay home.”

 “Well that doesn’t make me think he’s cheating.” “You don’t understand, he made up that Gerry was sick and I should stay home with him. We both know there’s nothing wrong with Gerry or the other dogs. He just wanted to sneak away from the house without me; and it’s probably because he’s seeing someone else.”

 “Oh (Y/N), I don’t think it’s that at all.” You perked up a little bit at Jenna’s comment.

 “Really?”

 “(Y/N) that man is head over heels in love with you. I can’t see him having some fling while he’s out of town. That was the old Tyler. This Tyler is totally dedicated to you and your baby.” She did make sense. It was only today that he’d been acting weird. “You have that gala tomorrow right”

 “Yeah.”

 “Well, maybe he’s trying to do something special for you; like rent a limo or something.” That seemed a bit far-fetched.

 “If he was going to do something like that, he could just call. There has to be something more.” You were convinced there was something going on, you just couldn’t put your finger on it.

 “It’s probably something more extravagant than that; it was just the first thing that popped in my head. But I definitely know he’s not cheating on you.” “How can you be so sure?”

 “Because if he is, I’ll beat the shit out of him.” You couldn’t help yourself, you laughed. Somehow, you could picture your best friend beating up Tyler; and you had a feeling she’d win. “Do you need me to come over there now, because I will?”

 “No, but thanks for the offer. Just talking to you about it, made me feel better. I know you’re right; I don’t think he’d cheat on me. I just can’t explain his actions today.”

 “Well you know Tyler, he’s probably trying to surprise you; though he never does it in a normal way.” Jenna was more than likely right. “I hate to cut this short, but I’ve gotta run. Are you sure you’re ok? Because I can cancel my plans and be right over.”

 “No I’ll be fine. I’m sorry for bugging you.”

 “(Y/N) you’re never a bother, this is what best friends are for; but I really have to run.” You felt bad for keeping your best friend from her plans, though she hadn’t mentioned what they were. ‘Sorry I’m late.’ You heard a distinct male voice in the background, which sounded a lot like Tyler.

 “Is that Tyler?”

 “What?...umm…No.” There was a slight panic in her voice. “That’s Bill…my date.”

 “But I thought you wanted us to set you up with Jamie?”

 “Umm…yeah I dp. It’s a long story, I’ll tell you about it later…I’m really late for this…thing. Promise I’ll tell you later…bye.”

 “B…” She hung up before you could even say goodbye. Now you were worried about your best friend. The last time the two of you talked, she couldn’t stop talking about Jamie and how perfect he was. You thought the two of them would be great together. This day just kept getting weirder by the minute. Maybe you should just go lay down and start the whole thing over again. The wind blew just then, making you realize how cold it actually was outside.

 Once inside you decided it wasn’t such a bad idea to just lay down and take a nap; so you crawled into your bed, the dogs following. They’re warm bodies felt good against your chilled bones as the three of you cuddled. You still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on with Tyler, but you tried to convince yourself that things would be fine. Closing your eyes, you let sleep take you. You weren’t sure how long you’d been asleep, but you woke up to Tyler gently shaking your dreaming form.

 “Babe…babe.” You blinked your eyes at him, trying hard to wake yourself from slumber.

 “Tyler?” You asked groggily. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost three o’clock.”

 “Mmmm. I didn’t realize I’d slept that long.” As you became fully awake, memories of the morning started to invade your fog filled brain. You sat up, trying to get out of the bed, but were trapped between Tyler and the dogs. “Umm…can you let me up?”

 “No.”

 “Ty, please. I just want…” You didn’t know what you were going to do, or where you were going to go; you just knew that you wanted to put some distance between yourself and Tyler.

 He brushed a stray lock of hair from your face, which made you flinch. “Baby, I’m sorry about earlier.” You turned your face from him, knowing you weren’t quite ready for this whole conversation. “Sweetheart, please look at me. I just want to talk to you.” A small tear ran down your cheek, and you quickly wiped it away. “Baby please don’t cry.” The pleading tone in his voice broke you, and before you knew what was happening; he wrapped you in his arms and held you to his chest. “Sshh, baby it’s ok.” He rubbed small circles on your back, which calmed you.

 Once, you finally got ahold of your emotions you pulled back slightly from him. “Babe, don’t get mad; but I talked to Jenna.” You should’ve known she’d call and bitch him out; though you couldn’t be upset with her. She only ever had your best interest at heart. “I’m not cheating on you sweetie, I’m never going to do that again. You should know that by now.”

 “I do. It’s just…” You took a deep breath before continuing. “You’ve been so weird since you came home, and you were so insistent that I not go with you today. I didn’t know what else to think.” He ran his fingers through his hair, a habit he had when he needed a minute to think. “I didn’t want you to come with me, because I was trying to surprise you with this.” He reached down and grabbed a small bag that he had by the bed; then handed over to you. “I wanted to give this to you tomorrow night, but…” He trailed off, while you blushed at your foolish thoughts of him cheating on you.

 Nestled inside tissue paper was a black velvet box, which you knew contained something you didn’t deserve. “Ty I can’t.”

 “(Y/N) if you don’t open that box this instant, I swear I’ll take you over my knee right now.” You raised your eyes at him, at his veiled threat; which was somewhat tempting in and of itself. “Don’t look at me like that.” He smirked. “Ok, so that wasn’t a very good threat, but I’ll do something you won’t like at all.”

 A small giggle escaped your lips. “Well if you’re going to do ‘something I won’t like,’ I guess I better open this.” You lifted the lid on the velvet case. Inside lay a beautiful diamond pendant necklace. Small diamonds encircle two round cut stones; that then dropped down in to one large teardrop diamond. The teardrop diamond alone had to be three carats, not to mention the other stones that surrounded it. It literally stole your breath away. “Tyler, it’s too much.”

 “Do you like it?”

 “Like it! It’s breathtaking. I’ve never seen something so beautiful.”

 “Well it pales compared to you.” His words made you melt. You didn’t deserve this man. A few tears spilled out your eyes yet again; though this time they were happy ones. “I just wanted to give you something special for tomorrow night.”

 “Oh Tyler, I love it, but you didn’t need to do this; just being with you is enough.” Reaching over you planted a kiss on his lips. It wasn’t enough, this man deserved so much more; and he most definitely didn’t deserve your skepticism. You pulled back, to tell him this. “I’m so sorry I doubted you for even a minute Ty. I don’t deserve you.”

 “Babe, don’t worry about it. I mean I’m not happy, that that’s the first thing you thought of; but at the same time I didn’t really help my cause insisting you stay home, with Gerry.” You both looked over at the pup, who was over in the corner clearly trying to play fetch by himself. “He’s obviously not sick.” Both of you laughed at the lie which Tyler had used earlier. “So how about I put this on you?”

 He took the velvet box out of your hands, and started to take the necklace out of the package. “Wait…You wanted me to have this for tomorrow, maybe we should wait.”

 “I’d rather have you wear this and nothing else right now. Call it your punishment for making me give it to you early.” He wiggled his eyes suggestively at you.

 “Not that I mind that punishment at all, but don’t you have a game to get to soon?” He shrugged his shoulder, as if it didn’t matter. “And I haven’t made you dinner yet.”

 “I’d rather have dessert first.” He leaned over and kissed you passionately, before pulling away to put the necklace on you; then went and lifted the hem of your shirt. “Now, about that punishment part.”

 Tyler was a good fifteen minutes late in leaving for the game, but you both felt it was well worth any laps he’d have to do in practice the following morning. Luckily, you had another hour and half before you left to watch him play. The Stars were able to pull off a big win against the Oilers that night, which meant that everyone was in a good mood as you headed down to the tunnels. You were certain that everyone would want to go out and celebrate, considering the guys had the next three days off. However, everyone seemed to go their separate ways, and so you and Tyler headed home to just be with each other.

 The next day, Tyler headed out to practice; while you met up with Andrea and Alandra later in the day. The three of you spent a relaxing day at the spa, where you got facials, pedicures and manicures; as well as getting your hair and makeup done for the gala that night. You had originally wanted to wear your hair how Candace had suggested, half-up, half-down; but once Tyler bought you that stunning pendant you felt as if you should showcase it and pull all your hair up. The stylist put a braid on the right side, pulling it out to give it a fuller look. She then swept it behind your ear, while creating a low bun with the remaining hair she had curled. She took down a few tendrils to frame your face. When it came to your makeup, the artist decided to go with a soft smokey eye to give you a more natural look. She used a soft pale pink blush on the apples of your cheeks, with a few gloss drops to give you that fresh dewy look. As for your lips, she kept them simple as well, lining them with a soft pink color that complimented the lipstick she’d chosen. She topped it off with a shimmery gloss, which made your lips look totally kissable. Of course, you ended up buying the lip shades she used, as you were sure you were going to need to reapply it even before you left the house. When you looked in the mirror the overall effect of your makeup and hair looked absolutely stunning; and briefly you wondered if you and Tyler would even make it out of the house tonight.

 You hugged the girls goodbye, telling them you’d see them shortly; then headed home. Tyler had his head in the fridge, looking for something when you walked in the door, so it took him a moment to notice you. “Wow babe, you look amazing.”

 “Thanks, I totally think I’m just going exactly like this tonight.” You still had a pair of jeans, with a button down shirt on. Though you knew once you put your gown on, your look would be complete; right now your outfit didn’t quite fit.

 “You could wear a paper bag and be drop dead gorgeous.”

 “Keep talking like that Seguin, and we may not leave this house tonight.” You slid your hands up his chest, then kissed his lips with your glossed ones.

 He pulled away quicker than what you liked. “Well I better get my ass in the shower, before things get out of control here.” He kissed you again quickly. “Besides, I need to get myself cleaned up if I’m going to be standing next to you all night.” Reaching up you wiped the trace amount of lipstick off of his lips, before he headed off to your bedroom.

 You made your way upstairs and got the gown out of the spare closet and the garment bag it was in. It looked so beautiful just hanging there, and you couldn’t wait to put it on. You dabbed some perfume behind your ears, as well as on your neck and wrists; then for good measure you applied a touch to your cleavage for the end of the night. Finally you slipped the dress on and checked your reflection in the mirror. You still felt like royalty in it. Last but not least you slid into the pair of pumps that you had bought to go with it. There was just one finishing touch left and that was the elaborate necklace Tyler had bought for you. As you placed it around your neck, you truly had to question if Tyler had seen the gown, for they seemed made for each other. With one last look in the mirror you headed down the stairs to meet Tyler.

 He was standing in the foyer, fixing his cuff links when you walked downstairs. You took a moment to take the sight of him in. He was clad in a black suit, with a pristine white shirt. His vest was buttoned up and held in his black tie. Standing there, you couldn’t help but think of the first night you saw him. He was just as handsome that night as he was right now. It was easy to see how you fell in love with him, that first night. Visibly you shook yourself. Your movement caught his eyes and he looked up, his jaw going slack as he took in your appearance. “Ready to go?”

 It took him a moment before he answered you. “Woah…babe, I’m speechless.” He moved closer to the stairs as you neared the bottom. “You look….” He seemed to be searching for words. “Gorgeous doesn’t seem to cover it.”

 “You clean up pretty well yourself.” You added with a wink. His devilish smirk came out then. “Seriously Ty, I don’t think you’ve ever looked more handsome. Maybe the foundation needs to have more of these events.”

 “I think I’m going to have to agree with you there.” He was still struggling with his left cuff link and you grabbed his hand and adjusted it for him, while he still drank in your appearance. “Baby, you’re just so damn beautiful.”

 “Stop, you’re making me blush.”

 “I can’t help it. I just don’t know how l got so lucky?” You gave him a quick peck on the lips, wiping your lipstick off of him.

 “I’m pretty sure I’m the lucky one here.” After everything that happened yesterday, you truly felt blessed that you and Tyler found your way back to each other. “Alright, we better get going or we’ll be late.”

 He glanced at his watch. “Right. I thought we’d take the Ferrari tonight, is that ok?”

 “Yeah that works.” The two of you headed out. With all the traffic it took a few extra minutes to get to the venue. You were surprised when you pulled up to the place where you first met. “I thought we’d be at the arena.”

 “Oh…ummm. I think it was booked or something, so they’re holding it here.” Tyler pulled up to the valet station and quickly jumped out of the car, so he could open your door instead of the attendant. He offered his hand to assist you out of the vehicle. You saw the appreciative glance the valet gave you as you emerged from the Ferrari. Apparently the dress concealed your baby bump more than you thought. Tyler glared at the young man, then slid his arm around your waist to draw you nearer.

 As you walked into the building you noticed it wasn’t as crowded as you thought it would be. Maybe Tyler had gotten the time wrong. “I think we’re in the ballroom.” Tyler stated as he led you through the building. When you entered the ballroom, there was no one in the room, save a lonely waiter finishing up the place settings at one of the tables.

 “Umm…what’s going on Ty?”

 “I don’t know.” He made his way over to the server. “Excuse me sir, is this the right room for the Fire and Ice event?”

 “Yeah, this is the right room.” The two of you surveyed the empty room before he said. “It’s just the event is tomorrow.” With those words he walked into the back room.

 “They gave you the wrong date?” Tyler shrugged.

 “They must have, though I was almost positive they told us today.”

 “Well Andrea and Alandra got ready with me, so they must think it’s today too. I should call them.” You flipped open your purse to search for your phone.

 “Babe, they’re probably already on their way here. Why don’t you just dance with me right now?”

 You look at him curiously. “Huh?”

 “Come on, you look so beautiful in that dress and this room looks amazing. I just want to dance with you.” He already grabbed your hand and was leading you out to where the dance floor was.

 “But there’s no music.”

 “We don’t need any.” He wrapped you up in his arms and started to hum lightly. The tune sounded vaguely familiar, though you couldn’t quite place it. You found yourself, swaying in his arms. He swept you into a grand turn, and soon you were twirling around the floor, to the light lilt of the piano. Piano, where did that come from? The two of you continued to dance, when suddenly you heard a voice break in.

 You steady me, slow and sweet we sway, take the lead and I will follow.

Finally ready now. To close my eyes and just believe that you won’t lead me where I don’t go.

When my faith gets tired and my hope seems lost.

You spin me round and round and remind me of that song,

The one you wrote for me,

And we dance…Oh we dance.

 You looked up into Tyler’s smiling face. “I know this song.”

 “You should, you sang it for months after we went to your cousin’s wedding.” It was true, the melody had stuck in your head and you would sing it when you were in the shower, or out in the kitchen getting dinner ready. But that was at least nine months ago, and you never thought Tyler was paying attention.

 “Where did the music come from?”

 He shrugged nonchalantly, but you could tell by the smirk on his face he had done this. “Just dance with me baby.” He twirled you again and you were lost in the rhythm of the music and the thrill of being in Tyler’s arms.

 And I’ve been told, to pick up my sword and fight for love.

Little did I know that love had won for me.

Here in your arms, you steal my heart again,

and I breathe you in like I’ve never breathed till now.

When my faith gets tired and my hope seems lost.

You spin me round and round and remind me of that song,

The one you wrote for me,

And we dance, oh, we dance.

Oh, oh we dance.

Oh, oh, oh we dance

Just you and me.

 The words of the song had always resonated with you, but never more so then in that moment. Just being in his arms moving around the dance floor, made you lose your heart all over again to him. As you looked up at his brilliant smile, he stole your breath away. It was just the two of you in that moment, and you knew then and there, that this was the only man you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. Not that you hadn’t had this thought before, it was just all clear now. You’d walk to the ends of the earth for this man, for you knew he’d do the same for you.

 And I will lock eyes with the one who’s ransomed me.

The one who gave me joy from mourning.

And I will love eyes with the one who’s chosen me.

The one who set my feet to dancing.

Oh we dance,

Oh we dance, we dance.

Oh we dance

Just you and me.

 Suddenly you wished you could bottle this moment and keep it with you forever, as you heard the words of the song coming to a close, for you didn’t want it to end. The two of you had been in the darks depths a relationship could go, but somehow you’d both fought and found the light; and now that you had everything in the world seemed perfect. You just wanted to stay in this dance with him for the rest of your life.

 The voice faded but the music continued as Tyler swayed back and forth with you in his arms. That’s when you noticed on stage there was a grand piano along with string quartet that you never noticed because you were so wrapped up dancing with the man you love. He slowed the two of you to a stop as the music played softly in the background; then he reached and entwined your hands together.

 “It’s only been a little over a year since I met you here, you know that?” You nodded your head, unsure of where this conversation was going. “But I knew that night, that someday I’d be standing in front of you just like I am now.” Goosebumps started to skate up your arms at his words. “This place is pretty special to us, because not only did we first meet here, it brought us back together…well that and this little one right here.” His eyes drifted to your concealed baby bump and you both smiled. His grip on your hands tighten as he continued. “I don’t tell you this near enough, but I love you (Y/N). There is no one else in this world for me.” Your eyes started to tear, as he professed his love for you. “When you left me…as you should have.” A small laugh escaped you. “I thought I was going to die. I knew then that I didn’t want to live a life without you in it. It was like I couldn’t even breathe because you weren’t beside me.” The tears you’d been struggling to hold back, started to fall freely now. He unlaced one of your hands and with his thumb brushed them away. “Stop babe, or you’re gonna make me cry too.” Through your weeping eyes, you could just see him trying to suppress his own tears.

 He took a deep breath in. “Anyhow…I knew if you ever gave me a chance again, I wouldn’t mess it up this time…and I swear to God I never will.” You smiled at him, hopefully letting him know that you’d never lose faith in him again, like you had yesterday. “You’re my everything; do you know that.” It wasn’t really a question, more of a statement; but you knew then and there that he was your all as well. “You’re my home, my shelter, the one I want to run to not only in the bad, but in the good as well. But most of all you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” You squeezed his hands back hoping to convey the words you couldn’t speak at the moment. “I realized in this last year that nothing, not hockey, not the money, not the house, none of it means anything; if I don’t have you to share it with. I love you with my whole being.” He dropped to one knee then, tears streaming down not only your face, but one or two fell from his. You swear your heart stopped beating. He let go of your one hand again and searched in his inside suit pocket. Franticly you swiped at the tears falling down your face, for you wanted to look into Tyler’s eyes without any obstruction.

 “I know I don’t deserve you (Y/N), but if you’ll have me, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want us to be a family in every sense of the word.” He flipped open the jewelry case and in it lay the most exquisite diamond ring you’d ever laid eyes on. “(Y/F/M/L/N) would you do me the greatest honor I’ve ever had in my life, and marry me?” You were nodding yes, through a stream of tears now, as you tried to find your voice.

 “Yes, Ty, Yes.”

 He didn’t give you time to say anything more. He placed the ring on your shaking hand and then in one swift motion, he rose from the floor, lifting you off your feet at the same time. He kissed you then, and you melted into his arms; kissing him back pouring all the love you had for him into it. Reluctantly he pulled back. “Did you really just say yes?”

 Again, you nodded your head up and down. “Of course I said yes. Ty I love you so much. There is no one in this world I’d rather spend the rest of my life with, then you.” He still had you swept off your feet, and you had a feeling it would be that way from now until the end of time. You locked your eyes with his. “I can’t believe I get to be Mrs. Seguin, or that you did all this.”

 “I can’t wait to call you my wife, but there’s more.” You weren’t entirely sure you heard him correctly, so you quirked an eyebrow at him. “You guys can come out now.” He placed you on your feet, as the doors to the adjacent room opened and out came rushing all your family and friends.

 “Oh my god!” To say you were surprised was an understatement. They were all clapping and yelling congratulations. Your parents were the first at your side, enveloping you in a huge hug and offering you their congratulations. You were vaguely aware that Tyler’s whole family was doing the same to him. Two little hands latched on to your dress and you looked down to see your niece Rylynn holding on to you tightly. You lifted her up on your hip and she planted a kiss on your cheek.

 “Does this mean I get to be in your wedding?”

 You couldn’t help but laugh at her little request. “Of course you can sweetie. You’ll be the best flower girl there ever was.”

 “Yipee”

 Matt came over and took his joyful daughter out of your hands, while at the same time placing a kiss on your cheek. “Congratulations sis. That man is really in love with you.”

 “Oh my god, everything he said to you was so sweet.” Melissa added as she dabbed her eyes, through your hug.

 “Wait, you guys heard that?”

 “Yep, and watched it too.” Sean added leaning to offer his congratulation.

 “But how?”

 “That’s a question you’re going to have to ask your fiancé.” Jessica told you.

 “I might have an idea how it happened. Congratulations bestie!” Your best friend Jenna added as she squeezed you.

 “Wait, did you help him with this?”

 “Me and a bunch of others, but there’s a microphone in that chandelier right there.” You looked up to find it, glancing through the sparkling crystals, trying to find the tiny device. “There’s also hidden cameras all over here. And while there was a bunch of us that helped, it was all Tyler’s idea.”

 You gave Jenna one more hug, and thanked her for everything. There were still tons of people around wanting to wish you well, but you needed to say somethings to your fiancé. He wasn’t more than five feet from you, so you turned towards him. Automatically, his arm went around your waist to draw you close to him. Standing on your tip-toes you reached up and planted a chaste kiss on his cheek. His mom was still standing there. “I’m so happy for you two. You’re just so perfect.” She was crying as she grabbed you and hugged you hard. Softly she whispered in your ear, so only you could hear her. “Thank you for loving my baby boy. I know that it hasn’t been easy at times, but I couldn’t ask for anyone better for him to spend the rest of his life with than you.” More tears came rushing down at her words.

 You couldn’t find the words to tell her how much what she just said meant. Finally you whispered back, “I promise to love him with all I have.” She released you then, only to be replaced by Candace and Cassidy. In that moment you realized, you weren’t going to get a moment alone with Tyler until later in the night. Both his sisters were so happy, for you; and you couldn’t be more excited to have them as your actual sisters soon.

 Jamie, was the next person to find you, kissing your cheek in congratulations; before he slapped his best friend on the back. “So, he’s finally going to make an honest woman out of you; about time Seggy, because I was all ready to swoop in.”

 “Don’t even think about it Chubbs, she’s definitely spoken for now.” Tyler held up your left hand to show him the ring, while you just shook your head in laughter. It was one person after the next for the following hour, wishing both you and Tyler well. It wasn’t until you were back on the dance floor, alone in Tyler’s arms before you got a chance to ask him the question you’d been dying to know, since talking to your best friend.

 “Ty, I can’t believe you did all this for me? Jenna said there are even cameras somewhere around here. How in the world did you do this?”

 “Well it wasn’t easy, but it was worth it; you’re worth it.” You knew that none of this would’ve been easy to pull off and you couldn’t wait to hear how he did it all.

[puckinghell]

Stars and Supernovae | August

Summary: As soon as you meet Tyler Seguin, you know you’re destined to be best friends. Sometimes you wonder if you’re destined to be more, but life keeps getting in the way. Perhaps it’s just not written in the stars? Note: This is Part 4. Part 1 | part 2 | part 3

You groaned as what felt like the hundredth guy looked down your shirt as you handed him his beer. You knew why your boss had decided to make your work outfit so low cut - more tips - but God, did you hate this stupid job. But you needed it; somehow a miracle had happened and you had managed to find a new roommate, so you could keep your apartment, but it was still tight with money, and without this job you wouldn’t be able to keep your head above water.

Well, truth be told, Tyler had managed to find you a new roommate. You weren’t sure how, but he’d called you the day after the infamous dinner party, and told you that his sister Candace had a friend that was looking to move to Dallas. 

Sabrina was nice enough, although she didn’t really get your sarcastic humor and she preferred heels over sneakers, which was always one of the things that made you a bit distrusting of people, but she paid the rent on time and never left the kitchen a mess, so in more ways than one was she a better roommate than Katie ever had been.

In a way, it had been good for your friendship, that Katie lived with Jamie now. Not having her around all the time meant you were no longer so annoyed with the little things she did - like leave her shoes in the middle of the hallway - and you both made sure to get together every other week or so at the very least, to catch up on everything going on. Sometimes, you met up in a bar or coffee shop, but you also liked going over to their house because it meant Jamie would be there, and you’d really taken a liking to the Dallas Stars captain. 

Maybe because he was the closest you could get to Tyler, right now. Although you would rather die than tell Tyler that.

Once, Jamie had asked you about Tyler.

“So, are you two like, dating?” You’d been in the kitchen together, him cooking and you getting yourself a glass of wine, and you’d nearly dropped the bottle at his words.

“No,” you sputtered, “Why would you possibly ask me that?”

Jamie shrugged. “I’ve known Segs for a while, and I’ve never known him so… domestic. He barely goes out, doesn’t really take girls home anymore, and even now that he’s at the cabin he calls you nearly every day. I’m lucky if I get one text a week and it usually just says still alive, don’t worry or asks me to water his plants.”

“I’ve been watering his plants,” you blurt out, and the corners of Jamie’s lips curled into a knowing smile as he raised an eyebrow. “We’re just friends, Jamie. Promise. Nothing is going on between us.”

“But you’d like it to.” It’s not a question, more a statement, and you felt your cheeks flare up red. Jamie just laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell him. But just so you know, I know Segs, maybe better than he knows himself. And he might not want to admit it to himself, but he knows you’re his person.” Jamie had left the kitchen with those words and they’d played over and over in your mind for the weeks following.

“Yo, what does a man have to do to get another beer in this place?” someone yelled, and you groaned before plastering on a fake smile and turning to the culprit.

“What can I get you?”

“A beer, did I stutter the first time, bitch?” You sighed, biting the inside of your cheek hard to stop yourself from saying something snarky back, when suddenly the guy disappeared from the bar. You watched as the guy stumbled back in slow motion and a pair of hands grabbed his shirt and pushed him into a table.

“Learn some manners, bud,” a tight voice said. A voice you’d recognize anywhere. A voice that was supposed to be in Canada right now. 

Tyler was always big and intimidating, with his tattoo sleeves and big muscles, but you’ve never seen him like this; his jaw set and his eyes cold, a snarl on his face. It’s the look that Jamie had whenever he’s about to get into a fight on the ice, a look that Tyler never gets, because he’s not a fighter.

“Tyler?” you brought out, stammering, and at your voice Tyler turned around. His face softened as he caught your eyes, and he made his way over to the counter so quickly you could barely see him move.

“Meet me outside?” he asked, softly. “Please?”

You didn’t know whether you were supposed to be mad at him; he was technically defending your honor, but this was also your job, and you really couldn’t afford to get fired. Your lack of answer seemed to worry Tyler. “Look, I’m sorry for losing my temper, but please come outside? I brought Gerry to meet you and I can’t leave him alone in the car any longer. Please.”

His repeated begging was enough to get you to leave your post behind the bar, but the mention of the puppy pulled it over the top, and you quickly nodded with smile. You asked your co-worker to cover for you and made your way out of the bar, where your eyes found Tyler immediately. He stood in front of his black pick up truck, a small blonde Labrador at his feet.

“Gerry!” you cooed, and the puppy looked up at you, his tiny tail wagging. You practically ran at the dog and scooped him up in your arms, pressing your lips to his head. “Tyler he’s so cute,” you marveled. Your best friend just chuckled.

“I haven’t seen you in four months, and I don’t even get a hug, huh?” You knew he was teasing you, and maybe it was because you’d missed his teasing so much, that your heart leaped and you quickly put Gerry on the ground, only to throw yourself forward and into Tyler’s arms. He caught you easily, his arms wrapping around your waist as he giggled into your ear.

“Hi,” he whispered into your hair, and you pressed your face into his neck. He smells so familiar, feels so familiar, and suddenly you were swallowing back tears.

“Hi,” you smiled.” I missed you.”

“I missed you more.”

You felt something scratch your feet and released Tyler, only to kneel and pick Gerry back up.

“I can’t believe you come back to Dallas after four months and the first thing you do is punch one of my customers.” You wiped at the tears in your eyes and then smiled up at him. Tyler at least had the decency to look ashamed, as his hand rubbed his neck slowly.

“Right, sorry about that,” he said. “I took offense to his tone.”

You laughed humorlessly. “That’s nothing, Ty. He was nice, in comparison to most. It’s just something I have to deal with. You can’t punch them all, cause then I won’t get paid.”

“You shouldn’t even have to have this job,” he mumbled. “If I could…” He stopped himself then, staring at the ground in front of his feet instead. But you knew what he was saying. If he could, he would take care of you. If you would let him. Which you weren’t going to do.

“I know,” you told him softly, and then you reached out and cuddled into his chest again, holding Gerry between your bodies. “But I have rent to pay.”

“Can’t you find another job?” Tyler asked, his hand stroking your back. “Can’t I just hire you as my professional dog walker?”

You laughed, lightly kicking his shin with your foot. “Absolutely not. You’re my best friend, not my boss.”

“You’re my best friend, too.” Tyler’s voice was soft and you cursed your heart for fluttering the way it did. “That’s why I worry, with you at this job. These guys wouldn’t know respect if it hit them in the face. What if one day, one of them goes too far?” He swallowed thickly and you couldn’t help yourself; you reached up and pressed a kiss to his cheek, before stepping back.

“I’ll keep an eye out for other jobs,” you promised him, and the content look on his face made it worth it that you were most definitely going to get yelled at by your boss for being gone so long.

Tyler spent the next few days helping you find another job, at least when he wasn’t training, and you spent them cuddled up on his sofa with his dogs as you scrolled through the internet looking for jobs. Finally, you found an advert for a barista position, at a 24/7 coffee shop on campus, and you sent in your application. Two days later, you were hired.

“It’s still at night, but at least my customers won’t be drunk,” you joked. You were sitting on your own couch, for a change, because Tyler’s sisters are in town and staying at his house. Sabrina was on the other side of the couch, watching Sex and the City. It had never been your favorite show, but you let her pick, because you weren’t really planning on watching it anyway. You had an essay to write. Your phone pinged, and you smiled when you saw it was Tyler.

Please come over. My sisters are driving me insane.

You quickly typed out a reply, explaining that you had an essay and simply didn’t have the time.

I don’t accept that. It’s Saturday, you have all day tomorrow. Pretty please? :(

Even over text, you didn’t know how to say no, so you told him you’d be there within ten minutes. You were a bit nervous to meet his sisters, but understood that you had no right to feel that way, because you were just a friend. When you explained to Sabrina where you were going, she clasped her hands together in excitement.

“Oh, I’ll come with you! I haven’t seen Candace in so long!” You couldn’t come up with a good reason why she shouldn’t come, so you nodded, even though you weren’t that excited about the prospect.

You opened Tyler’s door with your key and ignored Sabrina’s raised eyebrow, probably wondering why you even had a key in the first place; instead you focused on the three dogs crowding around your feet.

“Hi, puppies,” you cooed, lifting Gerry into your arms and using your free hand to pet Cash and Marshall.

“You must be Y/N!” A blonde girl appeared in the hallway, and smiled at you. The smile broadened when she spotted Sabrina. “Sab!” She ran over and hugged your roommate. A second blonde girl appeared, but she just stood there, seemingly unsure what to do. Then, heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, and you were relieved to hear Tyler’s voice.

“Hey Shiny,” he hummed. You put Gerry down and smiled. “These are my sisters, Candace and Cassidy. They’re driving me nuts with their yapper about my lack of decorating skills.” He rolled his eyes and you laughed.

“It is a bit bare, in here.”

“Oh, come on! You can’t gang up on me, you’re my best friend!” Only then did he seem to spot the girl currently wrapped in his sister’s arms. “Oh, hello.”

“Hi,” said Sabrina, and you’d never heard her voice that honey-sweet. “I’m Sabrina. You must be Tyler.” She shook his hand, and the other sister, who you guessed was Cassidy, since Sabrina was Candace’s friend, frowned.

“Hello to you too,” she deadpanned, clearly annoyed that Sabrina was still making eyes at her brother, completely ignoring her presence. A snort escaped your lips and Cassidy sent you a look, her lips slowly curling into a smile. “Well, you must be Y/N. I’m Cassidy, that’s Candace. Come to the living room with me, we’re planning to get Ty some new decor and I’m sure you’d like a say, since you’re here so often.” There was no malice behind her words, but you didn’t miss the narrowing of Sabrina’s eyes.

“Oh, yes, you can show me around, Tyler,” she purred, and you rolled your eyes as you followed Cassidy to the living room.

“I was thinking of putting the couch a bit more like this…” Cassidy motioned, “and putting a painting there…” pointing, “and then also some ornaments like, vases and pillows and just little knick knacks. There’s nothing in here that shows any personality.”

“He has his hockey pucks,” you pointed out. In the bookcase lay an array of hockey pucks. One day, when you’d come to pick up the dogs and Tyler hadn’t been home, you’d gone through all of them to read what they were for. First NHL assist, first NHL goal, hat tricks, 100th game, 200th game.

“Not enough,” Cassidy said, and you had to agree with her. You spent the rest of the evening planning Tyler’s new interior, Candace joining you after a while, and Tyler begrudgingly letting you. You figured maybe he would’ve fought it more if he hadn’t been so busy entertaining you roommate, who you were starting to like a lot less; not that that was fair, because Tyler was single and hot as hell and could you really blame her for trying? 

No, it annoyed you more that he seemed to be very interested. Again, that wasn’t fair either, because she was very pretty, and exactly the kind of girl he probably should end up with. 

But it was the first time you spent a night at your best friend’s house without him making even one smart ass, snarky remark towards you, and that’s how you knew things were about to change.

[soveryanon]

Four weeks later, reviewing time for MAG139 /o/

-I’m still crying over how the first time Tim ever spoke on tape, he pointed out so many mistakes/typos/misreadings from statements that were faaar from being one-liner but actually… Big Mysteries that are still relevant now. Amongst those:

(MAG033) TIM: Um… oh, and here, in Miss Montauk’s statement about her father’s killings. You refer to case, um, 9220611 as case, um, 1106922. Oh, and don’t get me started on the other case numbers around the Hill Top hauntings, they’re a mess! […] So, in case 8163103… it isn’t clear if Albrecht’s wife is called “Clara” or “Carla”, ‘cause you keep switching back and forth…

Aaaand it was in that episode that we heard about “Peter Lukas” for the first time ever. I miss Tim and gdi, he had a good nose…

- I want to say a word about Jon’s reading of the statement in itself: “Jon, what the FUCK.” Part of why it was so sneakily terrifying was… how much Jon was into it? He totally ran with the sheer glee and cruelty, especially, I felt, in these moments:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “It’s hard to say how much I’ve got left in me; how much longer my sacrifices can buy me. But when I go… you better believe I’m going big – and it is going to hurt. […] And I hurt so very many people… A building fire is a dreadful thing – but so much more dreadful when it’s shining out into that night. It was the first of my crimes, but not the last, and arson has always been my thing. It’s such a simple way to destroy everything someone has built, both literally, and figuratively. […] I was to secure her sacrifices. I would spare you the details, but I do not wish to~”

Presumably, the dramatic reading is still a Jon Thing and not intrinsically spooky, but w o w Jon, you didn’t have to take that edge for a sadistic serial killer.

- YEAH OKAY, and Eugene was terrifying per se. Why are all Desolation people Like That. And Eugene started… very young:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “So, me? I was born in ’36 […]. But now, staggering through the ruins of his life, the look I saw on his face… it woke something in me. Something… truly awful… Anyone who talks about “the Blitz spirit” wasn’t there, or wants to paper over their fear with nostalgia. Terrible things happened in the Blackout, and we hurt each other just as much as the Germans hurt us. And I hurt so very many people…”

He… wasn’t even ten, back then…

;; Aaaand once again, demonstration that spooks tend to go for the easy, vulnerable targets:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I took foreign workers, mostly. Those with the fewest immediate connections to complicate matters, and the most hopeful dreams of what their life might be. They were the ones that provided Agnes the most satisfying nourishment. I would wait for them to be alone, and then I would catch them unawares.”

Gerry had commented about the fact that the world becoming a Factory Farm for a Fear God would mean being able to snatch everything (MAG111: “right now all the entities have to act like a hunter, they pick off the weak ones around the edges, the ones that wander too close, and the rest of the time they have to just graze on whatever fear we all passively give away.”) but it’s always upsetting when we get Spooks describing their preferred targets… ;;

Eugene said that he was already seventy, he’s now eighty, Jon had found hints that he was probably still active (MAG139, Jon: “looking at the details for the British Steel Plant in Scunthorpe, it does seem like Eugene is still around. So I can only assume… some sort of equilibrium was found. Given what happened when I met Jude Perry, I’m not in any rush to track him or… any of them down myself.”), but given how Eugene had promised that he would be “going big” at the end of his life, it… probably won’t be pretty.

(And I totally understand that Jon feels like it’s not his own battle! But at every little concession, my heart breaks a bit. There are still people in the coffin; Eugene is probably still taking foreign workers even after Agnes’s death, for his own sacrifices… and it’s true that it’s not the Archive team’s role to save them, that they have bigger things to focus on? But they know what is happening, and that still means that innocents are getting killed and/or consumed and they… let it happen. It feels so Beholding, to know and to allow it, feeding from the scraps of the surviving witnesses’ tales…? They’re not actively allowing these terrible things to happen but they take advantage of that whole system…)

Eugene also highlighted how in the end, the cults/clusters/congregations of people worshipping the same concept are… human-made. There doesn’t seem to be any special instructions or a divine revelation about how they should proceed; they scramble and try things out, but it’s mostly coming from punctual decisions, in the same way that Robert Smirke made arbitrary decisions regarding his Architecture of the Fears.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I found my God through my own path, served It in my own way; and when Arthur and Diego found me, told me there were others that shared my devotion… Well, I can’t say it doesn’t feel nice to belong. Even if we do have our… little disagreements. […] But a longing… is not the same thing as an instruction. We’d all been touched and warped by proximity to the holy Burning Fire, but none of us had any special knowledge, no matter what Diego claims he might have read. […] Some objected, said that unless the child was conceived of the Flame, it could never be a true incarnation. But they had no idea of how such a conception could possibly even work, so it was decided that it would have to be enough to birth the child by fire. […] There was some… division amongst us as to the best course of action, something that will surely not surprise you at this stage.”

It’s kind of impressive that the Lightless Flame managed to be a small cult, that Rayner attracted people around his own “religion”, and that the Magnus Institute apparently managed to establish itself around something its people shared (given that there are the international canals, the Usher Foundation and the Pu Songling Research Centre, who knew about the Archivist’s powers, and Jon was identified in Beijing, Elias was clearly familiar to Xiaolin, etc.). It makes sense, in that regard, that even when feeling like they “belong” and are worshipping the same concept, spooks tend to give their same patrons so many different names – like different aspects of it. I wonder if there are also divisions amongst the Beholding people about their ritual and how they should try to go about it? Outside of the fact that some (Jon…? Please, Jon, confirm that you still don’t want That.) might refuse to partake in it altogether because they’re satisfied with the world as is, like Jared demonstrated in MAG131 in his refusal to join in The Last Feast.

- I wonder to which extent we’re going to hear about the history of the Lightless Flame again, because… it sounds like there are still so many mysteries (even more than before this episode?) and I have no idea if they’ll fall into the left-in-the-air-for-us-to-guess/wonder category (Jonny did promise that we won’t get spoon-fed all the answers, iirc?), or if this will all get cleared up later.

* First, everything around Diego Molina (Malina? Not the first time his name has popped up, but each of his episodes are floating in the no-official-transcript void): 

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “We all felt the calling, the dreams, pulling us ever closer to a world of fire and loss, a place of burning, and agony, when we remade the world in the image of the Lightless Flame, the one Diego called “Asag”. […] none of us had any special knowledge, no matter what Diego claims he might have read. […] Arthur has told us not to harm you yet, but this whole thing has really rather weakened his authority, and many of us are now looking towards Diego for leadership. But we shall see, I suppose.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: “Diego”, I assume to be Diego Molina, who Basira crossed paths with back in her Section’d days, and “Arthur”… could be Arthur Nolan – though, going from… the head of a cult to watching over Jane Prentiss as a landlord… does seem like something of a demotion. … God knows. It’s not like I don’t have my own office politics to keep track of.

Jon remembered Basira’s account of her encounter with Diego (when she had been able to tell his name), from MAG043, which gave us an official description of him. He had been involved in the case which got her to sign her first Section 31 form, regarding a fire near Clapham in August 2011, and resulting in the death of a fellow (racist) officer:

(MAG043) BASIRA: He was… a Hispanic male. Probably mid to late forties, heavyset with a completely shaved head. […] I realised for the first time the bald guy’s saying something. Not loud, but intensely. I mean, this was years ago so I don’t remember exactly what he was saying, but it definitely involved the words “cleansing fire”, “all shall be ash”, and the name “Asag”? Which, I later learned, is some kind of Sumerian demon. So that’s fun. […] Our arsonist’s name was Diego Molina. He was assistant curator at some Mexican museum, come over with a loan to the Natural History Museum, but… they hadn’t heard from him for a few weeks. […] The only thing Diego Molina had on him, when we brought him in, was a small book, bound in red leather. They caught Spencer in storage, trying to destroy it with a zippo lighter. […] They told me he killed himself when he got home. Apparently, he’d somehow filled the bath full of boiling water and just… just got in. Official story was he’d somehow done it using a kettle, which… that’s, that’s just about the weakest cover-up I ever heard.

And the description she gave, and the focus on “Asag”, is of course putting to mind the mysterious man from MAG012 who was transported to Lesere Saraki’s service on the night of the 23rd December of 2011 (so six months after Basira’s case), and who had apparently been fighting with Gerry Keay, before Gerry killed him for good in the hospital:

(MAG012, Lesere Saraki) “Apparently the fire brigade had responded to reports of a blaze in a building site near St Mary’s churchyard, and had turned up to find the two men lying unconscious. There had been no fire, although the ground they lay on showed several burn marks and a metal bar that had been lying nearby appeared to have bent slightly as if from great heat. […] the more I heard, the more it sounded like most of them weren’t in English. The first sounded like “Asak” or “Asag”, then “Veepalach” and finally in English “The Lightless Flame”. The last part was very clear, and I assumed he was talking about whatever burned him, but he said it with such intensity that the words made me feel quite uncomfortable.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: As far as the mystery man’s chanting goes, if it was indeed “Asag” that he was saying, then that’s quite interesting. Asag is the name of a demon in Sumerian mythology associated with disease and corruption, which doesn’t really seem to have much relevance to this statement except that it was also fabled that Asag was able to boil fish alive in their rivers. Admittedly in Sumerian myth this was because he was monstrously ugly but a curious coincidence nonetheless. “Veepalach” might also be a mishearing of the Polish word “wypalać”, according to Martin, which means to cauterize or brand. Admittedly, if Martin speaks Polish in the same way he “speaks Latin” then he might be talking nonsense again, but I’ve looked it up and it appears to check out.

* Tangent about Gerry but mMMmm, there is one item I had absolutely forgotten about that was mentioned in this episode?

(MAG012, Lesere Saraki) “He was in almost identical shape to the first, except for the fact that the burns seemed to stop at his neck, along a clear line. It was as though he’d been wearing a choker that the damage couldn’t get above but his neck was bare. […] Like the first, he was completely covered in almost uniform second-degree burns, except for what at first I thought were small black scorch marks. Looking closer, I saw that they were eyes. Small, tattooed eyes on every one of his joints: his knees, his elbows and even his knuckles, as well as just over his heart. I would have expected the burns to have almost destroyed tattoos that small but instead they were unblemished and the skin about a centimetre around each one also didn’t seem to have been affected. […] After a few seconds of awkward silence, Gerard spoke. He asked me if the paramedics had brought any items in with them. Specifically, he was after a small book bound in red leather and a brass pendant he had been wearing. He didn’t say what design had been on the pendant but I guessed it had been an eye. I told him that neither of those things had been brought in with him, and he was quiet for a long time.”

With the descriptions of his wounds and how the Eyes had apparently protected him from the burning, and how there was specifically a clear delimitation after his neck, and how he had lost a pendant… it looks like he had a(n Eye?) pendant acting as a protection, which was pretty efficient? Given Gerry’s reaction, was it actually… from Eric’s…? (I doubt he would have been apparently stunned into silence like this if it had just been something from Mary?)

Plus, I’m not sure about a few things but they’re quite interesting to think about: Why had Gerry apparently been fighting against Diego? In MAG111, he mainly described his activities around Leitner books at the time, and we spotted him casually saving or giving hints to a few statement-givers here and there, helping them to survive, but this was the only time we heard of him him… actively fighting and killing a Spook. Had they been fighting over the “small book bound in red leather”? Given how Eugene mentioned Diego’s reading in MAG139, that Basira remembered they had retrieved a book on him in MAG043, and that Gerry was after one that matched its description in MAG012, he was tied to at least that one, so… I would say it was either a (proto)Leitner, either a Smirke book covering some thoughts about the rituals? Did Diego become a Spook thanks to it, à la Mike Crew and Jared Hopworth? (Though in their cases, they got rid of their own books once they acquired their powers…)

(Given Gertrude’s personal history with the Lightless Flame, I first thought, very excitedly, that Gerry had tried to neutralise someone who was threatening direct harm to Gertrude. Technically, unless small retcon, it can’t be the case: Mary Keay was stated to have died in September 2008 (MAG004), Gerry explained that she had “haunted” him for five years after that (MAG111) until Gertrude found him and got rid of Mary, and that Gerry had only begun working with her after that. There is a very small discrepancy here (that would mean that Gertrude made Mary disappear in 2013 and Gerry said he then proceeded to work with her “for a few years”… but he died in late 2014) but, technically, with the information we’ve got, Mary was still haunting Gerry at the time of his hospitalisation in 2011… and sadly, was probably indeed the person who came to fetch Gerry (MAG012, Lesere Saraki: “Gerard Keay was treated for a further four days in the hospital before being discharged into the care of his mother.”). When Jon had highlighted how he had the feeling that Gertrude drew a sick pleasure from pretending to be Gerry’s mom (MAG107), my first instinct was to scream “gERTRUDE…” about MAG012… but nop, doesn’t appear to work. Damnit.)

* Anyway, back to Diego: he was apparently the Scholar-like of the group (was the one calling their god “Asag”, was the one to tell the others that their ideal world was called “The Scoured Earth”), and he was definitely tied to that book in red leather, and Basira did mention that John Spencer hadn’t managed to burn it, and HUUUU, I remembered having thought, with “They caught Spencer in storage, trying to destroy it with a zippo lighter.” (MAG043) that there were lots of lighters involved (Gerry’s, Jon’s…) but… specifically there, given the Very Tense relationship between The Web and The Desolation, I wonder if this might have in fact been the same one with the web design that would later end up in Jon’s hands – the Web trying to use someone to get rid of a Desolation-related item, to put another dent into the Lightless Flame’s activities, a few years after Agnes’s death?

* It’s REALLY interesting that Diego was obsessed with calling their god “Asag”, given how Jon highlighted that it was more linked to “corruption” (MAG012: “Asag is the name of a demon in Sumerian mythology associated with disease and corruption, which doesn’t really seem to have much relevance to this statement except that it was also fabled that Asag was able to boil fish alive in their rivers.”)… and how Arthur Nolan was apparently punished, or cast away, stuck with the Hive:

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) “I don’t know how long the nest has been there. It’s not even my house, I just live there. Some sweaty old man thinks he owns it, taking money for my presence as though it will save him. […] Now I know that whatever the old man thinks, as he passes about the house with brow crinkled and mouth puckered in disapproval, it is not his. It has a thousand truer owners who shift and live and sing within the very walls of the building. He does not even know about the wasps’ nest. I wonder how long he has not known. How many years it has been there. Have you ever heard of the filarial worm? Mosquitoes gift it with their kiss and it grows and grows. It stops water moving round the human body right, makes limbs and bellies swell and sag with fluid. Now, when I look at that fat, sweaty sack, I think about it, and the voice sings of showing him what a real parasite can do.”

(MAG055) JORDAN: […] a couple of years ago, I was called in to deal with a wasps’ nest. […] The landlord’s name was Arthur Nolan. He was a short man with a constant scowl, thinning white hair and a well-chewed cigar. It looked like his denim shirt once contained quite an athletic build, but it long since settled. […] After he hit me with a look of disappointment, he nodded and began to walk down the hall. I followed him, desperate for answers, but he ignored my questions about what the hell was going on and kept walking down the stairs towards his flat. At one point, he shook his head and mumbled something about hoping it wouldn’t get this far, but he didn’t seem to be saying it to me.”

(Jane Prentiss gave her statement on February 23rd 2014, and Jordan Kennedy mentioned that he had met Arthur shortly after, in February or March 2014.)

Was there a prior “architecture” of the Fears where the Desolation and Corruption might have been lumped in together, through the name “Asag”…? The Hive, at least, sounded very, uh, eager to show how Special it was (to Arthur, in the same way that it was hissing at Beholding in Jane’s statement). Was Arthur tied to The Hive, given how he immolated himself right after Jordan “killed” the nest…? (Jon mentioned that they found Arthur’s body after the fire, in MAG032’s post-statement.) Was he supposed to be punished by getting consummated by it, and tried to throw Jane to it as fodder instead…? Given how there was apparently that Diego-Arthur rivalry and how Arthur (unlike Eugene) knew what had happened to Agnes at Hill Top Road, I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up finding a statement left by Arthur somewhere, when he was “demoted”…?

- Alright, so we got official confirmation that Hill Top Road initially belonged to The Web:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “The compromise we came to… was Hill Top Road. We knew it was a stronghold of The Web, full of other children Agnes’s age […], though if we’d known exactly how powerful The Web was in that place, perhaps we would have reconsidered. […] it seems the fight scarred the place in a way far deeper than simple fire. A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.”

Sarah Baldwin had described the taxidermy shop as a “place of power” for The Stranger, Breekon had referred to the Institute as The Eye’s “pedestal”, Elias pointed out Ny-Ålesund as a “stronghold” of The Dark.

(MAG096) ARCHIVIST: There are, er… there, there are dozens of deliveries recorded here by Breekon and Hope. What were they delivering? What is the significance of this place? SARAH: Nothing, except what people give it. But they give it a lot, make it a place of power for us. Enough to keep certain items here.

(MAG128, Breekon) “That was the first time we saw what would become this place, The Eye’s Pedestal.”

(MAG135) ELIAS: I don’t know the details. Ny-Ålesund is a stronghold of The Dark, meaning I can’t see inside.

(Plus, potentially: somewhere in the sea and/or the graveyard Naomi encountered in MAG013 for The Lonely, given Carter Chilcott’s dreams in MAG057; Point Nemo for The End?; the remains of The Maria Fairchild encountered in MAG051 for The Vast?)

Interestingly, Eugene used “stronghold” and Elias referred to Ny-Ålesund for The Dark in the same way, so it seems to be the Right Word to describe the concept, no need to beat around the bush. Hill Top Road used to be Web, and, as we got a glimpse in MAG008, at least The Desolation (the glimpses of Agnes’s ghost, the burning) and most likely The Spiral (through Ivo Lensik, Father Edwin Burroughs, and/or Anya Villette) have been around that place – is it still powerful, but too chaotic to be definitely claimed…? Jon had said that he didn’t think it would be wise to go there (MAG114: “I’ve half a mind to just go down and have a look at it myself, but… I don’t know. Ever since it first came up I’ve felt like it would be… just a very bad idea.”), but. Was that genuine concern because he Learned From Poking Into Danger (which sounds ludicrous, it’s Jon we’re talking about), or the spiders nudging him to not go because ~obviously, he doesn’t want to go, he’s absolutely not being held by strings, what do you mean~.

- You fucked up a perfectly simple place, is what you did, Agnes. Look. You gave it reality bending.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I was… not one of those assigned to watch our chosen one, so I can’t say much about exactly what happened within the walls of that house, but it seems the fight scarred the place in a way far deeper than simple fire. A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.”

Since then, there had been at least, uuh… Desolation and Spiral which have been spotted there (MAG008) + some timeline problems, with Ray and Agnes’s ghosts appearing. Anya Villette (MAG114) seemed to say that The Web might possibly be re-emerging? And there is the problem of Anya Villette herself – was the reality-getting-messed-up-around-her an effect of The Spiral, did she come from a parallel dimension, did she ever exist at all, etc.

- There is something fundamentally hilarious about the fact that the cultists of the Lightless Flame tried to guess how to raise Agnes and failed utterly, because she was… a child. No, wait, it was sad and heartbreaking.

But the fact that they sent her to Hill Top Road because it “was a stronghold of The Web, full of other children Agnes’s age” when they were late teenagers, and she was ten-to-eleven? What a bunch of idiots, holy Mew. (I’m sad for Agnes but also covering my face snickering at these idiots trying to raise a Messiah and having no idea how to deal with a child. No wonder she was “prone to fits of violent rage”, you weren’t giving her the environment she needed……………)

- Iiiiii don’t know what to think about Jack Barnabas. On the one hand:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “That stupid coffeeshop twit. I honestly don’t know why Arthur allowed it, or why Jude didn’t step in – she’s usually so jealous! But Agnes… [SIGH] Maybe Agnes asked them to leave him alone…! Or maybe they were just surprised by her interest in this… boring, unremarkable fool. […] We have allowed Jude free rein on what happens to the coffeeshop boy, though Agnes asked her… not to interfere. She has not yet harmed him, but I cannot imagine what is going through her mind. The misery, and pain, he has brought upon himself. For all her anger, she is not rash, and I fear her quiet consideration far more than I worry about her temper. It may be he lives the remainder of his natural life – but she will make sure he is never happy, and never without pain.”

Eugene was sure that he would be getting hell. And it is indeed what Jack lived… for a while, right after the events (March 2007):

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “I lost almost everything after that. I never had much to begin with, and after I was let go at the café, I couldn’t afford to keep my home. They didn’t even try to pretend it wasn’t because my burned face would scare away customers. I’ve ended up living with my father again, who has been… understanding about the situation though… even he can’t bring himself to meet my eye most days.”

But Jon had also mentioned in his post-statement (January 2017) that his situation had gotten much better:

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] Martin has been able to make contact with Mr. Barnabas by email. He’s apparently been doing much better in the years since his statement, having received some reasonably successful plastic surgery.

;; I had assumed it was a genuine improvement, I really hope it is… and not, like, a small respite before Jude comes after him again to strip him of what he managed to get back.

- Eugene was probably That One Guy With The Candles spotted by Jack Barnabas the night of Agnes’s death:

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

Diego Molina, Eugene Vanderstock and… probably Arthur Nolan with the spiders? Jon had identified Arthur in the group but without tangential proof (though MAG055 had associated him with burning and fire):

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

* Small fuuuunny thing: there had been a few mentions here and there that Agnes didn’t eat regular food, before Eugene confirmed that she needed another kind of sustenance:

(MAG059, Ronald Sinclair) “She never came to church, though; never sat around the dinner table when it was uncovered.”

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “She never actually put any milk in it. She never even drank it. […] What was her life, that every Tuesday at 3’ in the afternoon, she came into the same café, and didn’t drink a black coffee? […] We went to the park a couple more times; had a meal in an Italian restaurant where she didn’t eat anything; we even went to see a film.”

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I took foreign workers, mostly. Those with the fewest immediate connections to complicate matters, and the most hopeful dreams of what their life might be. They were the ones that provided Agnes the most satisfying nourishment. […] Agnes would take them to her small, empty flat, lay them on the floor and light them. Over the many hours these candles burned, she would crane over them, so Arthur tells me, inhaling all the agony, suffering, and loss from which they were created. Or he could’ve been lying to me, just keeping me busy with torture and murder so I didn’t get in the way of anything. I don’t think I’d have minded that, actually. At least, I felt useful.”

- HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT WAS ABSOLUTELY ABSENT OF EUGENE’S STATEMENT REGARDING AGNES’S DEATH? SPIDERS. Probably-Arthur had been bringing some on the night of her death. There were SPIDERS in Jack’s flat (that Agnes’s presence burned):

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “It was as I was doing this, I noticed kind of an odd smell? Like when you turn on an electric heater for the first time in a while and you get a whiff of all the burning dust. I looked up, and noticed within the corner of the room, where there had been a spider’s web this morning, there was just a faint wisp of smoke. It was weird, but I had more important things on my mind.”

And also, THE FUCKING TREE at Hill Top Road, which prompted Agnes’s death on November 23rd 2006. Eugene made it sound like Agnes had slowly come to the conclusion that she couldn’t carry out the ritual because of her “doubt” but… we know that her death was tied to the tree at Hill Top Road, the night Ivo Lensik was compelled to unroot it (and to free spiders):

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “[…] I heard Agnes gasp. I turned to see her gripping her chest as though in sudden pain, and she told me we had to go. I followed her as she… staggered out of the park and over to a phone booth where she made a panicked call. She said something about a tree falling, and that they… had to finish something. Then she hung up. She leaned on my arm as we walked back to her flat. […] Agnes turned to me and apologized, told me goodbye, and thank you. There was such a sense of finality to it that I felt like my heart stopped.”

Eugene knew that Hill Top Road had been a stronghold of The Web, but I’m not sure that he understood how much The Web might have possibly been still hanging around? It had struck me, in MAG067, how Jack… had suddenly decided to go talk to Agnes, and how he had described her:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “But she was so beautiful, she… she was tall, with long straight auburn hair, and these eyes that… when they looked at you, it didn’t feel like she was seeing you so much as… was trapping you. […] I was… drawn to her in a way I can’t… even explain. […] That was the moment I decided to try and talk to Agnes. Seeing her interact with someone else, even in such a weird way, unblocked something in my mind. The following Tuesday, when she came in and ordered her coffee, I asked her name. She looked at me in surprise and, for a second, I felt like I’d made a terrible mistake, but then she… told me, very matter-of-factly. And then I asked her out on a date. I don’t know how it happened, it just… tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop it. […] I worried I was boring her, but every time I looked over, she had that same expression on, which… by then I was pretty sure was a smile. I’d catch her eye and that feeling would flood though me – I… I still don’t know quite how to describe it, but whatever it was, it was powerful. […] I… I don’t know if I would have had it in me to resist. I just couldn’t avoid being drawn in, like a moth to the flame.”

Except for that last image, the way Agnes was attracting him… sounds super Webby to me? And as mentioned above, we know there were spiders in Jack’s flat. I don’t think that his crush was Web-induced, but his decision to go talk to her could perhaps have been due to a string…? (I’m really not sure but one my personal takes would be: The Web’s presence at Hill Top Road was diminished because of the tree, but it eroded over time and/or something made the seal weaken; the spiders used Jack’s crush and pushed him to confess, humouring Agnes and/or giving her a pretext to officialise that she wouldn’t do the ritual (making it sound like she couldn’t, rather than admitting that she didn’t want to); the spiders got Ivo Lensik to “kill” the tree, freeing The Web’s influence… and it was back as a contender for the ownership of the place. Possibly: it’s also what allowed Annabelle to be born as an avatar, a few years later, as Raymond Fielding had been dead for a long while and Neil Lagorio was growing old and incapacitated?)

- Regarding Agnes’s timeline, some bits are now a bit clearer, others still blurry:

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

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

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

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

* In 1989, Jude met Agnes and the others. (MAG089)

* Gertrude did something tying Agnes to the place (MAG139, Eugene: “Jude simply flies into a rage when it’s brought up. I assume it’s why we were waiting, biding our time for decades, unable to bring our designs to any culmination. Jude had only just joined at the time”), Agnes kept Ray’s hand.

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

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

* On November 23rd 2006, Ivo Lensik uprooted the tree at Hill Top Road, freeing spiders from the apple buried under it; Agnes felt it, said that she had to finish something, gathered the members of the cult, and at her request, they hanged her, with Ray’s hand tied to her waist. (MAG008/MAG067/MAG139)

The Web binds and traps, so it might have been its way to get back at Agnes, before Gertrude did… something, fifteen years later? I would have assumed that Gertrude had struck around the time of Ray’s death, but no, Eugene said that it was around the time Jude had joined them, and Jude was absolutely crystal clear that she joined in 1989.

- … I’m still side-eying (ha) a loooot Agnes’s stance on the candles, given that Eugene never actually saw her inhaling them (it was more of a Jude thing, to like incense?), and that Arthur was the one to say she was using them. It sounds like there is room for her to… not have used them at all. And, actually, to not have been that much into serving the Desolation in the first place.

It’s impressive how much Agnes herself still remains a Mystery, despite the fact that we’ve now learned about her birth and how she was raised. Interestingly (and I really doubt it was a coincidence), all the titbits we got about her were people who were either infatuated with her (Jude, Jack), either barely knew her and were unable to decipher her (Ronald), either saw her as a symbol more than a person (Eugene). The only time we heard about what she might have thought or felt was through Jack, and very briefly:

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “She was talking about… some sort of job, and whether Agnes was going to be able to do it. At first, I thought it was a job interview, and… then she started talking about Agnes being released from something. Agnes just… said something softly, and shook her head. She looked sad, an expression I’d never seen on her face before. The other woman sighed, clearly unhappy with the answer, and stood up to leave. Before she went, she took out a brown paper envelope and handed it over; said that she’d give it to her now so she didn’t forget later. She called it “a collection”, and it looked like the envelope might have been full of money. Agnes put it in her jacket and returned to staring out the window, as her intimidating companion left with a frustrated expression.”

(And we still don’t know what was in that envelope! You could technically put small candles in an envelope but they would still be too big for a jacket…? (Were there spiders inside of it.) Was the other woman Jude, since it was “a collection” and Eugene mentioned she might come “to collect” after Gertrude…? Perhaps he wasn’t being metaphorical.)

(MAG067, Jack Barnabas) “We sat on a bench as the sun went down, watching the sky redden, and Agnes asked me a question. It was the first time she’d said anything more than a few words since we left my flat. [STATIC:] She asked me if I had a destiny. [/STATIC] I don’t need to tell you the question caught me off-guard. I don’t know if I’ve given the impression clearly enough yet, being a single guy in my early thirties still working the tiller to Sheffield Café, but I don’t really see myself as having much of a destiny. Hell, I’m not even sure I believe in destiny. I certainly don’t believe in God, and I feel that’s… kind of linked. So I told her this. She looked at me with the same sadness I had seen on her face before. “That must be nice,” she said, and went back to staring into the sunset.”

It sounds like Agnes might have been much more reluctant about The Lightless Flame’s ritual than Eugene wanted to believe…? Whether or not we get a statement left by Arthur, I’m pretty confident that we might have one left by Agnes herself – or possibly a recording of her talking with Gertrude. There have been lots of people talking about Agnes without us getting to hear Agnes’s voice and intentions directly, and I doubt that this has been a coincidence? Eugene explicitly said that Gertrude did something to Agnes – is it possible that they agreed on something together, with Agnes more or less trying to spare her extended family’s feelings while ensuring that she couldn’t get used by them…?

(It would sound super positive for the series, which tends to give characters darker sides too, but… Agnes’s story has sounded very tragic so far? Just like Gerry – being programmed to be Something by their own mother, getting involved with spooks and fundamentally twisted, unable to escape, until they would reach their bitter end?)

(- There is something very poetic in the idea that… we’ll see about it, but maybe Agnes, whose whole life was programmed, who had a “Destiny” inflicted to her, actually gained agency for the first time in the house of the Web, which is known for its mind-control?)

- … Okay, so the Fears/Dread Powers/Outer Gods definitely are able to touch people more easily through their dreams.

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “We all felt the calling, the dreams, pulling us ever closer to a world of fire and loss, a place of burning, and agony, when we remade the world in the image of the Lightless Flame, the one Diego called “Asag”. We all felt it. Longed for it.”

Jane mentioned her “crawling and many-legged” dreams (MAG032), Annabelle had reported “several unsettling dreams about spiders” (MAG069); there were Oliver’s dreams (MAG011, MAG121); Adelard mentioned his own nightmares (MAG113); Lucia was pursued by some (MAG130); it’s unclear how Garland Hillier got his “revelations” but it could have happened through his dreams (MAG134); Robert Smirke had seen the Fears, and ultimately Beholding, in his dreams (MAG138); and of course, there are Jon’s dreams, which… seem more active than most of the others (given that Daisy confirmed that she was seeing him back, and that the way Elias described them in MAG120, Jon was inflicting anguish on the victims and was identified as the cause of their suffering).

- Regarding how the Lightless Flame proceeded and how Manuela designed The Dark’s ritual… the overall guidelines seem to be to Believe In It Very Hard, And It Will Happen?

(MAG135, Manuela Dominguez) “Scientifically, it was nonsense of course. Dark energy and the like don’t work like that, not even remotely. But that wasn’t important. What mattered was that it felt like science, and that was all I needed. To do my work, to create the Black Star would need a parody, an aping mockery of science. But it would also need the deepest of darknesses. When I told Maxwell what I actually needed, he told me such a thing was impossible, but I insisted. And so he began his work on the Daedalus. […] My experiments continued largely uninterrupted, pushing the boundaries of light, darkness and fear. It was dangerous work and more than once, I got too close to the light and it almost destroyed me. But it didn’t. I could regale you with the technical terms or scientific disciplines I played with and rendered meaningless, but in the end all you actually need to know is that I succeeded. A tiny, terrible sun of the pitchest black, shining beautiful Darkness all around it.”

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “But a longing… is not the same thing as an instruction. We’d all been touched and warped by proximity to the holy Burning Fire, but none of us had any special knowledge, no matter what Diego claims he might have read. He wanted a Grand Inferno, a ritual of apocalyptic burning that would make the firebombing of Dresden look like a sparkler. Which sounded… amazing! […] And that’s when Arthur proposed his own plan: a Chosen One. We would create a messiah, the Flame Incarnate, one who could usher in this new world and lead us in what Diego called “The Scoured Earth”. […] Some objected, said that unless the child was conceived of the Flame, it could never be a true incarnation. But they had no idea of how such a conception could possibly even work, so it was decided that it would have to be enough to birth the child by fire. […] And in the centre of the pyre, a hollow, where Eileen was to lay. We prayed, and sacrificed, and anointed her body with holy oil and a crown of kindling. I protested the last one, felt we could do better than to ape the Christians, but I was shouted down.”

It looks like The Lightless Flame improvised… basically everything, by picking here and there symbols and ritualistic gestures that belonged to other cults – so the baffling thing is that it worked, and it’s probably because they thought/hoped/believed it would.

- Whiiiich directly raises the question of The Rite of the Watcher’s Crown, as Jon implicitly seemed to think – or, at least, he has been shown voicing some interrogations about why he was there.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Why were we chosen? Agnes was created – crafted with a specific purpose so finely tuned that even a grain of uncertainty threatened the entirety of her being. [CHORTLING] But I’m so full of doubt it feels like there’s no room for anything else, and… I’m sure Martin is the same…! Is there “destiny” here? B–bloodlines and… prophecies, or did we just… stumble into this? Maybe we’re the opposite of Agnes; maybe our doubts are exactly what we need. I–if that’s the case, I’m a… an amazing chosen one. … [LONG EXHALE] Don’t know how that would work, though.

And indeed: how is this ritual meant to work, if the Archivists tend to not be so keen to see the world warped…? Elias pointed out in MAG092 how fitting Jon is for the role and, indeed, his personality matches his powers, which seem to be… compensating for things he is lacking: compulsion means getting the truth out of people (while Jon is prone to paranoia), Knowing comes in handy given that he has so many questions, being able to get formatted statements help to satiate his curiosity… And precisely, because Jon is prone to doubt, he’ll push forward to know. But that doesn’t mean that he would be ready to doom the world and inflict fears on people, especially when Elias pushed him to stop another apocalypse (MAG102, “I should have thought preventing the horrific transformation of our world is not solely my concern!” YEAH, DEFINE WHAT IS AND ISN’T “HORRIFIC”, ELIAS). So what is it Elias saw in Jon that led him to think that Jon might be up for it, if his plans are indeed to carry out The Watcher’s Crown…?

I’m surprised that Jon would mention “bloodlines” in the list of potential reasons for them to be here, given how… it hasn’t been the case for any of the characters we’ve met so far, except Gerry – who, precisely, told Jon that blood didn’t matter (except if you’re a Lukas and use family structure as a tool to shape more believers)?

Overall, there is a non-systematic but still notable trend, amongst the Archival staff, to have encountered Spooks before joining the Institute in order to try and find out more about it:

(* Michael Shelley: lost a friend to The Spiral when he was young, which pushed him to join the Institute to understand what had happened, according to MAG101.)

* Jon had met The Web as a kid, probably never truly got away from it even though he did not die right away. Georgie highlighted how, personality-wise, he was perfect for the job:

(MAG093) GEORGIE: That does at least explain why he picked you. ARCHIVIST: Uh? GEORGIE: If your job is asking questions, I mean. You were always the one who pushed too far, and asked smart-arse, awkward questions. I always was surprised you never got punched.

* We heard Melanie’s recruitment live, though the reasons are still a bit unclear:

(MAG084) ELIAS: Do you want the job, Melanie? MELANIE: Oh… Um, I…Well, it’s, it’s rather sudden, but… er, I mean, sure. Yes. Yes, I do.

(MAG106) MELANIE: Threaten, then. I’ve got nothing. ELIAS: That’s… almost true. Your life is indeed shockingly absent of any meaningful connections. That’s actually one of the reasons I chose you for this job.

(Melanie had had various Spooky encounters at this point: she witnessed a fight between agents of the Stranger and of the… Flesh? Slaughter? (MAG028), got wounded on the shoulder by a Slaughter ghost (MAG076), and was already infected by a bullet from another Slaugher ghost (MAG117) when Elias recruited her. Static was even heard when he was talking to her, so he definitely did something, whether it was… seeing the bullet, or compelling her to think about the reasons for accepting? But why did he want her in the team – was it because she was leaning towards Beholding, in her quest for seeing things that could destroy her/being a witness overall/working with cameras and recording supernatural events? Was it because of the Slaughter wounds, set-up for Jon?)

* Same for Basira and Daisy: officially, Elias needed to neutralise Daisy and to be able to use her “competences” in dealing with Spooks, hence the trapping of Basira as blackmail material. Both had large amounts of Spooky encounters beforehand, as Section 31-signee officers (including the showdown with Rayner). Given recent development, it’s possible that Elias mostly just wanted Basira in the team, but her being good at investigating and “suit[ing] the academic life” (MAG102) might also just have been a happy coincidence – unlike the other Beholding folks, Basira has demonstrated that she’s able to call things quit when she is done with them, such as with her quitting the police.

* It’s unclear whether Jon had personally asked Sasha to be transferred to the Archives when he was appointed as Head Archivist (he liked Sasha a lot! She was getting a free pass on everything!). He did mention that “her working here seems the natural progression of her lifelong interest in the paranormal (MAG048), but it’s unclear whether that bit was Sasha-Sasha… or something rewritten by the Not!Them ;; (Since from what we knew it season 1, Sasha was pretty short on money and even hated Artefact Storage when she was working there but “couldn’t afford to quit”… so it might be that the real Sasha had just been desperate for a job, like Martin.)

* We know, however, quite a lot about Tim: he followed Danny and became an unwilling spectator to Grimaldi/Nikola’s skinning and dancing; he joined the Institute shortly afterwards in order to try and track down the Circus and get answers about what had happened to his brother (he even became a Smirke specialist in just two years!). We know that Jon specifically asked him to come with him to the Archives:

(MAG065) TIM: No. No, you listen for once. I was fine in research, happy. Then you asked me to be transferred here, and suddenly it’s all monsters and killers and secret passages, oh my!

(Plus, the whole thing with how he hadn’t managed to move but only watch in the Covent Garden theatre (MAG104) sounded verrryy much like Jon watching his bully disappear behind the door. Watching until the end, unable to do anything to stop events – but not closing their eyes either. Beholding-compatible.)

* AND MARTIN IS STILL OUR BIG MYSTERY, but of all things, we know that Elias was the one to interview him when he was applied with a fake CV, which UHOH.

(MAG056) MARTIN: I… … I lied on my CV. ARCHIVIST: … What? MARTIN: I don’t have a Master’s in parapsychology, I don’t even have a degree. […] So I… I just kinda started to lie on my applications, sending them out to just about anywhere. For some reason, my lie about parapsychology got me an interview with Elias and, and then a job here. M–most of my employment details are made up, I’m only 29!

(Unclear whether this happened when Martin was 17 or a little later, but he was at any rate already employed at the Institute in 2009, at age 22.) More specifically about working in the Archives, it doesn’t sound like Jon asked Martin to follow him there – firstly, Jon was super dismissive of him in season 1, and secondly, there was Martin’s awkward silence when he and Tim discussed that:

(MAG098) MARTIN: […] [Jon] said he doesn’t want to lose anyone else. Like, y’know, it’s his fault. TIM: Isn’t it? MARTIN: No! No, it isn’t! I mean, you heard Elias… We never really stood a chance. TIM: Yeah. Maybe. But Elias wasn’t actually the one who offered me the job down here. MARTIN: No, I– Sure. …

So either he volunteered, either he might have been sent down there by Elias… which just raises another “why”. It was a bit weird how Jon, in MAG139, immediately segued from Martin to the question of why they had been “chosen” to be there (why did thinking about Martin prompt that?), but on the other hand, it’s still an enigma why Elias hired Martin. Could be that everything was absolutely accidental, could be the Spiders at work, could be that Elias did have specific plans about Martin (because Elias didn’t especially like Martin…? He’s always very casually talking him down), who knows.

*SHAKES ELIAS AGAIN, SPIT WHAT YOU KNOW YOU INSUFFERABLE GRINNING EX-HEAD*

(Other option of why they were chosen: their isolation. Jon’s parents died when he was a kid, and his grandmother died around the time he began working at the Institute, in 2012; Tim’s only family member mentioned was his brother, who had died before he joined the Institute; Martin’s only family member mentioned around him was his mother, and given that he had to care for her when he was only 17, it is implied that he might not have had many family members around or close; Basira only mentioned her father, and in past tense; Melanie’s parents are both dead and Elias pointed out she didn’t have any real anchor anymore; Daisy’s “last connection to humanity” was stated to be Basira. Could be Elias being a vulture, or a bit of classism, targeting people in need/from poor upbringings, assuming that they would be more influenceable and easy to handle?)

- À propos of Martin, this episode also reminded of One Big Important Question:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “And that’s when Arthur proposed his own plan: a Chosen One. We would create a messiah, the Flame Incarnate […]. When we finally decided, it was Eileen Montague who came forward as a volunteer. She was five months pregnant at the time, and had already taken care of the father in the usual manner of our little congregation. […] We baptized her with the boiling water of Asag and named her… “Agnes”, as had been her mother’s final request.”

IS THERE A SINGLE GOOD MOTHER IN TMA. I’m snorting and weeping over the fact that:

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: […] [Jack Barnabas] was unable to provide much more information on the above but, upon Martin’s asking if Agnes had mentioned her childhood at all, he did recall her briefly alluding to being adopted.

L-O-L YES, SHE WAS ADOPTED… by so many different people. By the cult of the Lightless Flame after her birth, and then by Raymond Fielding (kind of) when they sent her off to fight the Spiders as a kid.

We don’t have Stellar Parenting overall, very true, but I can still think of a few fathers who sacrificed themselves to save a child – Jason North was implied to have immolated himself to save his son from his own curse in MAG037, and YEAH OKAY, ROBERT MONTAUK WAS A SERIAL KILLER but he was also good towards Julia in MAG009 (and we will probably hear a bit more about their family’s story, about Julia’s mother… but I had gotten the feeling that Robert probably did what he did in order to avenge his wife and/or to protect Julia from the same fate?). Plus, Gerry mentioned that he thinks that his father might have wanted to help raise, him before Mary decided to get rid of the problem. Not role models, sure, but not-failing-as-parents. Meanwhile, almost every time we see a mother or hear about her feelings (ie, excluding for example Andrea Nunis’s mother, who was an anchor to her, but who wasn’t a character in herself), it’s Bad News. As MAG139 demonstrated, Agnes’s mother imposed the Destiny on her daughter before she was even born. See also: Mary friggin’ Keay to Gerry, and not-his-mother-but-was-apparently-getting-a-kick-out-of-being-mistaken-for-it Gertrude. Do I need to mention Martin’s mother.

It’s a great subversion of the idea that mothers are inherently nurturing and kind but they’re also… the Rarest Species in this series, uh.

- Hey hey hey, alright, I deserve tomatoes to be thrown at me, but on the subject of Martin Lukas Keay von Closen Son Of Puppets Blackwood. So. Martin and spiders have a loving relationship, but this episode also reminded me that another of his loves is also…

(MAG117) MARTIN: This way I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but… I’m ready. And I want to. Also, I get to burn some stuff, so that cool!

(MAG118) ELIAS: Tell me what you’re doing, and why. MARTIN: I just thought I’d, y’know, drop a couple of ideas in the old suggestion box! Turns out my suggestion is… fire! [LIGHTER ON]

… arson, so on the list of “what the heck is Martin Blackwood”, what about Unholy Grandchild of Web and Desolation or something through his dad.)

- Gertrude’s death was sneakily pushed back to the forefront again:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “And he’s probably right. Just as well you are not here. Smart move on your part. But they always are, aren’t they? Smart moves. Someday, you’re gonna push your luck too far, and when you do… Well, you just better hope it isn’t Jude who comes to collect. […] As for you… Whatever you did, and whatever protection it might have afforded you is severed, with Agnes’s death. Arthur has told us not to harm you yet, but this whole thing has really rather weakened his authority, and many of us are now looking towards Diego for leadership. But we shall see, I suppose. I hope, when it is time, we may burn you forever, Gertrude.

[…] ARCHIVIST: […] Nice to see Gertrude [EXHALE] also used to get a lot of threats. So far it doesn’t seem that any went… desperately well. Except for Elias, of course. But he didn’t threaten, did he? He just… did it.

And I still feel like we might be missing a few things about the circumstances surrounding it – if Gertrude was pursued by so many people and so cautious about it, how come Elias managed to get rid of her in the end…? Is it because he was kind of a blind spot (ha) and she had been underestimating him…? Is it because, so focused on Spooks, she didn’t consider mundane means…? But she was well-aware of the power of regular, non-paranormal weapons! She used so many explosives…

I wonder if the Reminder that Gertrude had a long list of would-be killers, that she had managed to avoid for so long until Elias got to her, is supposed to mean that we’ll hear more about the Elias-Gertrude relationship… Oliver had mentioned that she had many things going after her, in MAG121; Peter mentioned that he wouldn’t have been against offing her himself in MAG134; and now, again, we’re getting another mention in MAG139…

- Jon is still gathering information about past rituals and we can add another name for the Desolation: “The Scoured Earth”, which should have been carried out by Agnes… and was left on standby and/or cancelled entirely for this round. We’re only missing the name and description for The Lonely (though we know from MAG134 that Gertrude successfully derailed it already), The Corruption (was it whatever Jane tried against the Institute?), and everything about The Vast. Jon didn’t say how and where and why he found Eugene’s statement in particular: whether he was drawn to this one, or found it cobwebs-wrapped, or Knew he had to read it?

(And The Corruption still hasn’t had any statement in season 4! Oh worms.)

- Jon gave us updates on the Archival staff, and it is various shades of sob. Chronologically, by order of mentions:

* Basira still hasn’t spilled the beannnns ;_;

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: The others are doing… better, I think. Basira’s busy doing research for something secretive, unsurprisingly. But she seems to be adjusting to, uh… the new Daisy.

So, on the one hand: Basira is still Hiding Everything from Jon… but on the other hand, it sounds like it’s going better between her and Daisy? … but WELP, if their relationship is pacifying, it means that it’s becoming Something That Could Be Taken Away from us and from them / it’s giving Jonny an opportunity to hurt us a whole lot if one of them dies. Let me be happy about them, gdi?!

* I Have Reclamations To Make About Jon’s mentions of Daisy:

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: I actually like Daisy now, which is a… really weird feeling. [INHALE]

Like, on the one hand, I get that becoming kind of bff with Daisy is throwing you off, Jon, but don’t you dare lie to Us/The Tape Recorder: you liked Daisy and sharing your fantastic shitty sense of humour with her, I Have Receipts:

(MAG096) DAISY: Come on. Before the Met get here. ARCHIVIST: Whatever you say~ DAISY: And wipe that grin off your face.

Plus, you’ve been listening to THE ARCHERS in her company, probably to indulge her, and you went out for drinks with her; there are limits to pity, you’ve been way into Friendship territory for a while now, don’t try to bluff!! :w

Also, a bit saddened that he’s describing her as “the new Daisy” because… it doesn’t really seem accurate? According to Daisy, this was her all along/her true self, and we indeed could see glimpses of it in season 3, like how she gladly accepted the nickname “Daisy” (MAG082, Elias: “Everyone calls me Daisy. I like that because it sounds so gentle […] It makes me feel strong, to know that the soft nickname everyone calls me comes from a bloody wound.”) (But at the same time… ;; It’s very easy to picture Elias waltzing in at some point to highlight that ahah, but the rabid dog was the real you all along, too…)

* Melanie is “quiet”.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Melanie’s quiet, but I think therapy’s helping.

And given that the identity of her therapist is still undetermined, I’m filled with dread… The Web is known for making people come off as “quiet”……………

(MAG059, Ronald Sinclair) “The other kids living there were the same – at least, I think they were. I remember them being kind of dull, not that they were… boring, exactly, […] but there was something about them, as though… there were some things that they said and did without anything behind them. Occasionally there would be flashes of something. […] mostly they were quiet, almost placid. I’m sure they’d have said the same things about me, but at the time, nothing seemed amiss. I did what I did because it was what I was supposed to do, and it never struck me to question it. I’m not sure I really recognise who I became while living at that house.”

Please, be just fine and healing, Melanie…? ;;

* Helen is… *LOUD SOB*

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Haven’t seen Helen much. The door is… sometimes there, sometimes not. … I haven’t knocked. I’m never going to trust it. Trust… her. … Trust it. [DRY EXHALE] And I shouldn’t. Whatever its relationship to the person who was or is Helen… assuming that I can ever know its motivations is a mistake.

Damniiiiiiiiiiiiiit… Extra-aouch that Helen directly told Jon that she wasn’t super-fond of the “it” in MAG131 (and given how Melanie, who seems to be the closest to Helen?, used “she”), and that Jon is… very pointedly choosing to still using “It” anyway after some hesitation (reflex to call The Distortion “it”, then remembering his discussion with Helen and going for “she”, then reaffirming his distrust with “it”?).

I’m really not surprised that Jon is having trouble with her door (Jon has a History of doors that should stay closed, and specifically got bad experiences with Michael’s), I’m saddened that he is choosing to not trust Helen, although… I can imagine why. But is it through an intrinsically personal decision (The Distortion is supposed to lie and deceive; maybe it’s currently trustworthy only because of his lack of trust? Is it because he still feels guilty over what happened to the human Helen Richardson, who got snatched right before him? Is it because he still resents Michael?), or is it also because of the Beholding in him – pushing him to not trust what he can’t know…?

I wonder how Helen being around will end up causing harm (because surely, it will): will it be because Jon will finally decide to trust her because he has no choice left, and immediately be given reason to regret? Is it because Jon will adamantly refuse to trust her when she could be preventing another disaster…?

* And theeeeeeeeeeeeen…

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: And that just leaves Martin, which…

[SAD PAUSE OF ARCHIVIST DESPERATELY PINING] Jon, p l z. If you’re beginning to reach Martin Level of concern/pining/worrying, then Oh No.

(MAG117) MARTIN: I suppose you can get used to anything, but… [PAUSE] It feels different. I need them to be safe. I need him to be okay. … So–sorry, hum. I–I’m not afraid for me, though. Isn’t that weird…? […] I just… really hope everyone makes it back. … And I want to win on my own. Oh, and I hope the world doesn’t end. Obviously. [SIGH] Just… [SIGH] Just don't die, Jon. … O–or Tim, or Basira, or… Daisy, I guess. Just… just everyone please, make it back home…?

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: … [SIGH] I’m just worried about Martin. … Christ… Every other Avatar gets to have their feelings… burned right out of them, but me? I’ve… just got to sit in mine. … I know he said he had everything under control. I need… to trust him; whatever he’s doing with Peter, he’s… he knows what he’s doing. Probably. I just– … [VERY FAST] I need him to be okay. I just do.

(I’m still not sure whether the “I need him to be okay” was a conscious reference to MAG117 from him, or just a coincidence to convey that these two tragic idiots are reaching the same point independently. We have clues that Jon had heard Tim’s testament from that episode, potentially Melanie’s as well since she gave her statement about the Ghost Bullet; but they weren’t dated from the same day, and not on the same tapes if the official description (“A-F”) is any indication, so…)

Anyway. Please, Jon, don’t wish for your feelings to disappear. There is something very delicious and entertaining about Jon complaining that he has FEELINGS, URK, IT SUCKS, but at the same time, This Is That Kind Of Series. Please, enjoy your sad pining and your concern and your worrying, Jon. (;wwwwwwwww; for Jon still trying to put some reason in his own mind; explaining what is the problem, and at the same time still holding to his decision to trust Martin…)

(- There was something very… “SO WHO IS HAVING A CRUSH, NOW, UH.” with that Martin mention, given that Eugene’s statement referred to Jack Barnabas and… back in MAG067, Jon hadn’t been fundamentally kind towards the latter’s story:

(MAG067) ARCHIVIST: Statement of Jack Barnabas, regarding a short-lived courtship with Agnes Montague in the autumn of 2006. […] A rather different perspective on the woman known as Agnes Montague or… Agnes Fielding, depending on who you ask. Although hardly a reliable account, steeped as it is in messy obsessions and confusion.

HEY JON, WHAT’S GOOD, and who is the one pining, now.

(Although of course, more seriously: there is kind of an echo between Jack and Agnes, and Martin and Jon…? Someone Normal harbouring feelings for an avatar who was Chosen and burdened with a specific role in their little society and who had met The Web in their youth, and after a while, the avatar growing fondness in return – though the nature of their feelings is unclear. In Jon’s case, not sure whether his worries and concern for Martin are derailing anything Beholding-related or… just part of the Bigger Plan. Though Jack&Agnes, and Martin&Jon, could also all be… part of The Web’s plans overall. Too many spiders.))

(Following: bits typed down before MAG140 was released:)

- Big question is what happened at the end of the episode exactly?

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: … If I… Knew… what his plan was… If I knew what Peter was doing, if I just– [WHISPERING] … Can I…? [LOW RUMBLING SOUND, STATIC RISES] [CRIES OF PAIN] [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION STEADILY RISING] [NOISE OF SOMETHING-OR-JON FALLING] [SQUEAL OF DISTORTION DECREASES] [MUMBLING] End… E–end recording…! [CLICK.]

1°) See, Jon: assuming you’re on a first name basis with “Peter” is a bad idea, and karma went right back at you.

2°) Re: the noise of something falling. Was it Jon falling off his chair AGAIN, JON, YOU ALREADY DID THAT IN MAG128. Did Jon manage to get a concussion by trying to Know too hard. Does it count as his Lonely scar. Is Elias laughing hysterically in his cell because Jon is such an Embarrassment.

3°) Okay, so, unlike the other times Jon got to Know about something or purposely used that power… there was, on top of the usual static, Peter’s trademark “squeal of distortion” (I am using the way the official transcript introduced it, in MAG100, and it’s been the same sound surrounding Peter’s appearances since then). So, whatever happened was definitely Lonely-related, but: was it because Jon can’t pierce through the Lonely, in the same way he didn’t manage to peak through The Dark in MAG135? Was it Peter hiding himself a bit deeper in reaction to Jon’s attempt, feeling (or SEEING, if he was… right in the room with Jon) what Jon was trying to do? … Another possibility is that it was that Jon couldn’t access Martin because of MARTIN himself (ie: he’s a bit too much into the Lonely, or worse… is beginning to use Lonely powers), but I’m leaning towards Peter here. With The Dark and now The Lonely, that makes a lot of Power Walls that Jon isn’t yet able to bypass…

4°) Did Jon manage to Know something through the experience, or… not at all? I got the impression that he had just hit the wall of squealing sounds, bounced back, and… didn’t get anything at all.

5°) Obligatory “JON used Beholding powers! JON’s attack missed. JON hurt himself in his confusion. JON fainted!” joke here.

Speculation for MAG140 based on the title (20/05/19):

A PRETTY ONE, and uuuuh, smells of… alchemy? JOHN FLAMSTEED? So either about another way of interpreting the powers before Smirke, in general (Gerry had put them on the same level in MAG111), either, more specifically… about The Dark, and its previous ritual attempt (and then, could also be about Edmond Halley, since Basira had linked the two in MAG108)? Or could be about The Vast? Second meaning… could be about a ~sky~, so Basira explaining her current activities/researches…? Will she finally tell Jon about the fact that The Dark is potentially planning something in Svalbard…?

(17/06/19: AHAHAHA sob.)

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

Let’s debunk this hot trash

“Part of the problem in front of Marvel Comics is the Marvel Universe is one long, mostly-unbroken line since its inception in 1961's Fantastic Four #1. There have been retcons, changes, tweaks, and cuts, but by and large it's a straight run. The universe has seen a number of resets, but it's mostly been returned to the state that long-time fans are comfortable with.”

Why is this a problem? Marvel is the highest selling comic book company in America and the long continuity is objectively not a problem.

It’s just something people incorrectly claim is a problem.

By the 1990s Marvel already had shittons of complicated continuity that had been going longer than most other long running franchise stories.

The readers back then jumped on ship just fine.

The AMOUNT of continuity you have is never the problem it’s how you manage it. In the days where every issue was treated as someone’s first and made accessible the amount of continuity was never a problem.

“Marvel Comics as a whole and the current creative stewards of its characters have to roll with 57 years of punches. They have to take the good and the bad. In the case of Spider-Man, the current writers, artists, and editors have to occasionally tackle the fact that Peter Parker hit his wife, made a deal with Mephisto to wipe out his marriage, or that Gwen Stacy had sex with Norman Osborn. ”

They don’t HAVE to deal with any of that.

They already dealt with the first of those things and simply SHOULD deal with the other two by erasing them.

But it’s also not like the presence of those things (sans OMD) is a huge hamper on the storytelling abilities or sales of the writers.

“Many of these are moments that readers and creators would simply like to forget, but they're a part of the fabric of the character. ”

Yes and welcome to ‘This is how a dramatic character on serialized fiction’ works.

“With Marvel's Spider-Man for PlayStation 4, Insomniac Games had the chance to start from scratch. They get to pick and choose what works for their version of Peter Parker and his alter-ego. The only backstory he brings to the table is that which Insomniac has carefully considered. This allows the team to drop the facets of Spider-Man that maybe didn't work and play around with some new ideas that might be better. And if Marvel's smart, they should steal some of what Insomniac Games did here.”

Why?

Insomniac already stole from Marvel.

Sales and storytelling potential for Spider-Man is NOT hampered by large continuity or even negative patches of it for the most part.

When bad stories happen so long as they are fixed then things get to move on. Even something as bad as Sins Past isn’t overly a drag because the story itself is so nonsensical it might as well not be canon, people have isolated and ignored it and the scope of the damage it can cause is fairly limited, it doesn’t really cut to the heart of the franchise. The time he hit his wife on the other hand was dealt with and moved on from.

So the existence of bad patches doesn’t really matter. Doctor Who has had no end of bad stories merely in it’s TV incarnation (to say nothing of it’s plethora of spin-off media which are all canon to varying degrees) and all those things still happened. But the show is still going strong and hit stratospheric popularity in the mid-late 2000s and early 2010s.

Hell the Simpsons is still going despite there being at least 20 years of mediocre-bad stories.

“I'm going to be honest. I'm not a huge fan of Mary Jane Watson. I don't necessarily have a problem with the character, but I've never really been a fan either. The marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson was done on a whim and many writershated it at the time.”

Oy vey this shit again.

The marriage was not done on a whim. Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man wanted it to happen and EIC Jim Shooter decided to synch it up with the comics.

At the time Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz had been building up to Peter and MJ’s wedding with the intention of her jilting him.

But the build up from them, and other writers like Peter David, was still there.

Only the outcome changed.

As for this ‘many writers hated it’ thing, the article links to ONE writer’s opinion on the subject.

If we actually look at the majority of Spider-Man writers to have written for Spider-Man during and after the marriage we see most of them were okay or neutral on the subject.

David Michelinie wasn’t thrilled with it, but he came on side eventually. Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz were the same. Matt Fraction wasn’t too sure about it but wasn’t innately against it either. Nick Spencer clearly liked it. Howard Mackie has given statements indicating he was against it at a time but might over all be neutral. Roberto Aguirre Sacasa has never said anything on the subject to my knowledge but his work implies he’s supportive of it. Mark Millar has never said anything on the subject. J.M. DeMatteis, J. Michael Straczynski and Peter David have been outright supportive of it, as was probably Todd McFarlane, Jodie Houser and for sure artist Ryan Stegman.

Oh and Stan Lee the creator of Spider-Man. Let’s not leave him out.

Compared to that we have Roger Stern, Terry Kavanagh, John Byrne, Paul Jenkins, Gerry Conway and Jim Owsley who were against it.

Conway’s opposition was possibly due to his going through a divorce at the time. Stern’s opposition was based upon his idea of MJ being stuck in the Silver Age but he wasn’t innately opposed to Spider-Man marrying in general. Jim Owsley on his linked to blog (where he routinely lies, including claiming Ron Frenz was potentially suicidal when he never was) had a stupid sexist rationale for disliking the marriage. John Byrne is creepy shithead who would’ve preferred Spider-Man was dating underage girls anyway and along with Terry Kavanagh never wrote a good Spider-Man story in his life. In Kavanagh’s case he never even wrote a good story in his life.

So of all those people only Paul Jenkins dislike of it wasn’t unjustified. But he was an outlier.

Every other writer either liked it, was neutral on it, disliked it for nonsensical reasons or didn’t know about good storytelling in the first place to make citing them worth a damn in the first place.

And aside from aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall of this...does the author realize Peter and MJ’s relationship and MJ’s whole character doesn’t begin and end in the years they were married?

Like he talks about their marriage as though this being bad proves their relationship and her character is bad when there was 20+ years of MJ prior to that.

“I think Peter has had better love interests over the years, including Gwen Stacy. ”

And the author would be wrong.

Gwen Stacy is neither better nor more interesting that Mary Jane.

That’s why THEY KILLED HER!

“Part of that is giving Mary Jane something to do. She's been a model and an actress, but the books were always more concerned with the superheroics, so you never really got the chance to feel her drive there. She was a nightclub owner, but again, the same problem persisted. ”

Except Spider-Man stories ARE NOT MORE CONCERNED WITH THE SUPERHEROICS!

My God. How the fuck can someone have read any number of Spider-Man stories and not realized, oh yeah, the book is about Peter’s life over all and his normal life is as if not MORE important than whoever he is punching this month.

By this logic Harry Osborn, Aunt May, Flash Thompson and literally every supporting cast member who isn’t J. Jonah Jameson or like Ashley goddam Kafka, is a better supporting character than Mary Jane.

Mary jane doesn’t have to be involved in the superhero side of Peter’s life because the Spider-Man series isn’t about that. It’s about his life in general and sometimes one blurs over into the other but not always and frankly if you go by the classic stories not even most of the time.

That’s why on the occasions where such things did happen it was a big deal.

“Other than supporting Peter Parker, what did Mary Jane Watson really want? ”

To be an actress

To be taken seriously as more than a model

To support her sick cousin

To earn a psychology degree

To avoid commitment

“Sometimes she just wanted Peter to not be Spider-Man anymore, which is a downer of a conflict.”

This is another lie.

The ONLY times during which Mary jane didn’t want Peter to be Spider-Man were during the Clone Saga when she was pregnant, he’d retired and Ben Reilly was the new Spider-Man and new main character (meaning there was no issue there) or during the Mackie/Byrne reboot where she was being written deliberately out of character as an act of sabotage.

Unless the author meant like in specific stories where Peter was injured and she didn’t want him to go off and be Spider-Man at that moment or in that specific context, as opposed to wholesale retiring. At which point...how is this a downer conflict? It’s a starkly realistic and emotionally justified conflict in a series built off the back of realistic emotions because Spider-Man is a human drama and soap opera FFS!

“Sometimes, things are good... ...sometimes, they're not.

Go to the article itself and notice the second image the author uses.

If you’ve ever encountered similar lines of anti-MJ/anti-marriage argument before those panels, that artwork or stuff similar to it might strike you as familiar.

Why?

Because it’s from the exact same story. Maximum Carnage.

Every asshole who tries to make this argument uses Maximum Carnage, one of the worst Spider-Man stories over all to bolster their claims. The repetition of scenes from this story (and usually the same scene) is telling because it’s either cherry picking from a notoriously bad story and pretending like it represented a norm (and removes it from important context FYI) or...these people don’t know what they are talking about and just parrot one another with the same examples.

“Over in the Ultimate Comics line, writer Brian Michael Bendis would give Mary Jane a career choice that dovetails well with superheroes: journalist. See, the reason DC Comics' Lois Lane works is her driving motivation—to be the best investigative journalist in the world—puts her on a path to run into Clark Kent and Superman. ”

Yeah and the problem is that MJ worked as well for decades even when she wasn’t a journalist. Shit she worked for the majority of Ultimate Spider-Man’s run prior to her becoming a journalist!

Yeah, remember that tiny piece of vital information the author conveniently ignored. For MOST of Ultimate Spider-Man’s 10 year tenure with Peter Parker as the lead character Mary Jane wasn’t a journalist!

Shit, she worked for her school paper so the idea that it made her involvement in heroics more organic is pretty bullshit.

More importantly prior to her journalist job Ultimate MJ’s role and function within the narrative was strikingly similar to her 616 married counterpart!

“Her intense curiosity and lack of self-preservation makes her endearing; the audience knows what she wants and the lengths she'll go to get it.”

And MJ’s goofy deameanor at times, inner strength, sociable nature, insecutirs, struggles with guilt and commitment make her endearing.

“So Insomniac decided to take the Ultimate version of Mary Jane and play it up to Lois Lane levels. She's an investigative journalist at the Daily Bugle searching for more on the recently-arrested Wilson Fisk. Her own adventures put her on the path to meeting with Spider-Man. You get that moment where they're both asking, "What are you doing here?" and you realize there's old, unmentioned romantic history. MJ already knows Peter is Spider-Man and she's fine with that side of his life. ”

And it works great...in a video game setting where you truly are spending 90% of your time in the middle of action and the plot needs to be entirely in service of that plot.

But in the context of a comic book more about the normal lives of the characters than revolving around superheroics and starring the most famous character (who’s clad in red and blue) of one of the two biggest companies in the world MJ as a journalist would die on it’s ass because it WOULD just be derivative of Lois Lane.

I mean Jesus Christ people also deride Black Cat and Norman Osborn for being derivative of Catwoman and Norman Osborn even though they deviate in big ways. But if Spider-Man major love interest/wife literally also became an investigative journalist and primarily interacted with Spider-Man (at least within the context of the main plot) within that role it would literally just be Lois Lane.

“This Mary Jane's problem is one of equal partnership. She's a great, inventive journalist. Sure, she could die on an investigation, considering where she decides to focus her talent, but in her mind, that's no different from a police officer or firefighter dying in the line of duty. The truth is important. This flips the dynamic a bit; her problem is that Peter doesn't acknowledge that she's also right where she needs to be. She's his equal, even if she doesn't have fancy Spider-powers. ”

  MJ was Peter’s equal in the comics too.

 Being someone’s equal as a person doesn’t mean doing the same job as them, working in the same line of work or directly contributing to the superhero action.

 You just need to be an equal in your personality and agency which in-universe MJ has had.

 This is to say nothing of how by this logic Alfred, Batman’s FATHER FIGURE, is not his equal or how Ganke Lee in Miles Morales comics wouldn’t really be HIS equal either or how, again, Spider-Man stories do not innately codify the superheroics as MORE important than the normal life stuff.

  “It's a great change.”

 Yes it is, in the context of a video game.

  “This Mary Jane is funny, a bit headstrong, and leaps sometimes before she looks. ”

 You mean just like comic book Mary Jane.

 “ Comic Mary Jane has many of these facets, but it's tough to get a grasp on what she really wants outside of Peter. ”

 Unless you’ve literally read the issue immediately after Peter meets her where she makes it clear she wants to be an actress. Or read any comic in the interim where she wants to have financial security, be taken seriously, reconcile with her family, indulge in/get over her commitment issues, help her cousin, learn psychology, etc.

 “Journalism doesn't have to be the answer, but there needs to be one that intersects with the lives of Peter and Spider-Man. ”

 No there doesn’t. In the real world couples jobs don’t have to intersect. Many of Peter’s supporting cast members do not have jobs that intersect with his life outside of the fact that they are his friends and/or family. This is true of other heroes too.

 MJ being Peter’s friend/girlfriend/wife is enough of a reason for her to intersect in his life and be featured in this stories, beyond that she can be given subplots of her own just like many other characters had.

 Two of the best subplots in Spider-Man involved Flash Thompson. One of them was his and Betty Brant’s affair and the other was his struggles with alcoholism. These were problems that for the longest time Peter wasn’t even aware of but they were compelling and entertaining unto themselves because Flash was a great character and we cared because he was Peter’s friend. However these stories also at no point ever really involved Spider-Man’s life. It was strictly confined to the problems of Peter Parker’s world.

 MJ’s job can be much the same.

 MJ’s normalacy is in fact a MAJOR reason why so many fans love her so much and why so many people love Spider-Man himself.

 Why make her more like Lois and her dynamic like that of Lois and Superman, those two characters who famously are awesome but also not as relatable as Spider-Man and MJ!

  “With Insomniac's Mary Jane, everything just clicks into place.”

 As would it for comic book MJ if you bothered to pay attention.

 “The problem here is Marvel never sat down and explained how this worked. Again, Peter's death was the impetus for Miles becoming Spider-Man. In the Ultimate comics, he had the powers long before he actually put on the costume. Miles' creator Brian Michael Bendis never sat down and explained the new backstory before he jumped over to DC Comics. We don't know the specifics of why this version of Miles took up the mantle, the question of his motivations always remains a bit fuzzy.”

  No it isn’t. Miles wasn’t REBOOTED into the 616 universe. He was integrated in with everyone’s memories altered around.

 His backstory was the same as in the Ultimate Universe he just literally, physically migrated over.

 Miles motivations were thus the same albeit undermined from a creative POV.

 “When the title of Spider-Man was passed on in the Ultimate universe, that made sense. But the question the Prime universe needs to answer now is: Why do they share the title? ”

 Because that was Miles’ chosen title and Peter gave his blessing for it and on a meta-level it is intended to represent how anyone can be Spider-Man.

 “Peter has offered it to Miles, but why does this version of Miles want it in return?”

  Because Ultimate Peter died and Miles wanted to honour him.

 It isn’t the case of he just ALWAYS existed in this universe. You cannot time travel back like 15 years into the 616 Marvel universe and locate baby Miles Morales He literally, physically doesn’t exist there.

 “That's really why these new versions of the characters work. I can see what they offer Peter and what he offers them in return. ”

 Comic book MJ offered Peter a human connection, a friend, a confidant, someone to support him and companionship.

 Why does she need to offer any more than that when in real life no one is hinging their deeper relationships upon the basis of what that person does for them in terms of their jobs or hobbies.

  “And that facet is sometimes missing in the Marvel Comics iteration. ”

 No it isn’t.

 “I see what they offer Peter, but sometimes it's hard to see what they get out of the relationship.”

 MJ gets a friend, companion, someone who understands and supports her, someone who helps emotionally fulfil her and make her a better person and sometimes someone who can help her in times of emotional and physical crises.

 “Great artists steal, Marvel. The comic publisher is already bringing Insomniac's Spider-Man into the the universe with the upcoming Spider-Geddon crossover (shown below). Now it's time to steal certain facets of the storytelling for the universe. Marvel Comics is stuck with the millstone of continuity around its neck, but that doesn't mean there aren't new directions the company can move Spider-Man and his amazing friends toward. ”

 Marvel has never rebooted it’s history since 1961.

 DC has done so in varying ways 5 or 6 times.

 Marvel outsells DC.

 Of all iconic characters owned by DC, Batman’s history has altered the least from one reboot into the next.

 Batman outsells every other DC character.

 In the 1980s Marvel fans had no access to the internet, few information books or other resources and few reprints with which to catch up upon the 20-25 years worth of history for the characters and of the few resources they did have not everyone had access to them.

 Marvel comics sold more physical copies back then than they do now.

 The highest selling Marvel titles of the 1980s and 1990s were the X-Men related titles which had objectively the most complicated, convoluted and least accessible .

 So STFU about too much continuity oh my God!

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG136!

- In a very interesting way for an episode dealing with The Web (both as an active force outside of the Institute and… very close to it: Annabelle sending Alison there, Jon being unable to focus on his lighter), this episode dealt, in a lot of small ways, with the idea that members of the Archives team are… regaining control of themselves and their lives?

Melanie is attempting therapy! She’s cautious about it but she’s taking measures to try and get better, she’s putting efforts into it, she wants to feel better!

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: If you don’t mind me asking, [STATIC:] where are you off to…? MELANIE: Therapy. [STATIC ENDS] … Wait. ARCHIVIST: Oh…! Oh, God, Melanie, I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh… MELANIE: [EXASPERATED SIGH] It’s fine. I would probably have told you eventually, anyway. ARCHIVIST: Even so, I shouldn’t have– MELANIE: Just… forget it. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] It’s good, though. I–I’m glad you’re getting help. MELANIE: Yes, well. We’ll see. There’s a… a lot of crap therapists out there. ARCHIVIST: I guess. Still, it–it is a good step.

Jon is right on this and… there was already something hopeful in the way that Melanie didn’t explode at Jon for accidentally compelling her; she wasn’t pleased by it but… she could have shut the conversation down. Instead, she tried to minimise a little what Jon had done and asserted her boundaries, which she did again with the therapist, but without cutting either of them out. She’s clearly not in the bestest of places, was uncomfortable with the topic… but I’m so glad and proud of her for taking this “step”, for deciding that she had to deal with her demons – possibly from way before she even came to the Institute for the first time?

Meanwhile: it wasn’t so much about Jon’s actions but about what he finally admitted – that he’s aware that he made a choice, that he’s actually had… a very twisted and casually self-destructive way of facing the coffin and of considering his own life since he’s woken up:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else so, if I can maybe stop that happening, and [DRY CHUCKLE] the only danger is to me, I– I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster. DAISY: That’s messed up. ARCHIVIST: [LOW SELF-DEPRECATIVE DRY LAUGHTER] … Yeah. I suppose it is.

It has been a process for Jon, too; the theme of “choice” has been sneakily prevalent in season 4 so far, following up on season 3:

(MAG087) Georgie: [SIGH] Look I’ve, I’ve got work to do. You listen, or don’t listen, or cross-record, or whatever you want, just… just think about it first, okay? You can choose to leave it alone. [DOOR CLOSES] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [TAPE PLAYER IS LOADED] [CLICK]

(MAG092) ARCHIVIST: I never chose this! ELIAS: You never wanted this, no. But I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see. Our world is made of choices, Jon, and very rarely do we truly know what any of them mean, but we make them nonetheless.

(MAG111) GERRY: Thing is, it’s harder than it looks. What’s out there doesn’t care about blood. […] But they care about your choices, your fears.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] You– you know what, no. I’m… I’m done with that. No more paranoia. It’s almost got me killed more than once, and… Georgie was right. If I am… slipping, then I need people I can trust. And I… I don’t think that can happen naturally for me an–anymore, so… I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them. E– except Elias, obviously, that’s not– I mean…

(MAG121) OLIVER: The thing is, Jon, right now, you have a choice. You’ve put it off for a long time; but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but – still too human to survive. You’re… balanced on an edge where The End can’t touch you – but you can’t escape him. I made a choice. We all made choices; now you have to– […] Make your choice, Jon.

(MAG132) DAISY: I don’t want t–to be a s–sadistic predator again… I–I don’t want to… hobble around, like some pathetic, wounded prey either… I don’t know which would be worse. And I’m sc–scared, now, that I’ll never get the choice… ARCHIVIST: One thing I’ve learned, Daisy, is that we all get a choice. Even if it doesn’t feel like one.

(MAG134) PETER: … Look. I’m not gonna pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to. It won’t even work unless you’re willing to commit.

(MAG136) DAISY: Get over yourself! You’re always talking about choices – we all made ours. Now I’m making the choice… to get some drinks in. Coming?

So, although his memories are still missing and he might not remember Oliver either (Jon has never mentioned him so far, and given how Jude had been able to kick Jon out of her dreams, he might have done the same thing despite giving a live-statement), Jon is aware that he made a decision – maybe without knowing in the details what was at stake (there could be a few things we could still scream at Elias in MAG092 re: informed consent :w), but he was faced with two options and elected one over the other. It has its own shades of tragic undertones and heartbreak, but it’s also… his own choice, this time around, and still more controlled than “sign papers to become Head Archivist of an eccentric Institute (sells your soul to a Fear god that you’ll now have to feed through other people’s terrors or your own)”. By pushing and questioning Jon, Daisy had been able to make him say what he chose to do (and as seen above, why), and his handling of the coffin was one of such things. Even if, indeed, the Web sent him in that direction (leaving MAG131’s tape for him, maybe manipulating him to some extent through the lighter), Jon, like Martin, is still appropriating what they did as being his own decision:

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation. MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just… felt like it might help. He’s always recording, I thought… it–it might help him… find his way out. PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled? MARTIN: [SULLEN] … I don’t know. … M–maybe? I–I, I definitely wanted to do it… PETER: But? MARTIN: I’m… I’m not sure where the idea came from.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] I don’t feel like I’m exactly in the best place to judge the… intersection [CHUCKLE] between free will and humanity. Still trying to figure that out myself. [SILENCE] DAISY: Jon… when you went into the coffin. Was it you choosing to do that? Did you actually think you could save me, or was… that something telling you to do it? [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: It was me. I was… drawn to it, I’ll admit, but it was my decision.

Jon agreeing to Daisy’s proposition to go get drinks may also be going in his own right direction – back in season 1, Jon would have probably shrugged off the offer? But as Helen told him, “people change” and right there, Jon had a micro-choice; he could have refused and, still, after a small hesitation, decided to go along with it instead.

Of course, when it comes to reclaiming their life back in this episode, the most striking was Daisy; Daisy, who had already explained who she wanted to be (MAG132: “I d–, I don’t… I don’t know who I am without, without the chase… I just know… that I… I don’t like who I was back outside. I don’t want to be her again. I want… to be… better…”) and who, so far, has managed to stick to that; Daisy, who handles herself as best as she can even (especially!) though it requires other people because she wants to avoid being alone for PTSD reasons:

(MAG133) [CLICK–] DAISY: You sure? ARCHIVIST: No, uh, it’s, hum. It’s fine. DAISY: It’s just… Basira’s busy.

(MAG136) MELANIE: Well… uhm. Daisy’s been, erm… I’ve been keeping her company. Er, while… while Basira’s busy. She’s, er… ARCHIVIST: Oh, no, I, uh… I–I know. […] DAISY: [QUICKLY] You’re not babysitting me, alright?! I know that’s what the others think, sometimes, but… that’s not it. I just… don’t like…  being on my own if I can help it. You know. Flashbacks, panic attacks, the usual. Just trying to avoid it if I can. ARCHIVIST: I know, Daisy, I–I do. It’s hard. DAISY: Yeah, well. Don’t let me get in your way.

There is currently something so strong in what we’re seeing of Daisy? In the way she’s aware of her limitations and manages to prevent the conditions leading to potential breakdowns? I feel like she’s following the same logic as when we knew her as a Hunter: when she was seeing a problem, she would just… neutralise it. Hence beating up Mike, hence immediately going for Jon’s voicebox; hence her Cold Factual Violence overall against spooks/vampires/“monsters” of various kinds. Basira had said that she liked Daisy because she was “solid”, because of her certainty, and this is still the same Daisy – though not hurting others anymore! And she pulled an incredible power move:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: It, uh… Hm. Is, uh… Weird question, but… I… [EXHALE] I haven’t seen you in my dreams? The last couple of weeks? DAISY: … Oh, uh, no. I… I work here, now. I figured it seems to protect the others, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh. Right, so… Wait, did you talk to Lukas, or…? DAISY: [CHUCKLE] Broke into Elias’s old office. Found an employment contract; filled it in, and signed it. ARCHIVIST: And that worked. DAISY: Seems so. ARCHIVIST: And you’re not… worried about… DAISY: Basira’s trapped here. So are you. Not gonna be going anywhere anyway. ARCHIVIST: … I suppose not. So… no more dreams. DAISY: Not of you and your weird eyes. Just the coffin. ARCHIVIST: Is that better…? DAISY: ’T’s mine. ARCHIVIST: … right.

She weaponised what they have gathered, through experiences and guesses, to get free of the dreams she hated! It’s not absolutely clear whether she signed to become an Archival assistant or a regular staff member; on the one hand, Jon’s concern hints towards archival assistant, since as far as we know, the Archives seemed to be their own business, including trapping their staff (though damn, I remembered MAG102 being more explicit on the matter but: actually, no, since Martin saying that regular crew are able to quit was immediately followed by “Hannah just left to have her baby, though.”: was that “though” a “by the way” or a way to tamper what he had just said, and this is the most they can do, but still not quite quit…?); on the other hand, Daisy hasn’t specified what it was.

Anyway: it’s such a POWERFUL MOVE to… 1°) break into Elias’s office, 2°) just sign herself up like that?, 3°) ESPECIALLY given how Elias had initially coerced Basira into signing herself up to avoid turning the scene into a bloodbath, even before being told of the repercussions (that she couldn’t quit, that Elias dying meant that they would die too). What Daisy did sound like a direct answer to MAG092, and I’m loving it, loving that Daisy… just used what they had learnt of the dreams’ mechanism to protect herself and chose to bind herself to the Institute while exactly knowing what it meant, without anything blackmailing her into it. Elias hadn’t bothered to tie her down for who she was? Watch as she’ll decide that for herself.

This is also the first person of Extended Team Archive to… have given herself to The Eye fully knowing what she was doing. You better be grateful for the gesture, Big Eyeball!!! The others had to be misled or coerced into serving you, and Daisy, of all people, chose to give herself to you!!!

(- If Daisy became an Archive Assistant: I hope that she’ll get to read a statement at some point? Well, technically, best thing would be for nobody to read a statement but. Martin did it a few times (and read one in MAG134!), Tim ALMOST did it, Melanie did it twice, Basira did it once… it’s a bit of a Tradition. (And who wouldn’t want to hear Fay Roberts for almost an entire episode outside of Daisy’s own live-statements?! I’m a simple woman, okay.))

- I’m really curious about how Elias and Daisy would interact, now. Would it be biting/tense/mutual snarling, or taunting about Daisy still being a “rabid dog” at heart…? Or precisely not anymore: because Daisy acknowledged in front of Jon that Elias had not been that off about her (MAG132: “Did you ever hear the, the story Elias told me? About what I did. How I am… He, he didn’t get a detail wrong. The Hunt… Hunger was in me all my life.”)…? I also… get the feeling that maybe, the current Daisy might be perceiving her encounter with the Institute as a chance, since it ultimately led to her snapping out of the Hunt (though she would have reasons to want to break Elias’s arm for the fact that Basira got trapped because of him).

- I wonder if Martin saw Daisy’s name pop up amongst the new staff members? Or if Peter just told him right away what she had done? Is Daisy now actually getting a salary from the Institute? (I’m not sure that Elias “We really don’t have the budget for that” (MAG067) had even bothered to pay her when he was using her ~services~ so… drain Peter’s money, Daisy, gogogo!! And Use Your Powers to give everyone in Team Archive a raise, Martin :w)

- The fact that Daisy said that she had broken into “Elias’s old office”… Well, Elias’s office had been characterised by the clock in the background; since we could hear one in MAG126, I was assuming that Martin and Peter were in there (especially since Martin was doing Peter’s directorial work) but had noticed that there was no such sound in MAG134. Were they outside of the Institute? Or has Martin stopped working in Elias’s office since Daisy had forcefully gone inside of it, deeming it unsafe?

- Anyway: Jon-Melanie-Daisy seem to be creating an awkward support network, right now, and it’s ADORABLE and good (+ extra cookies to Melanie for seeking therapy!). They still have trouble talking: there were sooo many pauses and silences when Melanie was in front of Jon; Daisy is still not… super at ease speaking about how she feels (while she’s way chiller when it comes to describing how she broke into Elias’s office. Daisy, ilu.); Jon searched for his words a bit to describe how he was perceiving himself at the moment… But they’re trying and still getting those words out and explaining themselves to each other a bit. And it’s PRECIOUS, godsdamnit.

- ALRIGHT, NOW TO DIVE RIGHT INTO THE SILK-STICHED MEAT OF THIS EPISODE:

(MAG111) GERRY: Nice lighter. You a spider freak, then? ARCHIVIST: What? Oh! Er, no. I-I never really, uh… I never really thought of it. I–I’m Jon. I’m with the Magnus Institute.

(MAG136) DAISY: [SCOFF] She’s… Web. Spider’s sneaky like that. [PAUSE] Like that lighter you’re always using. Where’d you get that? ARCHIVIST: Mm. [STATIC] Good point. We should keep our eyes open. Anyway, how’s Basira doing?

………………. It was impossible to tell whether or not there was static back in MAG111 (at least for me: there was a constant static-y background due to Gerry being there), but here, yep, there was some. So something is DEFINITELY preventing Jon from lingering too much on the lighter (like an oily surface his attention keeps slipping on?) and what it means. … And apparently, he still has it with him – I had wondered if he hadn’t lent it to Martin for MAG118’s plan, burning statements? I mean, maybe he did and the lighter found its way back to Jon anyway, or it was still with Jon during the Wax Museum explosion, but Jon still has it with him at the moment.

How many silken strings have tied around Jon’s body and head without him noticing, I wonder… the episode was about a “Puppeteer”, after all (or… maybe a bit more about the puppets.)

……………….. Sounds like Jon is back to smoking again, too, given Daisy’s comment? And Jon’s smoking habits have been Smelling Like Web Spirit: he had apparently stopped around the time he began to work at the Institute (since he told Leitner he had “been quit for five years now” in MAG080, in February 2017); Elias had ranted about Jon smoking in MAG039 (“He’s not smoking again, is he?”: was it because he knew of Jon’s smoker history? Or because Jon had gone back to… smoking a lot since he discovered that the lighter had been delivered to him in MAG036?); Tim implied that he might have noticed that Jon had been smoking again recently at the end of season 2 (MAG079: “he’s going to do something, and it’s going to be bad. And I don’t mean like ‘sneaking a cigarette’ bad. Like properly bad.”); Jon ~conveniently~ felt the urge to smoke a cigarette and left Leitner alone to face his death (Elias.) in MAG080 (Jon minimised it at the time, but… it means that he had cigarettes on him.); and after that, we only got the mention from Daisy digging through his stuff in MAG091, and him offering Gerry a cigarette in MAG111.

One thing that makes me Hysterical every time:

(MAG091) DAISY: One wallet, brown leather, no cash. One packet cigarettes, Silk Cut. One lighter, gold, spiderweb design.

OF ALL THINGS, JON SMOKES “SILK CUT”

“SILK

CUT”

COME ON, SPIDER, COULD YOU TRY TO BE A BIT SUBTLE WITH THAT BOY?!

- Actual footage of Jon forgetting about his lighter (ft. Daisy):

- I find it very interesting that Daisy was able to notice the lighter and Jon’s lack of oversight about it since… when Daisy was introduced through Basira’s words, Basira explained that Daisy had first been sectioned over a Spider-related case:

(MAG043) BASIRA: […] Daisy was sectioned years before I was even on the force. She’s never been that forthcoming about any of her own experiences. Takes Section 31 very seriously. The most I could get out of her was that she was originally sectioned for something she referred to as “spider husks”. The way she described it, it sounded like she’d found a bunch of shells. The sort crabs leave behind when they grow, but… I could never figure out if it was meant to be the husks of people-sized spiders, or the spider-like husks of people? And Daisy never seemed like she wanted to clarify. I’m sure she mentioned vampires once as well, but… I think she was joking. … Probably. … Maybe…

We have learned, since then, that it wasn’t exactly true: Daisy’s first section’d case had to do with the coffin, but Daisy also told Jon that only her superior had known about it prior to Jon's pulling the story out of her (MAG061). So Basira couldn’t have known that Daisy had lied or dodged to tell the truth, but still… one of Daisy’s first cases had to do with Spiders.

(And Daisy has been ~taking care~ of the vampires, too, which are known for their mind-controlling powers. When Trevor had met a Spider-Woman, he had mentioned that his experience with vampires had probably helped him to identify that the compulsion to get out and get high wasn’t his own… So it seems like Hunters might have a little immunity or at least resistance to manipulation. I’m EVEN MORE RELIEVED that Jon got Daisy back.)

(… And afraid, oh so afraid for Daisy’s life-expectancy, since she’s already so important when it comes to potentially dealing with threats, and being a presence which allows the Archive team to re-form a bit.)

- MAG110 and MAG136 are quite good to listen to one after another, besides Neil Lagorio’s existence – they dealt with the same movie-making world, of Web apparently, and there were some tiny things which were quite interesting? Both statements were given by women isolated from their peers and put into a situation they probably wouldn’t have picked if they’d been allowed to retain more options and Choices:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “I’d held some ambitions about directing myself one day, but it soon became obvious that that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe if I’d got a feature under my belt before I was outed as trans, it might have been different, but… as it was, this revelation burned too many bridges, and when the dust had settled, it was made abundantly clear to me that I was never going to get a movie of my own. And it was either cinematography, or nothing. So I stayed.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “He even kept in contact when I left to have my baby. It wasn’t planned […]. Anyway, even once I’d sorted out childcare arrangements, I found myself… more and more unwelcome in the industry. It wasn’t that people weren’t willing to hire me – by this point I had a hell of a special effects resumé – but the hours you were expected to be working, the way shoots were set up, the culture of drinking, networking… none of it was really possible alongside parenting.”

There was, also, the obvious theme of… the fictions reshaping reality, or becoming a reality: Dexter was obsessed with a Spider that seemed to only exist in his dream of a story, and he recreated it on the set in the end. Neil managed to finally recreate his last story with himself:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “he would twist his fingers into all sort of bizarre, intricate shapes, until I could see the strings flowing over them… ‘We made them dance,’ he would say, wonder and nostalgia in his voice. ‘Oh… how we made them dance.’ […] He told me later his… greatest regret was not being able to finish his final film. An arthouse piece simply titled Dancer. He never explained what it was about, nor do I think it actually… came out in the end. […] And as I walked away from Neil, the last time I saw him alive… he was dancing. The cables shifting, and moving him in a graceful, sweeping ballet. And he was crying with joy.”

On the theme of “smoking” as related to the Web, it’s ~curious~ to note that it was also present in MAG110 and MAG136’s statements, and not in moderation either:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “[Brandon Alma] took to the role immediately, with a gravity and a weariness that I don’t think could have been entirely feigned. He was the only one who didn’t seem excited by the movie, and spent his off-hours smoking and reading quietly in one of the trailers.” (MAG136, Alison Killala) “I had to fight every instinct inside me, everything that wanted to burst out in admiration for his work and his… profound effect on my life. But instead I chain-smoked and laughed, trying my best to come across as my hero’s peer…!”

So, hum. Smoking hadn’t been exclusively a Web-thing before (there was of course the Anglerfish’s baiting, and its shells smoking to disguise the odour of death), but I still find that noticeable.

- There is an OBVIOUS problem with the timeline of Neil’s death, from MAG110 and MAG136’s given mentions:

(MAG110) MARTIN: Martin Blackwood, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, recording statement number 0121403. Statement of Alexia Crawley, given March 14th, 2012. (MAG110, Alexia Crawley) It seems like a sick cosmic joke that that was the day the press broke the news of Neil Lagorio’s death. Half an hour after the cast walked into that building, one of the grips stumbled across the news story whilst idly checking his phone. Lagorio had been privately suffering from Parkinson’s for almost a decade, and had been bedridden in his Connecticut home for the last year.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: Statement of Alison Killala, regarding her time as friend and carer to special effects artist Neil Lagorio. Original statement given 1st December, 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. (MAG136, Alison Killala) “It was almost six months ago when the woman came to our door. […] I don’t know how long I was watching those films. They don’t… It was hard to keep track of time. According to my daughter, I was missing for five months. When Annabelle let me out, Neil was dead. […] She told me to come here. She told me to give them to you. I resisted for some time, but I’m done now. She’s won. And I’d… very much like to go home.”

If Annabelle visited Neil’s house six months before Alison gave her statement, it should have been in June; while Alexia’s statement put Neil’s death before March (presumably February, since Martin added as part of the follow-up that “Apparently, over the last five years, every February, a corpse is found washed up on Redondo Beach.”). It’s not clear either if Alison lived in the UK but she did mention the “UK press” at some point; while according to the official version given by Alexia, Neil had lived and died in the US.

So what happened…? Has someone in the Archives been purposely messing up with the dates regarding The Web…? Were there two “Neil Lagorio”s towards the end…? Did The Web messed up the files a bit through someone? (Noticeable, too: Jon who ~listens to all the tapes~ didn’t mention the echoes with MAG110’s statement, which was read by Martin. Did he listen to this one, or had the tape… disappeared when he went back?)

(I know that the popular theory regarding MAG114’s statement and what was happening in Hill Top Road is “parallel worlds”, but it always sounded textbook Spiral to me – we also have been demonstrations of entities rewriting reality to erase people or twist people’s memories, see the Not!Them and what happened to the statement-giver’s husband in MAG038. But I’m a bit short on explanations regarding the obvious problem of timeline in MAG110 and MAG136……………..)

- Relistening to MAG110, I just realized that someone had completely flown under my radar: Brandon (Brendon?) Alma, the main actor, who… was the one controlling the story and the set, actually?!

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “Most impressive to me though, was a guy named [Brandon Alma]. He was playing the closest thing the film had to a protagonist, a… homeless ex-Methodist minister who’d found himself on the island by chance and served as a connecting thread, wandering between the scenes and the vignettes of the inhabitants, after each ended with their march to the Spider. Brandon took to the role immediately, with a gravity and a weariness that I don’t think could have been entirely feigned. He was the only one who didn’t seem excited by the movie, and spent his off-hours smoking and reading quietly in one of the trailers. It was a shame because, for whatever reason, he also seemed to be the only one that Dexter would listen to. I only saw them talking once or twice but every time, Dexter would be wrapped, nodding at… whatever Brandon might have to say. […] [Dexter] then gathered up the cast and, with Brandon leading them, took them through a small door in the side of the workshop. And they disappeared inside.”

He was playing a character who was the “CONNECTING THREAD” between people getting eaten by the spider, Dexter “would be WRAPPED” and agreeing to everything Brandon told him, and Brandon was the one to lead the actors into the workshop where they were all killed/consumed/drunk hollow, UHUHUHUH. Maybe the book that Dexter had found wasn’t actually the (only?) thing that messed up everything? Or did Brandon come from the book? Was he actually the spider himself, or just there to ensure that the spider would emerge and be fed…?

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “I don’t know when he first mentioned his spider film. It didn’t… bubble out into a full obsession until two years ago, but I know he talked about it plenty before that. […] [蜘���が食べている] (Kumo ga tabeteiru). I think that was the name, anyway, something like that; he was normally slurring quite badly when he said it. He thought it translated to “The Spiders That Devour” but a Japanese friend once told me it was actually closer to just “Spiders Are Eating”. According to Dexter, Kumo was an old tokusatsu movie which, he believed, had come out sometime in the mid-to-late sixties. It was about a Spider – just the one, despite the title – that grew to a colossal size and terrorized a small unnamed island off the coast of Kagoshima. What struck him about it, though, was the utter absence of anything resembling a hero or a protagonist. No one fought against the monster, and although there were vignettes in the lives of those under the Spider’s shadow, they all ended the exact same way – with the character in question marching slowly, and calmly, into its waiting jaws.”

(And it would sound EXTREMELY Web to have all the attention focused on Dexter… while the true puppeteer would be somewhere else, hidden.)

- Something striking in many Web mentions is that: it likes Order (… and apparently drinking people hollow – requiring the fluids to sustain itself? To be able to moult and grow in size?)

(MAG127, Breekon) “We had some luggage once. A thrumming, silk-wrapped thing of The Spider, hiding away in an old steamer trunk. We stepped heavy through the dining car and found an old woman near the caboose. 'Something strange in the luggage car,' he said, and I finished as was our way. 'You should come and see it.' She stood and walked with us readily enough, though tears flowed silent down her cheeks and pattered onto the faded carpet. The Spider’s always an easy job – no fuss, no complication, everything planned and prepared. It knows too much to truly be a Stranger, but hides its knowing well enough to endure. We knew she wouldn’t scream as she was hollowed out and drunk.”

(MAG110) MARTIN: Apparently, over the last five years, every February, a corpse is found washed up on Redondo Beach. It will be a shrivelled husk, with all moisture and internal organs apparently removed.

(+ Daisy’s early Section 31 case with the “husks” of people/spiders/etc.)

On the matter of order: the victims in Kumo (MAG110) also weren’t making a fuss when they marched off to get eaten, it was the same behaviour as what Breekon described. Regarding Alison’s story, it seems like although she was officially the puppeteer of Neil’s body… SHE was the one who had been puppeteered around:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “I became his carer a few months later. It just seemed to make sense. A frugal life, lucrative career and… prickly personality had left him with lots of money but no real support; while my life had left me in a position where I cared… deeply about his well-being and was in… desperate need of money. Everything just… lined up so neatly. […] he threw himself into a new project, one I would never have expected, but that suited my engineering background perfectly. […] I protested, of course! This man was my hero, I–I loved him, and there was no way I could subject him to this… awful indignity. But my objections were ignored, as always, and Neil insisted that this was what he wanted. So I built that… strange contraption. Using the skills I had developed across my whole life, to fill every corner of Neil Lagorio’s house with wood, and steel, and cable. […] I barely even noticed when the harnesses were no longer necessary; when the loops for those hooks were now embedded directly into his body. I must have asked him about it. But at the time, it just seemed like… such a natural progression.

Neil had exactly the Right Person available for what he needed when his body started to shut down; Alison wanted to refuse and ended up accepting. Even before Annabelle came in, it… doesn’t really sound like Alison had been the one in control in that whole situation.

And on the matter of people being at the right place at the right time for The Web’s purposes: SQUINTS at the fact that 2012 was when Jon started working at the Institute. We witnessed Melanie, Basira and Daisy’s first steps there, we know that Tim went to get a job there because he was looking into his brother’s death, Sasha might or might not have been interested in the supernatural for years (it could have been the Not!Them rewriting that bit; we at least know that Sasha wasn’t particularly well-off so… maybe she just plainly needed the money); we know that Martin just happened to be hired after submitting his CV everywhere he could (the question of why ELIAS, who PERSONALLY INTERVIEWED HIM, hired him is… another Big Question), but… why did Jon start working at the Institute? He didn’t particularly expect to Georgie to identify what the Institute was, so it wasn’t a life-long dream of his that he would have mentioned many times as a student…

(Re: the Web and Order, SQUINTSSQUINTSSQUINTS again towards the one particular person who has mostly been associated with that: “loves scheduling”, has specific days on which he eats lunch with the Institute’s librarians, insisted on Tim doing the paperwork for his absences, That One Thing About Keeping Receipts If You Want To Claim Your Expenses (Unless You Die)… that guy.)

- I still wonder how the Web works on people exactly, though… especially given all the talks about making choices and decisions, it would seem a bit odd to end up concluding that “anyway, the Web will make you want and do whatever IT pleases, you can’t do anything about it”…? (Though yeah, THAT is frightening.)

Given that Alison compared herself to Frankenstein, I wonder, in her case, if despite her ~adamant refusal~ to puppet her friend and idol…

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “Even pyrotechnics, while… impressive and visually spectacular, they just didn’t give me the same sharp joy as making something that could move, that came alive, directed and controlled by my hand… I always felt Frankenstein should have been an engineer, not a medical student, as reading that book I couldn’t help but see myself in that obsession. But I suppose everyone’s already done the-monster-as-the-robot, haven’t they?”

… some parts of her didn’t actually want it? And this is how The Web might operate overall? Humans are complex, we’re always mixing up emotions and different desires at the same time; maybe The Web mostly just brings to the surfaces the ones it needs to push people in the direction it wants…? (In that case, re: Trevor and the Spider Woman… it wouldn’t be surprising, as an ex-heroin addict, that some part of him would still feel the tinge of the craving…)

- What was Neil, in the end? Was he a Web avatar who found a way to feed his god mostly through fictions? Was his ex-partner “Gabe” Gabriel, the Spiral’s Worker-In-Clay…? Was he a plain person, able to use some powers here and there? The thing is:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “his satisfaction with his latest and… as it turned out, last… foray into horror, with The Harvestman. He’d always had a fondness for spiders, he told me. And I of course reminded him that harvestmen… weren’t technically spiders.”

She is right! Though this could be a case of misleading us to focus on the symbols rather than their effects; Neil’s work was… indeed clearly linked to the idea of hidden control:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “he claimed to be working with Neil Lagorio to make the Spider. Now you might never have heard his name before, but I guarantee you you’ll have seen his work. From the mid-seventies right into CGI, Lagorio was THE name in Practical Creature Effects: suit work, stop-motion, animatronics, whatever the method, he was the master. […] I’d had the pleasure of working with him way back in 1989 on Orbit – a medium-budget sci-fi vehicle for some… aging action star. Neil was working on a twelve-foot tall animatronic robot that featured heavily in the climax. The picture was, unsurprisingly, a flop; but I still remember his work. How he brought a… lump of wood and steel to life. Th–the huge, intricate mechanisms that allowed his crew to puppet it into motion that was so natural you could forget that the back of it was completely hollow…!”

On the one hand, he sounded pretty harmless. On the other hand, there were these “original cuts” (and the cruel broken SMILE you could hear on Jon’s face when he mentioned them while reading the statement was… gosh.). Was Dexter Banks invited to one of those screenings, and is that why he was haunted by the memories of a movie he couldn’t find again…?

-… So, what does it mean for ANNABELLE to send these original cuts to the Institute?

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “There were two sorts of people in the world as far as Neil saw it: those who were worth his time, and those who were not. And if you were in the latter group, he honestly couldn’t care if you lived or died. Not that most people could tell which side of the line they fell on; there were even days that… I wasn’t sure myself! Sometimes, I remember, he would invite people over to his studio that I was sure he hated, for screenings of his “original cuts”. I was quite… jealous of this at the time, as I’d never got such an invitation. But it was probably for the best. I didn’t… realise it back then, but… [SIGH] those guests… they never quite looked the same afterwards. […] She told me to take the films. His… “original cuts”. She told me to come here. She told me to give them to you.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: [INHALES] Statement ends. Hm. Neil Lagorio… You ever see any of his work? DAISY: No. Not really into films. ARCHIVIST: Oh, they were… Well, let’s just say that it’s not a complete shock there was something unnatural to them. Didn’t know we had copies in the Institute, though; let alone original cuts. [CHUCKLE] Records indicate they [PAPERS RUSTLING] ended up in… Artefact Storage. DAISY: Probably best that they stay there. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah. Yes, of course.

(…………. You could HEAR that Jon was dangerously close to going to check them out if Daisy hadn’t reminded him that Jon, No.)

At the time, Gertrude was still running the Archives… but, again, it’s also around that time when Jon integrated the Institute as a researcher. (He said he had been working there for “four years” in MAG001, which was set sometime in the second half of 2015 – though I wouldn’t past it s1!Jon to round up, like, 3 years and 20 days to “four years” to sound… more impressive. However, we know for sure that Jon was working at the Institute in 2012 (MAG051: “One of my first cases as a researcher for the Institute in 2012”).) So why did Annabelle send the “original cuts” to the Institute, and who were they for…? Was it to send a message to Gertrude? Was it because the Web was veeeeeeeeeeeerrrry aware that the boy who had ~gotten away~ (el-o-el) was now working there (and was apparently a bit versed in Neil Lagorio’s work)? Was it a way to sneak into the Institute? Was it for Elias? Was it to avoid the “original cuts” affecting innocent bystanders? Was it a proclamation from Annabelle – demonstrating that the older generation was fading out and now she was taking over?

That last point is something that I really felt with Annabelle’s visit and Neil finally dying (… or moulting like a spider). It’s interesting that in both MAG110 and MAG136, there was something about the character the story was about… not having a keen relationship with modern technology:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “And so it was for the first few weeks. Dexter… clearly wasn’t sleeping. He had insisted on using old equipment and avoiding digital almost entirely, to the point where several of the crew were using pieces of kit they’d never even seen before. This meant that workprint had to be made manually for the dailies, something he refused to let anyone else do.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “We stayed in touch over the next few years, even worked together on the Wire-Runner, his one, underwhelming foray into CGI.”

We saw in MAG123 that Annabelle had started working using Internet, though using someone else to achieve it. I don’t have many theories or speculation about that one – I only find it curious that, given how MAG065 had introduced the idea that tape recorders… are digital, too, we’re still not sure about what it is that prevents Spooks from recording on Jon’s computer. Gertrude had commented that the tape recorders were a bit ~old-fashioned like her~ to defend her use of them to Lucia (MAG130), so… I don’t know! But potentially, I wonder if there might be something about the younger generation of avatars being more fit to use modern technologies, because some elements are their own idiosyncrasies while older techs were their predecessors’.

- Hi, do you sometimes get just PUNCHED IN THE GUTS by Jon.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else so, if I can maybe stop that happening, and [DRY CHUCKLE] the only danger is to me, I– I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster. DAISY: That’s messed up. ARCHIVIST: [LOW SELF-DEPRECATIVE DRY LAUGHTER] … Yeah. I suppose it is. DAISY: Did you know the coffin wouldn’t kill you? ARCHIVIST: I– guess I thought imprisonment wouldn’t… wouldn’t be as bad as it was. DAISY: [SHAKY SIGH] ARCHIVIST: And it’s a lot easier to make that choice than it is to actually… endure the result. You might have noticed when I was in there with you, I… I had regrets. DAISY: Yeah. I remember. ARCHIVIST: Plus, I thought… [PAUSE] W– [SIGH] Well, I didn’t know what being down there had done to you. DAISY: You thought I was gonna kill you? ARCHIVIST: I was a possibility. DAISY: Guess so. […] ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira– ARCHIVIST: Traumatised; traumatised; and paranoid, because of me.

;; I’m worried about these missing memories and what it means / what happened… Jon had told Basira that he could remember most of The Unknowing:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: My turn. What… what happened to me? BASIRA: How much do you remember? ARCHIVIST: I don’t… Music. Everything was wrong. Gertrude was there, and then… dancing. I think? Then… pain. And I was somewhere else. Dreaming. BASIRA: Dreaming. ARCHIVIST: Yes. …

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: Two years ago. … That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t feel like… … There’s just this… great… gap of time, where I wasn’t.

Back in MAG122, I had feared that he would have gotten something cauterised in the process, probably guilt, hence Tim’s death being erased… But no, it’s FAR from being the case: Jon has been a guilt-ridden ball of softness and caring and heartbreak since the beginning of season 4. So why are these memories still absent…? What happened in his dreams, for him to not remember exactly how he got to choose…?

(EXTRA-WORRIED since Elias had told Basira that Jon was “at a very delicate stage right now” in MAG127; and as much as I think that Elias probably doesn’t want to risk Jon managing to successfully compel him or extract a statement out of him right now… I’m Really Worried about the fact that he described Jon as being in transition. Choosing should have been the end result, right? So… so what is the next step……………)

Sobbing a lot about the fact that Jon isn’t sure that coming back was worth it, and that he’s been very casually self-destructive about the coffin. He kind of finished his sentence from MAG132 here:

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m scared. [SHORT CHUCKLE] When does the fear go away…? A–anyway, I–I’m sorry. You too, Basira, if you’re hearing this. I know you’d… stop me. You’d be right to, but… But if this goes wrong, all you lose is– …  I’m not risking anyone else.

“If this goes wrong, all you lose is” / “worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster”. A o u c h. He’s been the most outrightly emotional we’ve ever seen him in season 3 and 4, he was so afraid of becoming inhuman starting MAG092, he finally chose (and is aware of it) the avatar option because he was afraid to die (that’s one of the most human things he could possibly admit…?), and, since he’s woken up, he has dealt with rejections one after another: Georgie was thrown-off by him badly enough to leave (clearly dissatisfied with… the fact that Jon kept saying he was “fine”, when a normal human being shouldn’t have been), Basira was extremely cautious and still refuses to trust him, slaughter-infused Melanie BLAMED HIM FOR TIM&DAISY’S DEATHS, Martin avoided him time and time again:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Honestly, I… I, I think I’m alright? I mean, that’s… good, right? I… GEORGIE: After a six months coma? No. It’s not. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, Jon. ARCHIVIST: I… What? Y–you, you’d prefer I was… brain-damaged? Dead? Or– […] Georgie, I– GEORGIE: Jon. If this really is a second chance… please, try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. ARCHIVIST: Georgie, I don’t und– GEORGIE: Take care of yourself. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES] [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … What about you? Disappointed to see me alive? … Basira? BASIRA: We can deal with that later.

(MAG123) MELANIE: Tim is dead. Daisy is dead. And you, what? You’re just fine? ARCHIVIST: No, I’ve been in hospital for six months! MELANIE: Something has been in hospital. Something that’s got your face like– I warned Basira, I said not to let you back in here, but she just doesn’t listen! [STOMPING? AND FURIOUS STRANGLED NOISES] ARCHIVIST: Melanie, Melanie: it’s… it’s me. MELANIE: Oh! Okay, so what, “Hi Jon, how are you, get anyone killed lately?” ARCHIVIST: … I… MELANIE: Wipe that look off your face. Like you’re not the reason all of this is happening. Like you’re any better than– ARCHIVIST: [MESSY STUTTERING] MELANIE: –than him! ARCHIVIST: Basira said Elias was gone!

(MAG124) MARTIN: … Look, Jon, I, I’ve really got to go, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh, er, okay… MARTIN: I’m, I’m sorry that you– ARCHIVIST: Wowowow, it was… good t–, it was good to see you. MARTIN: … Yeah. [STEPS LEAVING] ARCHIVIST: … yeah… [CLICK.]

(MAG129) MARTIN: Please, stop finding me. ARCHIVIST: … What happened, Martin? [SILENCE] MARTIN: You died. ARCHIVIST: I came back. MARTIN: Yeah. [OPENS DOOR] I’m not gonna let it happen again. ARCHIVIST: … wait… Wait! W– [DOOR CLOSES] [SIGH] [CLICK.]

(YES, GRATUITOUS QUOTE-COMPILATION, BECAUSE THAT’S A LOT.)

It’s been a rough two months since he woke up, alright. I’m so glad that he managed to get Daisy back: not only it was a victory that actually felt like one (the removal of Melanie’s bullet meant that things got… strained), but Daisy has been asking the right questions and they’re so… like-minded? kindred spirits? lately, two Survivors able to understand each other, that it feels good and… a bit more hopeful.

(- I still want Jon to get the chance to have a discussion with Georgie, to explain himself and what happened, to explain that even though he decided something she’s disapproving of… he still wants to do some good, as much as he can? é_è To thank her for having watched over him and having given him so much valuable advice? For Georgie to accept that Jon did the best he could do in the situation he was in? Basira used to listen to Georgie’s podcast while in the car with Daisy so maybe Daisy heard some bits of it. Let Georgie and Daisy meeeeeet too!!)

- So much for Jon getting a stronger hold on his power, he still accidentally slipped and compelled:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: If you don’t mind me asking, [STATIC:] where are you off to…? MELANIE: Therapy. [STATIC ENDS] … Wait. ARCHIVIST: Oh…! Oh, God, Melanie, I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh… MELANIE: [EXASPERATED SIGH] It’s fine. I would probably have told you eventually, anyway.

Still too curious and not the best at self-restrain, though… he had been doing way better lately. I think the last time he had accidentally compelled was in MAG114, with Tim? On the other hand: it looks like his Insights are a bit more controlled since, unless he reveals that he has Known for a while, he… doesn’t seem to know about Basira’s activities. So maybe sternly forbidding him from peeking worked with that one, given that he had motivation to not screw things up (even more) between them…? He was a bit more relaxed with Melanie this time around! (Well. And Melanie was way more relaxed around him too, which… says something considering their previous exchanges.)

- What is wrong with Jon’s body. This makes the second mention of casual weirdness, after Jared commenting about Jon’s rib:

(MAG131) JARED: Huh. That’s a weird one. Not sure I like it. Still. Mine now.

(MAG136) DAISY: Not of you and your weird eyes.

Too many eyes, or something else…?

- I’m so emotional over the fact that Daisy is… currently giving back to Jon? Telling him that his way of thinking or his overall situation is “messed up”; reminding him that he’s not responsible for everything that’s happened to Melanie, Basira and herself; pushing him to snap out of it and have a nice time…? The fact that she included herself in the (short) list of people around Jon, and that:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: And you’re not… worried about… DAISY: Basira’s trapped here. So are you.

She listed him alongside Basira when justifying why her decision to tie herself to the Institute was worth it – they’re in this together and it’s not only just “with Basira” in her mind. It includes Jon.

- … and not Melanie there, BUT!! PROGRESS:

(MAG112) DAISY: Yeah. Couldn’t find Tim, but he’s gone with Martin and… the other one. BASIRA: Melanie. DAISY: Sure.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira–

She marked a verrrry slight pause before saying Melanie’s name but still: Melanie is now her own person in Daisy’s mind!

- And I’m SO EMOTIONAL OVER MELANIE OVERALL but also so proud that… apparently, she took it upon herself to take care of Daisy, and went as far as to go ask Jon to replace her when she couldn’t do it?

(MAG136) MELANIE: Well… uhm. Daisy’s been, erm… I’ve been keeping her company. Er, while… while Basira’s busy. She’s, er… ARCHIVIST: Oh, no, I, uh… I–I know. MELANIE: W–well, I’ve kind of got to… uhm. I’ve got somewhere to be. Do you mind if, if… she hangs around, with… […] [IN THE DISTANCE] Hum, yeah, he’s, he’s fine with it. So… […] DAISY: I didn’t ask her. To do that. ARCHIVIST: I–it–it’s fine.

I’m glad that Melanie makes sure that Daisy doesn’t end up alone, and that… she went to Jon for this ;__; Melanie knew better than everyone how it felt to be not emotionally supported by someone, namely Basira (MAG131: “Basira is… um. Basira deals in ‘intel’ these days, in usable data, assets. Not feelings. Not people.”), so I find this super-sweet that she… is apparently making extra efforts to not replicate the situation with Daisy? Some feeling of community/teamwork has been recreated lately, all around Daisy, and aaaaah… I’m so glad ;; Really sad that Martin isn’t there and that Basira is still closing herself off, but so glad about the faint Melanie-Daisy-Jon dynamic… (And so worried. Because now, I wonder how Jonny is planning to rip it away from us.)

(Though: Melanie didn’t try to set-up for Helen and Daisy to stay together. Is Helen mostly absent/can’t get out of her door much…? Or was it because Melanie didn’t absolutely trust Daisy’s Hunter instincts to not kick back in, if she was too close to a Spook-she-doesn’t-know-yet for long…?)

(I wonder if it’s Helen who suggested therapy to Melanie, or if they talked about it? In any case, having Helen around seemed to have helped Melanie a bit, overall ;__;)

- Though logistically: it’s hilarious that Melanie&Basira probably still live in the Archives, that Daisy is probably doing the same (unclear whether or not Jon Still Has A Home outside)… and that Daisy didn’t even mention that hi, she had signed some paperwork and was now an Official Member of the Institute. It took Jon two weeks to learn about it, and only because he asked about his dreams. (Daisy must have done that quite fast after getting out of the coffin? For someone who “missed dreaming”, she reacted immediately x”))

………………… I’m not sure that Basira will take that the news that Daisy is now tied to the Institute kindly, though, given the current state of things.

- Elephant in the room, Melanie’s ~therapist~ is ringing SO MANY warning bells:

(MAG136) THERAPIST: Right, have a seat. Do you mind if I record our sessions? MELANIE: I do mind. Yes. THERAPIST: Ah? I mean, it’s just for my own notes. MELANIE: I categorically and completely do *not* give consent for you to make any recording of me, ever. Turn it off. Please. [SILENCE] THERAPIST: I… I see. Yes. Of–of course. [CLICK.]

…………………. See, even besides the use of a tape recorder (who would use that in 2018 for very professional, serious and health-related purposes, if they’re not spooky?!), it’s how the therapist handled the act of recording in itself which makes me shiver. During a first session, a first encounter, when you’re supposed to not make the patient uncomfortable, turning it on before asking Melanie if she would be fine with it. Trying to argue with Melanie’s refusal when Melanie explicitly said she would be bothered by it. That small silence before complying – while Melanie was just stating her rights… (Though on that last one, Melanie’s background as a podcaster is showing; she was very efficiently able to state her will without leaving room for any loophole!)

There are many options for What The Deal Is With That Therapist:

1°) A totally normal person who just happens to use tape recorders in 2018 and was startled by Melanie’s professional-sounding declaration.

2°) Someone tied to the Lonely…? It would be a terrifying job for a Lukas, totally twisting the purpose of a therapy by… cutting you off from others? ;; (Peter had mentioned the possibility of therapy to Martin back in MAG120: “Oh! And if you want to talk to a counsellor, the Institute will of course cover any cost.”)

3°) Someone tied to Beholding: Gertrude had the contact information for one (MAG130: “If that’s your primary goal, my dear, I would suggest you speak to a qualified counsellor. We can suggest one, if you like […]. Hang on, let me see if I can find you the number for that counselling service. They’re actually quite good.”), and that last “I see” was quite striking, Avatars tend to make small references to their patrons all the time – though this one could have also been a nod to Melanie’s…

4°) … since the therapist seemed so taken aback by Melanie offering a resistance: … W e b…? Annabelle was even created during, specifically, a psychological experiment (though we don’t know if she was a psychology postgrad herself, or just a random test subject with a different background; the voice sounded maybe a bit too old for someone who still looked like a “student” in 2012, but then Elias is supposed to be middle-aged so, eh). It wouldn’t be the most subtle thing ever but then: given that Jon didn’t give any reason, why did he pick this specific statement this time around? Outside of the statement, who is a “puppeteer” in this episode? Which would raise, once again, the question of What Is Behind tape recorders; and, if Web, what allowed Melanie to not obey: was it because she used to be Slaughter-infused…? (I had wondered, especially after MAG125, about the relationship between the Slaughter and the Spider: the way Elias had specifically mentioned that Melanie had a “visceral hatred of being trapped” in MAG102, was run by “the self-determination you prize so highly” in MAG106, and the fact that Melanie had described him as “pulling all the strings” in return, had left me with the lingering of impression that… potentially, there was more something about Web than Beholding at work here, and that obviously, The Slaughter, being uncontrollable violence and chaos, wouldn’t be the best of pals with the Eight-Legged-Mrs.-Order Fear entity…)

The way Melanie described therapists at the beginning of the episode (“We’ll see. There’s a… a lot of crap therapists out there.” and it’s true, and she’s still trying!!! Good!!) already introduced cautiousness about the whole process; if this one turns out to be Bad, it wouldn’t be representative of every one of them. Still, kinda hoping (for Melanie) that unless this one manages to prove that her first few seconds were absolutely not representative of what she can offer, Melanie will try to find another one elsewhere ;; I’m impressed that she didn’t just go “Nop ahaha bye” when the tape recorder began to get used… without her consent. It wasn’t good when Jon was doing it, but from a therapist, there is something very, verrrry chilling, and this new character absolutely managed to sound as untrustworthy as Peter in just a few seconds ;;

- On the list of worrying things: URKKKKK that… Basira apparently still hasn’t told the others about her visits to Elias. She’s likely doing her own researches, as Elias had suggested, to check if there were some truths amongst what he told her about The Dark’s activities… but URRRKKK that she hasn’t said a word about it yet. Not good, Basira ;; Elias is spilling his poison and she’s drinking it raw – it will most likely mess her up… and mess up the others, too, if they’re not aware that Elias still has, in all likehood, Plans.

… On the other hand, I got the impression that her relationship with Daisy had improved a bit? Daisy sounded less… heartbroken, this time, giving me the impression that, yes, things aren’t perfect, but not excruciating either?

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I haven’t seen her much since… Well, she seemed a bit… tense, the last few times we spoke. How are you guys– DAISY: [CLEARS THROAT] ARCHIVIST: –doing? DAISY: N–no, Basira, she’s… She’s been good. We’re… together so it’s good. [SIGH] Wish she wouldn’t keep treating me like a china doll. But it’s alright. ARCHIVIST: That’s understandable, I suppose. DAISY: [BREATHING HARDER, FASTER] Yeah, well… What do you think?

See, I can’t really decide whether Daisy’s awkwardness was because it was a touchy subject and she was aware that no, things aren’t fine… Or if it was a matter of “oh lord, no, I can’t tell Awkward Nerd Guy that YES, things have been super-steamy in the tunnels lately, he would probably faint if he knew we were doing it in his Institute.”

(… reminder that in this episode, Jon had to read “He even kept in contact when I left to have my baby. It wasn’t planned, but while I may not have had much time for make-up and monster suits, the bodies inside of them were, er, a different matter.” with his own tongue.) (That’s not topping Timothy Hodge’s statement and Jon’s annotations from its patreon Deluxe transcript, but eh, it was still a beautiful line <3)

And the parallels between Daisy&Basira and Jon&Martin keep piling up! First Basira and Martin both were “busy”; now, it’s the single-minded longing for the other when they’re separated – Daisy having thought that she would never see Basira again when she was in the coffin, and now… Jon’s first reaction when Daisy taunts him about acting like he’s alone being to say that YES HE IS… because Martin isn’t there.

Holy Arceus on top of Giratina, Jon, what would your season-1 self would say about the Current You. (“Things change. People change.” Helen told him a few episodes ago, AND YEP. Y E P.)

- I’m… a bit worried about how Daisy handled Martin, however. It fits her and the… individualistic? bits of her that we had seen: if she sees a problem, she’ll try to deal with it through her own actions – Jon is sad because Martin isn’t there? Then no, she’s not going to drag Martin kicking and screaming back to Jon if she wants to cheer Jon up; she’ll push him to stand back up on his own.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I’m, I’m not “swanning around”– DAISY: “Boo-hoo, I’m so alone and a monster!” ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira–

1°) She’s partially not wrong? Though I still feel like, without knowing what Martin is doing behind the scenes together with Peter, there would be causes for concern and that Martin… is not in a good place nor there on his own: his lines in MAG124 and MAG129 sounded, more than anything, like he was straightforwardly blackmailed into not talking with the others (we know that, from Martin’s point of view, it’s a bit more complicated and not the end-goal; but still, his insistence to Jon about how he couldn’t hear what he had to say, had to leave, etc…. weren’t reassuring at all). Daisy might be projecting a bit on that one since she has deepened her network since she came back, probably because Basira was astray: she now remembers Melanie’s name, she listed Jon together with Basira as people trapped within the Institute (implying that she would not leave them behind). She might see Jon as hyperfixating on something that can’t be resolved right away, like her situation with Basira…? Unless it’s plainly because “Blackwood” hadn’t impressed her much in season 3 (she doesn’t know him! Even if Jon cares for him, maybe she doesn’t see him as all that valuable), or because… spooks are happening and the Lonely is managing to cut the ties that Martin die have with people, who are now just not finding him relevant anymore…?

2°) So nowadays, people are aware that Martin is doing “paperwork” – are they aware that he’s basically doing Peter’s work as an ~assistant~? Or are they plainly assuming that “Peter Lukas” is his alias…?

3°) ;; I’m super happy about Daisy inviting Jon for drinks, and Basira possibly joining them… but also worried about how Peter might just rub that into Martin’s face? Jon used to not be… social with the assistants. It would be so easy to tell Martin that it’s finally happening because Martin is not there… (And yes, Martin made his choice to protect the others, presumably Melanie&Basira, because Jon was away! And nowadays, it still stands, the fact that it would also protect Jon was only added to the pile! And he was told by Peter in MAG126 that he might “not want” to share what had happened with Jon at the end of it, implying that he would change; Martin knows these aspects of the deal! But Martin is not absolutely selfless either, and there could easily be some envious outbursts at the idea that Jon seems to be… happier, nowadays…?)

(… Martin had been so snappy to Basira in MAG088, and there was the whole talk between Basira&Melanie about how Martin seemed to think they would “steal his precious Archivist” in MAG106; who would have thought that Daisy and Jon would ultimately be the ones to go out for drinks together.)

- ANYWAY, Jon & Daisy & potentially Basira are going out for drinks and I don’t know if it will be an awkward mess or a nice time for all but. The potential for silly Tipsy Activities is strong – trying to make Jon guess ridiculous trivia facts through his Insights? Basira noting that Jon is behaving exactly like Martin presumably did at the end of MAG098 (talking a lot about a certain someone who isn’t really there at the moment)? Daisy sharing cop stories?

(… I also can’t help but think about the whole assistants-and-assimilated gang going for drinks during Jon’s kidnapping between MAG099–MAG102. Worst moment ever until they’re too inebriated to Coherently Think about why their lives suck and… see, that episode from Brooklyn 99? Going out of their way to find the most ridiculous kinda-harmless ways to exact revenge on what’s pissing them off at the moment, ie Elias? … Going to his office to wrap his whole desk in cellophane. While he’s standing there, just unable to do anything (they’re too many and too far gone for his power to work). While Tim is throwing serpentine streamers everywhere, Martin is crying because Elias’s paperweight suddenly reminds him of Jon, Daisy is seductively slurring the worst pick-up lines to Basira, and Melanie had stolen a spoon in the bar and tries to recreate “The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon” on Elias, again and again and AGAIN AND AGAIN– (maybe Basira told the truth in MAG106 and Melanie had indeed managed to make Elias cry, she just can’t remember about it). Basira was absolutely sober through it all, but when Elias tries to get explanations from her passiveness, it’s a mix of Her Iconic “I don’t know.” and the fact that she’s trying to get better at this new job of watching without doing anything. Elias would almost begin to regret Gertrude.)

Title for MAG137 is out and W O W is that an interesting one?! I have no idea if it will deal with one of the current threads or give information about other ones; it’s… a broad title which works for a lot of things. Tied to a very small mention we got in MAG105, so could be dealing with Gertrude’s studies on The Slaughter (and possibly her dealing with that one’s ritual)? If dealing with The Dark again, there are many angles which could work: attack on the Institute (get to meet The Creature, Jon.), Julia in present-time, Robert Montauk in the past, orrrr even something about the Elias-Rayner relationship that we now know was a Thing? (Though I feel that, if we get some information about that last one, it’s likely to be given in Ny-Ålesund.) Could also work for Hill Top Road, specifically Agnes and Ray? Could work for The Corruption (since The Hive had… personal feelings about The Institute) and maybe shed some light on whatever it was trying to achieve in the tunnels with the ring of worms (ritual attempt, or had Gertrude taken care of that one already?), or even something about John Amherst (Melanie… ;;)? Could work with Gertrude’s activities overall – with Elias, with Peter, with Jude… (Would be hilarious if it was about Elias and Peter, what the heck are you to each other, you terrible beings.) Could also work for Annabelle if it’s about balance? Aaaah, so many possibilities!! And it’s probably not even one that I thought of! =D

… and we’ll be getting a mid-season break, after all. Given how the break had been narratively inserted in season 3 (matching Jon’s kidnapping), will it be the case again and, if it is: what could possibly go wrong that we wouldn’t get a recording in-universe for three weeks? Four episodes left, a rushed trip to Ny-Ålesund could still happen before that and… leave them (/the surviving ones) in tatters afterwards, uuuuh…