#which makes it more likely that it's Jack Barnabas

[griftersbone42]

I haven't seen enough people talk about how Celia woke up ON THE SIDE OF A MOTORWAY in her pyjamas, and acted like it had happened before

[anthroposeen]

tmagp 12 relisten notes

Celia:

- requests tea, not coffee, the OIAR custom. points to her being from the TMA universe + bonus thing! there was no tea in the OIAR and sam lended her some. potentially a demonstration of their relationship dynamic lore-wise (celia representing other-wordly things and sam's insistence on interacting w them. this is definitely a reach, though, since im very much a 'the curtains are never just blue' person)

- she agrees to go out with sam but needs to "sort some things out" maybe related to jack, georgie, or her individual research

Sam:

- he asked her out! oh my god (alice's father)!

- is trying to distance himself from the magnus institute (TMI) but is still unable to break his curiosity about it

Alice:

- watched sam ask out celia (we can assume it was with the manner of a deer in the headlights)

- "its rude to have no game" i love you maam

- no glitch after she says "i cant believe im missing out on all of this- devastating" but could be because it comes off as more sarcastic than a blunt lie

- "we dont always get what we want, do we?" potentially a hint at her feeling about sam

- "i go by alice, now, actually" important only because i adore you miss dyer

- seems to genuinely care about gwen, lending to the idea that shes protecting her coworkers

- "i dont wonder. i know" no glitch followed this statement. it could be because it was meant as a joke and not to deceive gwen, but who is to say

Gwen:

- she's trying to discuss the morality of their roles and seems to be unhappy to participate in mascot strip club murder

- "you dont wonder what the point is? who benefits from all this awfulness?"

Glitches/lies:

- "dont worry about it, it wasnt that bad" alice, referencing TMI

- "no." sam, lying about not being interested in information about TMI

Incident:

- this is the result of gwen giving mr bonzo the hit, and it seems to have been read at her computer (once again implying theres a consciousness within FR3D1 or jmj)

- incident made by jordan bennett -> maybe related to this universe's bennett family (connection to barnabas bennett) but i doubt its lore relevant

- no obvious alchemic ties in this incident

- this case is narrated by norris/martin, but goes against the regular theme of his incidents (lonliness, loss of a loved one)

- the robotic sound of the narration seems to be diminishing, with very little of the beginning and end of the incidents being read in a monotone and robotic voice

- i want to voice my deepest appreciation for the title being "getting off", along with mr bonzo initiating a hit for the uk government in a strip club. incredible. absolute cinema from the minds of AJN and johhny sims truly

The target:

- before this episode, my theory was that klaus, colin, and teddy were the most likely to be the hit

- based on this list, if the target is the groom, it makes the most sense for it to be klaus, since there has been no mention of colin or teddy being engaged, and thats a clue i dont think the writers would leave out. however, the groom is called "baz" by his friends, which is a nickname i dont recognize (but its potentially on the rpg somewhere?)

- im not very convinced that klaus was the groom in this incident. i think the hit may have been obvious to lena, but gwen has yet to connect all the dots, leaving the audience a bit in the dark as well

[akalikai]

Okay so I do wonder if the baby is actually Celia's though, the way she phrased it was weird. And also like...It didn't seem like she was raising the child alone like wasn't she calling someone at home? LISTEN THE BABY IS CALLED JACK MAYBE ITS BC OF AGNES AND JACK BARNABAS-

Additionally the date didn't...Idk maybe it's because I'm aroace but it didn't feel like a romantic date to me? I feel like Celia is more interesting in the information that Sam can give her than Sam himself. Which is sad bc he really likes her.

Again, still holding in the back of my mind that Celia's hesitation to say yes to him was bc she's not actually interested in men but she knows she can get information from him like this.

As for Sam and Alice, God, okay maybe it's just me but I was lowkey kind of annoyed when he said they should "keep things professional". Alice HAS been doing that for the most part, she teases him and stuff but she never actively showed she was upset about Sam and Celia. The fact that he brought it up after he felt like the relationship could go somewhere, it's like-Its that feeling of cutting of your friends because you got a partner. Which I don't like, especially as an aroace person who has had that happen.

So either Sam better do something big to make it up to her or Gwen better sweep her off her feet because right now, Sam is not in my good books when it comes to Alice.

[monstermaster13]

Longest character tf mood: Dark/Badass/half non-human female characters but in particular characters like Nancy Downs, Lisle Von Rhuman, Elvira, Tiffany Valentine. And also Minerva Mink, Selene, Julie Bruin, Lady Dimitrescu, Santanico Pandemonium, Lopunny, Salazzle, Haterene, Peggy Bundy.

Most Recent/Personal Favorite: Horrors/slasher characters, Dan Aykroyd characters, Disney, Dreamworks.

Most Cursed: I would say having Smithy from Gavin and Stacey on my character tf tier would count only because well…James Corden (although I did do Biggie from Trolls and he's also a James Corden character), but Garbage Pail Kids and if real people counted I would include Donald Trump. Also Vic Frohmyer and Tom Everett from Christmas With The Kranks and Caddyshack II. Both are Dan Aykroyd movies I freaking hate, i've been more forgiving to the latter as of recent but for the former.

All-Time Favorite: Horror/slashers.

Most Obscure: Well there was the Doodles from Tweenies one I did and also Constance from Taz-Mania, and the New Zealand children's show character Bumble…but definitely the characters played by Jay Leno when he was host of the Tonight Show. I did a Vinnie from Biker Mice tf once and I did a Charley Davidson tg, but I really wanted to try and do Lawrence Limburger but I have trouble figuring out how to do that one since it's a fish-alien disguised as a human, but definitely the Christopher Walken version of Brainiac from the cancelled Superman project Tim Burton was going to do…because…alien-spider-Walken? Oh and definitely Flabber from Big Bad Beetleborgs.

Most Desired Character Skillset and Mindset: Genie, Edmund Blackadder.

Favorite OC: Melanie 'Mel' Sanders, Eucalyptus, Nathan, Matthias T.Radke/Werebelushi In Shades (please interact with this character in character only and not as if you are talking to me whenever you have a complaint, this makes it easier and so I don't have to deal with people bitching about me using him to vent instead of supposedly using myself).

Least Human Looking: Brundlefly, Mansquito, Pumpkinhead, Salvatore Moreau.

Favorite Voice: Definitely hard to pick on voices…i'd say Bojack. because Will Arnett, or just about any Christopher Walken character, or any Simpsons character (Sideshow Bob for example), and I would say Otho Fenlock if I got to do a tf into him, which I wish I did…when I did my original Tim Burton tfs I got up to doing Nightmare Before Christmas specifically Jack Skellington and I did the Michael Keaton Batman and Jack Nicholson Joker but I never did the Danny Devito Penguin (and I kept meaning to do it) and I did do a Mars Attacks alien, and I did Barnabas, but I never did Tarrant altough I did Johnny Depp's other Burton characters minus Victor and Ed Wood, and i'm kicking myself for not doing Otho considering how much I love Glenn Shadix.

Thiccest Favorite: Roman Craig…daaaamn, why is Dan Aykroyd so dilfy? I wish I knew but 90's-present Aykroyd characters, super thicc.

Underrated: Horror character transformations, Tim Burton characters.

Current TF Mood: Horror characters, Dan Aykroyd characters, characters from Star Trek, Dreamworks, Disney, South Park, Bojack Horseman, Biker Mice From Mars, Jim Henson.

[welcometogrouchland]

Wait actually just thinking abt this. The most famous examples of "anchors" as a concept in tma is Jon/Martin, Gertrude/Agnes, and technically Daisy/Basira but like. Only sort of.

Anyway, you ever think abt how none of those duos actually achieved their goals/succeeded and in fact usually ended up being each others undoing in one way or another???

[your-mom-friend]

Ranking Avatars on a Completely Arbitrary Scale Part 2: Apocalypse Boogaloo

Arson Montague: 11/10. What an icon. She is the moment. I want a full series surrounding her life. She had a Coffee Shop AU with Jack Barnabas and immediately stopped being evil and died. Poor girl. I can't help but find the circumstances of her existence so funny though. Her mom killed her dad while she's been pregnant. The cult didn't even want this to happen since she wasn't "conceived in the flame". According to the wiki they relented since "no one knew how that would even work". They threw away the childcare book because it didn't fit the aesthetic. She still turned out pretty okay. We love to see it.

Annabelle Cain: 8/10. We don't even know anything concrete about her childhood because she might not have told the truth. Go queen give us nothing! Yeah she terrified people at the arachnophobia study but she also used her powers to help Jarchivist and Co. so like? good for her? Confirmed Eldritch Horror.

Nikola Orsinov: 3/10 *in the tune* fuck this shit i'm out! fuck this shit i'm out! No but fr she gave me legit creeps and the forced skincare routine while hilarious to think about just makes me itch all over. Not a fan. Sorry bestie. Do have to give her points for being a whole Demon Mannequin and still being freaked out by The Coffin, as well as for being sassy with Elias. Points deducted for killing Danny

Nathaniel Thorp: 9/10 this man was requested and I had to look him up because i lowkey forgot but when I saw the start I remembered INSTANTLY I love him. He cheated death!! in a game!! what a madlad. Cut off his finger to prove a point lmao. Sad that he was a coward in the beginning but ah aren't we all? He died and then undied and then got better but couldn't eat or drink. What a character. @4bsent-damascus I hope you know you have excellent taste.

Melanie Queen: 8/10. Queen of owning her opinion. Not gonna call her a girlboss or whatever (she is but not for the eye thing) but if there's one thing she's unparalleled at it's owning her opinions. I feel for her! I really do. If I had a ghost bullet in my leg that decayed my morals enough to let me get all the pent-up anger out I would also not want it out. She was horrible to Jon for most of her run, but I also get it? Also, like fucking hell dude she had to mutilate her eyes to get her life back!!

Daisy Tonner: 8/10. She's a good person!! I love her. Points off for being a cop though. But she owned up to the harm she caused! And after disconnecting from The Hunt she worked VERY hard to make sure she wouldn't hurt people again and still allowed it to overtake her so she could protect her friends! Excellent character and she has incredible depth and complexity

Hezekiah WAKEly: 10.5/10 just wanted to lay in the dirt and get some sleep. What a mood. He didn't even really do anything! Yeah he was a little enthusiastic about the grave digging but I feel like that's understandable. If my only good sleep came after I dug graves I too would want to dig more graves. half a point off for murdering his friend though :/ I would've docked a whole point but his friend was a snitch and told the church which is pretty lame. Also it's so funny that the guy that wanted to sleep so bad had the last name Wakely

Maxwell Reimer: 5/10. His last incarnation kidnapped a kid which is a very bad thing to do, so don't. He is kind of a mid character to me honestly. Points for being a body hopper like my man JMag but eh. No real feeling about him sorry lads.

Tova McHugh: 5/10. Diversity Win! The person stealing your life force is a Demigirl! [This is from checking the wiki, where it's noted that Tova is referred to with both she and they pronouns.] This is more from personal dislike of the whole "I can do more so my life is worth more" philosophy they've got going on. Kind fucked up bestie. Was going to be a 4 but I kind of appreciate how much she's working for the philanthropy? In the sense of "I've taken their lives so I need to make it worth it so it wasn't in vain" which is has complicated feelings but I think it's good.

Micheal Crew: 6/10. Overall good character actually. He had some bad luck with the lightning strike and only went after the Lietners to get rid of the thing that was tormenting him. Devoted himself to The Vast and only then was a little insane. Don't think he even actually killed anyone? Just scares the shit out of them. Cool guy.

Julia Montauk: 7/10. Really cool to me actually. Feral, which we love to see. She's got such a fun dynamic with Trevor. She wasn't even like, a bad person at first. Just trying to live her life and then some pool of nightmare ink made heer feral and she's been living that monster hunting life ever since. Points off for keeping Gerry imprisoned and trying to kill Jon. Though I do wonder how she and Trevor managed to get into the UK at all considering they couldn't before

Trevor Herbert: 8.5/10. What a madlad. Showed up in season 1 like "what's up I'm Herb I'm homeless and I may have killed a man". Just wholesale unhinged. He also battled lung cancer. and addiction. and he won!! Incredible. Love his dynamic with Julia and I would've given him a 7 but I forgot about the addiction and lung cancer thing till I looked it up and I think that deserves an extra point that shit is hard.

This is part 2 of this post

Tag list: @pipis-pods @alas-shes-mad @4bsent-damascus @crabussy @u-suck-im-sick

Lmk who else you want to see and I'll add them in the next part (there's so many avatars it's insane there's like 80)

[radiantmists]

so i was thinking about this post i made some more and i feel like looking at the way the stories of evan lukas, agnes, and gerry are told to us is really interesting.

all three of them have this commonality where they were created to carry a legacy, to serve (or in gerry’s case, take advantage of) these entities; and each of them found at least some way to rebel against this, to take back their own agency and self-definition. agnes dated jack and chose the end of her life, gerry burned books and helped strays, evan completely broke from his family, made friends, fell in love.

but in the end, all three of them have their agency stolen again in death. gerry is bound into the book; evan lukas is buried at moorland house by relatives who take the chance to prey on his beloved. and then we come to agnes, who on some level did choose her death, but it also seems related to her connection with hilltop road and gertrude, which she had absolutely no control over. 

and deeper than that, for agnes, comes what arthur nolan puts into words:

“Never really knew what she felt ‘bout any of it, not really. Not in her own words. Guess that’s the thing about being the… chosen one, or... at the end of it, you’re always just the point of someone else’s story, everyone clamoring to say what you were, what you meant, and your thoughts on it all don’t mean nothing.”

(Episode 145, Infectious Doubts)

One thing that I know frustrated some people is that we never got to hear Agnes on podcast, but in the context of the above quote I think that was absolutely an intentional choice. Agnes never got to tell her own story; the closest we get is the story told by people like Arthur Nolan or Jack Barnabas, who claimed to love her. But the stories they tell are all mired in what they wanted her to be far more than who she was. The final loss of agency is that who she was was forgotten, replaced by what she could do for others, what she meant to them.

And, to a lesser extent, the same happens to Evan Lukas. He had friends, loved ones, and Naomi, but he was buried, the ceremony intended to memorialize one’s life, as a Lukas, on some lonely stretch of moor. And even looking at Naomi’s statement... it doesn’t tell us much about him, really, how he got out or what he felt about the whole thing beyond that he didn’t get along with his family. She loved him, but at least to the listener, his story is lost in favor of what he meant to her and what she lost when he died.

Gerry, we can see, was headed the same way. We get a lot of bystander’s statements about him, about how he saved them or creeped them out, and we get the statements of both his parents (though Mary barely mentions him). And in death, he’s sealed into a book for some inscrutable purpose of Gertrude’s, and then reduced to his utility as a monster manual for Trevor and Julia, and then for Jon.

But meeting Jon changes everything, because even though Jon desperately needs the information Gerry can give him, he insists on treating Gerry as a person. The big example of this is him burning Gerry’s page, fulfilling his wishes rather than treating him like an object, of course, and that’s an incredible moment. But even before that, in episode 111, Gerry tells Jon about the storage unit immediately after his page is ripped out; Jon could feasibly just dismiss him and move on. Instead, they have the conversation that fed all us shippers, and then Jon asks if Gerry wants to give a statement.

Obviously Jon does get some fulfillment out of people giving statements, but he doesn’t compel Gerry, and it seems pretty clear at least to me that he wouldn’t have pressed the issue if Gerry said no. What Jon does here, instead, is give Gerry the opportunity that Agnes and Evan Lukas never had: he gets to tell his own story.

And I think that it’s genuinely lovely that Jon is the one to make this change. Obviously the tapes have taken on a sinister cast with the final revelations as far as the Web, but I think it’s worth viewing them in light of what they meant to Jon, back then. He doesn’t want to be-- refuses to be-- another goddamn mystery. 

Because Jon, with all his struggles with the Web and Elias and his own transformation, also engages heavily with this question of agency. And above all, he doesn’t want to be defined by whatever incidentals someone pieces together about him; he wants his story to be preserved, and he wants, as much as possible, to write it himself. 

And he wants other people to have the same; he doesn’t want them to be forgotten.  He has everyone record their thoughts before the Unknowing in Testament; he listens, over and over, to the scraps of recording he gets of Gertrude, Gerry, Tim and Sasha. And when he finally stops Jonah, he does it-- at least partially-- in their memory.

Whether you believe Jon succeeded in defining his own story or not, I think there’s beauty in his desire to remember the stories of the people around him, as they were and as they wanted them to be told. 

[gammija]

The final Web!Martin evidence list

Now that canon is done, and we’ve got word of god confirmation that Web!Martin wasn’t complete nonsense, I decided to go back to my lil chronological evidence list and actually clean it up a bit, delete parts that in hindsight weren't all that indicative, and put everything in a slightly more readable format. (Obligatory disclaimer that i don’t and never did believe or advocate for some kind of evil web!martin, and that I'm not intending to connect a moral judgement to martin (or anyone else for that matter) having some of these traits)

So here: The (hopefully, please) final list with Web!Martin Evidence! Presented in order of importance, according to. me

The final (hopefully) Web!Martin evidence list

(In order from most to least obvious)

Spiders

I mean, it’s called the Web. TMA reiterates quite a few times that Martin liked spiders. Sometimes it IS that easy.

MAG022: Martin: "I like spiders. Big ones, at least. Y’know, y’know the ones you can see some fur on; I actually think they’re sort of cute -"

MAG038: | Sasha: "A spider?" Jon: "Yeah. I tried to kill it…" [...] Sasha: [Chuckles] "Well, I won’t tell Martin." Jon: "Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem."

MAG059: Jon: "I have done my best to prevent Martin reading this statement in too much detail. I have no interest in having another argument about spiders."

MAG079: Jon: "Apparently, biologically, his account of the spiders doesn’t make any sense according to Martin."

MAG197: Martin: “What? Because I like spiders? Well, used to.”

Lies and subterfuge

Martin is able to use lying and subterfuge to achieve his goals, and is called manipulative a few times.

Lies:

MAG022: Martin: "[He] became slightly more co-operative after I lied to him and told him that one of the upstairs residents had buzzed me in."

MAG056: Martin: "I lied on my CV."

MAG158: Peter: “But you said –” Martin: “Honestly, I mostly just said what I thought you wanted to hear.”

MAG164: Jon: "You – I actually believed you!"

MAG189: Martin: “Sorry. Sorry, John. Not sure how much everything up there actually understood what was going on. But, y’know, I didn’t want to take any chances so it made sense to… um…” Jon: “Put on a show?” Martin: “Yeah, basically, more or less.”

MAG191: Martin: "That's not true." Arun: "Liar!"

Subterfuge:

The plan in 118, which revolved around convincing Elias that Martin was only “acting out”, to create a distraction for Melanie. (Also compare the way he evades giving a straight answer here with the way Annabelle talks in 196.)

Working with Peter in s4 under false pretenses, to distract him from Jon and eventually try to learn what Peter wanted.

Manipulation accusations:

These, I know, are somewhat contentious, since it’s mostly villains saying this to him. I’m still including them, since

1): From a media analysis standpoint, being mentioned 3 times is a sign to pay attention, even when it may not be the full truth.

2): I only see it as describing Martin’s behaviour in the previous points, not as a moral judgement; Especially since he almost always ‘manipulates’ people in positions of power over him.

Still, if it bothers anyone, feel free to ignore these.

MAG138: Martin: "That’s it? No, no monologue, no mind games? You love manipulating people!" Elias: "That makes two of us."

MAG186: Martin: “I can be a real manipulative prick, you know that?” Also Martin: “Oh yeah.”

MAG196: Annabelle: “Because you always managed to get what you wanted through smiles and shrugs and stammerings that weren’t nearly as awkward as they seemed.” [SMALL SOUND OF MARTIN’S CONCESSION TO THE POINT] Martin: “Point taken.”

The Lonely/the Web

The Lonely and the Web sometimes affect Martin to similar degrees.

In season 3, when Martin is getting used to reading statements for the first time, most of them leave him emotionally affected: MAG084, MAG088, MAG090,

MAG095: Martin: “S-S-Statement… done.” [HEAVY BREATHING & TREMBLING AS MARTIN STEADIES HIMSELF] “I don’t like recording these. There. I-I said it.”,

MAG098: Martin: [Panting] “End of statement.” [Deep breath] “I, um, I think I might need to sit down. Oh. Yeah, I am. Right. I don’t, uh, I’m not really sure if these are actually getting easier or harder. I mean I don’t feel –”

Only the last two statements he reads are remarkably easier. This might be a hint that Martin is just getting used to reading them, but the quote from MAG098 seems to contradict that. Either way, it’s likely not a coincidence that those last two happen to be the Lonely and the Web:

MAG108: Martin: “Statement ends.” (exhale) “That wasn’t so bad…”

MAG110: Martin: “Statement ends.” [...] “I mean, I think it sounds like a Jurgen Leitner book. About spiders. Hm. Good John didn’t have to read this one, anyway. I know he’s not a fan. Although, this one wasn’t too bad, actually! I – yeah. Anyway.”

In season 5, there are two powers’ Domains that actually affected Martin mentally, as opposed to only physically: the Lonely’s, in 170 (and arguably 186), and, depending on your interpretation, in 172, when Martin went exploring without knowing why he did so.

Proximity

Martin investigates a lot of the Web statements during season 1 to 3 (in other words, when the archive team still researches statements). The only ones he isn’t mentioned in during this period are MAG019 and MAG020, when he’s being harrassed by worms, and MAG081, which Jon records by himself outside of the institute.

Most notably, he’s the one who discovered the statement in MAG114, ‘Cracked Foundations’, which is the one statement in the entire show that sets up the interdimensional properties of HTR.

The Web!Lighter passed through Martin's hands first, before he gave it to Jon.

Similarly, Annabelle mostly spoke to Martin in season 5, despite most other Avatars usually focusing on Jon.

Aesthetics

Apart from the above obviously Web related areas, there are some other aesthetics which are mentioned in connection to both the Web and Martin, throughout canon.

These are describing the Web;

These are describing Martin.

Tapes:

Martin is the only character to treat the tape recorders as friends - any other character is either indifferent, or treats them as enemies.

MAG039: Martin: "I think the tapes have a sort of… low-fi charm."

MAG154 Martin: “Oh. Hi. Hello again.” … (small laugh) “Sorry pal, false alarm this time.”

MAG156 Martin: “Mm? Oh.” [HE LAUGHS, GENTLY.] “Yeah. (rustling paper) I was going to read one. Hate for you to miss it!” [SHORT, FORCED LAUGH, AS HE FLAPS THE STATEMENT AROUND.]

MAG170 Martin: “Oh. Oh, hello. What’s this? Wow, retro! What are you up to, little buddy; just – listening? That’s okay. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

MAG190 Jon: "[The tapes] seem to like [Martin]."

Retro:

MAG069: Statement: “I only saw Annabelle Cane once during this period. She wasn’t hard to pick out. She dressed like a vintage clothing store exploded on her, and her short bleach-blonde hair stood out sharply against dark skin.”

MAG160: Jon: “Anyways, don’t tell me the phonebox down there doesn’t appeal to your retro aesthetic.” Martin: “It – might. Maybe.”

MAG163: Annabelle/the Web callying Martin via an old payphone: [ A PHONE RINGS. IT’S NOT THE TINNY, ELECTRONIC SOUND OF A CELLPHONE – NO, THIS IS A TRUE, HEAVY, CLASSIC RING.] Martin: “Uh. John? Uh, J, John – the, uh, payphone that’s – here, for some reason – it’s ringing?”

Hatred of burns:

MAG067: Jack Barnabas’ statement: “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.” “Another held a bag that seemed to be full of candles, while a third had a clear plastic container filled with hundreds of tiny spiders.”

MAG139: Statement by member of Cult of the Lightless Flame: “The Mother of Puppets has always suffered at our hand; all the manipulation and subtle venom in the world means nothing against a pure and unrestrained force of destruction and ruin.” Agnes burned down Hilltop Road.

MAG145: The Web ties Gertrude to Agnes, stopping the Desolation’s ritual (the only Power whose ritual the Web is known to have prevented).

MAG167: Gertrude enlists Agnes’/the Desolation’s help in order to burn her assistant Emma, who was Web aligned.

MAG169: Martin: "Look, I just – don’t want to get burned, all right? It’s, it’s like my least favorite pain ever. [...] I, I legitimately hate burns, alright? They’re, they’re awful, and they scar horribly, and they just – it – it just makes me sick; I, I hate it. Hate it!"

Phrasing:

MAG039: Martin: "I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck. [...] It's just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too. We all are, I think."

MAG079: Martin's poem: "The threads of people walking, living, lovi–"

MAG117: Martin: "This last couple of years, I’ve always been running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but, but now it’s my trap, and, well, I think it’ll work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but it felt good leaving my own little web. Oh, oh, Christ, I hope John doesn’t actually listen to these. “Good lord, is Martin becoming some sort of spider person?” No, John, it’s an expression, chill out! Besides, spiders are fine. I mean, yes, people are scared of them, obviously, but actual spiders, they just want to help you out with flies."

MAG167: Jon: “Methinks the Spider dost protest too much.” Martin: “Jon –” Jon: “Joking! Just joking.”

Personality:

How applicable these are depends heavily on how you interpret Martin's own personality, so your mileage may vary.

MAG008: Statement: “Nobody ever said a word against Raymond himself, though, who was by all accounts a kind and gentle soul [...]”

MAG123: Jon: "The Web does seem to have a preference for those who prefer not to assert themselves."

MAG147: Annabelles statement: "I discovered a deep and enduring talent inside myself for lying. [...] My manipulations were not intricate, but they were far beyond what was expected of a child my age, and I have always believed that the key to manipulating people is to ensure that they always under- or overestimate you. Never reveal your true abilities or plans."

Word of God and Annabelle

I kinda wanted to ‘prove’ that Web!Martin had quite a bit of evidence to back it up, hence this header being last. But of course, in this post-canon world, there are a few lines that most obviously confirm the theory:

MAG197: Martin is Web enough to be able to read the 'vibrations', like Annabelle, and see Jon and Basira (the latter being especially notable, as he hadn't known she was there beforehand): [CHITTERING, BUZZING AND HIGH-PITCHED SQUEALS CHANGE CADENCE] Martin: "Wait… Wait, hang on, is that him?" Annabelle: "Yes. I guess you’re better with the Web than we thought." Martin: "And – Wait, ha– No, uh… is that… Basira? He – He’s got Basira with him!" Annabelle: "Yes."

Season 5 Q&A part 2: Jonny: “Essentially, it was fascinating looking at the fandom and, like, the Web!Martin believers, because what they were doing was correctly picking up on hints dropped in the early seasons that were later, like, not exactly abandoned, but it was much more like, ‘Well, no, he does have like aspects of The Web to him, but he is moreover The Lonely.’ And that came about very… very organically, really. Because throughout Season 3 and going into Season 4, we had this conversation and we were like, ‘No, actually he's like-” Alex: “‘It can't be, it cannot be, it must be the other way round’ Yeah.”

(Note that they say “throughout season 3 and going into season 4,” which likely means that season 1, season 2, and at least part of season 3, aka half of the entire show, were written with Web!Martin as an intentional possibility.)

If you read all that, thanks so much! Obviously, Web!Martin never really came to fruition, so it's fine if you still don't like it. This is just a post explaining where it was coming from, at least for me and the other theorists I've spoken to.

[just-elian]

“Never really knew what she felt ‘bout any of it, not really. Not in her own words. Guess that’s the thing about being the… chosen one, or – I mean, Agnes was always quiet, but even if you spend all day, every day throwing out commandments and laying down parables… at the end of it, you’re always just the point of someone else’s story, everyone clamoring to say what you were, what you meant, and your thoughts on it all don’t mean nothing.” (MAG 145)

After Jon reads Eugene Vanderstock’s statement on Agnes Montague (MAG 139) he grumbles that every other avatar gets to have their feelings burned out of them. In that moment, Jon is desperate to draw a clear line between the human and the inhuman. He wants to believe his feelings make him different. Still worthy of his own existence?

The problem with his assertion is that it is patently, canonically untrue that avatars have their feelings burned out of them and by far and away the most interesting counter argument to this assertion is Agnes Montague herself in MAG 67.

When Agnes dates Jack Barnabas in that statement, she does so in the same way she orders that black coffee every Tuesday. To follow a strange and uncomfortable and undeniable desire for something ordinary which would eventually manifest as a love so at odds with the Desolation she is aligned with that it ruins her as their saviour.

However, once you accept the cold, hard fact that Agnes has feelings, I’d encourage you to kick yourself in the feels one more time and consider Agnes as a child and what has been done to her.

Agnes. 

Given as a sacrifice by her own mother, born of fear and fire. Raised in expectation by Masochists Anonymous who never gave a moment’s thought to what it would be like to raise a child, and labelled her as nothing but a brat when she did not do what they wanted.

Fed to a spider’s nest at ten or eleven, just to see how it goes.

A lonely child staring out a window and never allowed around other children because of dark powers she would (could?) not control.

A child with a destiny, drawn into the fight far too early, and for whom it was always too late.

“She asked me if I had a destiny… I told her [no]. She looked at me, with the same sadness I’d seen on her face before. “That must be nice,” she said and went back to staring into the sunset.” (MAG 67)

[helloiamrr]

So I have seen a few AUs of the Depp characters living with each other. I wanted to make my own, and decided to start on where the characters live.

Behold, my version of the ✨Depps AU✨

This was inspired by @violetblackmar and @thedepps-au . They were my inspirations in making this AU. @evildisneydorks' Villains AU also inspired and acted as a guide for me in expanding the residence of the characters.

Like I said before, I wanted to start with the world of this AU.

-If you are going to the residence, you will see a gate. When you enter the gate, there will be a long driveway(?). That is where the cars pass to get to the houses. If you finally reached the destination, you will be greeted by a fountain. That is what separates the two houses.

-There are two houses. Imagine Barnabas' mansion split into two. Thats my best description of the sizes. There are many people living in those houses. I have sorted the characters on which house they are going to live in. I will explain that in a little bit. The fountain I mentioned earlier is in the middle of the two houses.

-The house that has the shortest distance to the body of water is the home of the human characters. People like Gilbert Grape, Tom Hanson, Glen Lantz or Axel Blackmar live there. I hope you get the idea of what group lives there.

-Then, we have the other house. That is the place where the more fantasy-like characters reside. Characters like Tarrant Hightopp, Willy Wonka, Edward Scissorhands, and Gellert Grindelwald inhabit the house. Sweeney Todd also lives there. I am aware that he does not posses any magical or out of the ordinary abilities, but I wanted him to be in that house so that Johnny Depp's Tim Burton Characters can be in one place. Sweeney also kind of fits the aesthetic. Thats is also the case with Captain Jack Sparrow. This is also the explanation on why Dean Corso lives in the other house. He just fits in perfectly.

Additional Facts:

-Captain Jack Sparrow's ship inhabits the body of water that is close to the other house.

-There is a space where the characters can park their vehicles.

-Behind both houses, there is a forest. Well not exactly. On the grounds, there is a forest like area. Its super large, but smaller than your everyday forest. It is thick, and when night falls, its extremely dark there. It's purpose is to shield the homes from outsiders. The gate is the only way you can get in. That is also where Mr. Wolf, (from Into the Woods) spends most of his time. If you try to find the houses by going through the forest area, there's a huge possibility that the wolf might eat you.

-You would be lucky if someone like Tarrant Hightopp, manages to stop him from turning you into his meal.

-However, before you do enter the forest. You shall pass through a beautiful garden. Edward and Tarrant made that spot. Edward is the one who you might see if you come across the garden. He's also the reason why so many plants in the grounds look so beautiful.

-Like I mentioned before, there is a body of water. Its huge enough to house a ship, and it leads to the sea. A ship indeed resides there. That transport belongs to Captain Jack Sparrow. Like the others, Jack spends most of his time there. You can see him swimming sometimes.

--------------------------------------------------

Aaaand, thats all I can for the setting of this AU. This might be updated.

You will see more of this content in future posts. You will also how the characters interact. Thank you so much for reading this. I apologize if some of the descriptions I made were not that clear, and if there are spelling errors. Once again, thank you!

Another thing,

#justiceforjohnnydepp

[agnes-come-back-challenge]

This might just be the queerness in me talking, but I feel like TMA has a bit of a theme going with names and identities. About choosing who you are, or not being able to.

The Distortion - Michael had a whole thing about being both Michael but not Michael. “That is a name,” (MAG 47, “Another Door”) “I am Michael. I was not always Michael. I do not want to be Michael,” (MAG 101, “Another Twist”) “How would a melody describe itself?” (MAG 26, “A Distortion”). Helen was also like this, but to a lesser extent. At the beginning it was pretty similar (“I never know, not really. Do I need a name?” (MAG 101, “Another Twist”)), but by the time the apocalypse had happened it sort of seemed less genuine, probably because Helen Richardson was more suited to being the Distortion than Michael Shelley was.

Jon - All the other avatars (excluding Oliver and Annabelle) called him the Archivist, and after his coma, he started doing the same. He was kind of stuck between being Jon and being the Archivist.

Melanie - “Don’t call me Mel,” (MAG 147, “Weaver”). This one might be less central than a lot of the other ones, but I feel like it’s still significant. She also gets unwillingly called the “blind prophet”, which follows the theme of having a title forced on you for a role you don’t want.

Gerry - “Gerard was what my mum called me. I always wanted my friends to call me Gerry,” (MAG 111, “Family Business”). This one’s kind of similar to Melanie not wanting to be called Mel. It’s a smaller reflection of the idea of choosing who you are.

Jonah - He more literally chose who he wanted to be, I guess.

Oliver - “My name is Oliver Banks. In my other statements I used the name Antonio Blake, but I don’t really think either name holds much meaning for me anymore,” (MAG 121, “Far Away”). “I am Oliver Banks, sometimes known as Antonio Blake or Dr Thomas Pritchard,” (MAG 168, “Roots”).

Sasha - Sasha had her name and identity stolen early enough that we don’t know who she was.

Daisy - “Everyone calls me Daisy. I like that because it sounds so gentle, and I’m the only one left who knows about the scar on my back,” (MAG 82, “The Eyewitnesses”). This is another one like Melanie’s or Gerry’s. A more plot-relavant one is her separation of herself vs the Hunt when she got out of the coffin.

Breekon and Hope - Their whole thing is being one being in two bodies. They’re separate enough that Breekon didn’t die when Hope did, and even separate enough that they had noticeably different personalities (“He was always our humor,” (MAG 128, “Heavy Goods”)), but they’re still so connected that you can’t define the one without the other.

Agnes - Agnes is the Desolation’s messiah, but she doesn’t want to be. She didn’t want to have a destiny. She tried to make a bit of a life for herself, with going to the coffee shop and dating Jack Barnabas. And, judging by the fact that she cried when she did it, she didn’t want to burn Jack either.

Martin - In season 4 he almost lost himself to the Lonely. At the end, he was able to remember who he was.

Celia - Celia lost her identity, and chose a new name.

(Spoilers for season 5 (up to MAG 195) and theories for how this might be relevant under the cut)

The last few episodes have mentioned how the Eye wants Jon to commit to being the Archivist full time, and how a part of Jon also wants to do that. At the moment he's existing in the same way Michael was: with who he is fighting against itself. At some point he's going to have to choose to either die as Jon or live as the Archivist, and I’m not sure dying as Jon is an option anymore.

There’s been a pattern. Daisy tried so hard to choose to die as Daisy, but circumstances made her choose to be the Hunt instead. Helen was trying to retain some of her humanity at the start (if she was telling the truth, at least), but eventually she chose to be fully Helen and not Helen Richardson. Annabelle Cane (again, if she wasn’t lying) tried to stop manipulating people after running away, but she’s still a Web avatar now. Oliver tried to escape the nightmares, but he eventually accepted his role as well.

Jon already chose to wake up from his coma. He’s managed to avoid fully becoming the Archivist so far. But right now Martin is (presumably) in pretty severe danger. And if fully becoming the Archivist would let Jon save him, I think he might, especially since he already thinks doing that would let him “help” the world somewhat. And if Jon did choose to accept the Eye entirely to save him, it would definitely parallel Martin choosing the Lonely to keep Jon safe.

[nileqt87]

Ramblings about Lucifer referencing Bones, “Close your eyes.” and shows influencing each other

That was never just a Bones reference being made and the season finale admitted it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv_1dJk5yEM

David Boreanaz played the ironically-named Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series. His character has *so many* parallels with Lucifer (far more than Booth outside of the law enforcement/crime procedural connection).

Angel's spinoff also has noir crime drama aspects mixed with the supernatural starring an immortal protagonist with a dark past and infamously villainous reputation fighting evil as a supernatural private detective in the City of Angels (a city known for its dark underbelly juxtaposed with fame and glamor, broken dreams and chasing eternal youth) and navigating human law (including the LAPD and evil lawyers) while not legally existing.

Angel also fell in love with a blonde human heroine (Buffy Summers) after lifetimes of self-destructive, not-so-heroic behaviors (getting his soul back did *not* make Angel a hero and human Liam was a lecherous drunk with unfulfilled ambitions and father issues) who inspired him to become a better man and make human connections.

AtS made heavy use of sprawling nighttime Downtown L.A. cityscape shots, which Lucifer also shared an abundance of.

During both of their first cases, they failed to save the troubled blonde girl they were trying to help (Tina and Delilah, respectively). They also have a connection inside the LAPD through a blonde cop who also takes their identity secrets pretty badly (Kate Lockley in Angel's case).

Note that Buffy not only screamed (twice, given it repeated during her memory loss in Halloween), but also came after Angel with a crossbow when she thought he'd attacked her mother (it was Darla), so Chloe taking the Devil face reveal (Monster Reveals are iconic old horror imagery) poorly to the point of considering poisoning is par for the course. However, it only took Buffy seven episodes instead of three seasons to get the identity reveal via seeing the horrific second face (arguably also an accident on Angel's part).

They are metaphorically or literally Hell's angels. They also had long stays in Hell or a hell dimension.

Lucifer and Angel are also both Prodigal Sons with long-held grudges against their long-absent fathers (patricide in Liam/Angel(us)'s case) and they're later faced with a situation where they have unexpected, thought-impossible offspring who show up as adults (neither got to raise their miracle child) wanting revenge. Yup, major Connor/Rory parallel there.

Angel is also in a constant struggle with the Powers that Be manipulating his fate and free will (like Lucifer, he's a champion of free will no matter the cost) and making him prophecy's bitch.

Bones famously got jokes about how Booth is Angel getting his Shanshu (made human), since the character is given constant Angel-isms like references to a dark past having killed people (Booth is also named after a historical murderer, in addition to having been a sniper), both being Catholics full of Catholic guilt (note that the Buffyverse is most accurately polytheistic, though Angel does face off against a take on the antichrist--Angel has constant biblical imagery/themes and not just because of vampire iconography), kicking down doors (just not off their entire frames--LOL), turning on a dime and threatening people up against walls, constant wink-wink references to the Buffyverse (familiar casting, references to the Hyperion Hotel, etc...), etc...

The Lucifer finale used the words "Close your eyes." right before Lucifer is sent to Hell. This is literally the BtVS season 2 finale where Buffy kisses Angel and sends him to hell for a century with a stab to the gut (see the season 5 finale, not to mention Lucifer giving up his life for Chloe's à la I Will Remember You).

Note that D.B. Woodside was on BtVS (playing Robin Wood, whose Slayer mother Nikki Wood was killed by Spike). Aimee Garcia was in both episodes of AtS (Birthday--she's older than she looks!) and Bones. See her also playing a cross-wearing religious girl on Supernatural who was slaughtered in a police precinct by Lilith. Kevin Alejandro was also in an episode of Bones.

Tricia Helfer was in an episode of Supernatural playing a ghost who reenacts the night of her death every year. BtVS also had an episode along those lines, but with Buffy and Angelus possessed (not to mention Phantom Dennis!). Lucifer having Dan as a ghost is yet another thing they all have in common (ditto referencing Ghost, Patrick Swayze and/or Unchained Melody--Vincent Schiavelli a.k.a. Ghost's subway ghost was Jenny's uncle Enyos, whom Angelus killed).

Lucifer name-checked Castiel and Supernatural referenced Lucifer using their Lucifer (crime-fighting angel in L.A. made it a double-reference whammy). Supernatural returned the favor again by having Castiel forced to sing in Enochian. Lucifer's reference to his singing voice was already a zing about Misha Collins having to put on that monotone gravel voice and Enochian being far from melodious.

Russell T Davies was quite heavily inspired by the Buffyverse when he revived Doctor Who and spun off Torchwood, so there are absolute tons of Buffy, Angel and Spike respectively in Rose Tyler, the 9th/10th Doctors, Captain Jack Harkness and Captain John Hart (right down to the actor). School Reunion is the episode where the Buffyverse inspiration is most on the nose, complete with Anthony Stewart Head saying "shooty dog thing" in a school setting and a Mayor/Angel-esque speech about the curse of immortality. The Time War gave the Doctor a huge genocide-level guilt complex. Note that the creator of DC comics' version of Lucifer, Neil Gaiman, has also written for Doctor Who and is also the co-creator of Good Omens (the show is brimming with Doctor Who Easter eggs thanks to David Tennant). A barely-recognizable Tom Ellis played Martha Jones' ex-fiancé Tom Milligan during the Year that Never Was, as well.

A lot of shows take inspiration from the Buffyverse and you've probably seen some of them. It isn't just the copycat vampire romance stories either.

Angel's forerunners in turn were a mix of guilt-stricken, rat-eating Louis de Pointe du Lac (his Jekyll/Hyde-esque alter-ego Angelus is closer to the pre-retcon, fully-evil Lestat de Lioncourt, who got woobified into an antihero rocker not unlike Spike--the entire Fanged Four mirror Anne Rice's character lineup), sword-wielding, immortality trope-influencers Connor/Duncan MacLeod of Highlander fighting for the Prize of humanity (akin to Pinocchio becoming a "real boy"--see also Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows, though he was before vampires became antihero superheroes, not just sympathetic antivillains) and Nick Knight of Forever Knight (vampire detective).

Additionally, Tom Welling was famously the longest-serving Clark Kent of them all (Smallville) on the old WB (there's that DC comics connection, too), so it's not just a Fox shows thing (though Fox, not just Warner Brothers, did indeed own the Buffyverse). One of the least-known things about Clark is that he also has an immortality problem where he wouldn't age parallel to Lois (they wouldn't be able to have kids either) without a workaround. The Kryptonite line directed at Cain/Pierce by Lucifer was quite on the nose! Lucifer and Smallville sort of crossed over even further in Crisis on Infinite Earths, so Tom is canonically the face of both Clark and Cain in parallel universes of the DC multiverse.

Supernatural had quite recently had their own takes on Cain (played by Timothy Omundson, who also played God Johnson) and the Mark of Cain when Lucifer did it. Dan's killer Le Mec was, of course, Rob Benedict, who was God a.k.a. Chuck Shurley, the ultimate villain of Supernatural. Richard Speight, Jr., who was archangel Gabriel/Loki the Trickster, directed a lot of Lucifer's later episodes in addition to being a prolific Supernatural director.

Supernatural and Lucifer use the exact same font for their titles (Supernatural Knight).

The X-Files (which Supernatural referenced constantly) and Supernatural also had stories about nephilim (see the apocryphal Book of Enoch). Lucifer ultimately had two nephilim (forbidden interspecies offspring of angels and humans), even if not saying so as a known concept. Connor can also be compared to the vampire equivalent of being something like a dhampir, though he's not quite that (mostly-but-not-quite-human offspring of two vampires instead of a human/vampire hybrid--see Blade for an actual dhampir). Supernatural has also covered the even rarer cambion species (human/demon hybrid).

[nealiios]

The Supernatural 70s: Part I - Corruption of An Innocent

"We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us - we're soldiers writers."

-- with apologies to the screenwriter of "Stripes"

Dear reader, I have the darkest of revelations to make to you, a truth when fully and wholly disclosed shall most assuredly chill you to the bone, a tale that shall make you question all that you hold to be true and good and holy about my personal history. While you may have come in search of that narrative designer best known for his works of interactive high fantasy, you should know that he is also a crafter of a darker art, a scribbler of twisted tales filled with ghosts, and ghouls, and gargoyles. I am, dear innocent, a devotee of horrors! Mwahahahaha!

[cue thunderclap, lightning, pipe organ music]

Given the genre of writing for which most of you know me, I forgive you if you think of me principally as a fantasy writer. I don't object to that classification because I do enjoy mucking about with magic and dark woods and mysterious ancient civilizations. But if you are to truly know who I am as a writer, you must realize that the image I hold of myself is principally as a creator of weird tales.

To understand how and why I came to be drawn to this sub-genre of fantastic fiction, you first must understand that I come from peculiar folks. Maybe I don't have the Ipswich look, or I didn't grow up in a castle, but my pedigree for oddity has been there from the start. My mother was declared dead at birth by her doctor, and often heard voices calling to her in the dead of night that no one else could hear. Her mother would periodically ring us up to discuss events in our lives about which she couldn't possibly have known. My father's people still share ghost stories about a family homestead that burned down mysteriously in the 1960s. Even my older brother has outré memories about events he says cannot possibly be true, and as a kid was kicked off the Tulsa city bookmobile for attempting to check out books about UFOs, bigfoot, and ESP. It's fair to say I was doomed - or destined - for weirdness from the start.

If the above listed circumstances had not been enough, I grew up in an area where neighbors whispered stories about a horrifically deformed Bulldog Man who stalked kids who "parked" on the Old North Road near my house. The state in which I was raised was rife with legends of bigfoots, deer women, and devil men. Even in my childhood household there existed a pantheon of mythological entities invented explicitly to keep me in line. If I was a good boy, The Repairman would leave me little gifts of Hot Wheels cars or candy. If I was being terrible, however, my father would dress in a skeleton costume, rise from the basement and threaten to drag me down into everlasting hellfire (evidently there was a secret portal in our basement.) There were monsters, monsters EVERYWHERE I looked in my childhood world. Given that I was told as a fledgling writer to write what I knew, how could anyone have been surprised that the first stories I wrote were filled with the supernatural?

"The Nightmare" by John Henry Fuseli (1781)

My formative years during the late sixties and early seventies took place at a strange juncture in our American cultural history. At the same time that we were loudly proclaiming the supremacy of scientific thought because we'd landed men on the moon, we were also in the midst of a counter cultural explosion of interest in astrology, witchcraft, ghosts, extra sensory perception, and flying saucers. Occult-related books were flying off the shelves as sales surged by more than 100% between 1966 and 1969. Cultural historians would come to refer to this is as the "occult boom," and its aftershocks would impact popular cultural for decades to come.

My first contact with tales of the supernatural were innocuous, largely sanitized for consumption by children. I vividly remember watching Casper the Friendly Ghost and the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I read to shreds numerous copies of both Where the Wild Things Are and Gus the Ghost. Likely the most important exposure for me was to the original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? cartoon which attempted to inoculate us from our fears of ghosts and aliens by convincing us that ultimately the monster was always just a bad man in a mask. (It's fascinating to me that modern incarnations of Scooby Doo seem to have completely lost this point and instead make all the monsters real.)

ABOVE: Although the original cartoon Scooby Doo, Where Are You? ran only for one season from 1969 to 1970, it remained in heavy reruns and syndication for decades. It is notable for having been a program that perfectly embodied the conflict between reason and superstition in popular culture, and was originally intended to provide children with critical thinking skills so they would reject the idea of monsters, ghosts, and the like. Ironically, modern takes on Scooby Doo have almost entirely subverted this idea and usually present the culprits of their mysteries as real monsters.

During that same time, television also introduced me to my first onscreen crush in the form of the beautiful and charming Samantha Stevens, a witch who struggles to not to use her powers while married to a frequently intolerant mortal advertising executive in Bewitched. The Munsters and The Addams Family gave me my first taste for "goth" living even before it would become all the rage in the dance clubs of the 1980s. Late night movies on TV would bring all the important horror classics of the past in my living room as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Godzilla all became childhood friends. Over time the darkened castles, creaking doors, foggy graveyards, howling wolves, and ever present witches and vampires became so engrained in my psyche that today they remain the "comfort viewing" to which I retreat when I'm sick or in need of other distractions from modern life.

ABOVE: Elizabeth Montgomery starred in Bewitched (1964 - 1972) as Samantha Stephens, a witch who married "mortal" advertising executive Darren Stephens (played for the first five seasons by actor Dick York). Inspired by movies like I Married a Witch (1942) and Bell, Book and Candle (1958), it was a long running series that explored the complex relationship dynamics between those who possess magic and those who don't. Social commentators have referred to it as an allegory both for mixed marriages and also about the challenges faced by minorities, homosexuals, cultural deviants, or generally creative folks in a non heterogeneous community. It was also one of the first American television programs to portray witches not as worshippers of Satan, but simply as a group of people ostracized for their culture and their supernatural skills.

Even before I began elementary school, there was one piece of must-see gothic horror programming that I went out of my way to catch every day. Dark Shadows aired at 3:30 p.m. on our local ABC affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma which usually allowed me to catch most of it if I ran home from school (or even more if my mom or brother picked me up.) In theory it was a soap opera, but the show featured a regular parade of supernatural characters and themes. The lead was a 175 year old vampire named Barnabas Collins (played by Johnathan Frid), and the show revolved around his timeless pursuit of his lost love, Josette. It was also a program that regularly dealt with reincarnation, precognition, werewolves, time travel, witchcraft, and other occult themes. Though it regularly provoked criticism from religious groups about its content, it ran from June of 1966 until it's final cancellation in April of 1971. (I would discover it in the early 1970s as it ran in syndication.) Dark Shadows would spin off two feature-length movies based on the original, a series of tie-in novels, an excellent reboot series in 1991 (starring Ben Cross as Barnabas), and a positively embarrassingly awful movie directed by Tim Burton in 1991.

ABOVE: Johnathan Frid starred as Barnabas Collins, one of the leading characters of the original Dark Shadows television series. The influence of the series cannot be understated. In many ways Dark Shadows paved the way for the inclusion of supernatural elements in other soap operas of the 1970s and the 1980s, and was largely responsible for the explosion of romance novels featuring supernatural themes over the same time period.

While Dark Shadows was a favorite early television program for me, another show would prove not only to be a borderline obsession, but also a major influence on my career as a storyteller. Night Gallery (1969-1973) was a weekly anthology television show from Rod Serling, better known as the creator and host of the original Twilight Zone. Like Twilight Zone before it, Night Gallery was a deep and complex commentary on the human condition, but unlike its predecessor the outcomes for the characters almost always skewed towards the horrific and the truly outré. In "The Painted Mirror," an antiques dealer uses a magic painting to trap an enemy in the prehistoric past. Jack Cassidy plots to use astral projection to kill his romantic rival in "The Last Laurel" but accidentally ends up killing himself. In "Eyes" a young Stephen Spielberg directs Joan Crawford in a story about an entitled rich woman who plots to take the sight of a poor man. Week after week it delivered some of the best-written horror television of the early 1970s.

In retrospect I find it surprising that I was allowed to watch Night Gallery at all. I was very young while it was airing, and some of the content was dark and often quite shocking for its time. Nevertheless, I was so attached to the show that I'd throw a literal temper tantrum if I missed a single, solitary episode. If our family needed to go somewhere on an evening that Night Gallery was scheduled, either my parents would either have to wait until after it had aired before we left, or they'd make arrangements in advance with whomever we were visiting to make sure it was okay that I could watch Night Gallery there. I was, in a word, a fanatic.

ABOVE: Every segment of Night Gallery was introduced by series creator Rod Serling standing before a painting created explicitly for the series. Director Guillermo del Toro credits Serling's series as being the most important and influential show on his own work, even more so than the more famous Twilight Zone.

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 89 - Twice as Bright

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

Yeah, too Fleshy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, someone's certainly smitten...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My impression of this episode

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

[magnusmysteries]

Part 21: Star-Crossed Lovers

The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.

In the previous post I said the tree at Hill Top Road was of the Spiral. And that one of the reasons I think that is that it was destroyed by two people marked by the Spiral. What other reasons are there? 

Second reason: It bleeds, like the doorknob in a sturdy lock. If you see a tree bleed, you’d fear for your sanity.

Third reason: I think trees in general are a symbol of the Spiral. In The Coming Storm Michael Crew is tormented by a Spiral creature. He opens it’s gate to find a forest full of impossible trees. But symbolically what does trees have to do with the Spiral? 

I think the Spiral not only covers the fear of insanity, but also the fear of getting lost. That’s why the Spiral often deals with mazes. And that’s why trees, you can get lost in the woods. Michael Crew did not enter the gate, but if he had I think he would have gotten lost. This explains why the Spiral is the opposite of the Desolation (see part 3). Because trees burn. This is why the Spiral is next to the Buried (see part 3). Because you can get lost in a cave. 

This might explain why the Spiral likes fractals. Trees look like a fractal with their branches. And a maze has branching paths like a fractal.

Gertrude’s protective circle is in a forest. It has bottles full of boiling water and photographs of Gertrude and twigs and pine needles. When the Cult is trying to burn Gertrude, the force gets directed to the bottles because of the photographs. And then the forest and the twigs neutralizes the power because they are of the Spiral and opposes the Desolation.

In Burning Desire Agnes feels a sudden pain. It happens just about the same time as the Hill Top Road tree is pulled down. Why is Agnes affected by the tree’s destruction?

In Recluse the statement giver mentions the tree. He says it has leaves, and that he likes to sit under it and read. So it is a normal tree, not yet dead and spooky like in Burned Out. In the same episode is the box from the table. It has not yet ended up beneath the tree. So who changed the tree? Who placed the box beneath it? 

I think Agnes did both things. But how can Agnes turn a tree into a Spiral tree if Agnes is of the Desolation? Because Agnes is an avatar of both the Spiral and the Desolation. 

The Cult of the Lightless Flame has a hard time raising Agnes and so decides to send her to the orphanage to be raised by Raymond Fielding of the Web. Now, does that make any sense? Letting a different Power, one that specializes in mind control no less, raise their messiah? No. Creating Agnes was the Web’s plan from the beginning. 

In Burning Desire Jack sees three men from the Cult of the Lightless Flame. One John identifies as Diego, and suspects another could be Arthur Noland. One has a bag full of candles, so it is probably Eugene Vanderstock, as he made candles. By process of elimination, the third man is probably Arthur. This man holds a container full of spiders. According to Jane Prentiss, there are also spiders in the apartment building where Arthur later is the landlord. The Web is manipulating Arthur and he doesn't realize it. Arthur is the one that proposes a plan to make a Messiah for the Desolation. But it is actually the Web’s plan.

When the Lightless Flame Cult holds the ritual that births Agnes, they have it in a forest. Agnes’ mother lies on wood and wears a crown of wood. The cultists don’t realize it, but they are incorporating Spiral symbols in their ritual.

Agnes’ mother is of the Desolation. I think the father is someone from the Spiral. I think there is a meta hint about it: The mother’s name is Eileen Montague. Montague is the last name of Romeo from Romeo and Juliet. A story of two people from enemy families falling in love. Like Eileen having a relationship with someone from the enemy power. The Spiral being the opposite of the Desolation.

When Diego brings a book about child care, Arthur burns it. He thinks he does it because Diego is attacking his leadership. Actually the Web makes him do it. To sabotage their attempts at raising Agnes, so that they’ll bring Agnes to the orphanage.

Why was Agnes created? In This Old House we learn that the Web would lure servants of various fears to Hill Top Road to fight each other to widen the crack in reality. A sculptor of puppets (of the Web? Or the Stranger?) gets killed by a hunter.  An Eye avatar gets killed by a Buried avatar. But why make Agnes an avatar of two Fears? I think the web wanted all the Fears to have fought at Hill Top Road. By creating Agnes, the Web is killing two birds with one stone, getting a Desolation fight and a Spiral fight at the same time.

If Agnes made the tree, does it mean the tree is also a Spiral and Desolation tree? Yes. The tree has scorch marks on it. But if Ivo and Father Burroughs needed to be marked by the Spiral to destroy the tree, would they not also have to be marked by the Desolation? Yes, and they were marked by the Desolation. Just before they destroyed the tree, they were attacked by the Desolation and felt like they were burning. The Web brought the Desolation entity to Hill Top Road to mark them. 

In this Old House Annabelle says the crack in reality became a gap when Agnes kills Raymond. I think she’s a little wrong. The fight between Agnes and Raymond did turn the crack into a gap, but I think that happened before Raymond died. Agnes binds Raymond to Hill Top Road by putting the box from his table under the tree. She transforms the tree so it can not be easily destroyed. I believe binding Raymond is what widens the crack. And this allows for time travel.

Quote from Ivo from Burned out “And then I would smell it again, that whiff of burnt hair, or catch a glimpse of brown pigtails disappearing around a corner.”

Ivo is not hallucinating, nor seeing a ghost. That’s Agnes traveling to the future. The pigtails suggest this happened while Agnes was young. Which suggests the time traveling became possible before Raymond died.

In I Guess You Had To Be There a woman sees the ghost of a burning woman. I think that’s Agnes again, time traveling.

I think it’s impossible to travel in time to before the crack gets widened. At least I can’t think of anything that suggests time traveling happening before Agnes goes to Hill Top Road.

Raymond shows up in the future and meets Ivo. Raymond’s not a ghost, he’s a time traveler. He’s wearing old fashioned clothes, natch. (I think every time we see something related to ghosts or life after death it is connected either with the End, or the two fears next to the End, the Slaughter and the Lonely. I don’t think the Web or the Desolation makes ghosts.) I’m not sure why Raymond traveled forward in time. Was it on purpose to try to escape Agnes and the tree? Did Agnes send him?

Raymond goes and stares out of the window into the garden. I think he’s looking at the tree, the tree that is trapping him. Raymond vanished and the floor where he stood was scorched.

In the past Raymond vanished, and Agnes lived alone for some years. Then the orphanage burns and Raymond is found dead, missing his right hand. Many years later Agnes is hanged. A severed right hand is attached to her waist with a chain. Tissue decay suggests the hand owner died about the same time as Agnes.

I think when Raymond vanished for years, that’s because he went to the future and met Ivo. Right before Agnes dies, she travels back in time to when Raymond met Ivo. Agnes chains Raymond to herself and drags him back in time. Hence the scorched floor. Agnes takes Raymond back to the orphanage, cuts off his hand, burns him and the orphanage. Then she travels forwards in time and is hanged, hand still attached. 

Why is she attached to the hand when she is hanged? I think some magic reason. Maybe by having part of him attached, when she commits suicide, Raymond is symbolically committing suicide. Maybe this lessens the Web’s power? Hands are often a symbol for the Spiral.

Eugene says Arthur told him Agnes had kept the hand when she burned Raymond. So maybe Arthur spoke with future Agnes? Since Agnes stopped aging as an adult, Arthur would not have realized she was older.

Agnes goes on some dates with Jack Barnabas. When the tree is uprooted, Agnes tells the cult that Barnabas has made her doubt role as a Messiah. She says her doubt will make the ritual fail. And so she will hang herself, so that she will not use up the Desolation power on a failed ritual. That way the cult can attempt another ritual relatively soon, but not too soon. This is a bunch of lies.

Agnes never wanted to complete a ritual. (Maybe when she was very little.) She was just pretending for the cult. She never had any real interest in Barnabas, the dates with him were just an excuse to fool the cult, and more importantly fool the web.

Agnes fakes her death, sort of. By going back in time she could create two Agneses. One of them hanged herself, the other lived.

This paragraph has super big spoilers for the movie The Prestige, so I’m gonna encrypt it in ROT13 : Oneanonf naq Ntarf tb ba n qngr naq jngpu gur Cerfgvtr. Va gur Cerfgvtr n punenpgre vf uhat, lrg fbeg bs fheivirf, orpnhfr vg’f npghnyyl gjvaf cergraqvat gb or bar crefba. Whfg yvxr Ntarf trgf uhat, lrg fheivirf orpnhfr fur vf gjb crbcyr ivn gvzr geniry.

Why did Agnes have to fake her own death? I’m not sure about this but I think the Web considered her dangerous and wanted her killed. But if Agnes died, the aspect of the Web that was trapped under the tree would also have died. So the Web couldn’t kill her until they had removed the tree. Once the tree is gone, Agnes is no longer protected and she fakes her death.

This is similar to how the Web bound Gertrude and Agnes together. This made the cult afraid to hurt Gertrude. Agnes told the cult that it was her binding to Gertrude that prevented her from doing the ritual. But this is more lies, she didn’t want to do it anyway. I think the Web bound them together to protect Gertrude. The Web wanted Gertrude alive, possibly so Gertrude could stop the other ritual than the Eye’s. Or possibly because the Web thought Gertrude could be the one to complete the Eye’s ritual.

Is Agnes evil? I think she is very good, though very ruthless. When she was very young she did burn people. But if an adult gives a machine gun to a baby and the baby shoots someone, who is to blame?

In Burned Out Annie tells Ivo about Agnes, implying Agnes killed pets and a boy named Henry. But Annie serves the Web, and I think she is lying. Annie wants Ivo to repeat this story to the Archives to trick the Archivists into thinking Agnes is evil. Annie asks Ivo to not let anyone know what she’d been talking about. This is because Annie doesn’t want Ivo to find out the stories are lies. But Annie knows Ivo can’t help tell the story when making a statement.

In Recluse Agnes saves a boy from Raymond, and she probably saves the other children. This is before she is bound to Gertrude, so she was already good before that.

Eugene made candles of people, so Agnes could inhale their suffering. But Eugene is not sure if Agnes uses those candles, or that’s just what Arthur tells him. And in Twice as Bright Jude Perry says she had a newfound love for scented candles. It was Jude who inhaled their suffering.

Agnes kisses Barnabas and burns him badly. But I think this was to prevent the other cult members from killing him, because he’s already suffering. Agnes asks Jude not to interfere with Barnabas. Agnes cries a tear when kissing him, she is sad she has to hurt him.

Gertrude demands that the cult not hurt Barnabas. Why does Gertrude care about him? She doesn’t. It’s Agnes that has told Gertrude to protect Barnabas, because Agnes feels guilty about hurting him. Agnes and Gertrude are working together. More on that in a later post.

In Infectious Doubts Gertrude allows Arthur to ask her a question. Why would she give information to an enemy? The only reason would be if she wanted to lie to him. I’m not sure how much Gertrude tells him is true, but I think at least one thing is a lie. Gertrude says her protective circle has symbols of the Desolation. Actually it has symbols of the Spiral. Similar symbols were used when Agnes was born. Gertrude is lying to Arthur, because she does not want him to realize that Agnes is part Spiral. 

How can Agnes be good, if she is an avatar? I think because she never made a choice to become an avatar, she was one from birth. Because she never chose it, I think the Desolation and the Spiral can’t influence her mind.

[im-the-punk-who]

Hey, I was wondering if you have a book rec

!!

Okay so in full disclosure, I have a really hard time reading books. My brain sometime around six years ago just decided that wasn't its style anymore, so I don't read a TON. A lot of these aren’t going to be recent releases. However, here are a bunch of books I would absolutely recommend checking out! I tried to include a variety of genres but I have uh.....five bookshelves in my apartment so if you're looking for more of a certain genre let me know!

Theatre:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard

Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett

These are my two favorite plays - they're both absurdist, humorous, and have some fun things to say. They’re both by old white guys but like....I love both Tom Stoppard and Samuel Beckett DEEPLY and they have all of my love and respect.

Non-Fiction/Educational:

Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Beverly Daniel Tatum - this is considered a 'classic' on the psychology of racism, and was particularly helpful for me as a white person in arming myself against 'reverse racism' thoughts and in dissembling my own prejudices. This is mostly a rec for other white folks, but Tatum also addresses 'having the courage to sit at the black table' as a way of claiming your own identity outside of the stereotypes the dominant society expects of you.

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown - Okay listen I just really REALLY love Brene Brown, she is a therapist most famous for her TED talk about Vulnerability and this is just...listen I really like to read this book when I am sad and feel like shit because it makes me feel strong. I reread this book at least once a year.

Imagined Communities by Benendict Anderson - This is an absolutely fascinating read on the rise of nationalism. It’s a bit dry and wordy, but the ideas and use of history as propaganda, spinning the story of a nation to pit it against or on the same side as other nations, and the ways in which these tactics shaped cultural history is just!!!! Amazing.

Gay New York by George Chauncey - This is just one of the most informative and interesting reads of queer history in New York that I’ve ever come across. It’s one of the ‘must reads’ of queer history and has so many interesting tidbits that I have to recommend it. It’s a bit old(published in 1994) but I still find it relevant and interesting to read.

Personal Fiction/Autobiographical Fiction

White Girls by Hilton Als - I went to a reading of this book when it first came out. It was so much fun and so eye-opening for me as a baby queer in NYC that I bought the book there. I wanna be really clear that Als does not pull punches and a lot of people don’t quite like it, but I love Als’ style of writing. The stories and essays in this book are amazing and funny and heartbreaking and informative of queer experience - particularly black queer experience - that I always feel like...honored? to experience through writing? This is one of those ‘you’re gonna suffer but you’re gonna be happy about it’ reads - it can be hard to face because of how very hard the pills are to swallow but like....gosh I just love this book and it’s interesting and hilarious and great.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins  - this is my tin hat favorite. It hits....ugh. This is one of those books that came out and like every government agency freaked the fuck out over it. It’s an interesting look into the quote-unquote dark underbelly of capitalism; how and why countries manipulate each other through economic policies. Super interesting read with a nice style of prose.

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs Okay so full disclosure I have not finished reading this, but I’m far enough through to rec it. This book chronicles the author’s attempt to read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica from front to back, and it is just as kooky and hilarious as it sounds. I am very incredibly and deeply offended this author stole both my schtick and my initials, thereby preventing me from doing this exact thing. I read through the phone book in its entirety when I was three. I had it in me. Anyway, this is basically the author just listing weird interesting facts he’s read about and connecting them to his daily life, but it’s a fun read, and you learn a lot of totally useless facts, which is absolutely my jam.

When Skatboards Will Be Free by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - HI I LOVE THIS BOOK. I’ve read it maybe three times over. It’s so fun and interesting. You may notice that a lot of the books I rec are very absurdist in their humor, and this is no exception. This book is full of the dry wit and just weird goddamn shit you could only expect from the child of a revolution that never came. You want to read a book about someone who Went Through Shit? Read this book. It’s funny and heartbreaking and just. AHHHH. Seriously I cannot recommend this enough.

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosch - FIGHT ME ON THIS. I love this book.....so much. Yes it’s technically a comic book but the stories are so INTERESTING and hilarious and full of exactly the dry absurdist humor I eat the fuck up. Also! Allie Brosch recently released a sequel of sorts called Solutions and Other Problems that I recommend without even reading it.

Poetry

Pansy by Andrea Gibson - IF YOU ARE NOT READING THE POETRY OF ANDREA GIBSON WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING WITH YOUR LIFE. I cried seven times reading this book. There are only like 14 poems. Please please read this to break your own queer heart :)

Bloodsport by Yves Olade - This is a tiny book full of absolutely devastating poetry. Most of it has to do with the grief of relationships, but like....gosh I love all of Olade’s stuff. (Also!! This is available as a pay-what-you-wish pdf!!)

Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón - This book focuses a lot on the author’s experiences of loss, and knowing that loss is going to happen. I’m completely devastated every time I read this.

Science Fiction/Fantasy

The Bartimeaus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud - So what if I am a dumb millennial I love this series. It’s another dry and deadpan humor, with weird additions and Stroud’s use of footnotes to absolutely crack me the fuck up means I gotta rec this. I just gotta. Four(I think?) books following the deeply unlikeable Nathaniel and his Djinn Bartimaeus, who just wants to eat humans and have a deeply enjoyable enemies to lovers plotline with his arch rival.

The Magic's Price Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey - Okay I know I’ve recced this before. I will rec it again. This was the very first series I ever read that featured a gay protagonist and I was. Devastated? Reformed? I latched onto Vanyel Ashkevron and I am never letting this depressed emo boy go. Try me, I bite. Seriously, this book was released in the 80s and yet it is still relevant, I still cry - god i LOVE this series SO MUCH. And, MERCEDES LACKEY actually invented unbury your gays, sorry I make the rule on that one. :) Also there are magic talking horses??????? Seriously please read this series I love it so much.

Fire Bringer & The Sight by David Clement-Davies - This is another series that was absolutely formative in my baby lexicon. These are books about magical animals and their inner societal workings and both books address the ideas of good, evil, darkness, compassion and good will, and destiny. I am obsessed with these books, they are some of the most interesting of the genre I’ve read, and so incredibly intricately written. LOVE these books.

Vampire Earth Series by E. E. Knight - The Witcher before it was cool. Sort of but like...there are schools of Cat, Bear, etc and it has COOL VAMPIRES I LOVE THSI SERIES. Basically, earth has been taken over by a race of alien ‘Vampires’ and follows a human involved in the resistance. The writing in this series is...wow. It’s so intricate and interesting and involved. I own the whole series because I love it so much, including the after-series hardback novels. I’m so messy and I love it.

Kindred by Octavia Butler - You know how people are like ‘YOU SHOULD READ OCTAVIA BUTLER!!’ ? You should absolutely do that. This novel is mindblowing and interesting and the pace and narrative are so so so interesting. Heartbreaking, god, horrific. Butler is an amazing writer and this novel, while my personal favorite, is not by any means the only of her books I would recommend. STORIES. STORIES!!!!!!!

Fiction

The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel: A Novel by Magdalena Zyzak - This book is so fucking good. It’s imaginative, funny, intelligent....it’s honestly one of the best fiction novels I’ve ever read. Again, dry, absurdist humor, this book sort of reminds me of Terry Pratchett’s style of writing.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London - This is a classic, a true classic. The social commentary of this book is so so good, London’s style flows and, personally, as a dog and animal expert, the anthropomorphisation of Buck and his fellow animals is just so well done. I love this book, it’s quite an easy read, and I reread it at least once a year.

Rolling the R's by R. Zamora Linmark - Okay. Okay okay!!!!!! I gotta take a deep breath about this one. This book is. Yuh. This is a bit younger leaning than the other fictions, focusing almost entirely on high school level characters, however the experiences and commentary is just so so good. Focusing on a diverse group of characters growing up in Hawaii in the 1970′s, this book addresses the intersectionalities of gender, sexuality, race, immigration, education, and how we define who we are. I’m obsessed.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles - A heartbreaking novel about war, innocence, adolescence, and how we hide from our truths. It’s...so good, this book hurts me a LOT okay. The prose is phenomenal, the story is poignant, and it feels like I’m ripping my own heart out with a fishhook every time I finish it.

The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan - This is one of those books I half recommend because it’s so good, and half because of the deep wealth of knowledge it presents the reader. The author’s use of her own culture is just....goddddddddd. Intricate and interesting and so delicately included in the narrative that you can feel the love the author has for it. It’s a long read and it took me almost a month to get through reading every day, but god. It’s so soft and amazingly written I both wanted to read it all at once and take my time with it. This is another one that deals with the duality of humanity and how we connect with one another. Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!

P.S. Your Cat Is Dead by James Kirkwood Jr. - I love this book I love this book I LOVE THIS BOOK. It’s fucking hilarious, entertaining, I literally laughed out loud at every single chapter. Hilarious and poignant and surprisingly deep, this book literally follows the journey of a man in which literally everything that could go wrong does. It’s fucking hilarious.

I hope that helped and gave you some new books!!! <3