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soveryanon · 5 years

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Reviewing time for MAG134 /o/

- WOW is season 4, so far, the “Learning About Rituals” season. More about Fears politics, yes!! And new names! “Mother-of-Puppets” is such a wonderful name, and I love that it tends to be described as a “she” by people who know a bit about it (Oliver had referred to her in the feminine form too). Jon uses “it”, uses “the Spider”, but in his mind, it’s probably more… masculine?, given how he (almost) met “Mr. Spider” as a kid…

(MAG134) PETER: There are two Powers that, to my knowledge, have never attempted to fully manifest, never had followers set them up for a ritual: Mother-of-Puppets, and Terminus. The Web, and The End. The Web, I’ve never really been sure about: if I were to guess, I would say it actually prefers the world as is, playing everyone against each other, and so on. The End, on the other hand… The End doesn’t really need one: it knows that it gets everything eventually, so why bother. The End manifesting would not be a new world of terror; it would be a lifeless world. Devoid of everything. MARTIN: … Including fear. PETER: Exactly. It has no reason to truly attempt to enter our world, it’s… passive. But The Extinction… The Extinction is… different. It’s active. It will seek to create a lifeless world, in a way that none of the other Powers ever would. Some interpretations suggest it might replace us with something new, that can then fear annihilation in turn. But I and those like me would rather that did not happen.

It makes so much sense for The End!! I’m… however a bit surprised about The Web, though that tracks; but Peter’s overall tone was… way less confident on that one, and I can’t help but wonder, too. Why would The Web not attempt its own ritual? Because it requires a bit of free will to play with, and the success of a Web ritual would mean annihilating any?

I had already got the impression that what Raymond Fielding did at Hill Top Road (MAG059) was a draft or an experiment, in a small microcosm, of what a world under The Web could be like; but now, even more, if The Extinction is confirmed… I wonder if the Fifteenth couldn’t be a deal-breaker, for The Web: if this couldn’t push it to change its mind and decide to set up its own ritual after all, to pick controlling everything over letting everything get destroyed?

- And once again, I’m reminded of how close The Web and Beholding seem to be:

(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. PETER: You should watch out for that. Could be something dangerous. MARTIN: Sure.

It’s something I had wondered about Jon too: of what he does and thinks, what is coming from his “Insights”, and what is… the Web pulling strings? So far, I got the feeling that Insights give you a certainty: this is a Truth, a knowledge, there is no room for doubt about that piece of information. The Web… pulls you in a direction/makes you do something, and leaves you room to rationalise your actions yourself. What Martin described sounds a lot like how Trevor had described the Web’s effects on him:

(MAG056, Trevor Herbert) “she locked eyes with me. The weirdest sensation began to flow through me; I wanted to leave. It wasn’t like with a vampire, where I would feel like I’d been spoken to. This was just a sudden awareness of my own desire. I’d been sober for three years at that point, but I felt like I desperately wanted to get high, and I knew that the best place to get some was out in the night. Looking back, I think it might have been my own mind rationalising the way I felt my will being tugged out of the room, but it was still very powerful. If I hadn’t had a lifetime’s experience of identifying and fighting off the effect of the vampire’s gaze, I probably would have done it, too.”

Martin did something, didn’t know why, tried to find explanations as to why he did it but explicitly said he wasn’t sure about it. If it was Beholding, I feel like he would have been certain that his actions could have the result they did. The fact that Peter was suspicious of it, and not… directly associating it with one of Beholding’s powers (and given how he told Martin that he needed someone from The Beholding: it would have been a good, natural thing!), seems to confirm that no, it’s not Beholding, it’s something else.

And if it’s indeed The Web, it means:

* that The Web is still around, and still… “doting” on Jon a bit (or at least making sure he’s still in the game). The Web likes/needs/gets its kick with Jon – it had already sent Oliver to wake him up, it made sure that Jon wouldn’t stay stuck forever in the coffin… although it had helped him to go inside. I doubt that it just ~likes~ Jon and wants to cater to him, it’s probably more… curious? about his courses of actions (since it helped him to get Daisy back and ensured his return), but at the very least, it factored Jon in.

* that The Web is able to influence Martin, even with Peter being around. We could still get Web!Martin, people!! Maybe. (Please?) (Especially given that!! If The Web and The End ~don’t have a ritual~: Jon is close to Georgie, and met her after she had been marked. And Martin has always liked spiders, since he was introduced…)

* -> The Web is also getting the information about the new Fear. If it’s real, if Adelard is not mistaken: then The Web is the strongest candidate to want to stop it, is getting all the information… and hasn’t explicitly warned Jon about it, but has nonetheless given him information about how Gertrude stopped rituals (sending him her tape about The Flesh). Slowly training Jon in that regard, maybe?

- … Given how Peter thought that The Extinction could have once been part of The End before it took its independence… I wonder if this could be the case for The Eye or The Web, too, or if they might be currently merging? Mostly because of new technologies and means of communication, because our societies tend to associate control and knowledge – through surveillance?

There is the matter of how The Web and The Beholding both give information – as mentioned above, they’re pretty close. Both have pushed Jon to learn more about the rituals and, if Jon indeed belongs to Beholding, he also has a strong connection to The Web due to his childhood encounter. Peter specifically asked Martin if he had been “compelled” – and until now, the words “compel” and “compulsion” were… Archivist things, the way he forces people to answer his questions. The spiders have been invading the Institute for a long while; Elias has never done nor mentioned anything about their presence nor about Jon’s backstory (but did tell Jon: “And your will is still your own, mostly.” That “mostly” sounded very…) (SomethingsomethingTaperecordersandtheWeb, too, but that’s for another post that I swear I’ll try to finish before it’s completely debunked... as I have been telling myself for the last three months.)

… Interestingly: Peter does not sound comfortable with it, doesn’t sound like he regards it as a potential ally (“something dangerous”). If it’s indeed The Web: does Peter fear to be manipulated himself? Does he dislike The Web due to personal reasons – did Gertrude use it against The Lonely?

Then, it’s possible that The Lonely and The Web are naturally antagonistic (like The Vast and The Buried), or at least a bit opposite on the spectrum of colours-that-hate-me? We know that The Web and The Desolation were mostly enemies through Raymond Fielding and Agnes Montague, though it could have been a personal conflict rather than a visceral feud, but then… Since The Web, by essence, relies on connections and different instances (puppeteer/puppet(s)) while The Lonely is, er, a bit more individualistic and about cutting someone’s ties with everything else, I could see them pretty much opposite, even passively? If Gertrude didn’t use explosives against the Lukases’ ritual, I wonder if she used something having to do with The Web to neutralize it…

- There is some extra hilarity around the concept of The Web snatching Martin right under Peter’s nose and getting him as her avatar while Peter was pushing for Martin to join the Lonely, because… remember the circumstances of Peter’s first appearance? He had (presumably) fed Brian Finlinson to The Lonely in MAG100. Brian who was… precisely pursued by Spiders. So, Peter had whooshed Brian while The Web had laid a claim on him.

The Web in season 4: Forgive and forget? AHAHAHAH NO, RESENT AND REMEMBER, FUCKER.

- I love how we invariably go back to “gERTRUDE–” when we learn new things about what she did. Adding to the long list of rituals she took care of, she derailed or at least made sure that The Lonely lost its chance in this round:

What have you done this time, and when will we learn about that one, and how: through a statement from Peter himself? Through Jon finding a statement left by a witness, in the Archives? Is it why Peter is so cheery nowadays while he used to be described as stern and austere, did the derailing of the Lukases’ ritual somehow make them more emotional and human?

I’m also AWWWW. that the Lukases have a pet-name for their god, “Forsaken”. The word was dropped in a few statements regarding their… activities:

(MAG013, Naomi Herne) “It made me feel utterly forsaken. I started to run, following as much of the road as I could see in the hopes of getting to the other side, but there seemed to be no end to it.”

(MAG057, Carter Chilcott) “I had plenty of food and water, so starvation wasn’t a danger; but sometime in the first week, the clock stopped working. With no timepiece and… nothing left outside of the sun or moon, keeping any sort of time at all became utterly impossible. If I had to guess how long I spent in that strange exile, I would say between three or six months, but that is based solely on my eating and sleeping patterns, which were largely filled by despair and that quiet, aching terror of being utterly forsaken.”

I wonder if one of the Lonely statements we got already contains a hint as to what happened… Did Gertrude do something to Peter’s boat when he was bringing her back from the Great Twisting attempt in Sannikov Land? (We’re not sure about the exact date, it was sometime between October 2009 (MAG126’s statement) and 2011, since Leitner told Jon in MAG080, in February 2017, that he had met Gertrude six years ago, when she had lost her last assistant.) Or did it have to do with Sean Kelly (MAG033), when he disappeared in Autumn 2010? Could it have been through Evan – Gertrude finding a runaway Lukas and convincing him to turn against his family because it would protect Naomi? She was still alive when Evan Lukas died, since Naomi’s statement took place in January 2016 and she mentioned that Evan had died one year prior, while Gertrude herself died in March or May 2015. (Though Gerry and Jon’s discussion about the Lukases implied that they had taken care of killing him, or at least that seems to be Jon’s theory…)

At least, Gertrude hasn’t apparently exploded Peter’s boat, since Jon mentioned that it was still active back in MAG033. So maybe no plastic explosive this time, unless she bombed another of their place of power which wasn’t their house or the boat. Still: Gertrude, what did you do.

- Well, no: the big Mystery, regarding Gertrude derailing The Lonely’s ritual is… not so much that she did, because el-o-el Gertrude., but… how come the Lukases are still financing the Institute? How did you manage to pull that one off, Elias?!

I’m legitimately baffled that Peter seems to imply that maybe Elias would have moved a finger to stop Gertrude if he had understood how much of a threat she was, because… as much as Elias is “not exactly big on action” (Mary Keay’s words), I really doubt this one had to do with ignorance or an ~accidental~ lack of oversight. Elias didn’t have any reason to stop Gertrude when she was eliminating the concurrence? Somehow, however, he indeed managed to do something particularly impressive, in the fact that… nobody seems to be holding a grudge against him? Jude Perry clearly cheered at Gertrude’s death, yet hadn’t apparently tried to burn down the Institute or anything, and even considered that she owed Elias one for killing Gertrude, ergo she didn’t Take Care Of Jon although he pissed her off. Did Elias himself leak the rumours that he was behind Gertrude’s death, in order to get some sympathy/tolerance from the other avatars?

But the Lukases, really? How did Elias manage to get them to give money to the Institute even though an avatar (unwillingly) affiliated to Beholding had made sure that their ritual wouldn’t succeed during this round of the game? Is it because the ties between Mordechai Lukas and Jonah Magnus, and the founding of the Institute, are too deep overall and that managing to neutralise even your technical allies is regarded as fair game? Is it because there is a deep, visceral arrangement between the Institute and the Lukases (maybe having to do with Barnabas Bennett’s bones)? Did the Lukases only begin to give money because Elias had gotten rid of Gertrude?

It also shed another light on the fact that Elias… wasn’t really keen on allowing Jon anywhere near the Lukases, back in season one:

(MAG017) ELIAS: Do you have a moment? ARCHIVIST: Not really, I’m sort of in the middle of something. ELIAS: I understand, it’s just that Miss Herne has lodged a complaint. ARCHIVIST: A complaint? I could just as easily complain about her wasting my time! ELIAS: That’s not how it works, Jonathan. […] Regardless, I would prefer that you not antagonise anyone connected to the Lukas family. They are patrons of the Institute, after all. ARCHIVIST: Fine, fine, I’ll be more lovely. Now, can I get back to work?

(MAG033) ARCHIVIST: […] In addition to such business ventures, the Lukas family also provides funding to several academic and research organisations, including the Magnus Institute. Much as I want to dig further into this, especially given certain parallels with case 0161301, Elias gets very twitchy when we look into anything that might conceivably have funding repercussions.

(I’m still UGHBVGHBHJ that someone sternly called Jon “Jonathan” at some point, and that that someone was Elias. Jon, you know you effed up when… =D) Could have indeed been “JonATHAN, I need that mONEY, just SHUT THE HELL UP when it comes to them”, but also… something about making sure that some Lukases wouldn’t try to get rid of Jon as retribution, since they hadn’t been able to get back at Gertrude, when Jon was still a baby Archivist in the making and unable to defend himself against Spooks? And is it because Elias hadn’t done anything to stop Gertrude that Peter mentioned that he found Elias to be “protective” of his people, when he first appeared?

(MAG100) PETER: […] Now. Am I to understand: you don’t work here? BRIAN: No… I was just, um… making a s–statement, or, or whatever. Um… PETER: That’s probably for the best. Elias can be quite… “protective” of his people. Never really understood why.

That, or the Lukases had put a Restraining Order on all Archivists From The Magnus Institute at this point.

- It’s something I still wonder about, from time to time: the relationship between Elias and Gertrude. Elias clearly knew a lot more than what he let on, although he admitted that Gertrude “got very good at hiding things” from him (MAG102). It’s also related to what/who Elias is exactly (a thing that body-hops, or has been around for centuries/the creation of the Institute or even before? The actual Elias Bouchard, known pothead with terrible grades, who came to the Institute in 1991 and maybe got a revelation or something there?): did Gertrude and Elias’s relationship change over time? Was Elias still New at the job when Gertrude was operating, and genuinely didn’t understand that she had wrapped him around her little finger until very late? Was it mutual manipulation? Was Elias especially lenient since she was doing the dirty work, while he pretended not to know anything about it? Were they actually… actively collaborating, since Gertrude was apparently keeping her collaborators in the dark from each other – Gerry didn’t know that Leitner was hiding in the tunnels, Leitner didn’t know that she had been travelling with Gerry to stop the Unknowing, neither ever mentioned Adelard and Adelard hasn’t mentioned them either, and we still don’t know whether she indeed burned “Eric’s” page (likely Eric Delano, one of her assistants, and strongly suspected to be Gerry’s father – but since it wasn’t Made Official and Jonny pointedly eluded the question in the season 3 Q&A, I’m suspecting that the page might still be somewhere and that Gertrude might have given him sensible information that she wanted to hide, as another trump card in case… something happened to her). We know that Gertrude’s spending was approved by the Institute, including her travelling expenses (which baffled Jon a lot), and given how Elias overlooked Jon’s journey starting MAG103… it appears that Gertrude and Elias at least had a neutral ground on some matters.

I still hope that there is a tape, somewhere, of their last conversation… (We did get Leitner’s murder live, so hey, we COULD get a tape recording Gertrude’s murder, too. Equality.)

- I already made the compilation here but still: it remains so far HYSTERICAL to me that Peter just can’t shut up about Elias, while Elias… has never ever mentioned Peter. Ever. Do they even truly know each other? Who knows. (Does Elias know. Have they been sharing a flat for the past twenty years without Elias even knowing.)

- I was a bit curious about the fact that… most avatars tend to pun so much about their Patron, but Peter doesn’t really use idioms about being alone or lonely? (I had wondered at some point if “The Lonely” wasn’t actually a misconception and their god/Fear actually had more to do with time, since Peter throws references about time pretty often.)

… And maybe it’s in fact that……………. (it’s atrocious and I hate him)………. the equivalent of Lonely puns is when Peter uses “I” when you would expect him to use “we”.

(MAG108) PETER: Ah, I see. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. It’s one of Elias’s little jokes. MARTIN: I don– What? PETER: Did he suggest you record a statement today? One that mentioned me?

(MAG134) PETER: Martin… it’s going to be decades, if not centuries, before I get another chance to bring Forsaken into this world. […] The point is that, yes, obviously, if I last that long, I’m going to try again.

That. Would be fitting for a servant of loneliness (turning a matter of community/shared work into something individualistic) and I h a t e it…

Though apparently, Beholding is sneaking his way into Peter’s speech pattern too~ It was already there when he was appearing in season 3 (MAG108: “Be seeing you, as it were.” / MAG120: “Look, don’t let Elias get to you.”, “Oh, what’s that look for? You won! I am sorry if it doesn’t look quite like you hoped, but… here we are.”, “Oh, and Elias said you’d probably be keeping a close eye on the Archivist’s condition”, “And don’t look so down!”), but it keeps going:

(MAG134) PETER: […] I’ll see what else I can find to help with your reservations […]. I’m only one person, and I can’t keep an eye on everything.

And that last one was Typical Jon Speech (Jon uses “keep[ing] an eye on” a lot) so =D Peter, Beholding is getting to you, whether you want it or not.

- Another Peter thing is that he tends to use Biblical references, quite often compared to other characters:

(MAG108) PETER: Elias Bouchard, getting his hands dirty. Well-well. Must be the End Times.

(MAG134) PETER: […] he’s in there three days, and then what do you know! He manages to pull himself out of the coffin, like a grubby Jesus. And he even brings a Penitent Thief along, in the form of your pet murderer!

It was a bit blatant with Mordechai Lukas (very Jewish name, and Barnabas’s mention that a judge would never choose his side… felt like clear-cut antisemitism), and religious names were present in MAG033 (Tadeas Dahl’s name, the first mate of The Tundra, is close to “Thaddaeus”, one of the Apostles, “Peter” himself being another one; Jon also mentioned that the boat company was mainly owned by Nathaniel Lukas, “Nathaniel” being sometimes fused with Bartholomew), though Evan and Conrad (Konrad?) are a bit out of the loop. Evan had told Naomi that his family was “very religious, and he never had been”, which sounded like an Accurate Way to describe your family when they’re devoted to a God Of Loneliness, but it looks like they’re still raised digging a bit in the Old/New Testament? Or is it just a Peter thing? At the very least, the way he uses the similes as a frame of reference is quite noticeable.

(Not the first time that we’re meeting avatars with a very personal take on pre-established religion or mythology! Tom Haan from The Flesh was also invested, and The People’s Church of the Divine Host was created by “defrocked Pentecostal minister” Maxwell Rayner.)

- Holy Mew, is Peter hilarious even (especially) when he’s terrifying. There is something so fascinating in Alasdair Stuart’s delivery, and I’m not sure I’m able to pinpoint it exactly, but it’s mostly… the overall bouncy rhythm of his tone, combined with the fragmented syntax? Peter doesn’t pause when you’d expect him to, so there is always an element of sudden, unexpected anomaly? when you follow what he is saying. And that’s even without the CONTENT of what he’s saying, he’s so… savage… and gratuitously shittalking… everyone… while at the same time… being a facsimile of a Good Person Caring About Your Consent And Personal Investment…

(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. In any case, I have plenty of preparations to work on myself, before it’s ready. I’ll see what else I can find to help with your reservations in the meantime, mmkay? Just… don’t hesitate too long. We are on a deadline, after all.

Peter “mmkay?” Lukas. (Was it a nod to Martin’s “Mm–okay.” from earlier in the conversation? Because then, Peter plz, you have the same nasty habits of stealing cutesy wording from people around you as Elias, who had stolen Melanie’s “Knock knock?” from MAG098 in MAG104.)

Fear Gods care about your consent, your choices and you willingness to give yourself to it uwu AND I LOVE THAT PETER’S MAIN ARGUMENT AS TO WHY HE IS ~TRUSTWORTHY~ ON THE MATTER OF THE NEW FEAR IS:

(MAG134) PETER: Martin… it’s going to be decades, if not centuries, before I get another chance to bring Forsaken into this world. Your last Archivist saw to that. Honestly, if Elias hadn’t killed that woman, I’d have been very tempted. I warned him she was a danger– MARTIN: Peter! PETER: –but he’s always– MARTIN: Peter. PETER: … Anyway. The point is that, yes, obviously, if I last that long, I’m going to try again. But I’m… rather keen for the world not to end, in the meantime?

Basically: “yES, Martin, I tried to turn the world into a factory farm for my Fear God, and you BET ELIAS’S ASS THAT I WILL DO IT AGAIN if given the chance – so help me get a chance at it?”, with bonus “I’d have murdered that 70-something year old woman, trust me.” Also:

(MAG134) MARTIN: So… so what, you’re afraid of the competition? PETER: Not at all. Honestly, that’s the sort of thing I normally relish; I’ve always been a little bit of a gambler, and the higher the stakes, the better.

yEAH HUM H U M I’m glad that it was confirmed that Peter Is A Gambler, because it was something we could see in Vincent Yang’s story but uuuuh, Peter… Peter… there was something else we could also make of your gambling habits in that anecdote:

(MAG066, Vincent Yang) “I blinked hard as I started to make out two figures above me. One was Salesa, staring at me with an expression of curiosity. The other I didn’t know, though I vaguely recognized him as one of the captains that made port here occasionally – captain Larell, maybe, or Lukas? I don’t really remember. He looked at me, then over to Salesa, shrugged, and handed him a twenty-pound note, before turning around and walking out of the shipping container – which I saw I was once again inside.”

… you apparently bet that the guy would be dead, ie: you tend to gamble on the Worst Outcome and/or you tend to lose. That’s not especially reassuring given what you’re fearing yourself.

(Assuming Elias and Peter indeed know each other and are on relatively good terms: did they have bets on Jon’s overall decisions? Does Peter sometimes visit Elias in prison, did they bet on how many days it would take for him to descend into the coffin? Which one of the assistants would die first? Which Fear would leave a scar on Jon next? Which ritual Gertrude would derail next?)

Peter is terrible and yet, terribly honest about it? I mean, there is obviously a catch, there are obviously things he’s not telling, and you don’t want to trust him, but the comparison with Elias is just jarring. Elias wasn’t especially subtle but he still hid who he was for 80 episodes – we only discovered that he was a Spook himself through Leitner, and Elias would have probably kept up the charade even longer without his intervention. He only admitted to everything when Jon came to confront him with witnesses in MAG092, laying on the table the overall current threat and then… Elias “I should have thought preventing the horrific transformation of our world is not solely my concern!” (MAG102) Bouchard never bothered to mention anything about setting up The Watcher’s Crown, although Gerry mentioned in MAG111 that it would be coming soon-ish, and Peter mentioned that Elias had intended to launch “his ritual” before it wasn’t “an option anymore” back in MAG126. (To Elias’s credits: Beholding’s ritual probably doesn’t count as “horrific transformation” in ~his eyes~.)

There could still be a twist about whether Elias really wants to set up The Rite of the Watcher’s Crown (he… hasn’t been extremely good at making the Archive staff want to help? Honestly, before MAG120, I still wasn’t absolutely sure that Elias was into Beholding in the first place) but. Still. He kept veryyyy quiet about it, while Peter has just casually dropped on the table that yes, obviously, he would have liked to “bring Forsaken into this world” and would like to try again, thank you very much. Peter acts all friendly and faux-caring, hand on his heart and all, while being casually awful, but at least, he doesn’t keep quiet about being awful? He is his own shade of terribleness <33

- Peter’s affableness cracks me up so much (and is genuinely terrifying at the same time! But well: we already know he’s bad news, we already know his family is dedicated to a god of Loneliness, we already know he sacrifices people on his boat, we already know he’s a Spook; it’s the fact that he behaves like a genial uncle which is… hilarious):

(MAG120) PETER: Please, call me Peter. MARTIN: N–no. No, I think I’m okay. PETER: As you like. Look, don’t let Elias get to you. You did very well.

(MAG120) PETER: […] Oh! And if you want to talk to a counsellor, the Institute will of course cover any cost. MARTIN: Hum… thanks? PETER: Don’t mention it. I know how it can be with a new boss. I’d like to help you ease into it.

(MAG120) PETER: Marvellous. And don’t look so down! I know, change can be scary, but eventually it happens just the same. I think we’re going to great things, Martin. Great. Things.

(MAG126) PETER: You talked to him. And that’s understandable, Martin, of course it is! Please don’t think I’m upset, it’s just… not ideal. Shows how much work we still have ahead of us.

(MAG134) PETER: […] I’ll see what else I can find to help with your reservations in the meantime, mmkay?

I can’t believe the Fifteenth Fear wasn’t “Boss who sounds like he just came out of managerial school and learnt How To Try To Pretend To Be Your Friend”. (That “mmkay?” pETER…)

(- THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MENTIONING YOU HAVE A ~FAMILY THING~, TO MARTIN, WHO, AS FAR AS WE KNOW, DOESN’T HAVE ANY FAMILY LEFT AFTER HIS MOTHER D I E D A FEW MONTHS AGO, TWO MONTHS AFTER HE LEARNED THAT SHE HATED HIS GUTS BECAUSE HE LOOKED LIKE THE FATHER WHO HAD ABANDONED THEM WHEN HE WAS A KID… rude, Peter, rude, but then, I guess it was also The Point: even the avatar of loneliness has a family, who sometimes organises gathering. Martin… doesn’t. And isn’t even supposed to talk to his friends and his crush right now.) (Spiders, keep him company? ;w;)

- I have absolutely no idea what Peter’s plan is about and why he needs Lonely + Beholding powers to oppose The Extinction. At least officially, he’s not trying to bring out The Lonely’s ritual since Gertrude ensured that their recent attempt had gone very wrong. If it was about casting it to the Shadow Realm/The Lonely, I understand, but why Beholding…? Is it about neutralizing a fear through categorising it, as Jane Prentiss had mentioned…?

- I LOVE that Peter is so… uncaring and unimpressed with Jon overall.

(MAG134) PETER: And as far as the coffin goes, there’s not much I can do about a bull-headed Archivist– MARTIN: [EXPLOSIVE EXHALE] PETER: –who seems hellbent on self-destruction. My powers only extend so far. […] Because, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what’s been going on with him, these past couple of weeks. […] Jon wilfully hurled himself into the coffin. I did not intervene, because thankfully, I did not agree to protect your friends from their own idiocy. MARTIN: [HUFF] PETER: Though actually, he gave it more consideration that I thought he would. MARTIN: He’s not a moron. PETER: … If you say so! Regardless, he’s in there three days, and then what do you know! He manages to pull himself out of the coffin, like a grubby Jesus. […] Now, from my point of view, so far, none of this has been any of my business. We have bigger concerns than this little soap opera you call an Archive.

It would make sense that an avatar of Loneliness is especially bored/unimpressed with someone who is doing things out of CONCERN, for people he LIKES and wants to PROTECT because he CARES… but then, Martin is also doing this, and Peter is not ridiculising him (too much) for it. So why the disdain for Jon. Is it because Elias gushed about Jon too much.

- S O B ABOUT THE WAY MARTIN STARTED HIS INTRODUCTION OF THE STATEMENT… because it was textbook “Jon at the beginning of season 3” ;;

(MAG081) [CLICK–] ARCHIVIST: Statement of Jonathan Sims, Head Arch– [SIGH] Former Head Archivist at the Magnus Institute, London, regarding a childhood encounter with a book formerly possessed by Jurgen Leitner.

(MAG134) [CLICK–] MARTIN: [INHALE] … Right. Martin Blackwood, Archi– [SIGH] … Assistant to Peter Lukas, Head of the Magnus Institute, recording statement number 0060122.

Martin’s own title for his introduction was “archival assistant”, they both got stuck on the “arch–”… :: Another similarity between Jon and Martin: they can’t pronounce French to save their lives. (mtb.)

- Surprisingly, there was no sound of a ticking clock in the background… So did the episode take place somewhere else than in Elias’s office, this time around? Or has the clock… stopped…?

(I’m obsessing a bit with the clock but it has been there in the background to mean that things were taking place in Elias’s office before. So I can’t help but get plagued by an ominous feeling every time we hear it… but also, here, that we didn’t hear it, when the previous Martin-Peter exchange had it in the background. As if, I don’t know: time stopped and something is in suspension, something that should have happened didn’t, or what small Beholding protection was left around Martin has been stripped down. I don’t know.)

- It could come in handy at some point, since Peter is… not extremely reliable in that aspect, but amongst the things we never really explored, there were the matter of Gertrude and Jon(!)’s “protections”:

(MAG078) MICHAEL: Even with all the protections you have on, I doubt you can survive them now.

(MAG079) MICHAEL: I think I might also kill you. It would be easier than killing the Archivist; none of you are protected down here.

(MAG080) LEITNER: Hardly a book. Barely twelve pages. It is entitled A Disappearance. […] I have found, however, that reading only one or two words is sufficient to hide me from the prying eyes of your master. It allowed me to talk with Gertrude in relative safety […]. […] LEITNER: How did you know I was here? ELIAS: I didn’t. You’re very well hidden. But Jon is not, and he failed to take the same precautions I’m sure you took for granted with Gertrude. I knew he was talking to someone.

(MAG101) ARCHIVIST: But you… you never tried to take revenge on Gertrude? MICHAEL: She knew how to protect herself. She knew what she was creating.

(MAG102) ELIAS: She was… She got very good at hiding things from me.

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) “I assume whatever ‘surveillance’ meant you needed me to move it, is only keeping track of you, but let me know if there’s anything I need to be on the lookout for.”

(=> Gertrude knew that she was under “surveillance” back in 2012, and she probably meant Elias with that, and yet, managed to escape him more than he’s comfortable with. So it IS possible.)

So: 1°) there are ways to escape Elias’s prying eyes without relying on the tunnels or the A Disappearance book (was it why Gertrude apparently had something against all representations of eyes? She was cutting eyes from her books and Melanie had found eyeless dolls in the hangar), 2°) Jon also had protections on somehow by the end of season 2, without even knowing it, and we never really learn what it was and who was responsible for them (I mean… it didn’t help him when they were attacked by Prentiss? Would have Beholding lifted a finger (... batted an eyelash from its lidless eye.) to save its own Archivist?)

- There is something about the fact that everyone has begun to call Basira “detective”:

(MAG122) BASIRA: Alright. And you don’t know why this guy would have left a tape recorder? GEORGIE: You’re the detective. BASIRA: And you’re sure it was him who left it?

(MAG127) ELIAS: … Good evening. Detective. BASIRA: I’m not a detective. ELIAS: Of course.

(MAG134) PETER: […] I went to help, but was too late. Then, your detective friend– MARTIN: No, she’s not a dete– PETER: –went on one of Elias’s wild-goose chases

But I don’t know if it’s like, a new running gag or something more. On the one hand, even the “… and Daisy” joke turned out to have Something More behind it (when Elias added “and Daisy, I suppose” amongst the Archives’ losses in MAG120, he probably already knew that she wasn’t actually dead). On the other hand, it could also be due to… Georgie’s initial misconception, and Elias and Peter having a very twisted sense of humour: Georgie called Basira “detective” because she assumed she was one and/or because Melanie had snarked about it to her because Basira now “deals in intel” => Elias Saw the whole conversation and reused it => Peter followed Basira when she went to see Elias, and picked up on it too.

Jared had also identified Basira as police, though, and it’s… really strange that Basira, who resigned back in season 2 (more than one year ago!), who wasn’t taken by The Hunt like Daisy, is nowadays perceived as police more than she was before. Coule she be collaborating a bit with Section 31’d officers…? I’m not totally buying the speculation about “detective” being a Beholding title, though I gueeeeess it has that observing/following/trying to uncover the truth dimension to it…

To quote Basira herself: “I don’t know.”

- There were things that I found especially clever in the way information about the new Fear was delivered to us:

* It was the content of a letter addressed to someone who wasn’t the current reader (Gertrude vs. Martin); the letter was reporting the story of someone (Bernadette) who had studied the life of a Millerite. Different narrators, from different times (Martin reading the letter in 2018 / Adelard writing the letter in 2006 / Bernadette living that experience at least a few months prior / the life and disappearance of Garland Hillier from 1844 to 1867), which… could explain, already, if Adelard misunderstood something.

* The Fifteenth Fear is France, and tbh, yes.

* The way Adelard predicted and quickly addressed Gertrude’s objections and pointed out the motifs that we could be tempted to associate to another fear (Spiral, Lonely, End) but also highlighted that their effects were different. Also, in this context: if it had been something due to The Lonely… Peter likely should have been able to tell given the description. He didn’t. So it indeed wasn’t The Lonely (unless he’s misleading us hard).

* The fact that Adelard didn’t even see the Inheritors himself, that they were only described as “There is nothing done in the history of humanity that deserves the things that come after us.” (FROM SOMEONE WELL-VERSED IN HISTORY…), complete with static, was especially chilling? How bad can they be, to reach this extent – especially when Adelard highlighted immediately afterwards the many ways humans could so easily manage to destroy the world and themselves…?

* The whole description of the wrongness of the flat, of the whole not!Paris, was chilling. The stillness and eeriness reminded me of the remains of Pompeii, the cocoons of the bodies that were found?

* And yet, though removed in time, the thing is coming closer and closer:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “I have my suspicions she may find herself disappearing. She has that… quality about her, I’m sure you know what I mean, o–of an unfinished meal. And I can only hope that when the second course starts, she can remember her way back to Garland Hillier’s apartment once more. But of course, the evidence suggests that, in the end, even he wasn’t able to.”

Adelard assumed that Garland Hillier had disappeared because of the new Fear. Bernadette mentioned that she was supposed to meet with a “Monsieur Pinard” and since we didn’t hear about him… we could guess that he was a victim. Adelard was pretty confident that Bernadette, who had escaped once, was still a target and would be snatched soon (and WOW does “the quality of an unfinished meal” feel… like the accurate way to describe a few statement-givers that we’ve met or heard from), and… we still don’t know what happened to Adelard. In the end, because he was researching them, was he consumed by the Inheritors, too…?

(I’m still suspecting that Peter could be linked to the fact that he doesn’t seem to be around anymore: how come Peter knows that Adelard was researching that new Fear? And Adelard had been the only one to use “Terminus” to refer to The End (MAG113), until Peter in this episode…)

- The way Adelard talked about powers:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “I have never envied you your position, Gertrude. I have never coveted your gifts, as I know the terrible costs that come with them. But honestly, trying to get a description of these… things, these ‘Inheritors’ from Bernadette Delcour, made me wish I could just pull the image from her lips, like you would have been able to.”

… Sounds like he indeed didn’t have any of his own and/or is a “neutral” who miiight actually be a bit more aligned than he thinks? He mentioned that unlike Hunters, he wouldn’t be able to kill a powerful avatar (MAG113) and we only know that he was able to use the table against the Not!Them to bind it (MAG078), though he was really wary of the table itself. We know that there is still that Mystery Statement of 1991 somewhere (it could be how he came in contact with Gertrude for the first time?) and we’ll have to learn at some point what happened to him (;; posthumous letter left before he was snatched by The Extinction or something else? … or he became an avatar of The Extinction himself and screamscreamscream) so… we’ll definitely hear yet more about him. But I wanna know, gdi!! >w<

- So. The Extinction it is (complete with a few alternative names: “This is a fear of extinction. Of change […] of catastrophic change. A change in our world that will wipe out what it means to be “us”, and leave something else in its place. The Extinction. The Terrible Change. The-Future-Without-Us.”), unless Adelard misunderstood something at its chore and other characters will be able to correct it. His reasoning makes sense, though, and is very evocative of real-life and modern-era concerns?

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Mankind will warp the world so much it kills us all, and leaves only a thousand years of plastic behind. Technology will strip us of what it means to be human, and leave us something alien, and cold. We will press a button, that in a moment, will destroy everything we have ever been. Animals are witnessing the end of their entire species within a single generation. These are new fears, Gertrude, and a new Power is rising to consume them.”

And… given that MAG134’s letter (“dated 22nd of January, 2006”) was apparently anterior to MAG113 (“Statement undated, likely circa 2012” – well, assuming that Jon is reliable in dating papers since… if he had a degree in that, we would know.), and that Adelard had noted in MAG113 that Gertrude was “dismissive of the possibility”… it really sounds like there was something to do with the phenomenon of the old generation not being very anchored in the world’s current concerns? Gertrude was amazingly good at handling the Fears, she had fifty years of experience with them and… it would be understandable that, at the same time, she would have overlooked the possibility of a new one, feeling that this wasn’t anything new, that it could be categorised in the pre-existing ones.

If Adelard nailed it and if this Fifteenth power indeed exists… it means that we’ll need a new system to “balance” things out, after Smirke – or maybe it’s precisely because Smirke categorised them so much that what was left at the borders managed to get so powerful? If there is the need of a new Architecture, I’m half squinting at the fact that the Chinese word chosen to refer to Jon in MAG105 could be translated as “architect”, but… I’m still thinking that Basira could end up creating a new equilibrium, since, contrary to Jon, she was immediately good at drawing connections, at understanding how things could work out (e.g. what she noticed about The Dark in MAG108, and how quickly she assimilated the categorisation between the Fears and a bit of their inner politics).

- wOOPSIE does the scale of The Extinction sound like… another category on its own. While The End sounds more like a personal fear, this one is more about a whole community?

I’m still unsure how to categorise MAG065 – “Binary” and MAG122 – “Zombie”; I don’t really feel like either matched this one? I change my mind every time I listen to “Binary” and this time around, I was stricken by simply… how much Spiral it sounded? (Fear of losing one's mind, an incompatibility between two manners of being, Sergei’s reactions which sounded a lot like what Tim had described while in Michael’s corridor.) I really don’t see it as part of The Extinction (or at least not in the way Adelard described it): Sergei had a personal fear of death and ended up experiencing Worse while trying to escape it (which sounded textbook The End), not so much about the fear of being erased and replaced or about a consciousness of the world as you knew it getting destroyed and destroying you at the same time…? Meanwhile, “Zombie” had the replacement motive, but not the narrator’s fear of getting replaced or erased – mostly the idea that everyone else was a fake?

I’m still not sure about these ones and how to look at them, and I feel like it will be the case even when season 5 is over, godsdamnit x””) Everyone has a few of Those Statements that they have trouble categorising, mm? (I know that a lot of people is having a hard time with MAG114’s, which I read as textbook Spiral? But then, I’m at a loss with MAG065 and MAG122, and I guess it’s a good thing, technically, that everyone is at a loss about different ones…)

- However, the way Adelard described The Extinction REALLY put me in mind of… the Not!Them.

Not!Sasha was clear on the fact that it was part of The Stranger, and indeed, its effects (and what feeds it) has to do with the familiar made unfamiliar (MA080: “Once upon a time there was a monster, but no one realised. Sometimes someone did! And then they were scared, so that was good.”). But… when someone is eaten/destroyed/consumed by the Not!Them, does it actually feed The Extinction? Knowing that you will disappear, that your whole existence will be erased and rewritten?

Adelard had tracked the Not!Them for years: did he begin to consider the possibility of a new Fear because of it? Could it be possible that his views of the Not!Them blinded him a bit in the way he tried to define The Extinction…?

- I’m really curious and at the same time NOT to picture what an avatar of The Extinction would be like, if it gets any. (But my brain provides: alt-right politician in nice proper suit, complete with stiff frozen smile.)

- IT MAKES SENSE but in the meantime, I’m still going to laugh (and cry) so much over the fact that… when the series began, Jon’s main concern was to clean and order a dusty shady archive? And now, their main goal has evolved to: they’ll have to fight against the embodiment of the Fear of climate change or nuclear disaster. … Well, Jon had already highlighted how the situation had escalated, back with Georgie in MAG093 and then in MAG117:

(MAG093) GEORGIE: Jonathan Sims, are you trying to save the world? ARCHIVIST: I… Yeah. I… I guess I am.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: [….] So, I–I guess, sometime in the next few days, I go on a, eh, commando mission to blow up a wax museum. It’s not exactly what I was expecting. F–from an archiving job.

(bABE…) It… does put in perspective why Peter is so dismissive of the Archives’ problems:

(MAG134) PETER: Now, from my point of view, so far, none of this has been any of my business. We have bigger concerns than this little soap opera you call an Archive.

I mean. He has a point, but at the same time, shut up Peter, let us live :w Do we talk about your blatant tsundere crush on Elias, or on your own sense of Drama with your precisely timed entrances? (YES WE DO.)

But. Yep. Oops. If the new Fear is cataclysmic enough to basically erase everything else and play it solo, no wonder Peter is going :/ about Jon’s philosophical dilemma about feeling alone, changing, what is it that make you “human” or a “monster”, etc. (At the same time: shut up, Peter, don’t act as if you’re not responsible for the loneliness.)

… I wonder if we’re heading towards a “lesser of two evils” deal and this could be the way to get Jon to… willingly try to participate in the Watcher’s Crown…? (I gueesssss that there is still a possibility that the Archives team would manage to completely neutralise it before it becomes an actual threat, but given that we barely know anything about it and that Elias has kept real quiet about it, I feel like it’s meant to become an actual, real Thing at some point? Given that one of the main themes in season 4 so far, thanks to Melanie, Daisy, Helen, Oliver, Jared and Jon himself, has been around the matter of choices in relation to the Entities, and the idea that although they can influence you, you can also choose what to do with these powers, and the actions you take are your own… it would feel like a step back to have Jon utterly manipulated into being a participant, unaware that he is contributing to this one in the end? So if it’s about choice and taking a dubious option out of despair…)

- I Do Not Like This Mention Of Yet Another Door For Very Personal Reasons:

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “It talked of Garland Hillier’s “new revelation”, about the absolute change of the world in terms that seemed at first elegiac, but later seemed… almost panicked, with the final entry simply repeating the words [STATIC:] ‘La porte est la porte.’ ‘The door is the door.’ […] The door had been damaged by the builders who uncovered the place, and there were several distinct gaps in the wood. But as she walked back out, the door appeared to be whole. She ignored it, and left anyways, trying to reason it all as a strange quirk of memory. Just one of those things. […] She was more precise on her escape. Remembering Hillier’s words about the door, she had just enough time to retreat back to the apartment and barricade herself inside. Then, she waited until the entrance changed again, and she could emerge back into the world she remembered. At least, that’s my interpretation of events. […] I may try to interview her again later, though I have my suspicions she may find herself disappearing. She has that… quality about her, I’m sure you know what I mean, o–of an unfinished meal. And I can only hope that when the second course starts, she can remember her way back to Garland Hillier’s apartment once more. But of course, the evidence suggests that, in the end, even he wasn’t able to.

… because who has been strongly associated with “doors”?

(MAG080) ARCHIVIST: […] The door opened, and inside was dark. Against that darkness I could see the thin grey strands wrapped around the limbs of my former bully. And then, from inside, stretched two impossibly long limbs, bony and covered in coarse, black hair. For a second, there was almost the start of a scream, but the legs wrapped around him too quickly, and he disappeared into the doorway and out of sight. It slammed behind him, and he was gone, taking the book with him.

(MAG047) MICHAEL: In any case, it doesn’t matter. The Wanderer had a brief respite, but it’s over now. ARCHIVIST: Well, you’re too late. She– She’s gone! MICHAEL: [DISTORTED LAUGH] Yes… Ah… Did you notice which door she left through? ARCHIVIST: Yes… It w– MICHAEL: [CHUCKLES] ARCHIVIST: … wait! No, there was– MICHAEL: There has never been a door there, Archivist, your mind plays tricks on you.

(MAG078) MICHAEL: You – Need – A door. ARCHIVIST: NO. No, I–I just… I need…

(MAG101) MICHAEL: Good. Right this way. [A DOOR CREAKS] Open it. Open it and this will all be over. […] HELEN: The door is open if you’re ready? ARCHIVIST: No, not, not really, but…

(MAG120) ELIAS: […] There is a door in front of him. A yellow door. He knows the dream it used to lead to; he knows it well. But that’s not where it leads anymore. He does not know what is behind it anymore, and he is deathly afraid of finding out. The Archivist turns away.

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

(MAG131) ARCHIVIST: I, er… I don’t want to open it! I’m not going to. MELANIE: [SIGH] [KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK] She’s been helping us. ARCHIVIST: It has never helped anyone. Not without a cost. […] Right. [INHALE] [OPENS THE DOOR]

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: [STATIC RISING.] No need for that. I’m willing. [STATIC DECREASES.] [REMOVES THE COFFIN’S PADLOCK] … Right. [CHAIN FALLING ON THE GROUND] [COFFIN OPENING] [CREAKING SOUND]

Mr Spider’s door, which Jon almost knocked on, that swallowed the bully instead of him when he was eight. Michael’s door, which took Helen right in front of him, which Jon had to open to escape the Not!Them, which should have killed Jon another time before Helen replaced Michael and opened another door for Jon – Helen’s own door, that Jon rejected and feared to open in his nightmares, before he agreed to enter the corridors once more in order to meet Jared. The metaphorical door in Jon’s mind, holding back the ocean of knowledge that could drown him. Even: the trapdoor leading back to the Archives, when Tim and Jon went face to holes with Jane Prentiss (MAG039); the door that Jon closed on Leitner alive and reopened on Leitner’s body (MAG080); the door (or trapdoor?) which was the only thing between the group and the Unknowing while Daisy was planting bombs (MAG118); the coffin’s lid, which he opened to join Daisy; the door to Jon’s office, on which nobody ever knocks when they want to find him inside… Jon keeps being surrounded by doorways and thresholds that he has to cross, whose crossings mean a change – whether he loses something or manages to get it back.

I’m… worried about this new door, honestly.

(Because it feels so, so easy and gut-wrenching to picture either Jon or Martin desperately trying to open it while the other is – willingly – staying on the wrong side to try to contain or neutralise these Inheritors…?) (*“Sakura Nagashi” playing in the background.*)

- CHEER UP, BIGGEST TWIST: MARTIN WAS ALMOST JON’S ANCHOR /o/ Looks like he was mostly used as a puppet when it came to saving Jon, but still! (Although yeah, hum, who else could have come to put the tape recorders around the coffin except him? Basira was away. Melanie… probably wouldn’t have been able to WANT to save Jon like Martin did, allowing The Web to pull him towards that action – if it is indeed The Web.) Mayyyyybe Jon was wrong about how he summarised ~Her~, because hum:

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: Statement ends. The Web does seem to have a preference for those who prefer not to assert themselves.

… it really doesn’t sound like that applies to Martin? (It wouldn’t be surprising at aaaaaall that Jon has trouble understanding how The Web works, even more given that he’s “a tiny bit” influenced by it too.)

- I am SO GLAD about… everything about Martin. I am so glad that, although he was reluctant to call that Lonely guy “Peter” at the end of season 3 and is now calling him that way? He’s using that right, that Peter gave him and insisted on giving him, to make Peter SHUT THE FUCK UP and it’s glorious:

(MAG126) PETER: I’m just saying, that we’d all be better off if your Archivist actually knew how to archive. MARTIN: Peter. PETER: … Yes. Well.

(MAG134) PETER: […] Honestly, if Elias hadn’t killed that woman, I’d have been very tempted. I warned him she was a danger– MARTIN: Peter! PETER: –but he’s always– MARTIN: Peter. PETER: … Anyway.

I am SO glad that Martin is keeping a firm grip on the bastard, that he’s unfurling his frustration and snarking and snapping SO MUCH and taking none of Peter’s shit:

(MAG134) MARTIN: And you thought that since I’m so lonely already, I’d be ideal. PETER: Yes! MARTIN: You see, the thing is, Peter, I’m still not all that keen on being part of any ritual you set up. You know, in fact, if I were to be blunt, I’d say that would be suicidally stupid.

(MAG134) PETER: Because, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what’s been going on with him, these past couple of weeks. MARTIN: Oh – oh, yeah, sure. […] What, turning invisible and eavesdropping? PETER: If you like. But… I’m only one person, and I can’t keep an eye on everything. MARTIN: Or… anything, apparently!

mARTIN BLACKWOOD, PEOPLE. (Also, I’m still rolling on the floor that Peter very honestly admitted that he picked Martin because he Smelt Like Loneliness. Peter, you vulture.)

Martin also learnt to Master the unimpressed exhalations and the silences:

(MAG134) PETER: […] And as far as the coffin goes, there’s not much I can do about a bull-headed Archivist– MARTIN: [EXPLOSIVE EXHALE] PETER: –who seems hellbent on self-destruction. My powers only extend so far. MARTIN: Mm-mm. PETER: … Look. I’m not gonna pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to.

Which reminds me of MELANIE in front of Elias in MAG106 (before, erh, everything went awful.) so clearly, Martin has been upgrading himself. He had always been snappy but he’s getting so amazing at it lately and I… want… Jon… to see that… so much…

(On the one hand, it would probably be a recipe for disaster and arguments. On the other hand, if Georgie is any indication: Jon tends to love A Whole Lot people who don’t take any shit from him and/or could just plainly wreck him (Daisy.) so… I’m just picturing Martin snapping and snapping out of reflex, after months of intermittent cohabitation with Peter, and Jon’s stupid heart jumping to “… dOKI?!”.)

- … Okay, at the same time, panic aboard because Gerry did mention to Jon that the Lukases are good at grooming, and it’s clear that Peter is currently changing strategy:

(MAG126) PETER: You talked to him. MARTIN: I… I, I tried not to, I–I, I didn’t mean to… PETER: You talked to him. And that’s understandable, Martin, of course it is! Please don’t think I’m upset, it’s just… not ideal. Shows how much work we still have ahead of us.

(MAG134) PETER: … Anyway. Point is, I’m not your captor or your torturer. I’m not gonna tell you to stop talking to him, or even saving him if it comes to it. If that’s not a decision you’re willing to make yourself, me scolding you isn’t going to help.

Is this reverse-psychology from Peter? (=> If he sounds less scolding, then Martin will find the idea of talking to Jon less appealing.) Is it a test?

Because overall… it sounds like Peter’s arguments for Martin to not share his information with Jon are crumbling a bit? We got confirmation that Martin tied himself to Peter after The Flesh attack (so it really wasn’t about Jon!!!! It was about protecting the others because Jon… was in no state to!!!!!!!!!), but then:

Peter is good at ~explaining~ why he didn’t do anything with the threats that we witnessed (Breekon breaking in and delivering the coffin, Jon going inside of the coffin and getting stuck there) but… there is no description of the other threats/enemies that Peter supposedly handled. Do they even exist? And, well. Peter only mentions the “big picture” but:

(MAG126) PETER: [LAUGHS] Because, behind all his bluster, Elias’s just like all the rest. He’s so preoccupied playing the game he doesn’t pay attention to the big picture. He managed to convince himself that he could get his ritual off first, which would have made all of this a… bit moot, but that’s not really an option anymore.

(MAG134) PETER: You know what the stakes are now, and I just have to hope you’re with me on this, focusing on the big picture. MARTIN: … Yeah.

… why, then, is he trying to stop the Fifteenth on his own if it’s so dangerous? Of all entities, The Web and The End should be very keen to help (plus, all the ones who lost their chance at their ritual in the current cycle)? And Jon just proved that he is willing to risk his life himself, and Peter has demonstrated that he wouldn’t be lifting a finger to prevent him from doing it… on his own. And Peter, who had accepted Martin’s “advice” in MAG108:

(MAG108) PETER: So your advice would be “less murder”? MARTIN: I… I s–suppose…? PETER: No, no, it’t, it’s a good observation! I thank you for it. MARTIN: You’re… welcome…

… was confirmed (in MAG127) to have wooshed two researchers when Jon was in a coma, and casually mentioned murder intents towards Gertrude. It doesn’t really sound like he’s holding his end of the bargain, does it…?

- Another twist is that, actually, Martin is keeping track of what is happening in the Archives? Which is not what he told Jon in MAG129:

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: If–if you do need to talk, I– MARTIN: I can’t. ARCHIVIST: No. No, o–of course. [INHALE] Listen, Martin, you should know– MARTIN: Jon– ARCHIVIST: –Daisy might be alive, Basira is– MARTIN: Stop. Stop, please, I–I shouldn’t know any of this, I… [PACKING UP] I–I–I really need to go, I–I’m… ARCHIVIST: Right. … right.

Was it just because it mattered that Jon was telling him it? Or did Peter inform Martin of Breekon’s presence himself? Or did Martin’s deal with Peter change a bit because Martin coldly asked Peter why there was suddenly a big coffin in Jon’s office.

- … I find it especially interesting that in the summary of the Archives situation during season 4:

(MAG134) PETER: Martin, this is what we agreed. After The Flesh attacked, you came to me. MARTIN: [SIGH] PETER: And I’ve held up my end of the bargain, despite your continued hesitation. Your friends have been largely untroubled by the many – many – enemies that they have made. MARTIN: What about the delivery guy? Breekon. And the coffin? PETER: Was that its name? To be honest with you, I thought it was dead. MARTIN: You thought wrong. PETER: True enough. And as soon as I learned it was here, I moved to intervene, but, well. It turns out I wasn’t really needed. And as far as the coffin goes, there’s not much I can do about a bull-headed Archivist– MARTIN: [EXPLOSIVE EXHALE] PETER: –who seems hell-bent on self-destruction. My powers only extend so far. […] As I said, one of the last shreds of the Circus delivered a gateway into Too-Close-I-Cannot-Breathe. I went to help, but was too late. Then, your detective friend– MARTIN: No, she’s not a dete– PETER: –went on one of Elias’s wild-goose chases, then Jon wilfully hurled himself into the coffin. […] Regardless, he’s in there three days, and then what do you know! He manages to pull himself out of the coffin, like a grubby Jesus. And he even brings a Penitent Thief along, in the form of your pet murderer!

… Peter didn’t mention anything about Jon removing Melanie’s bullet (and getting stabbed in the shoulder), nor about Helen’s door and her corridors containing Jared. Both took place in the tunnels so, maybe, in the same way as Elias, Peter had trouble using his powers inside of them, and/or knows that he wouldn’t be quite as invisible down there?

I’m really really intrigued about the fact that Helen wasn’t mentioned: is it because Elias and Peter don’t factor her in, since the Distortion is mostly an ~irritant~ and not expected to be helpful? Or are they completely unaware of her presence? It’s unclear whether Martin was aware that Helen was the one who had saved them from Jared, but if he is… same as with Basira who hid it from Elias: he might be hiding it from Peter. Martin didn’t have a great time with The Distortion, but at the same time… Tim and Martin had seen “a woman” wandering in the corridors, when they were trapped inside of them at the end of season 2, and Martin had felt guilty over the fact that they hadn’t saved her:

(MAG080) TIM: […] … Any sign of the woman…? MARTIN: I don’t think so. [PAUSE] We should have helped her. TIM: No. MARTIN: But we could have tried! TIM: How? MARTIN: …

So: can’t be sure on that point yet, there are too many “if”s to be certain (maybe Martin totally missed the fact that Helen had saved them because he was running away and then went to Peter and began to cut ties with Basira&Melanie; maybe Martin knows she’s downstairs and discussed it with Peter but Peter is overlooking her) but… it’s possible that Martin is currently being way more cunning than he lets on. We know he can use his own weaknesses for deception – he demonstrated it in MAG116 – so… Maybe. Maybe he’s a bit less desperate than he pretends to be; maybe it has always been a matter of exerting some control over Peter, of investigating what Peter wanted from him (and now getting all the information he can manage about the Fears’ politics and the Fifteenth), biding his time to get rid of him…? (I don’t want to hope too much, but at the same time… Martin is firm as steel, right now. Even in the trailer, when he almost broke down, he got back on his feet and became firmer after the call. On the one hand, he had all the reasons in the world to be at his most vulnerable, with his mother dying, The Flesh attacking and him proving once again that he couldn’t help, and Jon not waking up, and I’d be perfectly content picturing that he was genuinely desperate and afraid and didn’t have hidden motives when he negotiated Peter’s ~protection~. On the other hand, it’s a constant thing in the series that people and listeners both underestimate Martin Blackwood.)

- I was suspecting that Peter could turn invisible/not be felt while in the same room as others (since he had implied he’d witnessed Elias’s arrest in MAG120), it’s more or less confirmed… though it could be something else entirely given Peter’s answer:

(MAG134) PETER: Martin… My patron, hopefully our patron someday, doesn’t give me any sort of special insights. I’m not quite the accomplished voyeur that Elias was. I have to keep tabs on things the old-fashioned way. MARTIN: What, turning invisible and eavesdropping? PETER: If you like. But… I’m only one person, and I can’t keep an eye on everything.

So that’s probably also why Martin was so stiff with Jon in MAG124 and MAG129: if he knew that Peter could be there and see everything, he had to try his best to be blameless, even before considering the whole “not telling Jon anything for Jon’s own good” shtick. I had noticed that it felt like Basira and Martin were acting as if they were constantly under surveillance (even worse than during Elias’s time!) so given that it seems to be the case… I wonder if Basira is suspecting that, indeed, Peter is sometimes there but you just can’t feel him. Hence her being so careful about what she says, and refusing to say anything meaningful overall.

(If Daisy’s Hunter instincts come back… maybe she will be able to feel him?)

- … And if Peter needs to be there to keep tabs on people… UHUH, is it meaningful that he repeated twice that he was just leaving?

(MAG134) PETER: Right! Then, if you’ll excuse me, I have a family thing to get to. MARTIN: Are we going to talk about Jon? PETER: … Do we need to? […] Okay! Now, I really am running late, so if you don’t mind? [CLICK.]

I don’t want to hope too much about it but: if Martin were to try to make a move to share information or use a back-up plan or something (leaving the tape of his recording somewhere for Jon to find it? Or Adelard’s letter? Or sending something to warn how Peter might be able to spy on the Archives team? Or going to see Jon directly?), this could be the perfect opportunity since… Peter won’t be there to see it. Not banking on it, but. Given that Peter wasn’t especially convincing as a protector and that Jon has demonstrated that he would find danger by himself if left on his own, and that Martin now knows that Adelard Dekker was indeed tracking a Fifteenth power… there have now been enough deal-breaking events and information to want to change strategy; it wouldn’t come out of the blue if it happened soon?

Title for MAG135 is out and HHHHHHHHHHHHH. It. sounds too easy to speculate “The Dark” here but at the same time… AT THE SAME TIME, IT SOUNDS LIKE THE PERFECT TITLE FOR MANUELA DOMINGUEZ’S STATEMENT??? THE LAST OF THE DAEDALUS SPACE STATION STORIES??? *o* (I… really don’t see how Jonny could find a more perfect title for this one, so? Plus, we haven’t had a Dark statement since season 4 began, so.) If it’s the case, then: the title already contains two meanings; if there is a third one, could be by taking it like… Heavy Unpleasant Discussion before or after the statement (Jon-Basira? … Basira-Elias…………..? We’re definitely due for a debriefing about what Elias sent her to, if his main goal was just for her to leave Jon alone, or if indeed he had her search for something tangible and where and what…)

(Other ~highlight~ of the week: we’re getting Martin’s eighth poem on Patreon on Friday, complete with Discord event dedicated to Martin’s poetry run by Anil, BLESS HIM………………) (/ Curse you all, I’m not in Belgium, I can’t follow the AMA through Aza’s account this time around so that means having to get a discord I guess ;;)

#peter: *ranting for the fifteenth time this month that gertrude could be a danger*#elias *signing the paper approving of gertrude's additional expenses for plastic explosives #with a check from the lukases*: ahah preposterous.#the magnus archives #mag134 #tma liveblog #tma spoilers/#tma season 4 #long post/

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joyofcrime-elinorhigh · 5 years

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Top 10 Obscure Christmas Specials II:

Guys! Guys! I'll get to the review proper in a second, but remember last year when I talked about A Cranberry Christmas? I said that it was lost media. WELL IT'S BEEN FOUND! HALLELUJAH! [link]

Hell-ho ho ho everybody! My name is JoyofCrimeArt, and it's that time of year again! Christmas time is upon us, and there is no escaping it! The radio is playing the same ten Christmas songs on loop (nine if they've already banned Baby, It's Cold Outside.) The feeling of kindness and generosity shared between you and your fellow man. And best of all, their finally airing all those weird ass Christmas and holiday specials. I love Christmas specials! Even the not very good one's usually have SOMETHING good about them! Whether it be some kind of festive ambiance, a good message, or just being very easy to make fun of. Sure, everybody knows about the classics Christmas specials. Frosty the Snowman, The Grinch, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, ect. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. But with Christmas being such a massive holiday, There are THOUSANDS of other Christmas and holiday specials out there that mostly go unnoticed every year! And while most of these specials go unnoticed for a reason, some are actually worth a watch, and act as hidden gems. And that'd why I'm here. To count down five more of these weird, bizarre, and unknown Christmas specials, that way you can check them out before the holidays are over. This is 5 Obscure Christmas Specials You Should Watch Part II. Now, I've done this before last year. (Link here if you haven't seen it. Top 5 Obscure Christmas Specials You Should Watch:) As such I'm going to be following the same rules as I did last time. I'll be ranking these specials not by quality, but by how much you should watch them! Because sometimes a bad or cheesy Christmas special can provide more entertainment value than a really good one. But don't take the number ranking to seriously. This is mostly just a showcase of bizarre specials that you might not have heard of, and the actually number rankings aren't really the focus here. But with all that said, let's get this started with... Number 5: Neo Yokio: Pink Christmas (2018) (Oh, the Cringe!) Just like to remind all of you that this is still running while Daredevil is canceled. Anyway, Jaden Smith is back! Just in case six episodes just wasn't synergy for you, now there is a Christmas special. Neo Yokio's Pink Christmas. This sixty-six minute long movie continues the story of Kaz Kaan, Neo Yokio's second most eligible bachelor and top demon hunter. The special opens with him having a cold around the holidays as his robot butler, Charles, tells him an original Christmas tale to make him feel better. Said tale follows Kaz as he has to prepare for the Neo Yokio top bachelor secret Santa contest. He finds out that he has to find a gift for his arch rival, Arcangelo. Being uninteresting in giving his rival a present, he hires a shopkeeper named Herbert Sims to handle the secret Santa contest for him. And while this is all going on he also has to deal with his Aunt Angelique visiting Neo Yokio for the holidays. But when both demonic forces and Arcangelo have plans to ruin Christmas, it's up to Kaz to set things right. If you've seen season one of this show, this special is more of the same. However, It is a bit more refined in it's doing so for the most part. I feel like there is more INTENTIONAL comedy overall compared to the first season. And I do like how this special manages to balance both the demon hunter and the bachelor aspect of Kaz's character. As oppose to the first season, where it felt like the show forgot half way through that it was suppose to be about demon hunting. We even get some more backstory and world building on the history of Neo Yokio and the Great Demon War, which is definitely a welcome addition. And Arcangelo, much like in season one, continues to be one of the highlights. He's like a cross between Phantom Blood's Dio Brando and Jake Paul. I love him. So I like how this special has him in a more major role. I also like some of the themes presented in the "message" of the special. How corporations around the holidays essentially try to monetize anti-materialism for there own benefit. "Sure, we'll air specials like the Grinch and Charlie Brown. Specials that are meant teach you that Christmas isn't about consumerism. Just as long as you sit through all the ads we place in the middle. It's a legit and kinda smart message that I haven't really seen tackled before. But like Neo Yokio season one I don't really know where the show stands on this topic. Is it pro or against capitalism? Maybe it's trying to show that there's no right or wrong answer, but it ends up feeling more confused than anything else. However, what does annoy me about this special is *Spoiler Warning?* the whole thing is, presumably, not cannon. I know that from the beginning we know that it's all a story told by the butler. But I was expecting some kind of twist where everything we heard would have actually happened somehow. Like Kaz would say "Wait, didn't that all happen last week Charles?" or something. Like a joke. Cause you know, this show is supposedly a comedy. But no, it's all just a story. So all the lore and world building that was actually somewhat interesting serves absolutely no point! *Spoiler Warning Over* I can't believe I let Jaden Smith trick me yet again. In conclusion, what you see is what you get here. If you want to see a Jaden Smith anime Christmas special, than Neo Yokio Pink Christmas is the special for you. Check it out for the clout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLVazo8J9uE

You know what, I change my mind. Screw "There About to Warp!" this is my new favorite Toonami promo. Number 4: Crunchyroll's Christmas Special (2015) and Crunchyroll's Holiday Special (2017) (Oh, the Cringe!) Now this is as bizarre and obscure as it comes. Just in case Neo Yokio wasn't enough for you to get your fill of vaguely anime themed Christmas nonsense, we have not one but TWO different Holiday specials brought to you from the lovely people of Crunchyroll. For a company as big and professional as Crunchyroll, you would think that any kind of special that they would make would have to be at least somewhat well produced, safe, and marketable, right? But that's not what this is at all. What we basically got here is two half hour long "variety show" style specials that were released on both Crunchyroll and Youtube. Both specials are pretty much the same in terms of content. There both just a smorgasbord of random sketches, out of context anime clips, straight up ads for their own service and merch. All themed around the holidays and anime. This special has a real [adult swim] vibe to it, relying on a lot of surreal humor and anti-comedy. In fact, it might of even out [adult swim]'d [adult swim] in it's sheer bizarreness. It's honestly pretty hard to describe without just telling you to see the special for yourself. Both specials are hosted by some guy named Mike Toole. I don't know who this guy is, but he's one of the best things about these special. He's just portrayed as this bumbling goof who's just unfazed by everything but really loves Christmas and anime. He has some really good comedic timing and his dry but cheerful delivery is a consistently funny thought both specials. The specials aren't perfect however. Not all of the skits land and some of them go on for WAY to long. But that's kinda what happens with any sketch show. You gotta take the good with the bad. But do you know what you should do if you want REAL otherworldly experience? Watch the Neo Yokio Christmas special, but pause it at random intervals and watch this special. Treating the sketches like the bumpers you would get in between the ads of a TV show. It's a horrible idea that I'm not willing to try, but I feel doing so could lead somebody to either madness or true enlightenment. And I want someone else to be the guinea pig for that. If you're a fan of both anime and weird surrealist humor then I would actually recommend checking these specials out. There both up online for free, so what do you have to lose?

Number 3: The OTHER Charlie Brown Christmas Specials (1992, 2002, and 2003) So everybody knows about a Charlie Brown Christmas. It's like, one of the most famous Christmas special of all time. Charlie Browns sad. They hold a play. Snoopy kisses Lucy on the mouth without her consent #MeToo. Linus gives a speech about Jesus to an empty auditorium cause adults don't exist in this world. Everybody sings. THE END. Timeless classic, we all know it. But many are not aware of the OTHER Peanuts holiday specials. There are three. 1992's It's Christmas Time Again, Charlie Brown. 2002's Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales. And 2003's I Want a Dog For Christmas Charlie Brown. Like all the Peanuts specials made after Charles Schulz's death, these are all just a collection of random Peanuts comics that were animated. As oppose to the original Charlie Brown Christmas special that had an original story written by Schulz's himself. All three of these specials are just little vignettes based around the Peanuts gang celebrating Christmas. While none of these specials are as ambitious or as heartfelt as the original special we all know and love, I don't think that their trying to be. While the first Charlie Brown Christmas special tries to tell an important message about the true meaning of Christmas, these other specials are pretty much just jokes without much plot or sentiment. But, given that they are just adaptation of Charles Schulz's writing, you know that there going to be funny. I always forget how much of a little shit Sally is, and these specials remind me. However, sometimes the transitioning between scenes can be a bit wonky. They clearly just copied the strips, without putting much thought in how it would work when put together in a sequence. While It's Christmas Time Again, Charlie Brown and Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales are pretty similar. But I Want a Dog For Christmas Charlie Brown takes a bit more of a different approach. It focuses mostly on Linus's little brother Rerun, and has much more of an overall plot. (Though a lot of it is still just mini vignettes.) However, while I do admire the risk, I'd say it's the weakest of the three. Rerun just isn't that interesting of a character compared to the rest of the Peanuts gang. And that one has an hour long run time, which causing the special to drag a bit. But there still are some fun highlights. If you are a fan of the Peanuts comic strips or specials, I would highly recommend these specials. They're light fluff, but They're good light fluff. They might not give you that warm Christmas feeling, but they will make you laugh. And sometimes that's all you need.

Number 2: Olive the Other Reindeer (1999) 1999's Olive the Other Reindeer use to be a holiday tradition for Cartoon Network every year right long side such other TIMELESS and BELOVED holiday classics as Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer and Legend of Frosty the Snowman. But now, it's seem like it's kinda fallen into obscurity. Which sucks, cause this special is actually really good. The special follows Olive, voiced by Drew Barrymore before her magnum opus Freddy Got Fingered. Olive is a dog who isn't very good at doing traditional "dog" stuff. She's so un-dog like that she actually begins to believe that she might in fact not be a dog at all, but a reindeer. And when one of Santa's reindeer's get's injured right before Christmas, Olive believes it's up to her to trek to the North Pole and save Christmas by flying Santa's sleigh. Despite the fact that she isn't a reindeer and can't actually fly. This is just a nice special, and a lot of that comes from Olive herself. Olive is a precious cinnamon bun who I WILL PROTECC! She's just such a kind and lovable lead, and Drew Barrymore's voice talent really helps extenuate this. But it's not just Olive, there are several other fun supporting characters too. Like Martini, a con artist penguin who accompanies Olive on her journey. There's also a evil postman (played by Dan Castellaneta) who acts as the specials main antagonist. His goal is to ruin Christmas because he hates all the extra work he has to do around the holidays. It's an interesting motivation for a villain, but they kind of ruin it in the last act by adding in a cliche "was always on the naughty list" element to his backstory. But regardless he's a fun villain. Between this and Robot Devil from Futurama Dan Castellaneta really knows how to ham it up as a villain who sings. What, you thought he wouldn't have a villain song? How naive of you. While the special is based on a children's book the adaptation was headed by Matt Groening, which I never realized as a kid. Though that does explain why Dan Castellaneta is here. The special is a departure from his usual style, with art based more on the book instead of his usual Simpson style. The special is done in CGI surprisingly, despite the characters looking entirely flat. I don't really get the point of this. Why go through the effort of trying to use CG to make something look 2D, when you could just animate it in 2D to begin with. But whatever the reason, I do appreciate the pop up book look this special provides. The special also carries a bit of that more adult humor, without going to far. Kind of like Murray Saves Christmas, a special that I talked about last year and also featured a lot of recurring staff members from Futurama. However, the world of this is special is weird. Santa is a known person who does radio interviews, but I guess that makes sense if we are assuming a world where Santa really exist. But then there are other oddities, like how Martini mentions how he use to work at the zoo until he got fired. But we also see Monkey's trying to escape the zoo. If being in the zoo is there job, why are they escaping? Aren't they there willingly? And why does Olive have an owner, but also a pet flea? Is this show set in the same universe as The Moxy Show? These are all questions that need to be answered. The special is cheesey and some parts are just there to fill up time. But overall it's still a really nice special featuring some likable characters and some really funny jokes. While no means perfect, I still recommend you give it a watch if you can.

Ahhh, nothing says Christmas like Santa, Pope John Paul II, Ultraman, and Quasimodo. Number 1: Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas (1999) And to end this countdown, let's end on a Christmas special that just screams wholesome. Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas. Probably the best direct to video product Disney has ever made. (Not that doing so is very hard.) This special is pretty simple. It's three different Christmas specials stitched together to equal an hour long movie, each staring a different Disney character. We got Huey, Dewey and Louie wishing on a shooting star hoping for it to be Christmas everyday. We have Goofy trying to prove to Max that Santa is real in what I guess is a prequel toGoof Troop? And then we have Mickey and Minnie reenacting the Gift of the Magi. All these segments are linked together by a narrator voiced by Kelsey Grammer. His voice is so warm and cozy in this special, and really helps add to the mood. Sure, none of these stories are that original, but that's fine because there well executed. There's just such an earnest sensitivity to this special that it's hard not to not feel all Christmas-y while watching it. The animation, while nothing that fantastic, is good for direct to video. And it manages to do both cartoon-y slapstick and warmer more emotion moments pretty well. The special isn't perfect. Some of the segments can feel a bit longer than they need to be despite the fact that the films so short. They're written like TV episodes but most run close to thirty minutes instead of twenty two. Also the last segment, with Mickey and Minnie, while not bad, is probably my least favorite. So it kinda ends on it's weakest note, though I get why they ended with it. Mickey just isn't my favorite of the Disney cast. I personally prefer the cartoon-y antics of Donald or the kindhearted nature of Goofy more in this special. Goofy is also a precious cinnamon bun who I will protecc. And I ship him with Olive. There was a sequel, Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, released in 2004. I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember it not being very good. It's goes for five shorter stories instead of three more focused ones, and I remember there being less of a warm Christmas-y essence to it. It was more jokes and less sentiment. Also, they replace the beautiful 2D animation for CGI. In 2004. With a direct to video budget. I can commend the ambition, but that probably wasn't the best movie. But if you want a nice wholesome Christmas special that the whole family can enjoy, than Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas an underrated pick I highly recommend you check out this holiday season.

And so there we have it. five (or technically eight now that I think about it) obscure Christmas specials that I highly suggest that you look into this holiday season. But again, there are WAY more underrated specials that just these out there. So I may have to revisit this idea again at some point in the future and do a part three. What would you all think of that? And what weird, obscure, underrated Christmas specials do you guys watch every year? I'd love to hear all about em in the comments down bellow! I'm always looking for new specials to watch! Please fav, follow, and comment if you liked the review. And I hope you have a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah (Even though that ended a week ago) Happy Ramadan (Even though that ended in June) Or whatever holiday you celebrate. Life Day? Regardless, Happy Holidays to you all! May your days be merry and bright! Now if you excuse me, I have to go work on 2018 year in review. Have a great day, and see you then! (I do not own any of the images or videos in this review. All credit goes to there original owners.)

https://www.deviantart.com/joyofcrimeart/journal/Top-5-Obscure-Christmas-Specials-II-776656208 DA Link

#Christmas #Cartoon Review #Olive the Other Reindeer #Crunchyroll #Mike Toole

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noirxxholic · 6 years

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Netflix Whump Movie Rec!

I just remembered this when I noticed there’s a movie out called Truth or Dare. My first instinct was to make fun of how they’re trying to turn so many games into movies now, but then I realized I have no room to talk because I thoroughly enjoyed the movie Would You Rather.

Before I get into the fun stuff, there’s a couple big potential cons to this movie that you should be aware of:

1. It is a horror movie. There is a 99% chance your fave will die.

2. The cast has a pretty good gender balance and a female lead, which is obviously a good thing, but I’m including it in cons because it means there is a lot of whump inflicted on women, so if you’re not okay with that this may not be the movie for you.

3. Couple TWs outside the norm of regular whump: There’s an attempted rape scene from about 1:04:00-1:05:00. It isn’t graphic at all and the attacker gets what’s coming to him, but still. There is also infanticide in one character’s backstory, and there is suicide involved that I can’t say anything else about without spoilers.

Okay, now that’s out of the way, here’s the premise: A One Percenter played by Jeffrey Combs (better known as my true love, Herbert West -- he’s much older now but still a ton of fun) gets his kicks with a yearly deadly dinner party. He finds people who for one reason or another desperately need money, and invites them to his mansion to play a game of real life Would You Rather, in which the winner gets the money for whatever they need. In the game, they’re offered choices of horrible things to have happen to themselves or the other guests, and have to choose between them. A couple examples: “Would you rather stab the person to your left or the person to your right?” “Would you rather get held underwater for two minutes or choose an different bad thing -- without knowing what the other thing is until after you’ve chosen?” Of course, the thing you choose then has to ACTUALLY happen. If you refuse to follow through on your choice you forfeit the game and Jeffrey Combs’s bodyguard just fuckin shoots you in the face. Blunt, but effective.

Our protaganist is a woman trying to get the money to pay for her brother’s cancer treatment. We don’t get nearly as much information or time to get to know the other players, but several of them still manage to make a pretty strong impression (i.e. strong enough that you feel something when they get whumped). The fact that you know everybody’s got a really important reason to be there makes for some nice emotional whump moments.

I’d also like to recommend this premise as an EXCELLENT fic prompt. Gather your favorite whumpees for a round of real life Would You Rather and see what happens!

#whump #movie rec #whump prompt

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saflinstudies · 7 years

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Greetings, fellow humans (and aliens).

You can call me Saflin. I’ve been lurking around the studyblr community for about a year, and now I’m finally officially making an account for it. This will be an account mostly centered around study notes and school, but that doesn’t mean I️ won’t be reblogging posts about Stranger Things and Six of Crows.

General and random facts about me: + I’m 209 years old. + I️ love eating chocolate-flavored pillow stuffing. + My favorite animal is the Australian polar bear.

jk jk jk none of that is true.

Okay, for real now: + I’m an INFJ, which means that, according to 16Personalities.com, I’m “quiet and mystical, yet a very inspiring and tireless idealist.” + I️ have a bichon-poodle dog. She just turned three on November 24th! + My sun sign is Pisces. + Me and my friend made up an entire backstory for a ladybug that lived in my room for two months because we were bored. His name was Sir Hebert Hubert the Fourth, and he was a butler for Queen Mildred. Long live Sir Herbert. + I’m a Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff in general terms, but academically, I’m a Slytherin. On every Which House do you Belong to? quiz I’ve took, the highest score I️ got for Gryffindor was 0.62%.

My interests: + SIX OF CROWS AND THE INFERNAL DEVICES ARE HBJVJHDGFSGSFDSFESEF I️ LOVE IT. + I️ listen to indie-pop music. + I’m OBSESSED with moving to London one day. + I️ love archery, but 6 times out of 10, I️ don’t even come close to hitting the target. + I’ve been writing a book for the past three years for fun (yeah, I️ know. I’m a huge nerd). + DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HOW GOOD STRANGER THINGS IS. + I️ love art. I️ prefer to draw realistically (mostly faces and plants) with graphite pencils. + Plants, plants, PLANTS. Especially succulents, baby’s breath, and ferns.

Academics: + Biology is my favorite subject. + I️ am a visual learner, so writing my notes and making graphs and diagrams are how I️ learn best. + I️ take: algebra 1 (help. I’m dying), life science, English, history, art, and Latin. + I️ started making study notes two years ago, and (thank GOD) I️ have improved a lot since then. + My dream colleges are John Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, and Georgetown University.

Why I️ started a studyblr: + I️ needed a little motivation to pull me through school, so I️ decided that making a studyblr would help. That, and the fact that it would be so amazing to be part of such an accepting, caring community made of other people who share the same interests and goals as me.

Studyblrs that I️ look up to:

@studyign @elkstudies @emmastudies @mochi-studies @studyingmood @studyquill @tbhstudying @sprouht-studies @sushi-studies @intellectys @studypetals @academiics @calmingstudies @gloomstudy @focusign @soostudynotes @studytherin

@quadrtics

#studyblr #new studyblr #studyquill #hellosareena #sprouht studies #focusign #emmastudies #calmingstudies #academiics #studyign #hello #quadrtics #studytherin #studypetals

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casualarsonist · 6 years

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Dune (novel) review and analysis

In commemoration to Frank Herbert’s epic novel, I’ve decided to make this review 10,000 words long.

Frank Herbert’s Dune has long stood as one of science fiction’s towering giants - a monolithic feat of imagination and a landmark science fiction novel. And as a work of fiction, this it true. Over the greater part of a thousand pages lay stories of sprawling civilisations, with dozens of unique characters engaging in complex power-plays whilst battling the brutality of the ecology of the sand-planet Arrakis. Following it’s release in 1965, it was (and still is) regarded as a masterwork in world-building - a milestone for the genre, and the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones of its time. As a work of fiction, it’s a triumph. As a piece of literature…well…

Frank Herbert was great at many things in his life. Writing was not one of them. And while Dune is a standout novel that, all things considered, has aged better than many novels (particularly of the sci-fi genre) of a similar time, it is, at least in my humble opinion, a spectacularly average work of prose. But I say this with the works of Cormac McCarthy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kurt Vonnegut, and others in mind, so I am probably doing him a disservice in comparing his work to what I believe to be the cream of the crop. But if you’re going to tout a novel as ‘one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time’, I think you have to allow it to undergo rigourous scrutiny from all angles. So with that in mind, let’s scrutinise this motherfucker.

Spoilers abound, including a spoiler for Metro 2033.

It is thousands of years in the future, and mankind has conquered the stars. Dune centres around the Atreides family - one of a number of Great Houses united under the pseudo-feudal collective ‘Lansraad’, owing allegiance to the Emperor Shaddam IV. Duke Leto Atreides - a hard but compassionate man and a competent leader - has been given charge over the desert planet Arrakis, displacing House Harkonnen - the Atreides’ mortal enemies. Leto senses correctly that this dangerous exchange of power is an intentional move by the Emperor to set his family up on the losing side of an inter-House rivalry, and with the help of the traitorous Yueh - the Atreides doctor - and the armies of the Emperor, the Harkonnen’s capture and kill Leto, whilst his son Paul and pregnant concubine Jessica disappear into the desert. There they encounter Arrakis’ indigenous inhabitants - the Fremen - and are accepted amongst them after proving their worth through combat and their uncanny abilities of deduction and prescience, abilities taught to Jessica and Paul by the Bene Gesserit, a powerful sisterhood who wield abilities of superhuman physical and mental conditioning to influence and manipulate society.

Paul, for his part, has been prophesied to be the ‘Kwisatz Haderach’ - the name for a messianic male Bene Gesserit, a child born of generations of genetic manipulation with the power to see through time and space. And when I say he is ‘prophesied’ to be the Kwisatz Haderach, I mean that he is the Kwisatz Haderach, and this, like most questions and mysteries the novel establishes, are answered immediately and conclusively without exception.

But anyway, after their escape the book jumps a number of years ahead, and Paul has had a son with a Fremen woman, while Jessica has given birth to Paul’s sister, Alia, a child imbued with all of Jessica’s Bene Gesserit powers in the womb, who speaks and acts like a grown adult despite looking and sounding like an infant.

Under Paul’s command, the Fremen tribes have been performing successful raids against the Harkonnen forces and reducing the flow of the addictive spice Melange - the galaxy’s most valuable trade commodity, and one that occurs only on Arrakis. This brings the Emperor to the planet, followed by the armies of every house in the Lansraad, and with the Fremen tribes at his back, Paul drives over them like a steamroller, taking back control of Arrakis with little to no complications because he’s the Kwisatz fucking Haderach, as we were told in the first chapter. His infant sister knifes the Baron Harkonnen to death, and Paul forces the daughter of the Emperor - Princess Irulan - to marry him while promising that he will never love her or otherwise show her affection. Jessica celebrates this. The end. So, I hope you could keep up with all the terms; my spellcheck was going absolutely mental as I was writing that.

But where to begin? Firstly, despite some of the criticisms I’ve read (as well as some of the criticisms I will make), I should note that I didn’t find Dune to be a particularly laborious read. Its length is obscene, yes, but my Tube rides would pass by in a flash when I was buried in the text. And although I personally don’t understand the decades-long literary trend of putting fake songs into a text (I’m looking at you, Lord of the Rings), I never found the numerous pages of songs in Dune to be as big an impediment to my interest as I did in, say, Lord of the fucking Rings (and skipping over reading them sped the whole process up considerably). I understand that saying that Dune ‘isn’t unreadable’ isn’t exactly high praise, but I think it’s worth at least outlining the extent of my criticisms of the text, because I’m going to tear into Herbert’s writing as we go on, but I don’t want you to think that sub-par prose necessarily translates into an odious reading experience. And in any case, Dune didn’t become one of the biggest selling sci-fi novels entirely without reason. The one thing that it does unquestionably well is exercise Herbert’s imagination.

Rarely has a imagined universe been so clearly realised before or since Frank Herbert’s seminal series, and this can be ascribed chiefly to one particular detail: his research and preparation. In reading George Arr-Arr Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, for example, one can detect in the convoluted and meandering text the fact that he doesn’t actually know where his novels are going when he starts writing them. The swelling word count of each successive entry in the series also bears testament to an increasingly relaxed editorial oversight, and this has resulted in each book becoming more bloated and complicated than the last. And while Dune itself is bloated terms of its length and complicated in terms of the language it introduces to the reader, there is a specific and unerring clarity in Herbert’s vision of the Dune universe that one would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere, and this is because the world itself was layed out by Herbert in detail, and years in advance, of the final writing and publishing of the novel. One can get a taste of this preparation and backstory in the supplementary appendices in the back of the book, as well as the accompanying glossary, which offers a definition of every single alien term that appears in the course of the preceding nine-hundred pages, and whilst not every creature or machine is described in minute detail, all the pieces of this puzzle fit together in the greater context of the novel.

There is also a sense of uncanny timelessness in the world of Dune, and Herbert has achieved this via a number of paths - the first being that he drew from real-world sciences as a foundation upon which the ecology and engineering of his universe is built. Rooting his fantasy work in a bed of modern fact (and remaining restrained enough in his vision to avoid sending his characters to absurd destinations such as planets made of cheese, or inhabited by talking animals, for instance) bestows a tangibility in one’s mind’s eye to the people, places, and things, and interestingly leaves Dune feeling relevant even to an audience for whom the technologies of the Sixties seem archaic and obsolete. The second factor that gives the novel life is its appropriation of Middle Eastern cultures as inspiration for that of the Fremen. This is obviously an accidental boon, but as with the surge of Middle Eastern cultural influences spreading throughout the Western world in the Sixties, so too has the region, its people, and its customs come to the forefront of Western attention in the last few decades. People are far more common with the word ‘jihad’ now than they would likely have been at the turn of the millenium, and this coincidental familiarity left me feeling a greater understanding of the desert-dwelling Fremen than I might otherwise have had, had I read the book as a teenager, for instance.

So before I launch into a diatribe, it’s worth pointing out that Dune IS a genuine landmark work, and with good reason, but it has its limits. And now that I’ve got that disclaimer out of the way, I can begin the fun part: talking about all the reasons Dune shits me off.

1: It starts each chapter with a spoiler for the rest of the novel.

Now I don’t know how you feel, but if I had to guess, I’d say that one of the main things that keeps an audience engaged in the plot of a piece of fiction is the fact that they don’t know what’s going to come next. Hell - this is why we engage in fictional stories at all, and why every series of Game of Thrones is preceded by an onslaught of social media statuses proclaiming that someone is going to get their eyes gouged out if they reveal whether the Immodium cures Daeneryus’ chronic diarrhea at the end of S03E05.

Frank Herbert has other things in mind, though, for every chapter in the novel begins with an excerpt from a piece of in-universe fiction - usually written by the Emperor’s daughter, and almost always regarding Paul’s actions in the future. Through these excerpts we get a glimpse into the world beyond the novel, specifically, into a world in which Paul is both a god, and not dead. This didn’t seem to perturb Herbert though, and he soldiers on admirably in his endeavor to supply multitudes of cliffhangers, the outcome of which have either already been revealed to us, or are revealed in the paragraph following the incident itself. Tracts of text are rendered wasted and pointless by Herbert’s own premature narrative ejaculation, and the trials that Paul undergoes on his journey towards godliness hold no weight because we know the outcome of his character from the opening of the very first chapter. In the most egregious instance, one chapter ends with Paul near death after poisoning himself. 'Will he survive?' I asked myself, 'Maybe the prophecy is wrong! Maybe something, anything, that hasn't already been revealed to us is about to happen!' In the very first sentence of the next chapter, an excerpt written far in the future that tells us specifically that Paul lives and gains the powers of the Kwisatz Haderach, like a time-travelling dickhead who has come back to the past to spoil your good time. Herbert then decides that blowing his load is no impediment to making the reader sit through six pages in the eyes of a character that doesn’t know of Paul’s situation, and we watch them trip clumsily over their own emotions and agonise over a question of his survival that was answered for us literally as soon as it was posed.This moment is so utterly confounding in its dramatic ineptitude that I was agape, staring at the page in disbelief. It’s as if The Usual Suspects began with a Kevin Spacey monologue directly to the camera talking about how he is Kaiser Soze, and then the rest of the film conducted itself as if it were still a mystery. It’s as if the opening crawl of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ told the audience that Darth Vader was Luke’s father, and then still tried to pull off the reveal. And this pattern is repeated from start to finish - every time you reach a point in which you wonder ‘will they make it out of this?’ Herbert comes back from the dead, strips the book from your hand, smacks you in the face with it, and emphatically replies ‘YES’.

2: Its inner monologues are prolific, and terrible.

No-one thinks to themselves like the characters in Dune think to themselves. If you are at McDonalds and you want to buy a burger, you don’t stand in line thinking to yourself ‘I am at McDonalds, and I am hungry. I wish to buy a burger, and I can see the burger menu in front of me, but I don’t know which to choose. I must hurry because I am almost at the front of the line - if I cannot choose in time, I will end up at the front of the line having not made a choice, and everyone around me will be inconvenienced!’

But Frank Herbert thinks people think like that.

He uses the character’s inner monologues as a medium for clumsy exposition, and eradicates any sense of realism or immersion they may hold. Now that’s not to say that one can’t use an inner monologue for that purpose, but the characters of Dune project a constant and unfiltered analysis of even the most basic social interactions, redundantly vocalising things made obvious in the text. Paul will do a thing, and Jessica will think that ‘Paul is doing that thing!’, and it will all be presented so dramatically that it makes you want to hurl the book into traffic. Herbert takes swathes of description that most writers would simply frame from a third person perspective about the characters and the world, and presents them instead as unedited, actual thoughts that the characters think in real time. In the midst of action and a threat to his mother’s life, Paul stops and takes a minute to recite this in his head: ‘They will concentrate on my mother and that Stilgar fellow. She can handle them. I must get to a safe vantage point where I can threaten them and give her time to escape.’ No-one alive has ever had a thought that forms itself like that, and this actually ends up having a tangible discriminatory effect on the reader, for whom all of the characters whose thoughts we don’t hear seem like pretty normal people, and all the central characters end up coming across as fucking weirdos, and one finds oneself subconsciously disliking them. Which brings me to my next point…

3: The Atreides are fools, assholes, or both, and the writing doesn’t help.

Now to be fair, it’s important to note that one of the key themes of Dune, according to Frank Herbert, is the danger of the ‘superhero’ myth. Through his genetic talents, his lifetime of training, and the legends and prophecies sewn into the Fremen culture, Paul takes a straight-line trajectory towards becoming the foretold Kwisatz Haderach, but despite his triumph over every challenge and his ultimate and all-encompassing victory over his enemies, he is not a character to be envied - he seemingly loses his attachment to the people around him and is consumed by his own myth, becoming more of a dictator than anything else. However, there are two problems with the portrayal of Paul et al. that confuses the intended message. The first is that a large proportion of the Atreides’ characterisation goes into establishing their constant control over their emotions, reactions, and decision-making processes; the effect being that from the very beginning of the novel the Atreides’ all seem to exist in their own little bubble, separated from the world at large as well as those around them by their own singular brilliance - Leto is a ‘great’ commander bearing the burden of the his people on his shoulders; Jessica is a Bene Gesserit and a concubine, viewed with suspicion by many around her due to her powers and her unofficial place within the family; and Paul is a demi-god in training. And since the tone of Herbert’s prose is so lacking in emotional nuance and resonance, it becomes difficult to discern whether he is intending to convey that, in any given situation, a character is displaying an intentional control over his or her reactions, or whether they are actually supposed to be displaying an unhealthy emotional disconnect. Within the text both instances appear the same, and it is only whether the control or the disconnect are explicitly stated that I, for one, could decipher the points in which it was intentional. Such as it is, the off-screen death of Paul’s son reads like a footnote for all the pause it gives him, and I still can’t figure out whether that’s because Herbert is trying to indicate the depth of Paul’s depravity, or whether he’s just a shitty writer who failed to properly demonstrate his character’s emotions, because honestly, it could be either.

And this brings me to the second problem, which is that the prose itself is complicit in the confusion. As stated, Herbert’s grasp of dramatic tension is so feeble, his demonstrated understanding of interpersonal emotions so poor, and his writing so matter-of-fact and lacking in colour, that it buries whatever philosophical subtext it may have and confuses speculation on its themes by virtue of the simple fact that any supposed ‘mystique’ could just as easily be chalked up to the author’s failed hold over his own material. The way Herbert fumbles with the tension he tries to invoke and the clumsiness of his writing when he gets inside his characters heads leaves it equally possible in my mind that his characters are complex as it is that they are simple - a situation I’ve never witnessed before - and in any other circumstance I’d admit that there was a kind of brilliance to this, if it wasn’t for the fact that the general tone of his writing clearly conveys the infancy of his talents as an author. My inclination, then, was simply to take everything at face value because the novel is written so explicitly. Which finally brings me to my actual point here:

If the novel is to be taken as it is written, then all of the main characters are giant idiot dickheads.

Let’s begin with Duke Leto. It’s kind of strange that everyone in Leto’s shadow exhibits an explicit and almost unfathomable loyalty to someone who’s temperament is almost exclusively characterised by flushes of anger, harsh words, and a deep belief in the feudal hierarchy - the idea of ‘right by birth’ being an absurd inflation of self-importance that Paul himself adopts as an awful character trait later on. Most of Leto’s subordinates seem to display symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, seeing brief moments of kindness following a rebuke or an outburst as a sign of his famed benevolence and compassion. ‘Show, don’t tell’ is an adage that comes to mind when pondering the writing of this character, and for all the tales of a 'great leader' that surround him, we see little of this in the timeline of the novel itself. A man whose idea of ‘strong leadership’ is a calm word after an outburst isn’t a figure of worship, he’s a cunt. And I can see the typing fingers of fans a-flurry as they rush to point out that Leto is supposedly uncharacteristically stressed by the danger his family has been put in - an excuse that would hold far more weight if Herbert had found time to actually demonstrate this somewhere within his novel’s nine-hundred pages, but he didn’t. Instead, we’re simply told that he’s not usually like that, which has as much meaning to a reader as being told your neighbour’s shithead Chihuahua ‘isn’t usually like that’, right after it bites the tip of your dick (true story, don’t ask). And after all this - after all his bluster and bullshit, and after spending a good deal of his story ostracizing the mother of his child in an effort to supposedly fake out the true traitor in his family’s midst - he succeeds in exactly none of his efforts, and the Harkonnen plot plays out without a hitch. To make matters worse, his final living act is to activate a poison gas capsule hidden in his tooth in an attempt to kill the Baron Harkonnen, and he even fucks this up, killing only himself and one of the Baron’s disposable offsiders. His capabilities as a leader are nil, and his compassion limited, at best.

Meanwhile, for her part, Jessica spends the majority of Dune pinballing between disgust and fear of her son because he is turning into the very thing she has been training him to be for the entirety of his existence, and vengeful joy as he rains destruction down upon their mutual enemies. In what you’ll come to see is a pattern amongst the Atreides, any sense of genuineness one may garner from her faint echoes of self-awareness is reversed and erased by the fact that she continually makes the same decisions she spends so much time regretting, and then comes to regret those decisions as well - simply put, she's written to be self-aware, but not written to learn. For instance, as the focus on her dwindling attachment to Paul begins to grow as he gets more powerful, she willingly undergoes a ritual whilst pregnant that bestows all her powers upon her unborn daughter, resulting in the birth of what the Bene Gesserit call an ‘Abomination’ - a child that she once again finds disconcerting. Typically the Bene Gesserit kill these children as they risk being dangerously possessed by the spirits of dead Bene Gesserit, but Jessica doesn’t care about that because she is the mother of Paul Atreides and she can do whatever the fuck she wants. And far be it from me to say that a mother shouldn’t be able to keep her child if she wants to, but there’s a distinct difference between wanting to keep your unborn daughter; and forcing upon her powers that she cannot refuse, making her a target for a powerful order, and then having the audacity to look down upon her as something unnatural simply because she is what you made her to be. The point I’m making is that whilst the character of Jessica constantly reminds the reader that she is disenfranchised or a passive observer amongst the events that take place around her, such claims are a hard pill to swallow coming from a character for whom a core motivation of their order is the pursuit of power, and particularly the desire to manipulate it from behind the scenes. Jessica is demonstrably one of the most influential and powerful people in the universe - she is a master of wits and observation, outsmarting even Leto’s security expert (who, it should be mentioned, is a human computer), and a master of combat, easily besting the chieftan of the first Freman tribe they encounter. She even has the power to force others into doing her bidding by the use of ‘The Voice’ - an ability she uses at least half a dozen times. And yet what is the one thing that gives her solace? The fact that her son plans to marry an innocent girl for political reasons, and then torture her for the rest of her life by withholding any kind of affection in favour of his concubine. These are the last words of Dune:

“Do you know so little of my son?” Jessica whispered. “See that princess standing there, so haughty and confident. They say she has pretensions of a literary nature. Let us hope she finds solace; she’ll have little else.” A bitter laugh escaped Jessica. “Think on it, Chani: that princess will have the name, yet she’ll live as less than a concubine - never to know a moment of tenderness from the man to whom she’s bound. While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.”

After everything that has happened, to the end, Jessica’s one gripe is that she was never treated with the respect of a Queen all those years ago when Leto was alive. Great. What a wonderful person. And make no mistake - she is talking about the innocent daughter of their enemy here; a girl who only wants to be a writer and scholar and will spend the rest of her life recording the history of this woman’s fucking son. And for some incomprehensible reason, Herbert decided that this, a petty display of spite that boils the most powerful female character in the novel down to the desire to be 'a wife', that this would be the perfect way to end his epic science fiction novel.

So what about Paul? We’ve already discussed in brief his descent into war mongering and self-absorption that makes him one of the most singularly unlikable characters in the book, but what makes it worse is that, once again, every single decision he makes leads him directly to the one point that he swears he never wants to go. His one steadfast moral handhold is his understanding of the fact that encouraging the Fremen to worship him and playing into the prophecy of the Kwisatz Haderach runs the risk of drawing these people to the edge of waging a religious war. But he also knows that their military might united under his leadership is his one way of winning back his seat as the ruler of Arrakis. So what does he decide to do?

We already know the answer to that.

Time and again Paul fans the flames of religious fervour and further asserts his singular command over everyone, ultimately leading his army to the brink of jihad. At various points he sets out to demonstrate that he fulfills the requirements of the prophecy, at others he demands fealty based on his birthright as son of the former Leto Atreides. By the end of the novel he literally says that he lives by two separate moral codes - that of a noble family, and that of the Fremen - and that a course of action illegal for an Atreides (i.e. the murder of the fucking Emperor) is not illegal for a Freman. You understand what this means, right? Paul is making the argument of a crazy person - he genuinely ascribes the blame for an illegal murder at the feet of a different version of himself. And while it’s true that Frank Herbert came out a decade after the release of the novel and talked about how it’s supposed to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of hero worship, it’s also true that Tommy Wiseau asserted that The Room was a drama, right up until he realised that everyone was laughing at it.

Dimitri Glukhovsky’s ‘Metro 2033’, for instance, ends with the protagonist realising at the last moment that the assumption upon which his last mission rests is incorrect, and that the race of beings that he is about to destroy are actually intelligent and benevolent, rather than the violent demons they are thought to be. This climax is a crescendo of swelling emotion and tragedy that leaves the main character broken and disillusioned, and it is one of the few times I’ve cried whilst reading a novel. Glukhovsky devotes the entire final section of the book to the failure of his protagonist, and of humanity at large, to realise what they have done until it’s too late, and the emotional repercussions of this.

Frank Herbert devotes a couple of lines to Paul's awareness of his ultimate failure.

And much like the death of the Paul’s son, this too reads like a footnote. So how are we supposed to understand the intentions of a novel that presents itself so dispassionately? One that portrays enormous and important events in such an off-hand manner? I’m not entirely sure to be honest. For certain, I could delve into a debate about the possible meaning of this and that and dive into the encyclopaedia of interpretations, and again, perhaps a certain amount of merit should be given to Dune for opening itself up to that kind of discussion. But I could also just take it for what it is, rather than what it accidentally might be, and that is a very imaginative but flatly-written tome, with passionless two-dimensional characters, and a storytelling style that constantly undermines its own drama. I bought the sequel - Dune Messiah - because it’s about one fifth of the length, and I was keen to see exactly how Herbert expands on the foundation he has laid here. Perhaps it has all the answers? Perhaps it will confirm that every assertion I have made in this turgid article is incorrect? If so, I’ll be sure to let you know. But for now, I only know what I know, and that is that Dune is a phenomenal work of imagination, a great fiction, and a poor, poor text.

6/10

Just Okay

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