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inkformyblood · 3 years

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in these bodies we will die

Commander Cody Week Day 04: Post-Order 66 @commandercodyweek

Pairing: Codywan, QuinObi, Cody x Obi-Wan x Quinlan Summary: Cody knows something is going to go wrong when he wakes up on a mission to execute a Jedi. But that is also just a matter of perspective. Most days, the trooper wakes up and finds that he is still CC-2224. The world around him is sharp and dark: the purple crackle of his electrostaff mingling with the steady beat of his heart which remained as rhythmic as a march, until it blotted out everything else. He is nothing but a weapon, and he waits patiently for his orders, whatever they may be.

On those days, he knows his place in the durasteel universe, following his Lord and enacting his will. The sneers — openly worn and honed to a razor’s edge — from the Brothers and Sisters that made up the Inquisitors didn’t impact him in the way they were hoping, because why would they? He is a weapon, one of a few who had been gifted beskar by their Lord, and who served at his convenience.

“Trying for a saber of your own?” Ninth Sister spat one day as she stormed from the throne room, her anger rolling from her like lightning and breaking harmlessly on the impassive countenance of CC-2224. “Trying to be a Brother, clone?”

“I’m already a brother,” CC-2224 tells her, but he doesn’t know why. She turns on her heel and leaves in a swish of black fabric, and he returns to waiting for his next order. He listens to the rumbling breaths from Darth Vader, the slight mechanical click between each hissing exhalation adding to the reflexive count in his head.

When Cody wakes on the transport, he knows that something has gone horribly wrong.

The floor shuddered beneath his feet with each roar of the massive engines, but the room is eerily silent. Before… Before when he was— Cody cut the thought off before it could travel any further. His mind felt fragile, as if it was constructed from freshly spun glass, and he knew that if it broke, he didn’t know how long it would be before he was able to pull control back again. Or even if he would want to.

Bile rose in his throat, hot and thick and acrid, and his shoulders contorted with the effort of keeping the scream trapped in his throat. He had woken up as Cody before but never prior to a mission. Never held the ability to escape, or to die, as closely as he did now.

He could remember, beneath the dark edges of the Executor and the constant hiss-click sound of the man who had once been Anakin Skywalker, a single moment of clarity as he knelt in front of the shell that hid his rotted carcass. Cody had been holding a lightsaber, the edges of it scorched and warped, and the scent of iron lingered in the air from the blue blood that had seeped into the handle. For a moment, his thumb had twitched over the ignition switch that could have been his salvation or his doom, but then Cody was gone once again as Darth Vader raised his chin with one gloved finger.

“Well done, Commander. I am glad to see I chose correctly.”

Cody had to hold on. Eyes squeezed tightly shut, he blindly ran a hand over the wall, fingers splayed until he found the recess, pulling the datapad free.

For an instant, before the screen activated, Cody caught sight of his reflection in the tinted transparisteel and felt the world threaten to fall away from him once more, nothing but the void waiting to consume him utterly.

What had Anakin done?

Obi-Wan — traitor to the Republic, good soldiers follow orders, no! — hadn’t spoken about Anakin’s past, but a trooper would have had to be blind to not see the marks that his past had left on him, the anger that burnt low in his eyes and caused his mouth to twist whenever someone mentioned the troopers being owned. Cody had seen the scar on Anakin’s arm from his tracker removal, straight and well-healed compared to the now-ruined tapestry of scars that had covered his back.

Cody’s fingers didn’t tremble as he raised his hand to his face, trailing a line from scalp to chin. He couldn’t feel anything different, a few new minor scars here and there pitting his skin like the surface of a moon, a far cry from the whorled raised scar that curled around his left eye. But that didn’t subtract from the new knowledge he carried: that Anakin had branded him like property with a red tattoo that would mar his skin forever.

Focus.

Breathe in, then out.

(I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.)

Cody focused on the datapad, reading over the minimal briefing he had been given, doom slipping over his shoulders like a shroud. He had been sent to hunt a Jedi, to track the whispers of a survivor and kill them.

Laughter, harsh and uncaring, bubbled up in his throat, trapped behind the cage of his teeth. What was one more when Cody had killed one of the men he loved with barely a second thought?

⁂

Cody felt himself slip partially beneath the waves of his consciousness the moment the trooper stepped outside the ship, hiding away from the first flicker of unspeakable terror that passed over a civilian's face at the sight of him.

The CC-2224 knew the motions, just as well as Cody did. Alpha-17 had vanished into the wind, from what little he had managed to find out from scraps of rumors, but he remembered his, and the other trainers, words well.

Move quick, strike hard, complete the mission.

Salt clung to every visible structure, encrusted pillars that distorted the shapes of the shipping crates and barrels into hunched figures as CC-2224 stepped into the warehouse. His electroshock baton lit up with a hiss, bathing the room in a vibrant purple, and the trooper took a step forward. The floor crunched beneath his boot, grinding down the patchwork of salt as he slowly followed the faint trail of footprints, head tilted to one side as he listened.

The Jedi — the traitor, no, all of them, traitors — was cornered with nowhere to run and had never been more dangerous.

He saw the flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he is turning before the trooper can even think, but it is Cody who shouts, his voice tinged with a desperation that could have ripped the stars from the sky at a word. “Quinlan!”

The man stumbled, caught off guard for only a moment, before he turned, igniting his lightsaber. The green blade stole Cody’s breath away, Quinlan’s lips drawn back in a snarl as he shifted into the beginning position of Ataru, the muscles in his legs visibly bunching as he prepared to jump.

Cody knew what he would do. He had seen it so many times before; a deadly dance made beautiful by the care and precision behind it: a single leap and twist, with the blade following barely half a second behind, leaving nothing but death in its wake.

His helmet clattered to the ground, the air biting at the tears that rolled down his cheeks. Then, the hiss of Quinlan’s blade stopped as the Jedi deignited it, stumbling forward half a step before he caught himself, hurt emblazoned across his face.

Cody was struck by how different he seemed now to their last parting. Before, where Obi-Wan had been the rising sun and Cody was moonlight, Quinlan was the midday sun, bright and vibrant and intoxicating. He had curled into Cody’s side, one leg thrown across his hip to prod at Obi-Wan, who was motionless, except for the faint rise and fall of his chest. His breath still held the sweetness of the wine from the previous evening, part celebration and part regret at having to be parted once more even as the war slowly drew to a close.

Extracting himself was a journey in parts as Quinlan slowly worked his way free, every movement languid and tinged with a deep melancholy.

“You don’t have to get up with me,” he whispered, cupping Cody’s face with one battle-worn hand, his thumb smoothing over the jut of his cheekbone. Quinlan’s eyes slipped out of focus for a moment, warm brown no longer studying every inch of Cody’s face, but between one blink and the next, a warm grin spilled across his face. “But it is good to see you both.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Cody replied. It felt like a paltry offering compared to the roaring fire that rekindled itself in his chest for sustenance at the mere thought of the other men, but Quinlan only laughed, low and deep, before kissing him again.

“When the war is over—“ Quinlan cut off Cody’s attempt at protest with another kiss, infuriating and effective all at the same time before he continued, intent on daring the universe to defy him. “When the war is over, we will be together again.”

Cody tasted the promise like caff on his tongue, hoping with every shattered piece of him that Quinlan was right. His hands were steady as he untied the small token — a nondescript twist of metal with the edges worn smooth through the Force — from the leather tie around his neck, and pressed it into Quinlan’s hands.

The man stepped backwards, a chill settling in the space between them, and closed his eyes. Cody settled back into the warmth of Obi-Wan’s embrace, watching the peace settle across Quinlan’s face, the edges of his grin softening.

“Beautiful.”

“How?” Quinlan demanded, his voice harsh and broken, ripping Cody from the memory. “Why?”

Cody’s hands spasmed around the handle of the electro baton, the urge to ignite it almost overwhelming. Quinlan was close, too close.

“Didn’t— Couldn’t—“ The words would choke him before he could speak. His free hand shook as he raised it, signing a single clumsy message as he trembled with the effort.

He still tried to flinch away from the blow that Quinlan landed, the heavy hilt of his lightsaber thinking against his temple, then Cody was gone once again.

When he woke, it could have hours, days, weeks, years later. But he was Cody, settling into the body it felt like he had borrowed, with a slight shift of his shoulders as he tested the restraints.

He knew that he was on a ship, could feel the floor vibrating beneath him through the thin padding of the cot he was lying in. His stomach twisted and rolled as the autopilot shuddered into life, and then there was nothing to do but wait.

Pain pulsed through his head like a second heartbeat, blurring his vision when his eyes slipped open in coordination with the door.

“Morning, Cody. Have I ever mentioned how blood-soaked is a very attractive look on you?”

“That makes three times now.” The words clawed up his throat as he spoke, dried blood flaking from his face with every movement. “And you were even stone-cold sober for one of them.”

“Such a liar,” Quinlan teased, his laugh choked and distorted by the tears that ran down his cheeks. The soft sound of metal clinking together followed him as he walked across the room, and Cody caught sight of the countless mementos strung across his chest on a sturdy chain.

“I can’t untie you,” Quinlan said, his voice heavy with regret as he sat on the edge of the bed. “After the first time, when you woke up and you weren’t you—“ He broke off with a grimace, the action mirrored by Cody.

He could barely breathe, regret and hope he thought he had killed long ago wrapping around his throat like a noose. “Are you okay?”

Quinlan laughed, the sound a distant echo from the rich timbre Cody remembered, leaning forward to press their foreheads together in Keldabe. “I’m fine, don’t worry about me. I’m notoriously hard to kill, which I guess is lucky for us both.”

As if sensing the dark direction Cody’s thoughts were starting to spiral in, Quinlan moved closer and kissed him gently, blotting out the universe for everything but soft warmth and the bite of salt and iron.

“I know about the chip. I can’t destroy it, cyar’ika.”

Sorrow ripped through Cody’s chest like a blaster bolt. The memory of teaching Quinlan ‘cyar’ika’ each mumbled repetition punctuated with a kiss until it seemed to fill his very soul couldn’t stand against it, and Cody pulled away from the Jedi, curling in on himself as much as he could.

“I’ll hurt you. Eventually, I’ll slip back under, and I’ll kill you. Please, Quin.”

Quinlan shook his head, his jaw set in sly determination. “I can’t remove it. It’s too Dark for me to distinguish it from myself. But I know someone who can.

“You’re not a killer in the way you think you are, Cody. Obi-Wan is still alive. And he’s going to be so happy to see you.”

“Alive?” Cody felt as if the floor had fallen away beneath him, but he was still here, still in control. “He’s alive?”

Quinlan nodded, and Cody finally allowed himself to weep, pressing his face into the crook of Quinlan’s neck as the other man hugged him tightly, trying to hold his shattered pieces together for a while longer.

#codyweek2021 #codywan #quinobi #purge trooper cody #cody x obi wan x quinlan #star wars #quinlan vos #commander cody #obi wan kenobi #my writing

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chaseatinydream · 3 years

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pirate king (24) || atz

The ship, for the first time since you stepped upon it, is completely silent.

As silent as grave, the Treasure drifts through the night, lost and aimless. You’re seated where you first started upon this ship, at the main mast, waiting for your judgement.

The deck is completely void of anyone.

Your fingers come up to touch the crystal hanging around your neck. The crew can’t bear to look you, your mere presence like a stain in their eyes. It’s your fault. It’s your fault the ship ended up in such disaster. Your fault Yeosang got shot. Your fault that Seonghwa has lost his only chance of making amends.

You can’t find it in you to cry anymore. Wrung dry, every bit of you completely exhausted, you simply want to close your eyes and sleep for eternity, uncaring and unknowing of everything around you.

You’ve had enough. You’ve done enough. You just want to sleep.

San is tending to Yeosang in the sickbay, whose life and death hangs in the very balance. Even exhausted, the healer refuses to stop keeping vigil over the navigator, afraid that with every second that passes he might slip into darkness, that every breath might be his last.

You haven’t spoken to a single person since the battle ended. The only one who managed to comfort you even just a little was Jongho, who gave you a tight squeeze before going below deck with the rest of the crew to lick his wounds.

You shouldn’t have come to this ship.

You hear heavy footsteps on the floorboards behind you and you instinctively know who it is. They stop behind you, a tense silence settling in the air.

“Captain wants to see you.”

You can’t muster the energy to answer the quartermaster. All you do is push yourself to your feet, and for the first time since the battle, your eyes meet.

His stare is one of barely restrained fury and anger, you can feel it radiating from him like a burning stove. From the look in his eyes, he probably wants to hurt you in every painful way possible, but he keeps his fists clenched at the sides, his teeth grinding as he fights to maintain a facade of calm.

You wish he’d hurt you. At least that might distract you from the crushing anguish in your chest.

But he doesn’t, so you simply get up and follow him.

Right before you stop at the captain’s cabin, your hand lingers on the doorknob. Wooyoung had been in the captain’s cabin before you, explaining the events of the night before. Are you ready to face the eyes of your captain and crew, to take the punishment for your lies?

You aren’t and you never will be, but you push the door open anyway and step inside.

The first thing you see before you is your captain, sitting at the desk. His back has been treated with San’s most potent cleaning spirits and as much healing energy he can spare, wrapped with a light gauze to prevent infection and numbed with one of your master’s anesthetic concoctions, but you still have no idea how he’s physically able to sit upright before you.

Wooyoung is seated at the side, head bowed against his chest. He’s picking at his shackles, something you know he does when he’s upset about something, and your heart twists in your chest.

When you step into the room, he doesn’t look at you.

Your captain’s face is unreadable, completely inscrutable. It’s like the first time you’d met him, all over again, when you had been terrified of him, fearing for your life. It’s like the beginning, when Mingi had forced you to your knees in front of the captain, and you had felt more than learned exactly how dangerous this man was.

But at the same time, it’s not.

Now, the cold sting of reality is like a steel blade to your chest. The crew had picked you up from nothing, given you warmth, comfort and a home. They had given you a name, protected you like you were one of their own, and made you family.

And the only thing you had given them in return were lies.

Your captain’s one green eye meets yours.

People often say that eyes are the windows to the soul, but you can read nothing from your captain, and it scares you.

“Tell me everything.”

So you do. You tell him everything, the truth, unfiltered, gushing from you. How you truly had no memories the day you had awoken. Hearing the voice of the sea monster in your mind. Your visit to the sea witch. How you had single handedly caused the whole mission to fail, effectively knocking over the first domino in a line, and essentially screwing everything up for the Treasure and its crew.

The whole time, neither Wooyoung nor Hongjoong say a word.

When your story ends, Hongjoong merely meets your eyes coolly in spite of the agonizing pain he must be in, shifting to look at you. It’s as if he’s never met you, never shared any memories with you, never cared in the least about you. Your blood turns to ice.

“Thank you for telling me.” He replies calmly, but you recognise the expression on his face. It’s a cold, silent anger, one that grows in the chest and wraps its poisonous vines around the heart and lungs, slowly choking its host with emotion. “I’ll decide what to do about this at a later time-”

“Captain!” San bursts into the room, you whirl around in shock to see your master at the doorway, tears spilling over his eyes. Dread crushes you in vice grip at the sight of your master’s face.

“Yeosang’s dying.”

The words are like a sledgehammer to your chest and for a moment, you feel like the air has been knocked out of you. Wooyoung’s eyes darken in horror.

“What?” The gunner breathes, so soft and so desperate, mirroring your own feelings. You can’t even form words to voice the emotions raging in you.

San’s desperate, tear filled eyes meet yours. “I can’t do anything to save him.” The healer chokes out, body trembling from trying to keep in his sobs. You feel like someone has just swung a hammer at you. There’s silence as everyone takes in the severity of his words.

“We’re losing him.”

It isn’t enough. San’s healing powers aren’t enough to replace all the blood Yeosang has already lost. The musket wounds are too numerous, leaving the already weakened navigator vulnerable to infections. Yeosang is going to die, and it’s all your fault.

There’s a sudden violent breaking sound and a scream almost leaves your mouth, but it remains lodged in your throat. Your captain has just sent a fist through his desk, and there’s the crunch of the bones in his hand shattering. Blood trickles between his broken fingers and torn skin, but the expression on his face remains unchanged.

It terrifies you.

“Captain-” San begins to say, but Hongjoong gets to his feet and leaves the room before any of you can say another word. The healer dashes after him, and you’re left alone in the room with Wooyoung.

“Wooyoung-” You begin to say, but he cuts you off with a stare so piercing you can feel it physically hurting you.

“Don’t speak to me.”

You recoil, the words like a whip to your soul. Wooyoung has never, ever spoken to you this way before. There’s something dark in his eyes, something brimming with hatred, pain and anguish, and your heart sinks when you realise that it’s all your fault.

Your fault.

“I wish…” Wooyoung struggles to force the words out through a clenched jaw, hands fisted so tight his knuckles are white. “I wish you’d never come with me on this mission.”

You feel like he’s slapped just slapped you across the face.

“I wish…” He continues, grinding his teeth to the point you can almost hear his molars creaking. You continue staring blankly at him. “I wish that you’d died that first battle after Raguza.”

Pain, so physical and so real, buries itself like a sword in your chest.

“I wish… I wish you’d never come onto this ship.”

Your heart shatters into a million, tiny pieces. Part of you wants to make amends somehow, but something in your mind tells you it’s impossible.

“Wooyoung-hyung-” You try to say, reaching for him, but he knocks your hand away. The look in his eyes is one of terror, like those of a wounded animal, and your heart sinks in your chest. But worse, he looks betrayed, silent fury and hurt rippling under his skin and brimming in his gaze. He trusted you, and you deceived him. “Stay away from me.” He spits, eyes cold as ice. With that, he spins on his heel and leaves, never once looking back. The door slams behind him, and then you’re by yourself in the captain’s cabin, trying to process everything that has just happened.

They hate you.

For the first time since you joined the crew, you feel utterly alone.

You slump to the ground like a marionette whose strings have been cut, unable to keep yourself upright anymore. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.

If only you hadn’t come to this ship, the sea monster wouldn’t have come for them.

Your fault.

If only the sea monster hadn’t attacked them, the crew wouldn’t have fired their cannons in Navy infested waters.

Your fault.

If only they hadn’t fire their cannons, the Navy wouldn’t have attacked and the ship wouldn’t have stopped at Tortuga.

It’s all your fault.

If the ship didn’t stop at Tortuga, Seonghwa wouldn’t have seen the hanging incident.

You’re nothing but a burden to them.

If you hadn’t dropped the book during the mission, none of this would have happened.

Seonghwa would still be happy and smiling. Wooyoung would be cheerful and messing with everyone on board. Captain wouldn’t have had to endure such torment.

Yeosang would still be well and alive.

You hunch over yourself on your knees, mouth open in a silent scream as you bury your face in your hands. Why did you have to exist? Why did you have to escape that prison cell?

You wish… you wish…

You wish that you’d died the day you’d awoken.

You don’t know how long you stay in that position, but you don’t want to move an inch. You want time to stay this way forever, until the ocean dries up and this world is a scorched wasteland, until the stars themselves burn into nothingness and you are nothing more than a pile of bones.

But then the ship rolls with the waves, and you hear the sound of something wooden scraping against the floor. It manages to pull you out of your sorrow for a short second, your eyes glancing up to see what has ruined your moment of grief.

Under the bed, you see a dark shape shifting with the pitch and roll of the ship, and you frown. Then it comes to you.

“If I don’t make it… Beneath my bed… In captain’s cabin… there is…”

You lunge forward with desperate hands, tugging the wooden chest out from beneath the bed frame. It’s clean, not covered in dust like you’d expected, meaning it must have been put under the bed just recently. Your trembling fingers struggle with the latch and finally, the little iron bar slides free of its catch.

The lid swings open easily and you discover the inside of the chest is full of papers. They’re all of different sizes, different types of material and thickness, some with messy scribbles and some with clean lines, notes jotted neatly on every piece.

In Yeosang’s handwriting.

You realise every piece of paper has been torn out of some book, all with some sort of red marking on them. You pick up the first one you find.

In Egyptian culture, they believed that the god Khnum created children of clay, before placing them in their mother’s womb.

The second piece.

Incan mythology states that Viracocha, god and creator of the universe, formed humans from clay on his second attempt of creating living creatures.

It can’t be what you think it means.

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Finally, you pick up the piece of paper nestled at the bottom of the chest with shaking hands. This one is done completely by Yeosang’s hand, every word and letter in his writing, and you clutch it to you as you read it aloud.

“In Jewish folklore, there were anthropomorphic beings of clay, constructed from the earth. Just as humans were constructed from clay with the breath of life (a soul) by the Creator, humans attempted to create humanoids from clay as well.”

“Who made you?”

“These could usually only be crafted by immensely powerful beings, such as mages or magicians.”

“I am unworthy of looking upon her face, the one who you have made a deal with, the sea witch!”

“The magicians used them for all sorts of different purposes, such as spell casting to more mundane tasks like housework. They were crafted with shells of clay, made in the image of man, and animated with powerful magic. However, due to the weak state of the bodies, they often crumbled to dust in a few months.”

“I can’t believe I got to lay eyes on a vessel that has only existed for a moon!”

“They were called-”

You feel your heart stop beating the moment your eyes touch that single word. You understand everything now. Why Yeosang was so desperate to hide this from you, to save you from yourself, to spare your heart from being shattered into a million pieces like a broken jar of clay. He was only trying to help you, to keep you from the truth. The word leave your mouth as if you’re in a trance. It’s your identity, who you are, what you are. And it’s like poison on your tongue. “Golem.”

Yeosang had known what you were the whole time, an animated lump of clay. The paper slips from your fingers and you turn them over in shock, staring at the smooth skin, the lines of your palms. Clay.

A empty, hollow husk without a soul.

Your body is an illusion. Human in form, but nothing more than a puppet made of dirt. You are a golem crafted from clay. For a moment, you raise your arms and are terrified whether you’ll see cracks will appear on your skin.

Yeosang sacrificed his life for you. He chose to take not one, but three bullets, for a piece of clay.

You sink to your knees.

Sea Witch.

Made.

Humans.

Clay.

Golem.

A deprecating chuckle leaves your mouth. So does another, and another. Your laughter grows in volume, then you’re laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all and how true all of farce has turned out to be. Tears leave your eyes, but at this point you don’t even care.

A pile of clay crying? You’d laugh at the thought, except for the fact that you are the pile of clay.

I wish you’d never joined this ship.

The words didn’t hurt as much anymore. You knew what you had to do to make things right again. You burst from the captain’s cabin, thinking of Yeosang, dying in the sickbay, who knew about what you were, and still chose to save you regardless.

You’d never managed to thank him.

Well, you would now.

You’d make everything right again.

After all, no one would mourn something made of clay.

#ateez #ateez fanfic #ateez fanfiction #hongjoong #seonghwa #yunho #yeosang #san #mingi #jongho #wooyoung #ateez pirate king #w; ot8 #w; pirate king #w; fanfiction

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in-the-whisper · 3 years

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I'm sorry if this is a common/stupid ask but I fundamentally don't understand religion and I couldn't imagine believing so strongly in anything, but it seems very nice(?) and possibly even optimistic to have a constant like that in your life. so in the sense I think I have an idea of what religion is, what makes you decide(?) to follow it or believe in it? genuine apologies if this comes across as patronizing or condescending, it's not my intention and sometimes I'm just bad with words ':]

dude you are always welcome here and i will never assume that you are being mean you are very sweet <3 i am very happy to talk to you!

ok so i come from a super different background so it’s hard for me to even imagine like not knowing a ton of people who are religious so i will try to explain and then if it doesn’t make sense feel free to poke me and i will try again. also it makes me happy so dont be scared i will say oh! someone asked me about God! yay! and then i will write a silly tumblr post while making this face -> c:

okay so one of your confusions seems to be why i would believe in something so strongly. in a way everyone believes things strongly, some even more than me (i mean look at politics and thanksgiving dinner). i think the reason that my relationship with God in particular is something i feel strongly about is because i derived my faith from my natural understanding of the value of my friends and from my understanding of morality.

i love my friends very much (most people do) and the idea of them getting hurt or mistreated makes me very angry (i think people would agree). and you could make the argument that the reason that i care so deeply about people and justice is because of all the stuff ive been through but i did think this before anything bad happened to me really.

there is a difference between atheist (philosophical) morality and Christian morality. for someone who doesn’t believe in God, there isn’t anybody who is more important than humanity who can tell them what to do. if one person does something, and i don’t like it, all i can say is, “i don’t like that,” and not “you shouldn’t do that.” because im not in charge of them. i’m just another person, who am i to go around establishing moral laws for other people?

but what that /also/ means is that there isn’t any “grounding” or like /reason/ for morality or the value of life other than personal preference. this Really bothered me about my philosophy class, every atheist philosopher did this. they all wanted to say that you could make morality for yourself (looking at you nietzsche). But then what happens? What about when someone is killed? or raped? I want to be able to say, “Rape is horrible.” and not just “Rape is horrible in my opinion.” Anything that doesn’t allow for these like absolute, unquestionable, overarching standards of how people /should/ or /shouldn’t/ live just doesn’t add up imo.

Atheist professor of law at Yale, Dr. Arthur Leff, wrote an article on this exact topic called “Unspeakable ethics Unnatural Law.” The entire thing is amazing and I recommend it, but here is the conclusion:

All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know about ourselves and each other, this is an extraordinarily unappetizing prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, the ruling model is Cain and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror, seems to have worked to make us "good," and worse than that, there is no reason why anything should. Only if ethics were something unspeakable by us, could law be unnatural, and therefore unchallengeable. As things now stand, everything is up for grabs.

Nevertheless: Napalming babies is bad. Starving the poor is wicked. Buying and selling each other is depraved. Those who stood up to and died resisting Hitler, Stalin, Amin, and Pol Pot-and General Custer too-have earned salvation. Those who acquiesced deserve to be damned. There is in the world such a thing as evil. [All together now:] Sez who? God help us.

So if I think this is true, if I really believe that death is evil, that rape is horrible, that there are some universally binding and unchallengeable truths about how people ought to live, I have to believe in a God. or i can live in a state of constant existential dread hahahahaha, , I joke but I actually did do that for a while it was pretty miserable.

i think the next question was kind of what made me believe in it? and that is kind of a difficult question because i think in a way Christianity just encapsulates a bunch of things that i already believed, and i just found like a label for them i guess. i also grew up Christian, so for me my experience questioning my religious identity was more like, three people you love are dead why do you still believe in a loving God? Rather than which religion or philosophy do i like the best?

idk maybe they come out to be the same but it doesnt feel entirely the same. i’m still a christian because of sunsets and sunrises and because the world feels beautiful and intentional, and because i’ve been in a lot of pain and it was real. it really happened. it wasn’t in my head (looking at you stoicism). it wasn’t unimportant. there is not if buts ands ors it was just awful and that’s that. so what can explain it? what can explain meaning? only God can.

Christianity is specifically the religion im interested in because it’s the only one i’ve come across that is as internally consistent, historically accurate, scientifically accurate, coherent understandings of the universe.

No other philosophy allows you to grieve. That’s why I believe in God. No other philosophy validates grief that a belief in a loving God, a belief that death isn’t meant to happen, that people are violently ripped from you without purpose and that you are meant to live together forever. It allows for a belief in the value of humanity and grace while also allowing you to believe that things that happen to you that might last with you forever are wrong and not just in your opinion. They were violently wrong, they violated ancient laws of the universe, they were an act of aggression toward God himself.

Ok im rambling now but I will leave you with this, which is what i wrote after finally deciding to remain a christian:

“There are several questions I asked that stopped me from rejecting Christianity.

Where did the universe come from and why does it exist?

Why does our experience involve morality?

Why is there love? (deep love between brothers, self sacrificial love, to die for another love)

Why is there goodness?

There are, of course, answers to these questions under ideologies other than Christianity, but I found their answers to be unsatisfying because to me, the existence of these things screams that there is something more to the universe than an unfortunate accident in a vacuum of uncaring nothingness.

When I listened to music encouraging its audience to live, when I listened to people fight for the lives of those they love, when i watched the sun set, or cried at the end of a deeply touching movie, I would think, “In light of this how can you say there is no God?”

In Christianity I found answers that profoundly satisfied my deepest questions.

There is a universe because God in his wisdom fashioned it to be a beautiful gift. There is morality because we stand in the midst of a cosmic battle between good and evil. There is love because God’s nature is perfectly loving and the fabric of the knowable universe was woven in his loving kindness. There is beauty and goodness because life wasn’t created to be a void and an unknowable miserable darkness.

The true issue with atheism is that while intellectually and technically feasible, it gives empty answers to facets of life that do not have empty realities.

It forced me to ask myself this question: How can such a beautiful, meaningful, tragic world exist from nothing and for nothing?”

#rape tw #rape #griefjourney #grief tw #long post #i specify philosophical morality because atheists by and large dont actually think like this but at an academic level this is how the logic #ends up working out

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klaussicarus · 4 years

Text

Day Ten: Corruption

Maddy stalked closer to Phantom and glared at him. He was begging for her to stop, for her to think everything over. He was sobbing. Maybe Maddie would've cared, would've seen what she was doing and would've stopped in horror. But all she could see was the unnatural green tint to his tears, further cementing his unnaturalness. His face had a blue shade creeping up his cheek and forehead, his eyes red and glowing, his pupils sharp and one eye was just blankly wide with no sclera to stop the blood crimsom.

Her and her husband had let Phantom be, had set a truce because they had assumed that Phantom would maybe be an outlier, that he would be more useful to them semi-dead than permanently dead. And he was, at least for a little bit. Then he started changing. The Fenton's knew what was going on. His appearance was changing to reflect his true self. He couldn't stay perfectly human forever.

There was a slow decay that ghosts took, and Maddie was just slightly upset that Phantom was decaying faster.

[[MORE]]

Danny felt himself hit the floor and fearfully glanced upward to his Mom and Dad. They were void of their usual antics, Mom had dropped her cheerful demeanor, a cold sneer across her face and his Dad had all but forgotten his facade of bumbling stupidity, instead his gaze was calculating and sharp. They had several weapons that Danny had never seen, impossible, for he had a constant eye on his parents lab through their cameras, deleting condemning footage and watching over every invention and making sure his trigger happy parents didn't have anything too dangerous. But here was over fifteen new weapons and gadgets that didnt even have starting blueprints displaying various ages and intricacies, all looking deadly and dangerous.

What had made his parents so paranoid that they had started making secret weapons? Did they know about Danny's stranglehold on their cameras? Did they know about his destruction of their weapons that went simply too far? Did they know about his alter ego dumping ghosts into the portal?

He didn't know and it was eating him up.

Scrambling back from his Mom as she got a little too close for comfort, her large and almost silly ecto-knife gripped in her hands. At least it would've felt silly if it wasn't covered in his glowing blood, his sides screaming in pain everytime he opened up a rapidly healing scab on his body. A bit of blood gurgled in his throat, spitting out the bright green, once again staining the metallic floor of the lab.

The next time he looks up Dad's gone, his eyes flicking around to try and find him, only to hear movements from behind his back.

'Shit, shit, shit,' Danny jumps up and starts hastily flying out, only for Mom to grab his ankle and to fling him into the wall. A loud crack echoes and Danny muffles a scream. Mom holds him down just barely, only able to pull her ecto-knife out once Jack helps constrict him to the wall. 'Oh god, they're really going to do it this time. They're going to fucking murder me.' He could see it in their determined brows, and cold gazes.

He breaks. He can only try to preserve his life, even if it doesn't preserve his double life.

"Mom! Dad! It's me!" He flickers back to his human self, even the few seconds tainting his blood with flecks of red, shifting back again even quicker to keep his advanced healing up. "I know it's hard to understand, but I'm a half ghost and I'm kinda sorta dead but I'm still the same Danny and I still love stars and the color red and I'm still am the same Danny that you know somaybepleasedon'tkillme!" His breath was coming fast, lungs heaving for unexisting air and heartbeat quickening like a rabbit's.

Mom's face remained the same angry sneer, with Dad only wearing a shade of weariness.

"We've known Phantom. We've known for a real long while. We're not stupid." Mom's grip tightens on his broken ankle, pulling a whine from his throat. "You're corrupted. It was our fault for letting you around those nasty two, who egged you on, and our fault for not locking you out of the lab."

Jack clears his throat, adding on. "We thought that maybe since your accident was different than Vlad's, that you wouldn't decay as he did. His process was slow and tedious, everything about him was decaying at the same high rate-"

Danny gasps, "You guys knew about Vlad?"

Maddie growls and slams his leg into the wall to shut him up. "I know we tend to play dumb, but you think we would really abandon our friend for no reason?" Another eyeroll, "That's practically insulting."

Jack claims the conversation again. "Anyways, we had left him as he was because he was something new, something we thought, that was going to finally bridge the gap between human and ghost. But he got more and more sickly. His mind started breaking, he didnt have enough of a connection to the living world. So me and Madsy decided to try to help. It was agreed, I would get into a bit of a spat with Vlad, and pull away and stop visiting him, while Maddie would play up his crush on her before announcing our now blossomed relationship. It was a perfect recipe for the classic kill-replace-marry obsession. Then we stayed back and waited. But, it seemed he immediately went off the deep end. The only reason we didn't do anything was because we were soft. We felt bad. So we left him and only really checked up on his status intermittently."

Danny stared in horror. They had both manipulated and used Vlad like a puppet. This whole time he was singing and dancing to their tune, and they just let him go rage-drunk and wreck havoc on the human realm due to having an unfulfilled and erratic obsession! It was truly inhumane and disturbing. Every ghost knew to never manipulate someone's obsession, to never mess with it. It was a ghost's tether to the living realm and was the pillar for a ghost's core!

But on went Maddie, unseeing or simply uncaring of Danny's reaction to such statements. "But when we realized what happened to you, we assumed that you would be better. You had immediately changed. You weren't slowly dying, slowly decaying! So we assumed that you were lucky. We went soft, and went easy on you. You even ran around saving the town! You didn't need an obsession to live! You were a perfect halfa. Vlad was just a ball of unhealthy obsessions in every aspect of his life, yet here we had our ultimate halfling, no obsession, no monstrousness, no ghost likely behavior." Maddie seems to perk up talking about his perfections before glowering at him. "But then a month and a half ago, you started a uptick in you passion for space, then adding on an extra obsession for bowling, then everything you ate had to have apples in it, then you stayed longer in your ghost form, performing mindless tricks in front of the crowd when you didnt have heroic duties, then you were missing days of school, coming back with snowflakes on your shoulders and ice on your shoes from the ghostzone. We first thought that this was normal teenage obsessions and rebellions, but then your eyes would flicker red, and your teeth got a little to sharp, then your hair started flickering and your skin got colder and turned more and more hypothermic blues. You were decaying. You are decaying." She bitterly looks away. "A failure. Once we dispatch you, we'll do what we should have done long ago, and track down Vlad to put an end to his miserable half life."

Her knife hovered above the young halfling's throat. His eyes were wide with panic, the emotion fueling his transformations as his skin fully turned blue and his eyes kept flickering between green and red. There were tears in his eyes that shone green and his wide pupils flinched away from her for a second before letting out a melodic pitched scream, his voice not hurting her, but instead filling her head with urgency and an undesirable need to stop what she was doing. Jack lets go of him and Maddie felt herself lower her knife. What was this feeling? Was it like some self defensive ghostly wail?

Danny closes his mouth In shock and scrambles up to cling to some pipes on the wall in a desperate attempt to climb away. When Maddy feels his leg leave her grasp, she shudders and regains her sense of reality.

"GET HERE YOU MISERABLE LITTLE CREATURE! YOU DARE TRY TO FUCK WITH MY HEAD? HOW DARE YOU!" She pulls him back down and slices at his chest. 'Ironic,' she thinks to herself, 'that we brought all this gear yet all we needed was just a silly knife!'

#danny phantom #danny fenton #dannymay #dannymay2020 #phantom #maddie fenton #madison fenton #jack fenton #fenton #corruption #ectoknife ectoblood #tw blood #blood #stab wound #knives #trigger warning

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astrogone · 4 years

Text

* ﹙✧﹚ : ❝ @godbanes ❞ / 𝑇𝐻𝐼𝑆 𝐼𝑆 𝐴 𝑆𝐸𝐴 ; 𝑇𝐻𝐼𝑆 𝐼𝑆 𝐴 𝑊𝐴𝑅 .

oh, she’d known. the seas had warned her, the skies had wept when they tried to tell her — you will lose everything and yourself. thetis ignored the signs. the veil of happiness had clouded her view as she clung on ever moment with her boy, her baby boy who she cherished from the moment he was born. a bitter smile appears on her face. “ i should have known. apollon had prophesied that the bud from my marriage to a mortal would bring me happiness, that the child will live a long and peaceful life. ” how those honest and prophetic lips had lied to her in that moment, one of the most miserable and dirtiest moments of her life. the blue in her eyes darken like a storm and her stern gaze finds ophiuchos’. “ i reckon you already know that, ophiuchos. ” the whole world knows how she was humiliated, claimed as a prize then stripped of the only remaining thread of hope she had.

the softness and sensibility on her face disappear, replaced by the rigid and serious appearance she chooses to take. thetis learnt to rely on herself and herself only, even when her sisters had begged her to let them in, let them help. the nereid refused. she became cold as the bottom of the sea and wrathful as the waves. “ you only say that out of pity. pity that i do not need. ” and yet she sought it when she opened up and let her feelings be heard. “ you may stay at my side, but i won’t accept any pity. ”

thetis rips her gaze away from the elder being, her breath stuck in her throat. as a nymph she barely has any control over anything, including herself. many gods saw her as a prize, a piece of meat to use as breeding material. to protect herself from these hungry animals thetis decided to make herself angry, disrespectful, cold, everything a god would hate in a nymph. everything that a nymph isn’t. the act of standing up against those stronger than her still feels wrong despite millennia of training herself to be so cold and uncaring. “ at the end of the day, ophiuchos, it is your choice. those who remain with me are either blessed or face a tragic ending. ”

𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐄𝐃, 𝐎𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐔𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐒 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐀𝐋𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐘 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘— heard about it from one of their Amalgamations who was presented during her time with the deities nearby, agony ever dwelling beneath her feet. Even if they were just a constellation hung in the sky with no memories, they would witness her struggle, and they would grieve for her by burning too brightly. Burning, burning, dying; it was all a constellation could do. ( THE SINGERS AND POETS WERE LIARS FOR ONLY TELLING THE UNIVERSE THAT THE STARS COULD DANCE, SING, LIVE WHEN THEY WERE NEVER ETERNAL, NEVER FREE. YOU WERE TRAPPED IN A FIRE FOR TOO LONG, IF ANYONE TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE BEAUTIFUL, YOU WOULD STARE AT THE SUN AND MELT REPLYING TO THEM: “THANK YOU, I DID NOTHING BUT BURN FOR YOU. DO I LOOK BEAUTIFUL STILL?” ) The whole world would know Thetis’ tale, yes, but the sky had eyes everywhere too. Ophiuchos was forever grateful to be given the chance from the believers to be standing beside Thetis, rather than being bound to only the stars and planets, their worst enemy. Though when she told them with such despise about them offering pity, something snapped in Ophiuchos and their stars died out; darkness reigned.

“Pity... Pity, you sssay, huh?”

Genuine confusion flickered violently in their voice, made from the lungs of a vessel that would comprehend so much emotions and their complexities, yet not when Ophiuchos had lived too long holding the burns— the agony as their only emotion. They said it out of pity. Emotions could truly not be that simple, now, was it? Frustration grew in Ophiuchos and they could only see deadly, blinding lights. ( YOU WANT TO SWALLOW THEM WHOLE BUT ALMOST LIKE BEFORE, YOU WILL WAKE UP SEEING YOUR BELLY STRETCHING AND TEARING FROM THE UNIVERSE DEVOURED IN YOU— DO YOU THINK YOU ARE READY TO KILL AND DIE IN REPEAT AGAIN? HAVE YOUR THROAT FULL OF WEEPING, DYING GALAXIES? BECOME A FALSE BIG BANG THAT CAN MAKE THE VOID ITSELF WISH IT CAN DIE ALREADY BEFORE IT CAN BE TOUCHED BY YOU? SHE DOES NOT NEED PITY, BUT LOOK AT YOU, FOOLISH SNAKE, YOU ARE THE PITY. ) “I don’t know how otherssss would say it, but how can I ssay what I meant it without pity— what you define it as painting you asss a weakness, I should ssssay?” they shook their head, as if they were offended to be placed in a position of being the threat when they could simply walk away from all of this chaos— leave her behind to suffer in solitude.

“Burn me into ashes, Thetis, I didn’t ssay it out of pity to make you look like one. I sssaid it becaussse I... I...” Ophiuchos’ mind blanked, their focus wavered as they could not find a proper word to use it in this time— this distorting, dying time, time, time...

“I CARE about you.”

When Thetis looked away from them, a hiss clawed through their throat, telling her to look at them, find the abyss staring back at her in their golden eyes after they threw their black shades over to the sands behind them, a tool now abandoned— forgotten. Stay at her side? No, no, that would not do. Instead, Thetis was going to have Ophiuchos stand in front of her then, with the waves continuing to rage behind their back and the future waiting to steal their spine, soul, name— they would be nothing and no one, and Ophiuchos only laughed despite everything. ( LOOK AT THE SERPENT, LOOK AT THE SINNER. THE NYPMN HOLDS THE RIGHTS TO BECOME THE WRATH, SO WHY TURN AWAY? THERE IS A CAUSE NOW SO BECOME THE EVOLUTION OF IT. THERE ARE THUNDERS RISING IN THE ATMOSPHERE, SANDS VIOLENTLY TREMBLING AHEAD, THE WAVES ARE WAILING AND SNEERING AND SCREAMING ALL AT ONCE; THE THREE GREAT GREEK GODS ARE FOUND IN A POORLY BRED NYPMN, AND THE WHOLE WORLD CAN ONLY WITNESS IT, BE REMINDED THERE IS A REASON WHY A STORM BEARS A NAME. BECOME THE STORM, OH, DEAREST DYING NYPMN, DIE AND BECOME THE UNFORGIVING SEA NO MORTALS AND IMMORTALS WILL EVER WISH TO EVEN THINK OF SUCH MERE PRESENCE— BE FREE. )

“Thossse who are either blessssd with a happy ending or cursssed with a tragic ending by simply being with you iss what I am getting from here,” mused Ophiuchos, tilting their head and their golden eyes gleamed. Though was that not how everyone thought at some point in their life? That those who stayed behind with the ones they thought of their beloved would only face two distinct outcomes? At least, Ophiuchos themself had thought so. ( IN YOU, KINDNESS MADE SOUNDS, AND CHAOS MADE SILENCE. EITHER THESE ENTITIES LIVE VIOLENTLY OR DIE PEACEFULLY BECAUSE OF YOU. YOU ARE A COMPLICATED BEAUTY SHEATHED IN A PHOBIA. YOU CAN NOT REMEMBER WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU MEAN ANYTHING BUT WONDERFUL TERROR TO THE UNIVERSE. YOU BREATHE, THEN EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE WILL BLEED. ) They still did while staring at Thetis, their gaze never breaking, never wavering. Always watching. “Interesssting that you are desscribing my associatesss perfectly as well, but, heh, that only further provesss my ssstatement—” Ophiuchos would try to take her chin for her to look at them directly in the eyes, gently, softly, even when there was only tension between them. Either she would let it happen or turn away from them, they would only think:

‘Look at my eyes and tell me what can you see? Nothing but gold. I was a constellation, so my eyes held those stars, but you don’t see them because I had killed every single of them because I do not deserve them— be remembered in the end. I don’t want to be remembered.’

“You are not alone.”

Ophiuchos stepped back from Thetis, but they were not done speaking yet. She could drown them in the sea, and they would only scream the rest of their words out. Despite the idea that their body would try to tear itself apart, with their lungs and veins full of fire, they would still be heard then and that was all they cared about: To be heard. They screamed in a ball of flames, so what difference would it make to do so in the sea? “If you are planning to leave thiss world and sssstay in the ocean forever after everything that had happened to you, okay, I undersstand, but,” they fisted their hands, clenching their hope that Thetis would listen to them, “Just know that I have already sssuffered so much from just being alone, ssso choosing to be with anyone— you? Oh, I am certainly embracing thissss choice, ssso give me all of what you have from the good and bad and in between, and I will only ssstand turning your ocean into the home made of nothing but MY blood.” Losing out of breath, they harshly exhaled. The weight had formed bit by bit in their body each time they uttered a sentence to Thetis, dragging them closer to the ragged surface of the rock, their face facing nearly Thetis’ feet— as if she was winning anyway, and all she did was watch. Ophiuchos would let her win though because after everything she had to go through?

Lived with?

Thetis deserved one good Goddamn ending in any situations. Just at least one.

Ophiuchos ached deeply, yet they still found a voice to use. They could not recognize it as their own, though they would hate to know if it was truly theirs; this voice was full of cracks and holes, bleeding nothing but pathetic despair. “But if you do allow me to ssstay with you, you will have to let everything in me ssssstay with me, including pity...”

Rage flickered, then died in Ophiuchos.

“It isss all or nothing, Thetis. Light or darkness forevermore. Your choice.”

#long post cw #//#( OHHH FUCKINGG SHITTTT THOUGH )#( WHY IS MY MUSE LIKE THIS THOUGH HDJCJDJCJD I HATE IT OVER HERE )#( OKAY BUT )#( ARI PLS YOUR WRITINGS AND THETIS ARE SO GOOD )#( literally can never get enough of you )#( yes lmfao love when my writing style changes randomly because of a sudden atmosphere change in the thread shdjsjsj )#( also love that we haven’t even plot out Anything with these two yet and )#( Ophiuchos is just: juST SHUT UP AND TAKE MY FRIENDSHIP )#( HSNCJDJD )#( ITS ALSMOST 3AMOVE HERE THOUGHFHOLY FUCKDJFNDNXJSJ GOODNESS I G H T )#࿐ ˚ . ‧✧̣̇‧⎛ ic ⎠ : ❝ i found my role in a tragedy . ❞#( * ophiuchos . )#godsbane

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gorgagne-viperidae · 5 years

Text

erden; threshold

you.

you know this dream. you know how it begins and you could count off each second with a preciseness so perfect it could cut, you know it as you know the exact tick of seconds per minute, minutes per bell, bells per day per sennight per moon. it has been years since it last haunted you and you could recite it from memory in perfect unbroken recollection without a hitch but it doesn’t stop your heart from hammering in the cage of your chest, doesn’t stop the strangling terror from taking root in your blood, blooming poisonous and terrible. you know it is here the moment the technicolour blur of your dreams goes dark and awareness, awareness is a fist to the gut, dragging you from the sluggish depths of oblivious ignorance into cold cognizant lucidity

it begins like this: a vast plain stretches out from beneath your feet and reaches out far beyond the range of your sight. if there is a sky, it is the same inky black as the earth, indistinguishable and seamless at the unseen horizon such that it leaves you- small, lonely you- surrounded in night so complete it strikes you blind. but you are not blind; you see yourself, the only thing there to see, too-long limbs and too-large horns curling at the peripheral of your limited vision in a sweep of ridges and keratin; a comfort however small. it is not night nor darkness so much as it is an absence, a gaping void so unfathomably complete that it defies comprehension. in the way of dreams (or is it memory?), you know without knowing that where you stand is, at once, beyond the space that She occupies and yet below it, the flip side of a coin unseen and yet as vast as the world itself. the knowledge is an ache, a hard knot of dread in the pit of your gut, a litany running itself raw behind your teeth repeating the same realisation over and over: you were never meant to be here.

in the way of dreams you begin to walk, strong legs carrying you nowhere as quick as thought. you don’t need to see the passage of a landscape that isn’t there to know you aren’t moving; where else is there to go but nowhere?

in the way of dreams you begin to run. run, run! faster, legs pumping until your muscles scream you sprint through nothing, lungs heaving like a bellows feeding fire and the first sparks of panic into your blood and you run. you run until you can’t. until you stagger to a walk with your hand on your side like you could massage away the thrumming sharp stitch working its way through your ribs, until your breath sears your throat and all you can hear beneath your own gasping is the roar of your blood under your burning skin. your pulse is a drum, beating a frenetic pace in perfect time with the slide of your composure into chaos. you breathe ice, the shards sticking in you in painful splinters as dread freezes your heart in place.

in the way of nightmares you begin to shout, vocal chords straining as you run your breath ragged and airless proclaiming: here i am! i am real! shouting turns to screams, defiance runs itself into desperation like a skein of thread unraveling in tangled and helpless knots. you are real! you scream yourself hoarse on names you cannot recall; is it your family you call for? who? yet call as you may, they don’t answer. nothing answers. the dark swallows your words whole, greedily drinks the hard notes of your spiraling despair and you wonder, under the panic and aimless urgency, what it means if you can’t hear yourself. night closes in oppressive, as thick and as heavy as ink, somehow viscous in a way that lingers on your tongue with a copper tang of fear. it clouds you, presses in on you, renders you as deaf as you are blind so that your tears fall unheard and unnoticed.

you. small, lonely you, you begin to cry. time is a concept that no longer concerns itself with you; you have lingered in this limbo forever while the dark eats your child’s pleading for someone, anyone to help you. in the way of nightmares you know this is your fault, that this is your price for daring to dream, for having the temerity to follow your family across the threshold into the unknown. family. cry harder for the shining memories of them gleaming blinking beckoning like beacons in the distance, feel the shudder of your sobs in your limbs like the shake of boughs in the wind because the truth is this and simply this: you are scared. cast out into the underside of creation you are lost and scared and unprepared.

in the way of guilty hearts you think, maybe you were never meant to follow. maybe you never should have stepped off the precipice, you should have stayed safe and cowardly on the other side while the shards of your heart disappeared into the light like soap bubbles, floating high and free and with a hope so querulous it’s no wonder everyone called it a suicide mission. but you -small, lonely you- could never suffer to be alone. so here you are.

crying turns back to pleading turns to bargaining. is anyone listening? you demand: take me back. you plead: i want to go back. in fading desperation, you bargain: i will do anything. exhausted, you weep: i will give anything. your offer hangs in the dark like a single clarion note, trembling with emotion and a conviction you have never held prior to now. you wait. bells pass, days pass, years pass and it is when you begin gouging at your horns with blunted bleeding nails for any scrap of a sound that isn’t just your heartbeat, it happens.

you don’t notice it at first. you don’t notice anything until your breath rasps strained in your throat around thin air that hurts to breathe. the endless black around you gains a weight that surpasses gravity, gathers into itself a density that presses in on you with intent to crush. as if it had been waiting, watching for you to notice it, this aching nothingness collapses in on itself like walls, batters you, engulfs you and with a breathless and mounting horror you watch it rise like the ravenous sea to swallow you piece by struggling piece. it consumes you without sound or fanfare in a cold and singular impartiality despite its evident patience, eats your screams in a muffling tide only to pour into your mouth as heavy and as cold as the uncaring ocean and as it closes in over your head in inky waves to drown you crush you pull you under you

---

Wake up, Erdenechimeg.

Breathe. Suck in a hard lungful of air, feel how sharply it aches when it unfurls in your chest in slow, burning waves, straining from an exertion you do not recall undergoing. Your throat is a flayed thing, raw in patches as if you have screamed, shouted, cried your way through the veil of sleep and the sting of it is what grounds you. Your limbs shake, your bones shake in their casings of muscle roped so tight and tense it’s a wonder they haven’t cracked. Your hands are claws sunk into your own forearms, blunted fingernails dug into skin and scale as if you could pry yourself open and take refuge in your own racing blood. Hyperventilation lurks over your shoulder, raking cold nails down your ribs and you bury your face back into the well of your crossed arms and you bite into the crumpled ball of your pillow to stave off the wild scream digging furrows into your throat.

You calm in stages. Reaching through the maelstrom of your panic you pick a point, any point to focus on that isn’t the stuttering babbling thing living behind your teeth. Start small, Erdenechimeg. Take the darkness, first. It is night, but even with your face tucked into the shield of your arms you can tell this night is as bright as day in the face of the true darkness of nothing. Here, in the holy dark of your shared room, the night lays soft and gentle over the two of you like a blanket, warm and flavoured with the tang of salt from the sea breeze through the window. The body curled into your side like a comma slumbers on, unaware of the panic thrumming through you like a frenetic beat. Breathe. Makoto sleeps undisturbed, colourful and warm with his hair spread out across the pillowcase like an ink bottle spilled, here and solid and so real it stings your eyes, a prickling in the back of your nose. You measure out your breath, force it into uniformity lest the shake of your shoulders give you away.

Morning is bells away still, the skies beyond the window lightening in slow gradients to wash out the rich, star-studded night to softer grey and blue hues. Bells until the horizon sets itself ablaze with the sun rising over the ocean, throwing lazy fingers across your bedroom wall to set the colour in Makoto’s skin afire with life and warmth anew. Bells until the household stirs, until your lover trades in his quiet snoring for louder murmurs of complaint or query or sleep-soft endearments. Bells, still, of warding off sleep, ducking under its welcoming arms to lie in stubborn wakefulness because you know, history has taught you that the dark waits behind your eyelids for the moment you forget yourself.

So you wait, Erdenechimeg.

You can wait.

#ffxivwrite2019 #erdenechimeg kha #ic post #kicking off the last prompt with hell

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spookyspaghettisundae · 5 years

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Suffer, Huntress

Evil walked the streets of the city. Fog strangled the spirits of people, instilling them with a fear that prevented them from straying far from the heat of the hearths. The thick fog suffocated the light shed by the gas-powered lanterns lining the cobblestone-covered streets. In the shadows of an alleyway, darker than most, a young lad clasped his hands together, mirroring the gesture of many a penitent man. But he prayed to no god.

Even surrounded by tiny flickering dots of candlelight, arranged in a specific arcane formation, this particular spot turned colder and darker than any other throughout the metropolis. The youth spoke strange syllables—uttering unspeakable sounds that no human tongue should utter—a spell that a strange man had taught him. An eerie sorcerer from far-flung lands, housed in a lavish tent in the harbor district, peddling his occult services for coin.

Reciting the deviant incantations, the boy prayed to something unholy in hopes of conjuring a power that would allow him to exact his revenge. Oh, but what a fool this lad of twelve winters was. He believed this ritual to be a tool at his disposal—but in truth, an unseen force would now use him as a tool to enter this world.

What a petty motive had driven the lad to practice such dark arts. The Baker boys had pulled down his pants in front of the seamstress girls on Miller street in broad daylight. A humiliation he could never forgive them for, as his darling, Susanne, was among the girls to witness his debasement. Not that Susanne really knew him, nor did he have an inkling if she even remotely reciprocated his sentiments. But to such a young and naive lad, the world had collapsed on that fateful day. And soon after, he sought revenge, though the Baker boys were too big and too tough for him to confront in person.

As he finished speaking the unspeakable, many disjointed thoughts crossed his mind. For nothing happened and his fears began to fill the dreadful void that followed. Had he misspoken on any parts of the spell? Had the stranger cheated him out of his hard-earned copper coin? What if the magick failed to do what he desired, and the Baker boys knew somehow of his doings? Would they do yet worse to him?

Still, nothing happened. The ringing from the clock tower bells to indicate the witching hour had long ceased to echo. The streets remained dead silent. The candles flickered, mocking the lad.

A violent gust of wind howled through the alley and blew his cap off his head, ruffling his hair, and snuffing out the lights from the candlewicks. He inhaled sharply, expecting something to happen.

And happen, something did.

He gurgled and rasping breaths escaped his lungs. A disembodied force surrounded him, enveloped him. An invisible something came from nothing, engulfing his body. It tickled all over, tingling—made him feel like dancing, but also gripped his heart with terror. It entered his heart first, spread from there into his thoughts, and finally took control.

Though he continued to see through his own two eyes, everything seemed so far away. Even his own hands, that he stared at. It was not him that gawked at his palms with curiosity, but the entity that had taken over. Cackling erupted from his mouth, not of his own volition. If his body still did his bidding, he would have screamed.

He left the alleyway—not the boy, but the creature in the boy’s body. Staggering at first, gaining familiarity of its vessel with each step, recalling how to move human legs again.

It had a mission. It wandered the streets, uncaring of the cold that bit at the digits of the body it had possessed. It had not felt so alive in a long time. After all, it had just escaped a prison between the worlds.

It, too, sought to exact revenge. Though its intent was of a much more murderous nature than the stupid boy’s. A lesson to be taught, a mortal to be punished.

It gazed at the street signs, finding its way. Ignoring the boy’s pleas for release, it homed closer and closer to its chosen destination. A stone tower standing tall above the houses around it. Massive fortifications with iron spikes and barred windows adorned its front. It exuded something merciless.

The creature marched towards the entrance. A man in a constable’s outfit stood guard outside the heavy wooden door leading inside. That officer displayed admirable stoicism, unflinching and with his hands buried in his jacket’s pockets. He glared at the boy approaching him.

The constable hissed at him, “What in the devil’s name are you doing here, boy? At such an ungodly hour?”

The creature reached out and feigned innocence when it answered, “Sir, I am lost and am afraid to walk home alone from here.”

It grabbed the man by his wrist, wrestling a hand out from his jacket pocket with a sudden surge of inhuman strength. Shock and awe of this peculiar situation paralyzed the man. They locked eyes with each other and both froze. Time stopped, with a split second dragging on like half an eternity. The creature released the boy, leaving behind a cold emptiness and a young soul scarred by the dread of helplessness.

The constable shivered and his vision glazed over. Thicker than the fog in the streets was the mist in his very own being: his adulterous thoughts and pangs of guilt towards his wife that had been on his mind all night aided the creature in taking control of him. In a haze, the constable was lost in his thoughts while the entity forced his lips to curl into a devious smile.

The boy gasped, emitted a clipped shriek, and ran off into the night. The constable’s body, now no longer within his own control, cackled as he turned to enter the tower.

Although it was cold inside this prison’s walls, the air within was warmer than the freezing night outside. The demon savored this change in temperature but wasted no time. The shroud of confusion that kept the constable from fighting back would not hold forever. The constable even entertained some murderous thoughts towards people who might reveal his sinful secret, giving the creature cause to chuckle.

Another officer inside gave him—it, or them—a funny look, but then averted his eyes to continue reading the penny dreadful he held in his hands as the possessed constable walked past him.

Tapping into the vessel’s thoughts, the demon knew where to go next. It traversed the prison’s lower chambers, arriving outside the office of the head warden. The constable knew—and by extension, so did the entity—that the head warden had stayed here late this eve, drinking himself into a stupor, just as he was wont to do on many such nights as of late.

It rapped the door with brute force, marveling at the delicious pain from the borrowed bruised knuckles not its own. Then it entered before the warden could respond.

The head warden looked up from sloppy notes in a journal, saying, “Come—”

He glowered at the constable. Tiny reflections of candlelight danced in his eyes together with venom. Brandy wafted out on his every breath. “Ah, yes, I see we’ve abandoned all good manners,” he slurred at the possessed man.

The warden arched an eyebrow as he stared at the constable, who now grinned at him.

“What is so damned funny, Marcus? Spit it out.”

The constable’s mouth opened and a jet of vomit shot out in a stream of steaming, disgusting goop. Foul-smelling and acrid, a mixture of black and dark green fluids sprayed the warden in the face, who sputtered and shielded his eyes far too late, only after tumbling from his chair onto the cold stone floor.

The constable chortled but almost choked, coughing up more bile as he rounded the warden’s desk and knelt beside the man on the floor. The warden writhed and desperately tried to wipe the vomit from his eyes but the possessed constable touched his forehead with his index and middle finger conjoined.

Then the constable collapsed, crumpling onto the floor beside him. The entity took over the warden’s body. It swam in a sea of stupor. The world span around him, and the warden’s drunkenness made it easy to assume control. The warden would probably think that this was all just a bad dream, until the cold harsh reality of the next day set in. The sobering nightmare of learning what he had done that night, once the demon was done performing its dirty deeds—oh, how the entity relished this prospect.

It drew a kerchief from the warden’s pocket and wiped the vomit from his face. He then produced a ring of keys from the desk drawer and jingled it, enjoying the bright ring of metal clinking together. Then he found the warden’s knife in the next drawer, which he hid inside a sleeve.

It forced the warden’s lips to whistle a happy tune as it left the office and made its way up the winding stairwell. The guard sitting in the entrance shot a glance to the warden, but shrugged and continued reading the piece of printed fiction in his hands.

Ascending the prison tower, the entity imagined all the ways it could torture its target. It had spent a lot of time contemplating this specific act. It had long lusted to inflict a unique breed of bodily harm and suffering.

“It is time to suffer, huntress,” it whispered through the warden’s teeth. His mouth twisted into a hideous, inhuman grin.

It made the fingers of the warden’s unoccupied hand dance and wiggle, picturing what it would be like to peel skin from muscle, and shaping the mental image of toying with human flesh and bone, piercing it all down to the marrow, drinking in the spectacle of muffled screams, and tearing and pulling with the warden’s strong bare hands.

Even through the alcohol-addled brain of the warden, the demon could pry precise knowledge from his memories. It knew exactly what cell to visit. It stopped right outside the reinforced door and unlatched a small opening at eye height. It peered inside, past rough iron bars that would prevent any grown human from reaching through.

A woman sat motionless on the stone floor, leaned up against the wall, one knee bent, the other leg outstretched. Her head was drooped down and a mess of tangled greasy hair concealed her face. Rays of moonlight poured in from in between the bars of her cell’s tiny window to the outside world, reflecting off of a sheen of sweat on her skin.

It was her. Nora Morrissey, the object of this demon’s obsession, the target of its intended symphony of torments.

Eager to begin, it unlocked the cell’s door and entered, closing it behind itself. It drew the knife from the warden’s sleeve. His teeth glistened in the moonlight, standing out bright and white between the lips that parted for that horrid, toothy grin.

It bent down to grab her but stumbled back in confusion. A sharp pain exploded in the warden’s gut, searing hot like fire, but cold and merciless like the wintry air itself. His fingers slipped off her arm. And although the haze of drunkenness had made it easy for the demon to take control, the same intoxication had dulled its own perception of the world around it. That sheen of sweat on her skin was not a cold one—it was warm, and her skin hot to the touch.

Icy, pale blue eyes stared back at him through the tangle of hair in front of her face. It looked down and found something sticking out of the warden’s belly. A crude, pointy object with straw wrapped around it. Something made of wrought iron, whittled down into a sharper shape from scraping it against stone for a very long time.

“I waited for this moment,” the demon had thought mere moments ago. But Nora, the “huntress,” was the one who said those words out loud. Had the creature spoken through the warden, the words would have spilled out with sadistic glee. But the words she had spoken trickled out, each syllable dripping with contempt. The sentence echoed in the demon’s entire being, instilling it with something alien.

Fear.

They struggled, grunting, panting, slamming each other back and forth into the walls of the narrow cell. It slashed her with the warden’s blade across her palm, drawing blood, but she fought with a rage that welled up in her gut, summoning a strength that took the entity by surprise. While he sunk the knife into her side, just missing something vital, she elbowed him in the throat and then seized the opportunity that opened as he reeled, repeatedly stabbing him in his belly with her improvised dagger, finally wrestling the bayonet from his hands.

Although the demon was in control of the warden’s body because the brandy had dulled his senses, the booze had also dulled the the body’s coordination. The world spun and crashed down sideways until the warden’s face smashed into the wall. The warden and the entity saw stars not of any world. The creature struggled to get up, but the body disobeyed.

The demon sensed the dagger rushing towards the warden’s back. The miscalculation now dawned upon the monster. It had underestimated this wretched woman. Time ground to a halt.

She had killed one of its kin. She had foregone the rituals of exorcism, ending its existence by killing that kin’s vessel. And now it sensed the same air of murder about her. Just before she could sink the dagger into the back of the warden’s skull, it fled this body. A thick violet mist billowed out of every orifice like a cloud of living steam, dispersing in every direction.

“You made a mistake coming here,” she growled. The demon could hear these words, haunting it on its way back to the void between worlds. “If we meet again, I will destroy you.”

It wanted to tell her the same, but had no body to respond and no courage to lend credence to such a threat.

And like that, it was gone from this world.

She took the keys from the warden. He groaned but remained lying on the floor, face down. She squeezed her fingers and hand together, balling it into a fist, letting blood drip from her slashed palm. Nora allowed herself to whimper. Tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked, wiping them away with the back of her uninjured hand.

She had no time to waste. It was time for her to escape. The Crimsonport Killer—as the press had dubbed her—was free. Some part of her had hoped to remain here in captivity until the day she died. Because with freedom now within her grasp, she felt the pull of a terrible responsibility, the weight of a crushing burden.

Once she stepped foot outside her cell, she could taste that burden. Once she escaped this place, she would have to hunt again, and live in squalor and in the shadows—a hopeless life of fighting the darkness with no safe haven to rest her head in. This demon was just one of many, and the demons were but one of the evils laying siege to the Red Coast.

The creature had unknowingly inflicted a different suffering than it had intended.

The ruthless huntress had returned.

The night would quake with fear.

—Submitted by Wratts

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sunniebelle · 5 years

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Perpetual Hope

Ten x Rose

There is nothing the Doctor can do but watch in horror as Rose puts her life in mortal danger to save the Earth, once again. Though he is desperate to find a way to save her from what the timelines are saying is inevitable, he tries to deny that he could lose his Rose forever. He soon learns that there is always hope to be found, if one knows where to look.

(tagging @doctorroseprompts for Doomsday month)

A03, TSP

The Doctor was cursing himself in a multitude of languages, calling himself every type of fool. He should never have brought Rose Tyler to this wretched place! He should have refused to take her back to see her mum.

Yet, he couldn’t deny her that small pleasure or the radiant smile it always brought to her face—and he was loathe to admit that he could very rarely deny her anything at all—so he had taken her back to the Powell Estate... and right into danger! More danger than she had ever been in during all her time with him. And, really, that was saying something!

“Hold on!” he shouted as he reflexively reached out for her.

He watched Rose struggle to reach the slowly descending lever while still holding onto her magnaclamp. An increasing amount of dread and panic swept through his mind and body as he watched Rose let go of the magnaclamp and grab the lever, bravely attempting to push it upright again. As soon as it was locked into position, however, the wind and suction increased dramatically; the remaining Daleks and Cybermen once again zooming through the air and into ‘hell’.

Rose’s body was almost immediately pulled horizontal to the floor, drawn unwillingly toward the void, a place of unspeakable horrors and never-ending nothingness. All that kept her from falling into its jaws was her two small human hands, desperately clinging to the lever.

His mind moved at an incredible speed, trying to think of some way to stop the inevitable ending, what he saw drawing nearer in the timelines. But he was completely helpless! He could do nothing to stop what was about to happen to his precious Rose. All of his knowledge, all of his superior Time Lord abilities and biology that he bragged about endlessly, every bit of it was bloody useless!

He had foolishly allowed himself to hope, to believe that this one time the universe would give him this chance to be happy; that it would be kind and give him his Rose. However, the universe was rarely ever kind, and obviously had no intention of being so today. Not to him.

Never to the Doctor.

He had too much blood on his hands for the universe to ever be kind to him, or to anyone he cared about. It seemed to relish punishing him, over and over and over again for his actions during the Time War, because of the impossible choice he had been forced to make for the sake of all creation.

The universe never let him forget that it would have its revenge. And right now, it would take it in the form of his beloved pink and yellow, kind-hearted human. In this moment—this one terrible, horrifying, hearts-stopping moment—he knew that his Rose would pay the price.

As the wind and suction in the painfully white room grew stronger, Rose struggled to grip the lever even more tightly, the void unerringly trying to pull her into its vicious, uncaring grip. But his precious girl was a fighter, a Tyler woman, strong-willed and stubborn to the end.

He watched in growing horror as Rose desperately held on to her lever, a scream of pain mixed with fear wrenched from her throat as her fragile human body was unnaturally stretched, the void’s lure becoming too much for her hands to bear. With every millimeter that her grip slipped, his hearts rate quickened, his breathing now fast and shallow.

As the timelines became clearer and showed him undeniable proof of how this would end, he reached out in desperation, uselessly grasping at thin air, knowing, but adamantly denying, that he would never be able to reach her. He shouted out to her, begging her to hold on.

A spike of ice-cold fear was driven directly into his hearts, chilling his blood, his stomach twisting into an impossibly tangled knot. His hearts pounded so loud he could almost hear them over her frightened gasps and screams of pain as the pull of the void over-stretched her shoulders and arm muscles, straining her hand’s death-grip.

Suddenly there was a shift in the air and a familiar blue-coated man—one the Doctor was sure he would never see again—appeared out of nowhere, stumbling into a crouch.

The man’s blue eyes darted around the bright-white room in astonishment and confusion before locking eyes with the Doctor. Captain Jack Harkness’ attention was quickly diverted upon hearing a cry from Rose's direction, her fingers slipping the last few centimeters on the lever.

Leaping to his feet and moving faster than seemed possible, Jack ran toward Rose.

The Doctor felt the terror in him build to a crescendo and, as her fingers slipped and she was sucked toward the void, it erupted from his throat in an unearthly scream, crying out her name as he helplessly watched his Rose fall toward hell.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion—whether it was him actually controlling time and its pace, or just how he was processing everything, the Doctor wasn't sure.

Jack flung his blue-coated arms around Rose’s middle and they both fell to the floor, his body atop hers as he tried to keep her from being pulled into the void. Yet the suction on Rose was too strong and was dragging them both toward its hungry opening, and it would win very soon.

The Doctor's eyes locked with Rose's and he saw the helplessness and sorrow in her eyes, but also saw her unconditional and unfailing love for him.

Jack quickly grasped one of Rose’s hands, holding it securely to a device on the top of his wrist, and pressed a button. A moment later there was a blue flash of light and shift of the air and they both vanished from the room.

In stunned silence the Doctor watched over the next few moments as the wind gradually died down, the void closing in on itself with a slurping, suction-like noise. The Doctor's feet suddenly fell to the ground, no longer being pulled on by the void.

He clung to his clamp for several more heartsbeats and glanced around the room, struggling—even with his impressive brain—to figure out what had just happened.

Suddenly, and without conscious thought, his feet were moving him toward his ship, carrying him at top speed toward his TARDIS.

Knowing he would have no patience with the lift, he tore down the stairs, setting a reckless pace. Following his ingrained sense of direction back to his ship, several minutes later he was frantically turning his key in the lock and rushing into the console room, slamming the door shut behind him.

He sent out a frantic plea to the sentient ship, asking her if Rose was aboard. He was filled with a myriad of conflicting emotions as he received a negative response.

He rushed to the console’s computer, clacking away at the keys, entering information in as fast as he could to search for his current and former companion.

He read over the results several times to make sure they were correct, burgeoning hope and unspeakable joy filling his whole being at his findings.

Quickly, he ran around the console, turning knobs and pulling levers like a madman, a manic smile stretching across his face as his magnificent space and time ship hurtled through the vortex.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Notes: This is a Doomsday fix-it, for Doomsday month, one that has been floating around my mind for a while. It is based on the assumption that Pete did not jump back at the last moment and catch Rose when she falls. There's also a surprise appearance from one of my favorite DW characters. This will likely be two chapters (not really sure yet, so don't hold me to that! :D). If you have any questions about the story, please feel free to message me! :D <3

#doctorroseprompts #doctor who #tenth doctor #rose tyler #ten x rose #fix-it fic #captain jack harkness #jackie tyler #angst #hurt/comfort #timeywimey #daleks #cybermen #army of ghosts #doomsday #doctor who doomsday

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soveryanon · 5 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG135 /o/

- Fun fact! The verb “extinguish” has appeared as a word in all three of the Daedalus statements, in relation to the three different powers involved:

(MAG057, Carter Chilcott) “There’s nothing, nothing but empty, uncaring void lacing dead worlds and dead stars all-together like a tapestry of lonely meaninglessness. Humans have existed for the smallest sliver of a fraction of a moment in the existence of the universe, and we will be extinguished just as quickly. And when we are at last gone forever, into the quiet emptiness of death, there will be nothing left but the cold universe. And nothing shall mark our passing because there is nothing to do so.”

(MAG106, Jan Kilbride) “Most people can’t even properly appreciate the size of our own planet, seeing it only in crudely rendered diagrams or maps; but compared to us… the planet is immense. More than large enough for the swell of humanity to grow and… ultimately extinguish itself. [SCOFF] Yet compared to the wider universe… it isn’t even a noticeable speck.”

(MAG135) ELIAS: I don’t know the details. Ny-Ålesund is a stronghold of The Dark, meaning I can’t see inside. I… believe they call it “The Extinguished Sun”, though that’s as much as I know.

- I love how The Dark still feels like… that one fear which should be super stereotypical (Cult Of Darkness.) and yet always manages to get under your skin anyway, and is that one thing that we’re apparently never managing to get rid of. Julia and Trevor butchered Darvish in Summer 2010? No problem. Things happened in March-to-May 2015 at the Hither Green Dissenters Chapel, apparently derailing or temporarily neutralising The Dark’s activities? Ahaha, we’ll manage. Maxwell Rayner was killed by Section 31 officers on Elias’s Personal Tip in February 2017? IT’S FINE. WE CAN STILL DO SOMETHING. I had Questions about how The Dark was connected with Gertrude’s death, I’m delighted that we’ll be digging into their activities again, since Jon isn’t sure what happened – isn’t even sure whether Gertrude had managed to neutralise them! I wonder if the matter of March/May 2015 as the date of Gertrude’s death will be explained, or if I should finally put that to rest as a simple mistake.

… Interestingly, following the pattern of solar eclipses: the total solar eclipse over Ny-Ålesund that Basira had pinned down actually took place on 20th March 2015, which is… neither when Mark Bilham went into the Hither Green Dissenters Chapel (March 11th), neither when Gertrude officially died (March 15th or May 15th), but is around the time she should have died according to Oliver’s dreams. In real life, the next solar eclipse (partial) in Ny-Ålesund happened on August 11th 2018, so that could be the planned date for the upcoming half-baked new ritual attempt indeed… but the date is a bit weird for the overall pacing of season 4. We’re in… beginning of April? 2018, and usually getting a statement a week (more or less). So that doesn’t easily coincide with a midseason finale, nor with the season finale? Unless Team Archive hurries to get to Svalbard very soon, in the hope of neutralising The Dark before August 2018. (Funny bit: there was a partial solar eclipse in South America on February 15th 2018… the day Oliver visited Jon and he woke up from his “coma”.)

I have no idea: there are so many things to keep track of, currently (Peter’s own plans? The Extinction’s threat? Elias’s intentions regarding The Watcher’s Crown? The Web’s schemes and intentions for Jon? Now, The Dark’s activities?) – I… do like that it indeed gives us a feeling that, outside of pure narrative… all the Fears have their own agenda, they’re not just queuing up for the Archives team to take care of them? They’re not dependant on them, they carry on Doing Their Things and bringing their own terrors? And it’s… very bittersweet to think that it will probably always be like this.

- I’m so mad about the fact that Manuela’s story makes… so much sense with how Jan had described her:

(MAG106, Jan Kilbride) “Manuela Dominguez was quite a big name in certain areas of the physics community. Or at least she had been; I hadn’t heard of any work she’d done for a good few years and, as I said I’m more on the engineering side of things so… it wasn’t really something I kept up with in detail. While she was happy to talk, Manuela apparently didn’t like to discuss her professional life on Earth, or the specifics of the research she was doing on the Daedalus. Like Chilcott, her research was kept entirely separate from mine, and while we spent plenty of time together, I never did figure out exactly what it was. Something to do with lasers, I think.”

I never ever thought for one second that it might have been “it’s because she’s part of the cult, Cass, and has been for the past years” aND YET IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE AND SEEMS SO OBVIOUS IN RETROSPECT… I’m so mad, I love this series and it keeps making me feel like a Fool. (But with love. Cackling at my face, but with love.) Another thing that gets a bit… “funny” in retrospect:

(MAG106, Jan Kilbride) “It was the sense of a presence, of there being something out there… something that wasn’t the Earth, and it was getting closer… When it started, I tried to talk to Manuela about it, but she seemed to think I was talking about aliens and quickly changed the subject. […] And that cry came again; so loud, and long, and deep that I couldn’t not be the sound of a living thing – so vast and so ancient that thinking about it made me weep. And I screamed in turn. My hands touched the rail at the exact moment that Manuela came to check on me. I was moving again. She asked if I was alright, though she… clearly had no interest in the answer. She said she’d felt the station shake, bu–ut when I pressed, she… claimed she hadn’t heard anything. Her eyes were red and I noticed for the first time that the tips of her fingers were burned. I… don’t know why I asked her, really. I knew then that she hadn’t heard it – that she would never hear it. And I felt completely alone. I remember I almost envied Chilcott, because at least he had known what he was signing up for.”

…………………… She probably assumed that Jan had heard her “battery” screaming, uh, hence the quick denial.

- WHY DO WE KEEP GETTING OPPORTUNITIES TO GET SAD ABOUT JAN KILBRIDE??? There was already something very… sensitive and heart-wrenching in his statement from MAG106, in his thought and overall tone (I’m apparently very weak to characters pulling the ~I would have liked to still be able to think that ignorance meant safety~ shtick ;;), even more with Melanie’s narration – she was absolutely perfect for that one, with her voice slightly cracking and the overall impression of throat tightening… And I was already sad for him with that statement alone! Even sadder when thinking he was probably the man with beautiful eyes seen with Gertrude during The Buried’s ritual! And season 4 keeps making me sad about him, godsdamnit, first with Jon mentioning how he ended, and now with:

(MAG135, Manuela Dominguez) “Either way, it was clear my two fellow astronauts were patsies, sent up there to suffer. I almost felt bad for them, but it was in most ways a relief to know I wouldn’t need to worry about them interfering with my own project. […] the closest I ever came to discovery was when Kilbride expressed confusion at the rate that our supplies were diminishing. It was really only the two of us anyway, with Chilcott sealed away, having his own little breakdown. And Jan was always a bit of an idiot, so ready to believe anyone’s lies… But I suppose I don’t need to tell you that – do I, Gertrude?”

(The insidiousness was creepy, sure, but come on, Dark people, we’re so used to Voyeurs all the time, you spilling that You Know What Gertrude Did With Jan doesn’t feel mind-blowingly threatening compared to the others <3)

I wonder if we’ll hear again about the Daedalus. Melanie had noticed that Jan’s statement felt like it ended abruptly (presumably, Gertrude was told he was here and interrupted him to have a chat?) – so there could be another half lying around, or a live-statement with Gertrude, or… I don’t know. But now that we know that there was a 4th person on the station (WHICH WAS A “HOLY ARCEUS” MOMENT), and given that Manuela mentioned that she wasn’t sure of the Lukases&the Fairchilds’ own motives + that… the person who had taken care of the calculation must have been aware of the extra body, but she didn’t say it was Rayner’s team taking care of that aspect, it still feels like there might have been another story against the Currently Official Story (once again):

(MAG135, Manuela Dominguez) “I don’t know how he convinced Fairchild and the Lukases to help finance the project – a life as long as his is evidently very good for one’s finances, but even so, space exploration is a whole other magnitude of expenditure. I don’t entirely know if they were working on rituals of their own, or simply pushing the boundaries of their own fears, their masters. […] Exactly how the launch was arranged, I couldn’t tell you, but I assume the calculations must have been done by one of ours. Otherwise, well… weight is very important when planning a launch, and it could hardly have escaped their notice that there were four people in that rocket.”

I’m very appreciative of the way the Daedalus had been handled in the canon, slowly taking “shape”. We first had Carter Chilcott’s testimony, who… couldn’t tell us a lot about the life aboard, except for his own experience, since he was precisely isolated; we then had Jan, who was more in control but still unaware of what was at work there; and now, we’re getting Manuela, who turned out to have been totally aware of the aim of the mission. This could be the end of the story, or there could be yet more to put things into perspective (ha), we’ll see!

- I don’t know which shade of queer Manuela was/is but: definitely queer (“Anything they did not understand became unnatural and I found myself crossing that line from an early age. Although strangely, out of everything I was, it was always my desire to pursue a scientific career that they railed against with the most energy.”). AND SO AWFUL HOLY HECK… I’m glad that Daisy wasn’t in the room with Jon because his tone was so into it that… he might have freaked her out a bit? It was terrifying, so… deceptively sweet while digging the knife deep into your flesh…

- One thing that gets me a lot (in a “HHHHHhhHHHH” way) is when… avatars talk about their patrons? The reverence, the worship in their words? And Manuela was especially “HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” is that regard: yes, absolutely terrible, and did you hear that drive and that passion? (It’s hot/aesthetically pleasing, is what I want to say.)

I still have… the impression, in a way, that the Daedalus never actually happened in the TMA universe; Melanie had mentioned that feeling in MAG106, though she pointed out the existence of pictures of the crew’s return to Earth, but somehow… I can’t help but feel like indeed, it was too out of our realm to truly have happened, and that it was all staged by another entity/by the Lukases&the Fairchilds, to pretend it had happened when actually the staff had stayed on Earth all along, and that they organised the press releases about it? But it’s also awfully fitting that yes, Fears experiments sound so impossible that it can’t have been happening. If there is no twist, it seems like avatars are drawing powers from their patrons proportionally to the faith they have in them?

(MAG135, Manuela Dominguez) “Scientifically, it was nonsense of course. Dark energy and the like don’t work like that, not even remotely. But that wasn’t important. What mattered was that it felt like science, and that was all I needed. To do my work, to create the Black Star would need a parody, an aping mockery of science. But it would also need the deepest of darknesses. When I told Maxwell what I actually needed, he told me such a thing was impossible, but I insisted. And so he began his work on the Daedalus.

[…] My experiments continued largely uninterrupted, pushing the boundaries of light, darkness and fear. It was dangerous work and more than once, I got too close to the light and it almost destroyed me. But it didn’t. I could regale you with the technical terms or scientific disciplines I played with and rendered meaningless, but in the end all you actually need to know is that I succeeded. A tiny, terrible sun of the pitchest black, shining beautiful Darkness all around it.”

Like a twisted “believe in fairies” – things getting the power you give them, similarly to symbols? Sarah had, back in the days, said the Trophy Room Taxidermy Shop got its powers from people’s interactions with it (MAG096: “What is the significance of this place?” “Nothing, except what people give it. But they give it a lot, make it a place of power for us.”)

If the experiment did indeed happen in space: there had been hypotheses that the “falling satellite debris” which killed Oliver had been the Daedalus, and I had dismissed it because the dates didn’t match at all… but I’m a stupid potato and: of course the crew returned to Earth through a shuttle, and this was explicitly stated by Manuela. So it could still have been the Daedalus going full-on Icarus.

… But on the other hand: while the name “Daedalus” finally takes a bit more meaning with this episode (the story about ~getting too close to the sun~), Daedalus was actually the prudent one, who remained wary of the sun and was clever enough to always escape the murder attempts. Icarus went too close to the sun (and drowned in the sea, leaving Daedalus alone). Daedalus… gave his name to the maze, and brings corridors to minds. (But the “Daedalus project” was an actual, historical one, which never got completed in our world… Rah, I don’t know! The fact that we learned that Manuela had actually been full-on avatar in the space station, and not an innocent scientist victim of The Dark, makes me paranoid about another… twist regarding the station x’))

We’ve had another reference to Icarus in the canon, though: “George Icarus” was the name under which Leitner was buried, as Tim discovered in MAG114. Paid by the Institute. It fits Leitner very well but… given the ties between “Daedalus” and “Icarus”, it feels like a very weird coincidence – so did you get involved in the space project in one way or another, Elias… *squints*)

- Regarding the 4th person on the Daedalus, I’ve been grabbing my face a lot and screaming in silence about the sheer HORROR of suddenly learning that… there was someone else aboard, with Manuela very casually dehumanizing him at every possible turn (“one unlucky nyctophobe”, “I never learned his name, never needed to; he was simply a battery”, “The final experiment had left my battery in such a state that no amount of sound-proofing could dampen the screams, and I was glad of the peace and quiet.”). I wonder if it’s someone we’ve already seen mentioned somewhere…? The only potential one (in my mind) would be Peter “Pete” Gordo, who worked at the Wakefield Prison in MAG052 – Exceptional Risk, and had touched the Dark creature when it came to butcher Robert Montauk. Both the (awful) statement-giver and Jon had highlighted that he had vanished shortly after, in 2002, so he was probably a “half-finished meal” too…

Since Manuela… didn’t mention killing him but implied that she had left him behind (alone) in the station when she went back to Earth with the other two, I wonder if he might have turned into Something Else, or if he plainly died of exhaustion / lack of oxygen / starvation / Fear (alone, in the dark empty infinite space). Conceptually, it could be a good tie-in if he had somehow become an avatar of Extinction, but I don’t know how that could fit with his primal fear and what happened to him. One thing I have in mind, though: Daedalus was the inventor who helped Pasiphae copulate with the bull, in the myth, and the Minotaur wouldn’t have been conceived without it. So… Daedalus contributed to Creating The Monster (before working to contain it). Not sure it could be relevant, but just in case… there is that.

(- Extra-funny thing about Icarus/Daedalus……………… remember how Peter had called Jon in MAG134? A “bull-headed Archivist”. Congrats, Jon! It might have been involuntary (IS IT.) but you’re officially the Monster In The Labyrinth, right now, according to the Lonely creepy boat captain.)

(And again: considering that it turned out Martin was the one who gave Jon the connection to the outside that helped pull him out of the coffin, does that make Martin an Ariadne.)

- So, we got a new name for a ritual (The Dark is ~The Extinguished Sun~) but we also got the notion of a “stronghold” mentioned by Elias:

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

=> Breekon had described the Institute as “The Eye’s Pedestal” (MAG128, “That was the first time we saw what would become this place, The Eye’s Pedestal.”), too. The question is still pending for Point Nemo (a Vast one? An End one?) and Hill Top Road (neutral ground or Web? Desolation? Spiral?). For the Lonely, Carter Chilcott had very specific dreams reminiscent of the graveyard from Naomi’s statement and of the Tundra’s journeys:

(MAG057, Carter Chilcott) “The hallucination stopped. I did not even get the comfort of company in my delusions, though at some point, the line between dreaming and reality seemed to blur. I’d be sleeping, strapped into my bed in the middle of the void, or at the same time floating through ancient graveyards or the open, empty sea. They weren’t hallucinations though, they were dreams – even if the cold seem to seep out of them, and into the bones of me.”

And there were the places where ritual attempts took place – the Wax Museum for The Stranger (though the Taxidermy Shop was also “a place of power” for them), that Elias claimed to be unable to access (and Jon did feel weird with no conception of time there); the town of Bucoda, for The Buried; Sannikov Land, for The Spiral; the Gnostic church near Istanbul for The Flesh (and potentially the Hither Green Dissenters Chapel for The Dark). Given how these places got… severely destroyed after their rituals got thwarted, it sounds like they were only been temporary places to build up power? Ny-Ålesund and the plain… sea are a bit more permanent than those punctual places, though? (Please, Team Archive, don’t go bombing the whole of Ny-Ålesund.)

- If we’re going to be digging a bit more into Dark-related activities… will we get a confirmation of what the fuck was happening re:Maxwell Rayner? Did he just have a remarkably long lifetime thanks to “feeding” his god, like Simon Fairchild, since we know that he was already around in the XIXth century and Manuela herself made a reference to the fact he had been around for very long (MAG135: “a life as long as his is evidently very good for one’s finances”)? I know the favourite fantheory on this one is that he’d been body-hopping but I’ve never been convinced since we didn’t really have descriptions of him changing, except that he was often Kind Of Old. There… has indeed been a suspicious trend of him targeting or getting a child around him: an unnamed one in 1864 (MAG098, Doctor Algernon Moss: “He is led around by a young Arabian lad of ten or eleven, though the ease with which he carries himself makes me suspect this assistance is an affectation rather than necessity.”); in 1995, Julia was attacked by the creature when she was 12; Basira and the other officers were sent against Rayner after he had kidnapped Callum Brodie, twelve years old, in January 2017 (MAG073, Basira: “Yeah. Callum Brodie. Twelve… twelve years old. Disappeared from his home in Dalston three weeks ago.”) – but it’s not necessarily to get a new body…? I always had the impression that it could plainly be because… well, the fear of the Dark is more prominent in children? So they could perhaps feed Dark-people better?

- I mostly wonder if (/hope that) we will get a bit more information about the relationship between Robert Montauk and Maxwell Rayner, in the process! Because… honestly, except for the fact that Robert’s wife apparently belonged to the People’s Church of the Divine Host (since she had the pendant) and that Robert killed around 40 people between 1990 and 1995 that may or may not have all been related to the cult, there are a loooot of things I’m still uncertain about? And Jon still had Questions about it too:

(MAG052) ARCHIVIST: So what is this thing that seems to have stalked Robert Montauk through so much of his life? And what’s its connection to Rayner? Were they summoning it, containing it, worshipping it? Whatever the case, it seems as though Montauk earned its anger. I feel it might be worthwhile getting a few more torches for the Archive.

(MAG074) ARCHIVIST: Well, that seems to close the book on Maxwell Rayner. Maybe the whole People’s Church of the Divine Host. I can’t help but feel I’ve got the last chapter of a story and I don’t even know the title. At least I hope it’s the last chapter. I still can’t find much about the company Outer Bay Shipping. Looks like a shell corporation, but tracking corporate ownership is not something I’m skilled at.

* Was Julia’s mother a runaway from the cult, or an active participant? It sounded to be the latter since Julia mentioned that she used to have friends who… didn’t inquire on her disappearance (MAG009: “apparently no-one noticed she was gone, which was strange as I have vague memories of her having friends over a lot before she vanished.”) Had she left her pendant to trap Julia too? Did she disappear to protect Julia? Did she willingly get spirited away? Actually, Robert told Julia she was “gone” but since Robert’s last victim had disappeared from his previous life a few years before his murder (MAG009, Archivist: “Christopher Lorne was a member of the church and his family hadn’t heard from him in the six years prior to his murder.”)… could it be possible that Julia’s mother is actually… still alive… and very Invested in the cult…

* Robert apparently did these things in order to protect Julia from… the cult? The creature? Maxwell? Julia did highlight that protecting her was one of his concerns (MAG009: “He whispered to me then, when he thought I was asleep, promised to protect me, to make sure that ‘it wouldn’t get me too’.”), but she didn’t really come out of the story acknowledging that it was what he was trying to achieve, I felt – not even to renounce his methods or success. Even when we got her live-statement in MAG109, she presented his actions as unrelated to her. But what was Robert doing exactly, and why…?

* Julia highlighted that they didn’t get any money problems (MAG009: “it was only after his arrest that I discovered that had been the point he’d resigned his job on the police force. I don’t know where the money came from after that but we always seemed to have enough.”) sooo was Maxwell Rayner paying for Robert’s… services?

* Robert and Rayner apparently hated each other by the time of Robert’s imprisonment, when Rayner visited him in Wakefield Prison in late March 2002, a few months before getting butchered by The Dark’s creature (… or one of them):

(MAG052, Phillip Brown) “It was an older guy, I’d guess late 50s, wearing a well-tailored black suit and an expression of disgust. When I brought Montauk in, his face fell, and he went very pale. I’d helped folks beat Robert Montauk a dozen times or more, but I had never seen him look scared. He sat down opposite the old man, and they looked each other in the eye through the thick glass. I think the visitor might have been blind. His eyes were cloudy, but he had no cane or dog. And it didn’t seem to affect how he looked at Montauk. Neither of them spoke. The seconds turned into minutes and still they didn’t say a word. They just sat there staring. Given where I work, it’s really something to be able to say that I’ve never seen two people who hated each other as much as Robert Montauk and that old man.

[…] I was tense, ready to fight off Montauk if he decided to make a move, but instead, a soft voice came from out of the darkness. I didn’t recognise it, but I thought it sounded like it came from the old man, and I don’t think he was talking to me. [STATIC:] “You didn’t think you could kill it for long, did you?” [/STATIC] That’s what it said. Then Pete got the door open, and a shaft of light poured in from the corridor. I could once again see Montauk and the old man sat there, motionless. It didn’t seem like they’d moved an inch, though as I went to take Montauk back to his cell, I noticed that he was crying.”

But before that, Rayner had apparently sent Robert after his next targets (MAG009, Julia: “He asked me to tell my father that it was Detective Rayner on the line with a new case for him.”), so? Unless the last one was someone that Robert went after without Rayner’s approval? Christopher Lorne, Robert’s last victim, was the only identified one, and was confirmed to have belonged to the People’s Church of the Divine Host. Was he an exception, or were all the previous victims from the cult too? In that case, why the heck was Maxwell Rayner getting them killed…? Or were they typical sacrifices in the cult? What happened, for Rayner to have come to loathe Robert, although he previous appeared to be giving him instructions…?

* Unless… was the man who phoned the Montauk’s house and pretended to be “officer Rayner” actually Maxwell Rayner, or someone making fun of him? Julia mentioned that the voice was old (fitting Rayner, forever a bit old) but… that it had an accent (MAG009: “It was a breathy voice, like that of an old man, and at the time I decided he had a German accent, though, when I was young a lot of different nationalities and accents were lumped together in my mind under the label ‘German’.”). If we know one thing from Maxwell Rayner’s voice, at least during the XIXth century, it’s precisely… that it just sounded unremarkable in English (MAG098: “Both speak perfect English, with no accent I can recognise”) – though the statement also dealt with German folklore and Rayner Knew about it, so who knows. Same person, different perceptions? Body-hopping after all? “Maxwell Rayner” being a mantle and a role more than the same person/soul?

- tl;dr Given how The Dark has been a huge part of Julia’s story and there is still room for Questions regarding Robert Montauk… if the Archival staff is planning to go after the remnant of the cult, I really hope that it will be Julia’s cue to come back… Although it has been stated that she couldn’t handle the idea of travelling by boat for very long.

- Re: Manuela’s DRIVE, how fitting that this was also an episode in which Elias casually mentioned his own ~patron~ (I’m really glad that Peter and Elias are now using that word too! It had, so far, mostly been used by other people to refer to avatars’ gods, not avatars themselves presenting their gods this way). Elias rarely mentions The Eye unprompted, and there was something interesting in the way the plural “you” from Manuela’s statement, referring to Gertrude and Elias, became that implied “we” from Elias, referring to him and… Jon, nowadays.

(MAG135) ELIAS: Fine. Consider it a test – things are… coming, things that will need Jon to be far stronger and more willing to use his connection to our patron.

Not the first time Elias amalgamated Jon and himself in the same ~we~ (MAG092: “It doesn’t please your master?” “Our master, Jon.”) but it was especially noticeable since Manuela had totally reduced the relevant Eye agents to the Archivist and the Head of the Institute, too. I don’t know how to explain that but… I felt like there was a bit of an echo, between the fact that Manuela had her own “we” (“even with the loss of Darvish, we will still be victorious”) with clearly identified, more powerful figures (Maxwell, Darvish, Manuela herself), and the… Eye people. There is mostly Elias and Jon, they’re the ones with powers, and as Manuela is describing The Dark’s ritual coming closer at the time of her statement, I feel like the shadow of the Watcher’s Crown is silently looming in a corner?

- As usual: e v e r y t h i n g about Elias. It’s been twice in a row now that Peter appears in an episode only for Elias to do the same in the very next episode and it feels like a competition between the Two Bastards to claim the Throne. Or a friendly competition between Alasdair Stuart and Ben Meredith to see who will manage to make people laughscream the most.

Anyway, non-exhaustive bullet list of Elias being… Elias:

* Do you think he will manage to give ONE GOOD PERFORMANCE REVIEW ONE DAY. I mean, how did he handle Melanie, who worked the hardest of all the assistants in the beginning of season 3, who read the most statements after Martin, who was given work by Jon, and all despite the lack of Archival training&direction (as she called Elias out on)?

(MAG106) ELIAS: And… how are you finding it? MELANIE: Is that a joke? ELIAS: Aside from the obvious, I mean. MELANIE: Oh well, I… I suppose it’s been… unstructured. Without Jon around, and with you being sat up here lurking, there’s not been a lot of useful direction. ELIAS: I see. MELANIE: I mean, you pick out a statement occasionally, and Jon might phone in to ask after some… scrap of information, but to be honest, no one’s even really told me what an “archival assistant” is actually supposed to do.

[A FEW EVIL SPEECHES AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE SESSIONS LATER]

MELANIE: [BROKEN SOBS] ELIAS: Anyway. Aside from all of that, I’d say your performance has been… satisfactory.

Meanwhile, Jon, who managed to snap out of the chaos that was The Unknowing, saw through Nikola, managed to compel Tim back to awareness enough for Tim to use the detonator…

(MAG135) ELIAS: Consider it a test – things are… coming, things that will need Jon to be far stronger and more willing to use his connection to our patron. His performance during The Unknowing was… disappointing.

… was “disappointing”. THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAID IN MAG120, THOUGH, YOU JERK:

(MAG120) ELIAS: You’re doing well, Jon. I only hope you can continue your growth without my guidance.

Insert the “My job here is done.” “But you didn’t do anything…?” meme here.

Elias, just face it: you’re a shit boss, a shit manager, a shit leader, absolutely terrible when it comes to actually giving direction, they’re not responsible for this!! :w

* Well, at the same time, calm your Jon!boner Elias:

(MAG135) BASIRA: Then you messed up. Way he tells it, he doesn’t know how he got out of there. ELIAS: But he did. And his powers were no small part of it. Even if he required some assistance, they were what saved him. And he’s still achieved what no one – mortal, monster, or anything in-between – has ever been able to. He climbed out of The Buried. […] If Gertrude had a plan for this one, I haven’t found it, which is why Jon needs to be closer to The Eye. If anyone can stop what’s happening, he can. See through the darkness, etcetera.

I had wondered whether Jon wasn’t beginning to get a biiit more powerful than was to Elias’s taste (since he mentioned to Basira that he has given instructions to prevent Jon from visiting him if Jon was inclined to it in MAG127, and Jon demonstrated in MAG128 how he’s now able to… extract statements from unwilling subjects, plus the overall droplets of knowledge), but it sounds like it’s actually going according to plan. Elias had already mentioned that Jon was… supposed to grow his own powers and be the one to take care of The Unknowing, back in MAG102, but here, Elias came across as especially powerless compared to Jon (“I don’t know the details. Ny-Ålesund is a stronghold of The Dark, meaning I can’t see inside.”) and… not even trying to pretend anymore that He Has An Important Role On His Own. Jon is the Archivist, we knooow, we’ve been told, but what is Elias’s function in this mess, then…?

* I’m not sure that there is anything more behind the “detective” title he’s giving to Basira since, as mentioned another time… it was something Georgie initially used (MAG122: “You’re the detective.”) and Elias uses it precisely because Basira pointed out that it wasn’t her title?

(MAG135) ELIAS: Nice to see you again, detective. BASIRA: Still not a detective. Never was. ELIAS: Oh, but everyone else seems to be getting a title these days, why shouldn’t you– BASIRA: [SLAMS HANDS ON THE TABLE] Cut the shit! […] ELIAS: I rather feel the real shame would be letting the entire world fall into Darkness because of a single person’s wounded pride. Detective. The stakes are far too high for that kind of… indulgence. […] ELIAS: Good luck. Detective.

It sounds mostly, to me, like a cat staring you RIGHT IN THE EYES while slowly pushing your favourite mug off the table? Doing it just to piss her off? Elias never used “Archivist” with Jon either (except in statement-mode in MAG120, but he went back to “Jon” when addressing him directly through the tape right after the static had faded), so I’m not sure there is particular… substance to it. On the one hand, it would sound like the perfect title for a Hunter-Beholding activity (tailing someone or something and learning about their privacy, potentially cumulating both fears of being hunted and exposed). On the other hand, I can’t help but feel like it could be another jab at Martin, who had mentioned his own lack of special pet name:

(MAG092) ELIAS: You think you’re the only police officer eager to do violence and call it justice? No, there are plenty of other rabid dogs out there, mad with the Hunt.

(MAG116) ELIAS: Oh, and, Jon, technically, I can’t stop you, but I would heavily advise against bringing any… rogue… elements. MARTIN: You can just say Tim.

(MAG118) MARTIN: Oh. That’s it, isn’t it! Martin’s just acting out! I mean, Daisy’s a rabid dog, and Melanie’s a potential killer; Tim’s a… a, a rogue element, but Martin? Oh, Martin’s just, just acting out! He’ll have a cry, and a lie-down, and feel much better!

(And once again: Elias did mention that Jon had received ~assistance~ to get out of the coffin… but managed to not name Martin directly, pfftttr.)

* Even more rattling chain sounds every time Elias opens his mouth => he’s using his hands a l o t when talking, uh. Gesturing person. VERY dramatic person. Is it a prerequisite for working at the Institute, was that the reason Elias chose Jon as the next Archivist.

* Oooh, Elias.

(MAG135) BASIRA: [SLAMS HANDS ON THE TABLE] Cut the shit! What are you playing at? ELIAS: I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.

When you’re playing at too many things at the same time that you can honestly not answer that question.

* Overall: I LIVE FOR ALL THE ELIAS-BASIRA EXCHANGES THIS SEASON… In season 1 and 2, they probably would have had very civil and cordial discussions but… beginning season 3, yes, Elias had begun to Let It Out way more (was it costing him that much to hold off and to appear proper and respectable? … or did the role just become Free Ben Estate.) and it’s even worse now. He’s so bratty and petty, and Basira had always been so straight-to-the-point and no-bullshit (except when it comes to office gossip) that it’s delightful and feels like she has to handle a spoiled brat while not being paid enough for this.

(MAG135) BASIRA: If you’re lying about this– ELIAS: You’ll kill me? [HUFF] I can hardly wait. [STEPS DEPARTING]

eLIAS, THAT’S LOW (the thing about kill-me-and-you’re-all-dying still stands, that’s precisely why they chose to get him arrested) AND YOU HAVE NO PRIDE YOURSELF.

* Though I am also very mad that Elias confirmed that His Plan regarding Basira’s investigations… was to get her out, because she’s Jon’s impulse-control.

(MAG135) ELIAS: Would you simply believe I wanted you and Daisy reunited? BASIRA: No. ELIAS: Fine.

I LOVE BASIRA SO M U C H…

Elias… called Basira out on her “pride” (“I rather feel the real shame would be letting the entire world fall into Darkness because of a single person’s wounded pride. Detective.”), and I’m worried that he might be spot-on on this one, like he was with Melanie and Tim. Though he’s currently nurturing Basira’s frustrations – sending her all over the globe before basically admitting that she couldn’t have done anything relevant herself? Now talking her down? Insisting that Jon is their best chance, apparently not taking her into consideration at all except as a potential messenger? Offering an “idea” that turned out to have been manipulation, and now giving new instructions while highlighting that she’s in no position to refuse? Either he’s still awfully bad when it comes to hurting people and not expecting them to get back at you, either he’s Compensating Hard for the prison time, either he’s trying to foster harsh reactions from Basira (and it won’t help her to warm up to Jon if Elias keeps presenting Jon as their most reliable chance ;;).

- I am HYSTERICAL over the fact that we’re finally getting another bit of something related to Elias’s backstory and that it’s that he was apparently acquainted with MAXWELL RAYNER:

(MAG135, Manuela Dominguez) “I come to you with a warning. And an offer. When you read this, I would consider it a great favour if you could share my words with the Head of your Institute. Tell him that Maxwell Rayner sends his regards and offers… sanctuary. A time of holy Darkness is at hand, when The Eye will close forever, and in the spirit of the friendship they once shared, he offers an opportunity – to surrender. Forsake the Ceaseless Watcher; abandon your position, and you shall be spared in the Blind World to come. In the spirit of reconciliation, and to convince you of our sincerity… I offer my story. Much as it may pain me to feed the sick voyeur that lurks in this place.

[…] That’s all I really came here to say! To let you know we had succeeded. And to make your boss an offer on behalf of Maxwell. […] So by all means, do your worst. Or prostrate yourself, both of you, before the Forever Blind – and perhaps you might be spared. Maxwell and I await your decision, with keen interest.”

ELIAS……………………

And nothing says more than “(ex)friendship” than confirming that you gave a tip to Section 31 to ensure they would go after and get rid of your old ~~friend~~, uh:

(MAG073) ARCHIVIST: […] Oddly enough, all I can think about is how did the police know where Rayner was keeping the boy? Basira didn’t seem to know, and the Church clearly wasn’t expecting the police to arrive. With a few exceptions, Rayner managed to stay off the grid for two decades. How did they find him now? Someone must have known what was happening and tipped them off. And I don’t think it was anyone inside that building.

(MAG135) ELIAS: You thought the final death of Maxwell Rayner might have sufficiently derailed them? Yes, that was my hope too, but alas it would seem not. BASIRA: Maxwell… You… You called in that tip, sent us out to their warehouse. ELIAS: And now I’m sending you out again.

(I’m so glad that it was confirmed!)

Until now, almost everything we had about Elias’s… life outside of the Institute was the Infamous Bits about His Official Backstory (which directly contradicted the small mention from MAG029 that he was a filing clerk at the Institute in 1972 – or at least, highlighted that uhoh, something doesn’t match here and that’s a twenty-years difference, the staff should have noticed):

(MAG049) ARCHIVIST: Supplemental. Elias Bouchard is a difficult man to pin down, certainly since he became head of the Institute in 1996 […]. It was a remarkably fast climb to the top, as from what I can find, it looks like he only joined the Institute five years before, in 1991, working in the Artefact Storage. […] And yet, everything I found out about his life before the Institute seems… an ill fit with the austere man I know. He apparently graduated with a Third from Christ Church’s College in PPE, and I found an old gossip column in the student newspaper that – sure well – that mentioned him. If I’m not reading too much into it, the implication seems to be that he was… something of a… pothead [CHUCKLES]. Was he… like that when he first came to work here…?

If this information is accurate: the time of Elias’s studies and his starting at the Institute would match the time-period during which the People’s Church of the Divine Host were officially active (MAG009: “a small cult that grew around the defrocked Pentecostal minister Maxwell Rayner in London during the late eighties and early nineties. […] Mr. Rayner himself disappeared from public view sometime in 1994 and the group fragmented shortly afterwards.”). How the heck did Elias apparently meet him, though? And mostly: … how could Rayner even have The Audacity to offer for them to just… resign? Manuela mentioned that she supposed “there is also an element of provocation here as well” and YOU DON’T SAY…

Wild hypotheses about the Rayner-Elias relationship, not in any particular order of Seriousness:

* Since Manuela only referred to “the Head of the Institute”, without naming Elias, and she referred to the fact that Rayner had been around for very long (we have a statement mentioning him from 1864): it’s an Old Thing, whether or not “Elias” is actually Jonah Magnus. (At the same time… given The Show that Elias is currently putting on, he really doesn’t read to me as being potentially 200+y old? He sounds way too immature and petty and frustrated to be this old?)

* Okay, so amongst the Eye-folks, there seems to be a trend of “x all the Entities”. Gertrude: thwarting all the Entities’ rituals. Jon: getting whumped by all the Entities and having scars to Show. Martin, man of 16 Fears: being courted by all the Entities. Elias: bedding all the Entities??

* Elias was a member of the cult during his Wild Days, before swinging another way when it began to crumble and/or before getting a Revelation at the Institute?

- … It’s also possible that the things about “friendship” were actually awfully sarcastic and cruel in their own ways. We have had the example of Mike Crew who was pursued by an entity and managed to escape it by giving himself fully to another, it… could have been something like that with Elias, too? Escaping the Dark by throwing himself into Beholding?

One thing I find striking is that, quite often, when we learned about the Spooky backstory of people who are currently tied to the Institute, Beholding wasn’t exactly the main Fear that they had encountered – mostly, they witnessed someone around them getting taken by a Fear, and were spectators who didn’t try (or manage) to stop it and… pressed on to know what was happening:

(MAG081) ARCHIVIST: And of course, in my heart, I knew that no-one else could have possibly seen anything as horrible as I had. Well, maybe I could have named one person, but… I watched him disappear forever. […] I had no idea what was going on, not really, but I was somehow desperate to get that book back. He was much bigger than me, though, so all I could do was follow as he walked down alleys and side streets. […] A strange conviction that, if I had been able to face that thing myself, maybe I could have saved him. Stopped it. Ridiculous, of course, I was eight.

(MAG101) MICHAEL: When he was in school, [Michael Shelley] lost a friend to something like me. His friend was named Ryan, but those in power simply called him schizophrenic. I don’t know if he was, but it doesn’t matter. He was so dreadfully afraid his world wasn’t real that to make it so was almost nothing. Michael was there when he was taken; he never got over what he saw. Or didn’t see. After much searching and despair, it drove him into the waiting arms of the Institute, where he met Gertrude Robinson.

(MAG104) TIM: I always tell myself there was some force there. Something that held me in place and meant that all I could do was watch. But sometimes when I think back, I remember how my legs shook, and maybe I could move. … Maybe I’m just a coward.

(Tim was literally a SPECTATOR in a theatre… Plus, add Basira who witnessed one colleague be taken by Diego Molina during her first Section 31’d case, and another colleague get killed by Natalie Ennis; Daisy who saw her colleague be taken by the coffin during her first Section 31’d case; Melanie… who didn’t lose anyone close to her in the process but still witnessed the strange things happening to “Sarah”, and a ghost getting butchered in the train.)

Survivor’s bias, but still noticeable – does Beholding put a claim on almost everyone who survived a Spooky encounter, maybe?

So I don’t know, really, but somethingsomething could the Dark actually have been the experience that originally pushed Elias towards the Institute…? (Jon had assumed, and seemed to have been validated in that regard, that Elias had trouble Watching in the tunnels, which are notoriously very dark. Perhaps the best way to insure Elias would shut the heck up would be to… plainly put a blindfold on him, and he would turn catatonic.)

- Meanwhile: Peter was mentioned for the first time in MAG033, appeared for the first time in episode MAG100. He has had a speaking presence in five episodes since then. He has been an absolute chatterbox when it comes to Elias – there has been no episode in which he didn’t mention him. Elias has been around since MAG017, has had a speaking presence in… eight? episodes since Peter appeared. And still. Has made. No mention. Whatsoever. Of. Any. “Peter Lukas”. Elias………………

(- Assuming that they do know each other, given that Elias said that:

(MAG135) ELIAS: Have you ever seen the Aurora borealis? It’s lovely this time of year. It would be a shame to lose them.

… Did he see them while on The Tundra? Romantikku.)

- Elias managed to not even mention Martin when describing that Jon had ~received help~ to get out of the coffin, and I want to believe that he’s still bitter about his arrest. Though… I really got the feeling, with MAG134 and how Martin described it, that it was The Web and… interestingly, Elias didn’t seem as wary of what happened as Peter.

So either it was actually Beholding guiding Martin there, either it gives some credentials to the idea that Elias had been collaborating or tolerating The Web at the Institute for a long while? There is also that strange connection between Jon and Martin: the fact that Martin just knew that Jon was alive (MAG088, Martin: “It’s the not knowing, you know? I mean, Jon’s still alive. Not sure why, but I’m sure of that. But Sasha, I…”) + the “DIG” from the same episode’s statement, read by Martin, creeping into Jon’s dreams (MAG120). So still no certainties about it but… there is something.

- I… am… very… wary… of the way Elias is OH SO VERY CONVENIENTLY pushing in the direction of Jon’s own uncertainty.

(MAG135) ARCHIVIST: I mean, the Sun’s still there so I assume they failed. Unless they’re still… waiting to attempt it. That’s not the sort of statement you give… four years before you try to actually… ! … Or is it… The timeframes on these, er, “attempts”, the–these rituals, well… they seem variable, to say the least. When I try to think about it, uh– […] [SIGH] I’ll keep digging. If there is another ritual upcoming, I’ll need all the information I can get on it. I can’t believe Gertrude didn’t have a plan for it. I hope I’m just being over-cautious, that it’s already long since dealt with, but… we’ll see. […] I can’t afford to be just living one day at a time, I need… a plan. But I don’t even know what I’m trying to achieve… And no one… no one wants to tell me. Hm. [SIGH] End recording.

(MAG135) ELIAS: I have been observing a recent increase in people and supplies being moved to the small town of Ny-Ålesund, in Svalbard. An increase which I believe may be linked to a rather desperate attempt, by the People’s Church of the Divine Host, to perform a crude ritual of their own. To bring their… “Mr. Pitch”… into the world. […] I don’t know the details. Ny-Ålesund is a stronghold of The Dark, meaning I can’t see inside. I… believe they call it “The Extinguished Sun”, though that’s as much as I know. If Gertrude had a plan for this one, I haven’t found it, which is why Jon needs to be closer to The Eye. If anyone can stop what’s happening, he can. See through the darkness, etcetera. […] Feel free to do your own research to confirm what I’m telling you. Just don’t take too long.

It… it sounds way too much like throwing Jon a bone to ensure that he will get a Dark scar/experience, since Jon had been unable to Know whether Gertrude had managed to stop them or not. It doesn’t feel like Elias is taking this threat too seriously (compare it to the way he had handled The Unknowing?!), but more that he’s pretty confident that they won’t manage anyway and that he can… totally afford to be totally shitty about it since, anyway, he knows that Jon and the others will get worried and will get invested because they can’t afford to risk allowing another ritual to succeed? I find it hard to believe that The Dark is currently any threat but I totally understand that just in case, yes, the Archive Team would feel like they must intervene.

… and with The Lonely (and The Extinction), the only physical scars/marks that Jon is still missing? Are from The Dark. He’s never experienced it directly either and… catapulting him over to Svalbard sounds like the IDEAL opportunity for it, uh. Elias didn’t explicitly say that stopping The Dark was why he needed Jon to get stronger – there were two separate things, he implied causality but… didn’t explicitly say that it was the case so. Suspicious. Of course he would need Jon stronger for The Eye’s ritual, ultimately, after all…?

… But another thing that makes me flip out? IS THAT ELIAS IS NOW FACTORING IN THAT JON CARES FOR THE EXTENDED ARCHIVE TEAM:

(MAG092) ELIAS: You may believe yourself to have friends, to have confidantes, but in the end, all they are, is something for you to watch, to know, and ultimately to discard.

(MAG135) ELIAS: […] His performance during The Unknowing was… disappointing. I needed a way to force him to harness his ability more acutely than he had before. The coffin was a useful tool; Daisy an adequate bait.

………………… and yes, Jon will probably get a new injury on the way: he’ll get mauled by one of the Dark creatures in best case scenario, he could lose his eyes at worst (… does he even need them nowadays. I mean, YES it would be heart-breaking but. It sounds like One Of These Things very likely to happen to him.)… but I’m more worried about Basira.

Because if Elias is now factoring in that to push Jon further, you have to use the fact that he cares, Ny-Ålesund sounds like a Big Danger for BASIRA.

She was there when Maxwell Rayner was killed.

The only other witnesses were police officers (all Section 31’d nowadays). She didn’t kill Rayner herself but. But. I do not trust Elias one second to not spread (or have already spread) misleading rumours letting Dark cultists think that Basira had been the one to kill Maxwell Rayner. Jon had noticed people wearing the People’s Church pendants outside (MAG123) and we still don’t know why they’re hanging around so close to the Institute but really… I can’t help but feel like if they’re targeting someone, it’s Basira, and not Jon.

- About Jon’s feeling regarding the way the other staff members look at him…

(MAG135) ARCHIVIST: I don’t… like interacting with the rest of the Institute these days. The way they look at me, I– … I don’t know. I don’t know what they’ve heard, what the rumours going around are, but… they have definitely heard something…! [SIGH] And they can’t wait until they don’t have to talk to me anymore. Can’t honestly say I blame them, none of this is easy. Everyone’s just trying to get through as best they can. Living one day at a time.

I’m not sure of what is happening, so:

* Is there indeed something noticeable in Jon nowadays? A gaze a bit too intense, an overall aura, something that makes you think “he’s spooky” without being able to pinpoint how? Too many eyes? Daisy was in the room when he read MAG133’s statement, I still feel like if anyone would be able to tell… it would be her.

* Alternatively, it… could also be an effect of the Lonely, again, since Jon had mentioned feeling isolated/lonely and… he’s very prone to feeling this as soon as he’s physically alone. It could just be that Jon feels like he can’t connect and that nobody wants to talk to him, while people are just… behaving towards him normally, but the Lonely is warping his perception.

* Alternatively: did Peter spread rumours on him through memos.

* Alternatively… oh, Jon… there could be so many reasons for people to not want to get involved with you Just In Case… Objectively: the Archives were attacked by Prentiss’s worms in Summer 2016. Jon was a mess for the following six months, before a body was discovered in the Archives and Sasha disappeared; Jon was on the run and the prime suspect. He came back and was on and off for a few months… before Tim died in an explosion in the Wax Museum alongside him, and Jon was hospitalised. And now he’s back. He means trouble, he means danger and, yes, people thought that Tim was having a breakdown when he was ranting about what was actually happening (as Martin told Jon in MAG102) but… Tim was popular. Tim used to be social, chatting with students and acting as relay between them and Jon (when they noticed errors in MAG033)… and Tim died.

Even Tim aside, there was the matter of Elias’s arrest and… Elias looked like he was actually well-liked by the staff? He was invested in the Institute’s life:

(MAG098) MELANIE: Uh, Martin? Have you seen Elias? MARTIN: Oh, uh… no. But Tuesday lunch he normally meets with the Library staff, I think?

And Rosie was chill with him (you don’t go “Yep, will do” at a boss you fear…). It’s possible that people resented Jon for Elias’s arrest and/or thought that Jon had framed him (which. to be honest.)? There are so many reasons for people to just… be wary of him, indeed…

- Jon’s voice was… something, at the beginning of MAG135. Sulky, tired, crushed? He reminded me of how he had introduced MAG129’s statement right after his encounter with Martin (clearly… unwell and plain sad); could have been caused by what he recounted regarding his interactions with the rest of the Institute, or by the content of the statement itself (it… wasn’t great news and Jon had no certainty about a possible positive outcome), but I wonder if it mightn’t be that reading statements left by Avatars is more taxing, since they’re more involved with the Fears? Does it feed Beholding a bit too much? He was very tired after Jane Prentiss’s; he collapsed after Breekon’s; he was clearly not fine with Manuela’s here. The only exception I can think of is MAG074 – Fatigue, which left him exhausted despite not apparently being (as far as we know) from an avatar?

- Raise your hand if Jon keeps slowly breaking your heart into small pieces when he has to tell himself, again and again, that he has to focus and that he can’t save everyone…

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: I… heard someone. He was begging for me to save him. Said he couldn’t breathe. … I can barely breathe. I couldn’t find him. But I am… n–not here for him. I don’t even know him.

(MAG135) ARCHIVIST: At least, the coffin’s gone. I gave Artefact Storage some very specific instructions, and they’ve got it solidly sealed away. … Is locking it up the right thing to do? There are other people in there. And Daisy and I got out, but– … No, I, uh… I can’t think about that. Even if I could somehow be sure of recreating our escape, I–I can’t save everyone that’s been taken. I–It’s not my job to try, I– And I can’t spend another three days in there, I just… I need to let it go.

(But I’m still worried that this could be… how Gertrude started out, too. At first focusing on people around her and on the missions ahead, before gradually coming to thinking that the others were necessarily sacrifices for the Greater Good. Though in Jon’s case: he’s been… very consistently upset and sad for victims overall. So right now, he’s encouragingly… totally unlike Gertrude. Caring so much.)

- Bring as many torches as you can, once again. And your Web lighter, Jon? What happened to that one since the end of season 3 ;;

(… They don’t even need to go to Svalbard, actually, since there was still the matter of St. Paul’s Church in West Hackney, from MAG063, though Jon hadn’t managed to find any connection with the People’s Church of the Divine Host but… it was clearly a Dark creature lurking there? And the statement was from 2014.)

- If Team Archive goes to Norway in a group expedition trip… I’m picturing the door of the Archives, closed. Jon having left a note warning people that they’ll be away for a week or two, the Archives will be closed during that time. Scribble from Daisy underneath: “If we don’t die.” (Helen having added “Of fun!”, before adding something else about this door being closed, but people can still knock if they need a door, she’d do her bestest.) Melanie put a message encouraging to NOT take a job here if they happen to hire new staff after their disappearances in ~dark conditions~. Basira tried to salvage the memo with a mention about contacting the police with a mention of Section 31 if they failed. Martin passing by, one day, and losing it because pETER, WHAT DID YOU ALLOW TO HAPPEN AGAIN, YOU SAID THEY WOULD BE SAFE–

- Elias said the words “SVALBARD” and “AURORA BOREALIS” in an episode about “DARK MATTER”, so my heart is screaming and seeing this as His Dark Materials representation. Come on, the Archives crew are millennials, they have read the trilogy, right right right? :w

… Well, maybe not Jon, who probably didn’t manage to finish the first volume and/or gave up on the second one when he realized that Will’s cat wouldn’t be the main protagonist. (Maybe he secretly stanned Lyra a bit for her tendency to just run away from the College. And also panserbjørne. He would stan The Bears.) Sasha’s first dream job was to be a witch because Serafina was DANG COOL, with becoming an aeronaut coming in close second; cue Heated Bi Debates with Tim, because his tiny bi heart had been awakened through other options (Lord Asriel? Terrible, but hot!! Marisa Coulter? Terrible but hella hot!!). Basira got her lesbian awakening with Mary – smart clever scientist who went Fuck Injustice? Sign her up. Melanie loved Will, loved WILL’S KNIFE, and also loved to read about bears savagely murdering each other (oh no, sheer horror if she ever finds out she had that in common with Jon!). Helen might need to have the story told to her but she goes “!! I can open doors and Windows too! :D”. Georgie loved the technology and the Gallivespians communicating through Lodestone resonators (… actually, Jon probably made her think about the Gallivespians. A lot). … Aza mentioned to me that “ahah, Martin must have projected so hard on Will” and I hate her, it was supposed to be all fun headcanons but oh no now it’s awfully sad (=> Will’s mother being sick and needing his help! Not being reliable, but it doesn’t matter, she loves him! And turns out that Will’s dad had never abandoned them, not exactly, and that he had always loved them all very much!) (YEAH NOW IT’S SUPER SAD WHEN THINKING ABOUT MARTIN PROJECTING.)

(Let’s compensate the Sad by thinking about Jon and the assistants going on a boat trip to Norway, and NOTHING BAD HAPPENING, they’ll manage to neutralise the Dark’s feeble attempt and nobody will die or be gravely injured or traumatised by anything :| So they get to enjoy the trip, even if it’s probably on the Tundra and Jon is seething because still no sign of Peter Lukas anywhere, Martin is there though mostly inaccessible (… all alone on the boat to fuel it?), but Jon still managed to grab him at some point to have Meaningful Discussions in the cold of the deck, at night, when they’re undignifiedly bundled up in layers and layers of down jackets, Martin being especially starry-eyed at the starry sky because as he had mentioned in MAG113, he never got to travel much, and he’s getting Something Nice for once even if it’s when on their way to probably die a dark death – but they don’t and it stays something nice :[)

(What do you mean, I slept 2h30 last night and worked overtime today and I’m surviving thanks to my 7th coffee.)

MAG136’s title is out and AAAAAAAAAAAAH???? WEB??? WEB??? I want to think that a twist could be at work here (The Corruption and The Desolation ought to be offended, tfw still no episode almost halfway into season 4 :w) but it screams WEB, it screams especially strongly SHE, SHE, THE WIFE… Though Annabelle was “the story-spinner” and this is another title altogether. On the one hand, Jon has been repeatedly lamenting over his overall lack of direction, so it could be Her Cue to go see him in person or send him someone who survived her… but on the other hand mmmm, too soon for that maybe? Could also be something about Raymond Fielding, perhaps? (Or twist and it’s not Web.) (… second-meaning could be about so many people… Peter? Elias (ha, he wished.)? Annabelle?)

#mag135 #long post/#tma liveblog #the magnus archives #tma season 4

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