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thedreadvampy · 4 years

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So this was sent to me by @atiredpan weeks ago when the White Jon conversation was very live and I'm posting it (belatedly) with their blessing (they didn't want to put it up publicly and have it seem like an attack which I really very much appreciate but wouldn't have minded) and I percolated for a few days and then got very busy for a few weeks. Response follows.

So I feel weird about how I'm responding to this stuff, I'm launching rapidly into taking about/explaining my own experience in a way I'm worried maybe comes across as a direct comparison. It kind of feels like I'm talking in a way that's like brushing off your experience and saying OK BUT HERE'S WHY I'M RIGHT and that's not what I'm trying to do, it's just that there's not much I can usefully add to what you've said - you know your experience better than I do, and I'm not gonna go around trying to read into it or reexplain it. So I'm going to talk about where I am/have been coming from, but not with the intention of countering your points, all of which I think really resonate.

First off, the post where I was like "Jon is white and if you disagree you're Wrong" was, unreservedly, just a shitty post and I'm not suprised it upset a lot of people. I'm really very sorry about that, it was thoughtlessly written and pretty stupidly posted.

I totally get that my whiteness has fed into how I hced Jon (and as I think I've said before I saw Jon a certain way well before I engaged with any fanworks, just as you did). There's a lot of reasons I imagined Jon as white from pretty early on, a non-negligible one of which was like...That's Jonny. This is a podcast by Jonny, about a character with the same name and mannerisms as Jonny, and Jonny is extremely white. It would have felt weird, when I was listening to TMA as a Friend Podcast, to stick a brown face onto what at least appeared at the time to basically be a self-insert character of my white friend. Now that's a really personal thing informed less by the story and more by the circumstances under which I've interacted with it, but it certainly laid a baseline. I didn't really have a clear mental picture of Jon (or most of the characters) for a looooooong time (for an artist I'm really not a very visual thinker) but I had a few sort of mental sketches (Jon is short white balding and awkward, Martin is tall biracial and scruffy Basira is fat and somali Melanie is my friend from work etc) which I developed a long time before I encountered fanworks.

I saw the alienation you mentioned and I connected it to class and gender, not race, because I’ve met a lot of cis men, white and otherwise, who interpolate trauma, class insecurity, insecurity about their own abilities, and so on into withdrawal, denial and snappiness. So for me I had an interpretation of that element of his personality which was pretty much race-neutral, and then I had these existing cues leading me to assuming he was white (largely that Jonny is white, but also wee stuff in the story that...it’s not like anything substantial enough to remember, let alone justify, but there were certainly interactions that pinged whiteness for me personally)

There are actually iirc a few throwaway references to Jon being promoted above more qualified candidates throughout (or at least I thought I knew that before s5), but the time I decided I thought White Jon was an obvious conclusion was of course the conversation where Sasha expresses frustration about it. and the context of that conclusion (at least as far as I can see) wasn't "people of colour can only exist in subservient positions/defined by oppression" but was informed by two things that were going on with my life around the time that episode aired

I had been having several conversations with friends of mine (and largely friends of Jonny's) who work in London in the museums/archiving sector and who are the only women of colour in whole departments or even whole museums, and who experience so little career mobility compared to their less-qualified white counterparts (we're talking about women graduating top of their class at Oxbridge with anthropology or library science masters and stellar original research, with a decade or more of impeccable work experience and acting up, being left in internship and low-grade positions, while white men who "fit the culture" but have 0 museums experience sail into upper management positions and then stay there until they retire). So I'd come almost directly from these conversations into what to me sounded like exactly the same gripe in TMA.

I'd been at that point working for about a year and a half on co-coordinating the anti-oppression committee in my workplace, which was a very Good Progressive Activist Charity with Good Lefty Principles, and over the course of experience sharing and discussions both with colleagues of colour and along lines of wealth, disability, class etc, I was very much confronted with the realisation of how much 'being adequately qualified' meant different things for middle-class good-university white men vs much more highly skilled and hardworking women of colour or people of different class and wealth backgrounds. Obviously I'd known that before in principle, but not really having been in Salaried Workplaces (as opposed to like. service and retail hourlies) I hadn’t got so up close and personal with it. So that was also very fresh in my mind, this like...big substantial experience of how Good, Well-Meaning, Caring, Thoughtful, Woke white men just........did not need to think about this. at all. and were startled and discomforted to face it. and that this was also true of most white middle-class women. and these conversations were really carved down the middle between white middle-class European women saying ‘this is such a surprise when we have such an equitable hiring policy and diverse staff, that there’s this gender gap’ and women of colour in the room wearily saying ‘yeah, there’s a gender gap, there’s always a gender gap and it is always a racialised gender gap’ so yeah I was definitely thinking about the intersection between being passed over at work because of gender and because of race.

The point about Tim is interesting because I think for me what’s getting lost is that I don’t think Jon is entitled as like...a Character Trait. He’s not like...Toxic Masculinity Man. He is very anxious about boundaries and about his own capacity to do harm. But it has to be pointed out to him where he’s doing harm. He doesn’t notice where he’s been unfairly advantaged, and that’s to me much more reflective of most people’s relationship to white or male entitlement.

As I say, that exchange with Tim and Sasha cemented the Jon Is White hc in my head specifically because it was so reflective of conversations I had had with women of colour working in similar workplaces, about white men, usually about white men they generally liked or at least didn’t have beef with beyond their unfair advantages.

It seems odd to me to frame ‘bitching about your boss on your friend’s behalf to make her feel better’ as more similar to white entitlement/white privilege than any of that tbh? That’s just...being friends with someone?

Anyway I recognise that it’s not white entitlement to accept a job. Obviously it’s not, it’s just sensible under the circumstances, you get lucky and you grab it. For me my sense of Jon as white-because-of-this is not “he took a job he shouldn’t have taken,” it’s more about his obliviousness to the impact he has on others, and also primarily how people react to him. The interaction between Sasha and Tim is saturated with the of course it would be him I mentioned above, but even before that he walks through the world not expecting to have to think about anything but his conscious decisions, and he’s caught aback when people see him as out of place or as having power above his station.

I think it’s impossible to extricate ‘this is where my head was at’ from that interpretation, and also like obviously my own whiteness is a big factor. And not just my own personal whiteness but the place I grew up (which was 98.3% white) and the world which reflects back whiteness. So this is in no way intended as a bolshy This Is The Correct Headcanon the way my Bad Post was bc examining it I’m like...yeah I mean this is about how I personally interpreted this based on where I was at at the time. But I do feel like there’s some communication gap in what it is about this unqualified promotion thing that pinged me - it’s not that All Bosses Must Be White And All Brown People Must Be Downtrod, it’s something quite specific about the tone and tenor of the interactions around the getting-a-job.

But also? Idk. Kind of unrelatedly, and people obviously should feel free to disagree with me on this, it feels kind of off to frame this as defaulting to a white Jon? I sort of think that my idea of Jon as white is very much not ‘white until proven otherwise’ - part of the reason for my original strident tone was that I felt that I was being expected to drop a headcanon I had for specific reasons and default to the fanon version of Jon without actually having any reason other than ‘this is how the community thinks he should look,’ and without really understanding anything about what that means, and while obviously defaulting to a non-white headcanon isn’t like...entrenched in the way that defaulting to a white headcanon is, it does seem to me like this is perhaps part of why white fans slap brown skin onto a character without thinking into what that means or why they’re doing it.

The thing I’m struggling with as regards my personal headcanon here is that I could decide to only ever draw Jon as Fanon Jon, but it wouldn’t be because I had strong reasons to see him that way, it wouldn’t be the same as why you see Jon as brown, or why I see like...Melanie as Indian, it would literally be Default To Standard in a way it isn’t for you. And I don’t feel that I have Defaulted To Whiteness, or where I have it is for reasons specifically to do with Jon (I visualised Jon as white because I visualised him as Jonny, who is white), not because I think every character is White Until Proven Otherwise. Like, my reasons for understanding Jon as white may be bad reasons, but they are reasons, not post-hoc excuses (I can’t like...prove that. but I know it to be true at least on a conscious level). I didn’t go Oh Jon Is White Because Everyone Is Unless I Have Reason To Think They Aren’t, Hooray, Here Is A Post-Hoc Justification For Why It Isn’t Racist To Think That. So while I am totally on board with the idea that it may be shitty, harmful or poorly thought through to hc Jon as white, I’m not sure I can fully see it in myself as being default. But I do understand that that isn’t necessarily what came across in my original short post.

Honestly, the reason I took issue with Fanon Jon and Fanon Martin in such a bolshy way in the first place was that I didn’t get why these characters were universally seen as Asian and white, respectively, and had such strong and consistent fanon images, when none of the other characters did, and when I was seeing people drawing people like Sasha and Melanie and Tim as white way more when in my mind there was no reason to assume they were white. On an emotional level I guess I think either there’s Fanon As Lore, or there’s no fanon (and I prefer the latter) and my discomfort came from the place that the one character I absolutely saw as coded as white in the core cast had this one really specific Ambiguously Brown Fanon Look (which from what I’d seen at the time didn’t seem to be like...backed with anything or coming from any personal interpretation for most of the white fans I was seeing on like Twitter and Tumblr) but white headcanons are everywhere for characters like Melanie or Sasha or Georgie, who seemed to me to be unambiguously people of colour, or characters like Tim or Martin (who could perfectly reasonably be people of colour and who I hc as Rroma and biracial respectively)? I don’t know, it’s difficult to express, but I find it frustrating.

#tma #White Jon #idk sorry to post this so separate from the rest of the conversation I have been Busy

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fatui-harbingers · 5 years

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I don't think some anti Dany Sansa stans understand that when Dany stans compare Sansa feeding Ramsay to the dogs to anyone else's kills (especially Dany’s) that they’re not excusing or even forgetting what Ramsay did to her and we totally supported what she did. It was awesome! I loved seeing her get justice for herself like that. Especially bc both in universe AND irl, most women don't get justice in any form.

I cheered for Sansa killing Ramsay just like I did Dany killing the Khals that were threatening to rape her to death. They were both super awesome girl power moments imo.

Even Dany stans that hate Sansa don't blame her for killing Ramsay the way she did! None of us liked watching her get hurt by him. None of us wanted to see her go through that! We were all very happy to see her kill him. I even loved her smile afterward!

The reason we even make the comparison is to point out the fandom’s hypocrisy. We don't care that she killed him but we do care about sexism and double standards within the fandom coming from mostly women that claim to be feminists. You can't go around saying “She burned the Khals! Mad Queen!” about Dany but then turn around and shout “YAS KWEEN!” about Sansa.

Another thing I don’t understand is why anyone would want these two women (with so much in common!) to hate each other, especially feminists! Even Dany stans that hate Sansa (which, btw, usually only happened bc of crazy Sansa stans. Most of them say they loved Sansa till encountering certain Sansa stans) were hoping they’d get along and be friends too. Some of us were even shipping Daensa and making Daensa edits/gifsets! Pitting two female power players against each other when it wouldn’t even actually make sense is anything but feminist. It’s crazy we even have to say this in 2019!

Sansa isn’t pure and perfect and flawless like some of her stans want her to be and I’m not sure why they have to hate on Dany to make themselves feel better. I understand wanting your fave character who is a secondary character with less power than a main character to have a main characters power and awesomeness too (even though secondary characters are very cool on their own!) but that doesn’t make it okay to hate on characters you wish your fave was! And sending hate on anon and threats to people that disagree with you? IMMATURE! How very hateful of you! (Seriously reminds me of Trump supporters and anti choice people. Yuck!)

Oops, got a little off track.

Like many very skilled meta writers have pointed out time and time again, you can’t call Dany mad and a war criminal if you’re not going to say the same about literally every. other. character. They’re all mad by your standards then!!! And don’t forget, Jon is half Targaryen! He’s destined to go mad, just like Grandpa Aerys!

And I’m not sure why Dany using dragon fire to kill is so bad? Tyrion used wildfire to destroy Stannis’ fleet and no one questioned his sanity. And Stannis, he and Melisandre burned innocent people alive as sacrifices to the Lord of Light and even his own daughter but he’s not mad? Iirc, Jon used fire on the Wildlings during the battle of Castle Black. And no one seemed to even be calling Cersei mad when she blew up the sept! But Dany is mad bc she said “dracarys” and her babies listened. I guess it doesn’t matter that dragon fire can melt stone and kills sooooo much faster than the fire we know! Never mind that death by dragon fire is waaaay faster than say, bleeding to death after losing a limb, or getting stabbed, or getting trampled, ya know, stuff that happens when you use horses and swords.

And don’t even get me started on the anti Dany crowd crying for the slavers and rapists Dany killed. Didn’t think I would need to ever say this but SLAVERY IS BAD! There is no way to “peacefully” abolish slavery! It’s impossible! And if you try to gradually rid of slavery, it’s EXTREMELY inhumane and you obviously don’t give a damn about the enslaved people at all, bunch of slavery apologists.

Most of us don’t think our fave is perfect. We know and admit they make mistakes, whether they learn from them or not, bc the reason we all love these characters is that they aren’t perfect! They seem so real! So relatable! And we love them anyway bc that’s how love works okay. No one is flawless in any way! It’s impossible!

If you’re gonna hate, AT LEAST hate equally will you? Gosh!

But I won’t go any further bc this rant is already longer than intended.

#daenerys targaryen #daenerys defense squad #the queensguard #queensguard #i love my boo and will defend her till my dying day #probably even after lets be real #this is the result of anxiety and not being able to sleep at 3 am #so forgive me if this seems all over the place #bc my head is lol #but yeah #sexist double standards are gross #even more so when coming from women and feminists #but I'll shut up now lol

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yszarin · 5 years

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see below for screaming and hopes for one day a whole bread on Panopticon

- as a general thing - please bear with me, early access delays mean that I have had no time to stew in this (well, I’ve had lunch, if you can call it that, and that’s it) and may thus be even less coherent than normal, if you can believe that

- ... so, Martin Won’t Let Monsters Talk About Tim? way to shatter my little Tim/Martin heart while also sticky-taping it back together, I love it so much.

- whoop half my OTP is... kayaking, in Egypt, so I really am easily pleased with my tiny breadcrumbs, apparently. @ canon pls more breadcrumbs. one day I may be able to assemble a modest loaf. (actually what is the minimum size of bread? how many crumbs will I need?)

- “that’s Leitner too!” Peter oh my god

- ohhhhhh! I was wondering a while ago about Not!Sasha being all Cask of Amontillado-ed in the basement and I’m so happy she’s finally out! doesn’t sound good for literally anyone but I am living.

- noooo Martin at least send a text

- oh dear Elias is back on his bullshit. not that he was ever off it, I suppose.

- oooooh will it explode heads? without an Eye connection? how is it messy, exactly? and how does Peter know it’s messy if Jonah’s been in there the whole time, I assume Peter is not as old? though I guess he could be.

- ahhhhhhh confirmation on the Jonah!Elias theory at last. and Elias and Peter can apparently bond over enjoying startling Martin.

- wow I cannot wait to find out how this happened. It sounds like Jonah’s eyes are in Elias’ body and that’s how the possession works, so - I don’t imagine they involved a surgeon? mechanically, how did they do that? was it like Operation?

- and this is Gertrude’s last stand, apparently - wow we are getting so much this episode. I hope this won’t be an end to hearing her statements - it feels like we still have a lot to learn from that era.

- I adore the way she’s saying Elias’ name right now, it’s so stabby

- I thought she was shot more than that? According to the transcript for Human Remains, she was shot three times, so... when did that happen, if it wasn’t then? did Elias decide later, “you know what, I’m still pissed, I’m going to go and do some overkill”?

- I really hope Martin does care about them still, somewhere. Or at least that the caring can be stapled back in at some point. I’m rather fond of the caring. I believe I’ve said before.

- Peter, did you read a book on villain speeches? “we’re the same” I swear. I guess being Lonely he’s not had much practice at them? but you’d think he could have put some work in with Martin, and Brian, and that.

- “I think I would” okay I am putting a lot of my emotions into that would, it’s a hypothetical not a certainty, come on Martin, don’t do it - YES WELL DONE GOOD BOY

- oh no the poor Institute staff! I hope Rosie’s okay, and Sonja, I’m not sure we have many other names but honestly, Trevor and Julia that is just rude.

- “YOU NEVER TAUGHT ME” I really was not expecting to laugh out loud in this episode but here were are I guess.

- and another very well-deserved fuck for Jon

- Not!Sasha and the Hunters is my new band name (love their various ways of calling for Jon). I really want to know who’s going to win and how.

- noooo Daisy! just leave it a minute! they might kill each other really hard! Daisy please

- I love that she’s the scarier though, listen to that growl that is excellent

- !!!YES MARTIN!!!

- “I mostly just said what I thought you wanted to here” please please mean that he’s not as far along as he implied

- god, Martin really is that “all my friends are dead” thing, isn’t he? someone get this man a dog.

- “trapped me into spreading evil” oh he did listen to Tim <3 </3

- also I like the acknowledgement of the Institute being evil - Martin describing it as that now actually gives me more hope for him not going full monster. at least, I can’t see him having said that and then wilfully becoming an avatar of evil, if that makes sense?

- hhhhh he did it for Jon my heart is all over the place

- I love that Martin’s outfoxed Peter Lukas through his special superpowers of being a disaster mlm with some real nasty self-worth issues. what an icon.

- oh no. bad static. D:

- and they’re talking about Jon so Jon going after Martin is clearly part of the plannnnn and I mean that bit I’m on board with I’ll never not be on board with Jon going after Martin but *squints* what are you doing Elias

- what a lovely evil laugh, I wonder if Ben practised (if so do recordings of it exist?) or if he can just do them?

- “I called you” was that the point of the Gertrude tape being left? to get Jon there? (“How do I summon my current Archivist? With a recording of me murdering the last one, works every time.”) Maybe the information about him being Jonah acted as a tie thing for him. and putting Peter in charge, has been all some sort of scheme to get Jon into the panopticon? feels like a Lot, I’d prefer if at least some of it was improv.

- “for Martin” oh just leave me here. “you want you to follow him” ugh.

- I mean I assume someone is going to make it out, we do still have two episodes. but this is presumably Doing Something for Elias. still vaguely concerned that this might be an attempt to actualise an entity - it’s as I say, vague, and a wild guess again, but if the Beholding and the Lonely aren’t that far apart then maybe Jon trying to bring Martin back will let something else (large, unblinking) through too? or maybe Elias just needs him to keep getting stronger.

- so, looking at the episode description - they’re referred to as having disappeared, which feels to me like a “won’t be back in the very near future, so is the next episode just going to be Basira on her own sighing a lot? can we have some of the other Institute staff? I’d really like to hear Rosie again. and from Sonja for the first time. then there’s Helen and Elias, still monsters on campus. Helen was doing a lot less spectating than I thought.

- are we allowed to have tape recorders in the Lonely? iirc we did hear a bit from Brian after he was whooshed, so it must be possible. I expect Jon’ll have one with him, they just tend to happen around him. just hope it turns on, I really really want Jon to finally get to yell at Peter and I want to hear it.

- anyway! I love this episode so much, it had so many things in it and they were wonderful, kudos to cast & crew as ever, RQ... very good. we knew that.

- also I’m still not over Martin Won’t Let Monsters Talk About Tim. I’m not going to be over it. I’m very short I can’t get over things.

#the magnus archives #*hurts in tim/martin*

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soveryanon · 5 years

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Reviewing time for MAG138! /o/

- ………………… It’s Holy Shit Smirke What The Fuck time, and I feel obligated to mention in preamble that: yes, I do get one of the points of his statement – that he lacked… flexibility and that it impacted his understanding of the Fears; that he associated them with a neat categorisation, with places, with stone and concrete and stable, fixed monumentality (“And if, as I came to believe, the Dread Powers were themselves places of a sort, then surely with the right space, the right architecture, they could be contained. Channelled. Harnessed.”) when they’re actually mutable, can express themselves in an infinity of ways, and that Smirke’s ~taxonomy~ was far from perfect, probably too tainted by his preconceptions and associations with tangible places to work for long after a few decades of illusion; that, in the end, Robert Smirke died as an old man unable to admit the flaws in his work (“Would you have me separate The Corruption between insects, dirt and disease? To, to divide the fungal bloom from the maggot? No. No, I… stand by my work.”), ready to blame others than him or his own community for their sufferings (“No; I feel certain they were bought into existence by some ancient civilisation, some… foolish tribe from pre-history.”). Leitner (!) (yes, “!”: Leitner, being right about something, I know. Incredible.) and Gerry had actually warned about describing the Fears with such neat separations:

(MAG080) LEITNER: I told you it was an unhelpful analogy. Let’s try another one. Um… Imagine, you are an ant, and you have never before seen a human. Then one day, into your colony, a huge fingernail is thrust, scraping and digging. You flee to another entrance, only to be confronted by a staring eye gazing at you. You climb to the top, trying to find escape and, above you, can see the vast dark shadow of a boot falling upon you. Would that ant be able to construct these things into the form of a single human being? Or would it believe itself to be under attack by three different, equally terrible, but very distinct assailants?

(MAG111) GERRY: […] And when our fears change, so do these things. But it’s not quick. Gertrude reckons they’ve basically been the same since the Industrial Revolution. She and my mum both liked to follow Smirke’s list of fourteen. ARCHIVIST: [DISBELIEVINGLY] Th– I mean, there are a lot more than fourteen things to be afraid of in the world. Where do you draw the line? GERRY: Hmmm. I always think it helps to imagine them like colours. The edges bleed together, and you can talk about little differences: “oh, that’s indigo, that’s more lilac”, but they’re both purple. I mean, I guess there are technically infinite colours, but you group them together into a few big ones. A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. […] And like colours, some of these powers, they feed into or balance each other. Some really clash, and you just can’t put them together. I mean, you could see them all as just one thing, I guess, but it would be pretty much meaningless, y’know, like… like trying to describe a… shirt by talking about the concept of colour. O–Of course, with these things it’s not a simple spectrum, y’know, it’s more like– ARCHIVIST: An infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once. GERRY: Now you’re getting it. ARCHIVIST: Like colours, but if colours hated me.

Sounds like the Fears are… part of a whole, and that “infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once” might still be the most Accurate Description for… whatever they are.

But I’m also an utter fool who likes neat categorisations for these concepts so YES, I acknowledge that Jonny is calling us out on trying to put labels on everything that happens in the series and on trying to make occurrences fit into the list we were given in MAG111, but suddenly I can’t read / HOW ABOUT I DO IT ~ANYWAY~. :w

- Obligatory tears because: Tim, disillusioned at the end of season 3, had reached the conclusions about Smirke’s work that Smirke himself half-admitted here (back-and-forth between admitting that he had been wrong and ~standing by his work~):

(MAG117) TIM: […] You know, for the longest time I thought the secret was in balance…! In some… dusty old architect’s work on symmetry. [SCOFF] But he failed, didn’t he? What was he even trying to achieve? He’d lived like anyone else, he… died like anyone else. Whatever he was looking for, in his “Balance and Fear”? I don’t think he found it.

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I have been blessed with a long life, something few who crossed paths with the Dread Powers can boast, but now… at the end of it, my true fear is that I have wasted it, chasing an impossible dream. To speak plain, I have begun to lose faith in the possibility of Balance. Of any sort of equilibrium among them.”

And look, yes, I know, I should be terrorised that Smirke’s shiny system wasn’t so great and functioning after all… but I’m mostly SAD, because Tim had spent the last three-to-four years of his life trying to understand Smirke’s work, and had concluded that it wasn’t working. And he was right. (And then he died, too.)

- So we’re getting a new designation for the Fears: the “Dread Powers”, which, yeah, what it says on the tin, neat!

- Smirke’s words and his influence on current characters localised in London puts me to mind again that… how come that some people apparently knew what the rituals would do to our world? How can they know of the result, since no ritual has succeeded so far?

(MAG092) ELIAS: These things that touch us, they… don’t have a form of the sort that could exist in physical reality. So the Stranger wishes to remake that physical reality into something closer to itself. It wants to make this world its own.

(MAG111) ARCHIVIST: No, I don’t have time. Tell me about the rituals. GERRY: Well, they all have one. Most of them, anyway. Takes centuries to build up to a level of power where they can try it, and if they fail, it’s back to square one. ARCHIVIST: Okay, but what do the rituals do? GERRY : They… kind of “shift” the world, just enough for the Power to come through. Merge with reality. Some say, or well, they guess, that it could bring other entities through with them. I mean, I doubt The Buried would be bringing through The Vast, but you know. ARCHIVIST : But what does that actually mean. F–for the world? “Merging with reality”? GERRY: […] right now all the entities have to act like a hunter, they pick off the weak ones around the edges, the ones that wander to close, and the rest of the time they have to just graze on whatever fear we all passively give away. ARCHIVIST : And if one of the rituals succeeds? GERRY : The world becomes a factory farm.

So this might be what Smirke theorised himself, notably on the idea that Powers had allies and opposites:

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “Fourteen Powers, with their opposites and their allies, each with an aim no more no less than manifestation. Apocalypse. Apotheosis. I wonder: did my work bring about these Dreadful things, or… did I simply develop the means by which they can be known…?”

And we saw through The Hunt (or… the essence of the hunt) that its goal is not to manifest, since it revels in the chase and the pursuit – not in getting the prey. Though Smirke might have given inspiration to humans touched by the powers, to organise their activities around circumstantial allies (or allies by nature) and enemies? There might still have been a bit of truth to it, since Gertrude did manage to neutralise The Buried’s ritual with the body of Vast-touched Jan Kilbride… So, to what extent was Smirke, in the end, spot-on, and to what extent did he over-systemise something that was filled with irregularities and particularities?

(- I wonder if the ideas of what the world WOULD look like if one of the rituals succeeded weren’t due to… the Fears-touched dreams? There is definitely something too suspicious about “dreams” overall in this series – I assumed for long that it was a case of “well, of course, if you experience a terrifying thing, your subconscious with get plagued with it and you’ll have nightmares related to this” for a lot of them, independently from Jon’s Archivist-induced dreams. But Smirke revealed that he had initially begun his work influenced by the dreams he had:

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “Did I ever tell you about the dreams? I’m sure I must have. I would dream about them, you see, as a young man, long before I devised my taxonomy. I would find myself in nightmares of strange, far-off places: a field of graves; a grasping tunnel; an abattoir, knee-deep in pigs’ blood. I believed then, as I still believe now, that these places I saw were the Powers themselves, expressed in their truest form, far more entirely than any “secret book” can claim.”

And we’ve had various cases of dreams being more spooky than “regular” ones: Oliver began to see the veins in his dreams (MAG011, MAG121), Robert E. Geiger was only able to hear Stefan Brotchen’s last words in his dreams (MAG099), Annabelle had started to get dreams involving spiders despite being unaware of the nature of the experiments (MAG069), Carter Chilcott had been dreaming of “floating through ancient graveyards or the open, empty sea” while on the Daedalus (MAG057), Joshua Gillespie dreamed of asphyxiating despite the coffin itself not giving him any such experience while he was awake (MAG002)… Is it possible that people are more sensitive to the Fears in their dreams, since dreams are a bit more in the Fears’ territory (Jonny mentioned, iirc, that they behave on “dream-logic”)? Is that how Garland Hillier saw The Extinction coming, too: due to his dreams?)

- Alright: sudden information that Smirke APPARENTLY HELPED THEORISE THE RITUALS??? HOLY MEW????

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “So many have abandoned us, casting about for rituals that I helped design. In my excited discussions with Mr. Rayner, I… perhaps extrapolated too much from his talk of a “Grand Ritual” of darkness. The Dark, I thought, was simply one of the Powers so, it stands to reason that each of them should have its own ritual. Perhaps they already did, even before I put pen to paper. They certainly do now, and I shudder to think how Lukas, Scott and the others may use this conception.”

So, to break this down: it seems like Maxwell Rayner agreed to discuss with Smirke about what he identified as The Dark’s ritual, and Smirke guessed from there that the other Fears that he had isolated probably had (or should have) their own rituals, and worked on theorising them? Basira herself had noticed that Natalie Ennis’s words reported in MAG025’s statement (“She said that they were all going, that 300 years was a long time to wait, but she was lucky to have found it so close to the end.”) matched with two solar eclipses happening in Ny-Ålesund (MAG108: “And when Natalie Ennis talked about it being 300 years ago, well. How much do you know about the relationship between Edmond Halley and John Flamsteed?” “What, Halley like the comet?” “Exactly.”); Basira might have been spot-on on the idea that The Dark is quite… regular and organized around these eclipses? Or at the very least, that The Dark was aware of its opportunities to reshape the world.

And Smirke hypothesises that a few other people might have taken inspiration from it, some of them also part of Jonah Magnus’s own circle (so they were probably all mutual acquaintances, at the very least, as people that Smirke had “brought into [his] confidence”?):

* “Mr. Rayner” (The Dark): unless twist, Maxwell Rayner himself, and Smirke had abundantly talked with him, apparently. No mention on whether Jonah knew him too (except if the Elias-is-Jonah theory turns out to be an actual thing, since Maxwell was revealed to have been a ~friend~ of the Head of the Institute in MAG135), but Dr. Algernon Moss, in a statement given May 14th 1864, had reported on his encounter with Maxwell Rayner who was already well-known at the time (MAG098).

* “Scott” (The Buried): likely referring to George Gilbert Scott (MAG050), who had been under Henry Roberts’s tutelage, who had himself been one of Smirke’s disciples. Sampson Kempthorne, the author of the letter to Jonah, briefly employed Scott in 1834 (historical fact) and noted that he tended to design claustrophobic places. Scott had been said to have “also received certain architectural tutelages from Sir Robert himself”, and during a reception, Smirke had explained to Kempthorne that Scott hadn’t really understood his lessons about “balance” and that Kempthorne had dodged a bullet getting rid of him. Sampson Kempthorne wrote his letter on June 12th 1841, was in good terms with Jonah Magnus but not really an intimate of Smirke himself (he wasn’t into ~the confidence~).

* “Lukas” (The Lonely): we know from Barnabas Bennett’s letter to Jonah Magnus, dated April 9th 1824, that Jonah had warned him to avoid Mordechai Lukas and was himself on “good terms” with him according to Elias (MAG092). Smirke could be referring to Mordechai or another from the family – since, at least, it seems like the ties between the Lukases and the Magnus Institute remained strong over time, with the Lukases being current sugar daddies patrons of the Institute (MAG017, MAG033) and Elias knowing ~Peter~ personally.

So that’s indeed quite a peculiar society of people in the know about the ~Dread Powers~. Given that Maxwell Rayner gave information to Smirke about The Dark’s “Grand Ritual”, and that Mordechai Lukas was already… powerful enough by himself to punish Barnabas in 1824, it doesn’t look like Robert Smirke “converted” all of the people surrounding him, but that he got acquainted with a few people who already had their own knowledge? Not sure about George Gilbert Scott, though – it seems like this one learned Smirke’s principles and ran away with them, serving The Buried.

In the same way, it really feels like Smirke might have exaggerated his role in organising the rituals? The Dark has its own already; we know that the previous attempt to bring The Stranger through took place in the Court Theatre of Buda in October 1787 (statement given by Abraham Janssen in MAG116), when Smirke was… a young kid. There was also some suspicion about the ~Archives~ under Alexandria, which were attacked by what looked like a Dark faction in AD 391, perhaps to stop an attempt by the Beholding (MAG053). According to Peter Lukas, The End and The Web have never been interested in setting up their ritual (MAG134), and Daisy&Jon guessed that The Hunt doesn’t want to reach its culmination (MAG133), even though some Hunters were seeking it. It doesn’t seem like Smirke created the principles that guide rituals, more that he himself didn’t have any information about attempts by other factions than The Dark? But he apparently wrote… guidelines (/wild-mass guessing essays) about others, and feared, towards the end of his life, how they could be misused.

Smirke, why the FUCK did you do that in the first place, OF COURSE IT WOULD GET MISUSED………….. (Though, it’s easy to see how something meant to protect could serve nefarious purpose. Explain in details how fire works, in order to save lives during a housefire, and one pyromaniac could still twist the principles to achieve more damage…)

Smirke specifically said that he “put pen to paper” so, unless it was an exaggeration… there might be a Robert Smirke essay somewhere about his ideas of the Fears’ rituals, whether they’re concrete guidelines or more general principles. The question is: where, and is it actually “worth” something, either to construct the rituals or to stop them? Did Gertrude have access to it? … is it in Elias’s safe? (Or is it… absolutely useless and off-the-mark, and Smirke feared for nothing because he thought his work a bigger deal than it actually was for the Fears themselves?)

- Amongst the list of people into ~Robert Smirke’s confidence~, what about Henry Roberts? He had trained George Gilbert Scott:

(MAG050, Sampson Kempthorne) “Henry [Roberts] was very effusive about the talents and prospects of young Mr Scott and was at great pains to inform me that his young protégé had also received certain architectural tutelages from Sir Robert himself. He said this with the oddest of looks, as though there was some jolly secret between us. I rather just nodded, as if to say I took his meaning, and he left well enough alone. […] At the mention of the name George Gilbert Scott, Sir Robert’s face flushed suddenly, in a manner not entirely unlike that of his protégé. He asked me what my interest was in Mr Scott, and I told him that he had, until recently, been engaged as my assistant. At this, Sir Robert gave a small laugh of satisfaction and told me I did not realise exactly how lucky an escape I may have had. I asked again what his training had entailed, and Sir Robert stared at me for a silent minute, before he finally nodded his head. “Balance,” he told me. “Equilibrium. […]” Without prompting, his tirade continued, and he talked about George, about shortcuts in symmetry and a patron that the young fool did not understand. I could follow very little of it, and it seems to be decidedly removed from anything that I would consider architecture, but whatever it was that Sir Robert had been teaching George, it appeared the lessons had been put to less noble use than he had intended.”

Both George Gilbert Scott and Henry Roberts historically survived Smirke (dying respectively in 1878 and 1876) – but it seemed that at the time, Henry Roberts knew about the true nature of Smirke’s work, and yet didn’t apparently dedicate himself to one power like Scott apparently did with The Buried…? Did it happen later, or did Henry Roberts totally manage to remain neutral…?

(And I’m HOWLING overall that… I hadn’t noticed, back in MAG050, that. Henry Roberts’s behaviour implied that Robert Smirke was indeed sharing what he knew of the Fears with his private club of acquaintances. I thought he was only training people in his “Balance and Fear” and that they independently happened to discover the powers by themselves. But nope, it’s REALLY all because of Robert Smirke; good job, Bob.)

- A curious detail: Robert Smirke’s death as given in MAG138 does not match the official version in our ~world~: the historical figure died on April 18th, 1867 while Martin reported that the letter he wrote to Jonah was dated February 13th, 1867, and that he died of ~apoplexy~ mid-writing it. That’s two months before his historical death!

(MAG138) MARTIN: Statement of Robert Smirke, taken from a letter to Jonah Magnus, dated 13th of February, 1867. […] Uh… [INHALE] The, hum… The letter ends there. Uh… Ap–apparently Robert Smirke was found collapsed in his study that evening, dead of, uh… [FLIPPING PAPER] Apoplexy.

Buuuut that year (1867) curiously has one matching point of data with the statement previously read by Martin, in MAG134 – it’s the same year Garland Hillier disappeared.

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Garland Hillier’s final essay, published in 1867 and simply titled “L’Avenir”, “The Future”, was supposedly a rambling and meandering speculation on the end of the human race, influenced by Darwin’s recent publication of The Origin of the Species and his own shattered faith. He posited a future where, far from any glorious or holy revelation or reckoning, a decadent and corrupt humanity was violently and utterly supplanted, and wiped out by a new category of being. One he referred to as “les Héritiers”. “The Inheritors”. He gave no details on how he believed they might look like, or how they might behave, but his predictions for the final days of humanity were unpleasant, and visceral. […] Anyway, the point is that sometime after that essay was published, Garland Hillier disappeared. Exactly when this happened, no one is really sure, but the last records of his existence can be found near the end of 1867.”

I don’t know if the “change” regarding Robert Smirke’s death is simply a matter of authorial self-protection (Magnus Archives is ~an AU~ of our reality, this Robert Smirke is not the same one as the historical figure) or if it is potentially tied to something more tightly knitted (a shift, a rupture between the Magnusverse and our own world? etc.)

At the very least, I *squint* hard at 1867. Were Jonah’s activities tied (from afar or more closely) to Garland Hillier’s own activities? Did Beholding start feeling threatened by the ~prophecy~ announcing the new emergence?

- You, too, get Marked by Beholding and get A Big Giant Eyeball haunting the sky in your dreams, the got-in-contact-with-Magnus trademark:

(MAG120) ELIAS: The Archivist wanders. He is searching, though, for what he does not know. […] All through it, the shadow is above him; the shape that gazes down upon him, bloodshot and unblinking. […] It opens, and he walks slowly down the steps into the earth; but even as it closes above him, the great shadow still Sees him. There is nowhere in this universe that it would not blot out the sky. […] So he watches her, trying in his single-minded focus to ignore the attention of that impossible thing that covers the sky and fixes its gaze on him with such force it would choke him – were he breathing. […] And at last, the Archivist looks up. [STATIC INTENSIFIES] At last, he looks into The Eye that sees all, and knows all, and clutches at the secret terrors of your heart. The Ceaseless Watcher of all that is, and all that was; the voracious, infinite hunger that tears at his soul, invoking him to discover, to observe, to experience all and everything and forever.

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I have been dreaming again, Jonah. The same every night for months, now. I imagine myself a boy again at Aspley. I awake, cold and alone in the dormitory. The sky outside is dark and I see no stars. I light a candle to better see my way, and step down the silent corridor. The masters’ rooms are empty; the fire in the kitchen is dead. Eventually, my steps lead out into the courtyard. It is so quiet that the sound of my feet upon the grass is painful to my ears. I stop, and look up at the sky, that empty black nothing, and I see the edges of the horizon becoming a dull white. I cannot understand what I am looking at. And then the sky… blinks. And I awake.”

(Bob didn’t have it so bad, after all? I mean. At least, his Big Eyeball blinked.)

- Third named mention of “The Watcher’s Crown” in the series! … almost directly answering Jon’s plea to know more about it from last episode:

(MAG111) GERARD: She worked out they’d all be happening quite close together. She’d already been doing it a while, and the Unknowing was the next on her list. That and The Watcher’s Crown. ARCHIVIST: The, the what? GERARD: Uh, the Rite of The Watcher’s Crown. It’s what she called the ritual for the Eye. She didn’t tell me much about that one, just that she knew how to take care of it.

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: […] What the hell is The Watcher’s Crown? So far the only mention of it I’ve had is from Gerry, and he didn’t seem to know much about what it actually meant. [PAUSE] And he’s gone now. But if it is the grand ritual of Beholding, then I– … I mean… I need to know about it. Right…?

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I am not a fool; I know well enough what this dream is likely to mean, and I warn you again that if you have any remaining ambitions to use our work, to try and wear The Watcher’s Crown, you must abandon them! Not simply for the sake of your own soul, but for that of the world! I have always had the utmost respect for you as a man of dignity, and learning. Do not allow yourself to fall to this madness.”

Interestingly, Smirke presented it like a literal crown that could be worn…? (What is in Elias’s safe.) (Is the crown Fashionable.)

- Take your pick of your Failed-Because-Of-Hubris representative:

(MAG080) LEITNER: And so I branded them with my seal. I told myself that if any should escape such a mark could help me retrieve them. But I think, in my heart, I dreamed of my work becoming known. That “The Library of Jurgen Leitner” would stand as a symbol of courage and protection. Hubris. I suppose it is fitting punishment that my name has become a watchword for evil, spoken by those who only know it as marking the darkest, most terrible of secrets. My name has become a curse.

(MAG111) GERRY: Eventually, I grew old enough and wise enough to see [my mother’s] obsession for what it really was: hubris. She lived her just carefully enough not to be destroyed by things she studied, but that was it. The things out there weren’t like taming fire, they couldn’t be contained or used for light or warmth. The best you could hope for from them, would be that they don’t spot you, and instead my mum chased after them, obsessed with others who had tried to stare at them without being blinded: y’know, Flamsteed, Smirke, Leitner. Idiots who destroyed themselves chasing a secret that wasn’t worth knowing.

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “You see, Jonah, I feel the hour of my death approaching and, though you have always been reluctant to pay due heed to my warnings or counsel, I continue to see in you the reflection of my own past hubris. […] So yes. Hubris. Not simply in that, I suppose, but in believing that those I brought into my confidence shared my lofty goals. “

I wonder if we’ll hear about John Flamsteed at some point, since Basira had done a bit of research on him by MAG108, too… (Though he lived waaaay before Smirke and Jonah.)

- I’m still not sold on the Jonah Magnus=Elias theory. On the one hand, there are many things indeed reinforcing that possibility: Smirke thought that Jonah had sunken into Beholding and that he planned to launch the Watcher’s Crown. MAG138 casually revealed that Smirke knew “Rayner” and the way he described him implied that Jonah knew him too (there was nothing in MAG098 to confirm or deny that Jonah knew the guy; the statement was even given to the Institute, not to Jonah himself, and we didn’t know if he was still alive at the time (1864) until MAG138). This is coming shortly after MAG135 which… revealed that Elias PERSONALLY knew Maxwell Rayner and was acquainted (?) with him at some point. Robert Smirke was guessing that Jonah was trying to escape death, and there is obviously the question: and if he had succeeded, who and where would he be? There is even the mention that:

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I am choosing to assume that these manifestations are unintentional, Jonah, and you have not… simply decided to implore a Dark Patron to end the life of an old man.”

… which (except for the fact that Beholding Never Does Shit) obviously puts Elias to mind because uh, who is well-known for murdering old people? Would Robert Smirke have been voiced by someone from Jonny’s family, too?

BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, every time Elias opens his mouth, I… can’t “read” him as 220+ years old. He’s too shitty? Too petty? Too… not exactly impulsive, but there is always an undercurrent of impatience in him, I feel? I don’t really know how to explain, but I feel like someone much older than “middle-aged” wouldn’t… revel as he does in petty jabs and punchlines, wouldn’t be so intent on getting the last word and on being Verbally Right at every turn?

(But then, that’s one of the main question in this series: what the HECK is Elias, what is his backstory, what are his goals, what even is his ROLE, and what does he know about the Spiders in his Institute.)

- HOWEVER, nervous laughter re: the fear of dying, because hum. Hum. Who does that remind me of.

(MAG080) ELIAS: Well, he was always going to need to fly the nest at some point. Go out and see the world for himself. LEITNER: He might die. ELIAS: It’s always a danger. Almost always.

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

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die.

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I beg you, do not pursue this goal; if only a single lesson may be gleaned from my life of long study, and longer hardship, it is that the fear of Death is natural, and to flee from it will only bring greater misery. Repent of your sins, Jonah. Seek forgiveness. I am certain the Dread Powers cannot take a soul that keeps faith in the Resurrection.”

Elias had already installed Jonah Magnus as a Role Model for Jon in MAG092 (“Because he had to know, to watch and see it all. That’s what this place is, John, never forget it. 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. This, at least, Gertrude understood.”) and ;; I. Am. Getting the feeling that Jon might be, totally unknowingly, walking in Jonah’s footsteps a bit…? Except for the part where he’d agree to sacrifice people close to him, because Jon’s conscious decisions have been the absolute opposite so far.

- Something heartbreaking to me: the way… information is not being shared, between Martin and Jon – though Martin is apparently planning to let Jon hear Robert Smirke’s statement eventually. Because MAG138 brings another light on Jonathan Fanshawe’s letter and Jon’s own conclusions about Jonah Magnus:

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: Hm. “Jonah Magnus”. I’ve never really given much thought to him. Not nearly as much as I should have. I suppose I had always hoped there was a chance he was… innocent, in all this. I know, I know! But I had… [EXHALE] I had just… hoped that maybe the founding of the Institute was in earnest. And not simply the foundation stone for all the terrible things that have happened here. … But no. Whatever is happening now… has its origins two hundred years ago. In the work of an evil man.

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “It is telling that of those I have brought into my confidence, it is only you and I who have continued this far without falling to one Power or another, despite all my instruction and work. This is, of course, assuming you have not taken the path of The Eye that I know has called you – called us both – for so long, even since before we began our work on Millbank. […] I am choosing to assume that these manifestations are unintentional, Jonah, and you have not… simply decided to implore a Dark Patron to end the life of an old man. I further find myself supposing that they may emanate from your own intrigues and preparations to culminate those plans which we agreed to abandon so many decades ago! […] The Eye has marked me for something, of this I have no doubt. My… humble hope is that it may be a swift death, an accidental effect of your own researches, which I once again implore you to abandon.”

Jonathan Fanshawe sent his letter to Jonah in November 21st, 1831: the fair assumption was that Jonah had probably funded the Institute in 1818 as a temple to Beholding? But it seems like it wasn’t the initial goal of the Institute, since Smirke was under the impression that Jonah hadn’t followed the path of Beholding until rather recently (unless Jonah had managed to deceive him all this time?). It could explain the wording used by Breekon to refer to the Institute:

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

“what WOULD BECOME this place”: not what it WAS already, even though Breekon is talking about their time serving on the Robert Small, around 1853, years after the foundation of the Institute. (Though the concept of the Institute, of Jonah asking all his acquaintances to send him spooky stories, amassing knowledge, threading his map of relationships around spooky people, of trying to know and learn more about it… indeed sounded extremely Beholding in the first place. But it seems like Beholding taking a hold of the Institute was a consequence, and not the initial goal of it – like the Institute wasn’t initially created to serve it?)

In the same way, I had wondered in MAG127 if Jon mightn’t have been wrong to conclude right away, like Jonathan Fanshawe, that Jonah’s goal had been to get rid of Albrecht without any concern for him – there could have been other reasons to take the actual books away from him, especially since they were the ones affecting Albrecht? But hum, alright: even without being a (conscious?) Beholding agent in the 1810s to 1830s, there are many ways to indeed be an “evil man” – Millbank says hi:

(MAG127, Jonathan Fanshawe) “Jonah; I must first and foremost decline your generous offer of a medical position servicing Millbank Penitentiary. While the terms you’ve laid out are no doubt more than adequate, I have, over these last months, come to the unfortunate conclusion that our intimacy and friendship must cease immediately. I do not know what interest you have in the poor condemned souls within those walls, nor do I care to guess. In the light of what I have so recently witnessed, I can no longer in good conscience associate with any of your endeavours.”

(MAG128, “Breekon”) “Poor wretches who emerged from Millbank, with tales of Australia and its cruelty on their lips, bundled into the cramped and creaking ship that would drag them away from everything they loved – and towards everything they feared.”

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “What we built at Millbank should be left well enough alone, resigned to the nightmares of the reprobates and brigands contained within its walls. […] This is, of course, assuming you have not taken the path of The Eye that I know has called you – called us both – for so long, even since before we began our work on Millbank.”

For Breekon to mention that it was an awful place, it must have been REALLY bad, indeed.

And it saddens me to agree with Martin that he… probably wasn’t the right person to read this statement:

(MAG138) MARTIN: I don’t know what he’s talking about when he mentions Millbank. The old prison, I guess? Tim said the tunnels under the Institute were all that was left of it, but… Jon said he’d checked them pretty thoroughly. [SILENCE] [SIGH] I’m not the one who knows all about this stuff…!

It’s not even just Jon who was specialising in navigating the tunnels – he was finding his way, but Tim was able to use them pretty efficiently too (MAG114, Jon: “I know there are some exits to the tunnels outside the Institute, so I guessed you were using them to get in and out, avoiding any… tape recorders.”). And there is something that Martin didn’t appear to remember about them, but that he had read himself:

(MAG088, Enrique MacMillan) “so here I came. To tell my story, of course, but another thing as well; cold, empty and calling. There’s something here, you see. Something to be dug up, rooted out, buried within. A hollow space that all eyes point towards. And I intend to reach it, if my fingers don’t give out first. I know where to dig.”

[…] MARTIN: Based on a few scattered notes and accounts from some of the older staff, it sounds like Mr. Macmillan got in a bit of a fight, which led to his arrest, and the replacement of quite a bit of the floor in Jon’s office. There are still a couple of boards with marks on them that I’d always hoped weren’t fingernail scratches, but I guess…

(+ Daisy’s mention to Jon in MAG114 that she didn’t like the tunnels because they felt “empty”, and the fact that… the “DIG” leaked into Jon’s dreams for reasons still unknown, despite Martin having been the one to read that statement.)

Is it the same structure as the tunnels under the Reform Club (MAG035) and St Paul’s Church (MAG063), or are they all separate installations? The ones under the Reform Club were long but looked clearly organised and structured; the one under St-Paul’s Church ended with a wall; and the ones under the Institute had been mentioned to be a veritable maze and… cover a very large area:

(MAG080) LEITNER: Over the years I have found that [this unexpurgated copy of Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture] interacts with Smirke’s architecture, and those tunnels specifically, in a more predictable way. By carefully reading specific passages in certain locations I am able to exercise… a degree of control over the substance of the tunnels. […] I’ve been in hiding for over twenty years now, ever since my library was destroyed. Obviously I have not spent all that time below your Institute. The old Millbank prison tunnels stretch out a very long way, and there are other entrances than the one below the Archives.

(Leitner even telling Jon that he had made them simpler for him.)

- YOU KNOW WHAT OTHER LINES SHARE THE SAME ENERGY?!

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I wish I could talk it through with Martin. … Or Tim. [SHORT SAD CHUCKLE] Or Sasha. But we never really did that, did we…? … Everything’s changed. … [SIGH] Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired.

(MAG138) MARTIN: Tim said the tunnels under the Institute were all that was left of it, but… Jon said he’d checked them pretty thoroughly. [SILENCE] [SIGH] I’m not the one who knows all about this stuff…! I wish– … No. No, it’s fine, I’m… fine, I… [EXHALE] I can do this.

It’s open to interpretation but I’m really hearing Martin’s “I wish–” as a “I wish Tim was still alive and with us” and AOUCH orz

(I’m… still hoping that we’ll get something from Martin about his own mourning of Tim orz Because that one must have been… so harsh… he was so worried about Sasha’s disappearance in the beginning of season 3, his small voice broke my heart in MAG092 when Elias confirmed that she had died a LONG time ago, and the fact that he had been buddy-buddy with her murderer while Elias was doing nothing about it had been one of the points he threw to Elias’s face in MAG118. And Tim was around even longer, and he experienced so many bad things alongside Tim, and even at his worst, Tim was often mellowing down / a bit more protective of Martin than… anyone else, really, be it in Michael’s corridors or when Tim had explained to Martin that he didn’t think that reading the statements were a good thing? And this despite Tim telling Jon in MAG114 that he didn’t know Martin as well as he knew Sasha, hence the fact he was avoiding him like the others – what does it say about Martin’s relationships with other people… ;;)

- But the “Good luck, Jon, I– … [HUFF] Stay safe.” coming after was absolute Gay Energy, and MARTIN!!!

It feels like the episode was the Perfect Recipe for how to get an episode popular/trending/making people scream: it has MARTIN throughout it, and we’re all thirsty to hear from him! It has Martin being snappy and cunning! Martin’s loyalty towards Jon! A Robert Smirke statement! The relationship between Smirke and Jonah Magnus! New questions about Jonah! More lore with Smirke’s taxonomy from the inside! Beholding statement, with eyes horror! A small mention of Tim! Elias! Elias in prison! Elias FINALLY ACKNOWLEDGING PETER’S EXISTENCE! MORE CHAINS RATTLING AT EVERY TURN! Elias calling Martin out for his manipulative tendencies! Martin using the tape recorders instead of being used by them!

I still feel floored.

- Special bonus for another occurrence of Martin’s “Mm-hMM” when people are telling him something he doesn’t want to hear, and I LOVE HIS CASUAL SNAPPINESS IN SEASON 4…

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I just… I’m sorry. Basira is off doing… God-knows-what, and I can’t talk to Melanie. MARTIN : Mm-hmm.

(MAG134) PETER: […] And as far as the coffin goes, there’s not much I can do about a bull-headed Archivist who seems hellbent on self-destruction. My powers only extend so far. MARTIN : Mm-hmm.

(MAG138) ELIAS: I am so very pleased to see you. MARTIN: Mm-hmm.

Martin “Mm-hMMm.” Blackwood, ilu.

- The difference between how Elias constantly reminded Jon how he belongs to The Eye, versus Elias’s… apparent uninterest? in Martin’s own alliance to the Lonely is quite… jarring. As for Jon:

(MAG092) ELIAS: [SIGH] What are you? ARCHIVIST: I… The Archivist. ELIAS: Precisely. It is your job to chronicle these things, to experience them, whether first-hand or through the eyes of others. To simply be told, well… ARCHIVIST: It doesn’t please your master? ELIAS: Our master, Jon. […] We thrive on ceaseless watching, on knowing too much. What we face is the hidden, the uncanny, and the unknown. If you are to stop them, you need to get better at seeing.

(MAG116) ELIAS: I have been doing my best to prepare you, Jon, to See. You should hopefully have it a bit easier than the others. ARCHIVIST: Another of my… powers? ELIAS: More… an aspect of your becoming. DAISY: You don’t say. ARCHIVIST: Er… right.

(MAG120) ELIAS: [The Eye] stares into him, and it stares out of him, and he is falling into the devouring eternity of its pupil. He wants to cry out in horror, but he cannot. He. is. whole.

(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. […] 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.

With Jon, it’s always been a casually possessive “us”. While Martin…

(MAG138) MARTIN: I think he wants me to join The Lonely. ELIAS: Then it sounds like you have a decision to make. [SILENCE] MARTIN : … What? [HUFF] That’s it? No, no monologue, no mindgames? You love manipulating people! ELIAS : That makes two of us. MARTIN: [HUFF] ELIAS : But no. This is too important for me to jeopardise with cheap “mindgames”. I simply have to trust that when the time comes, you’ll make the right choice. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Great. Great, great. So, what you’re [NERVOUS LAUGHTER] actually saying is that you’re gonna be… no help whatsoever!

… is clearly not getting that.

It’s terrible yet makes so much sense that of all people, Martin would talk to Elias about Peter’s offer, and implicitly seek out… whatever Elias might have to say about it? Elias had been the one to hire Martin in the Institute:

(MAG056) MARTIN: I don’t have a Master’s in parapsychology, I don’t even have a degree. When I was 17, my mom, she… had… she had some problems, and I ended up dropping out of school, t–trying to support us. I tried everything, but no one was hiring. So I… I just kinda started to lie on my applications, sending them out to just about anywhere. For some reason, my lie about parapsychology got me an interview with Elias and, and then a job here. M–most of my employment details are made up, I’m only 29!

… for reasons still unknown – was Elias actually fooled But Would Never Ever Admit It (as of MAG084, at the very least, he knew about Martin’s fake CV (“I mean, that doesn’t actually, er, make her qualified.” “[POINTEDLY] Formal qualifications aren’t everything, Martin.”) but that was long after MAG056 and he could have eavesdropped on that conversation)? Did Elias hire him because Martin was vulnerable and either prone to become canon-fodder or Beholding food, being Full Of Secrets and fearing that they might get discovered? Was there… something else? And in the same way, we’re not sure how Martin ended up working in the Archives – when Tim, in MAG098, pointed out that Jon had asked him to go with him, Martin was curiously silent as if… he couldn’t really say the same. Why is Martin at the Institute? Doesn’t working there for at least nine years mean anything?

I feel like the episode both began with a question (Martin asking where he should stand between The Lonely and The Eye) and ended up with his implicit answer, maybe… after all guided by Elias, when he made a jab at Martin for being into manipulation games too, and for not sharing his information about The Extinction with Jon:

(MAG138) MARTIN: So… so what? What does it mean? Am I supposed to be reassured that new Entities can be born? That there’s some, some kind of… precedent for The Extinction? … Peter? [SILENCE] Huh. Maybe he has gone to a party. […] I don’t know what Peter’s planning, but my–my guess is that it might involve something below the Institute. Hopefully, by the time you get these tapes, I’ll have something more concrete for you. [PAUSE] Good luck, Jon, I– … [HUFF] Stay safe. [CLICK.]

At the end of the episode, Martin’s answer feels twofold: to manipulate, and to choose “Jon”.

Manipulate, because he checked whether Peter was around before revealing that he wasn’t just using the tape recorders because it’s what the archive team does with the statements (MAG134: “I can’t help but notice you’re recording right now?” “It… was a statement, right, that’s what we do.”), but because he’s planning to send information to Jon, through the tape recorders that have always been associated with him (MAG126: “… It’s because he’s back, isn’t it. [SIGH] He’s back, so now you’re going to be… around, again. Listening in. Mff. You missed him, didn’t you. … Yeah. … [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION] Yeah, me too.”).

I don’t know if it’s enough to go full Web-aligned, but… it feels like between Eye and Lonely, Martin is actually heading towards a third option? Or maybe a neutral ground, since his loyalty for Jon is bypassing the rest as of now? Elias’s arrest had always been presented as Martin’s plan, it’s logical that Elias would remind Martin of it with such insistence (since he’s still stuck there), but it’s still… stricking:

(MAG113) ARCHIVIST: Martin’s plan is solid. I think. MARTIN: I mean, they might just kill him. MELANIE: Good. ARCHIVIST: I mean, maybe. But… I think they’re still our best chance. Even if we did manage to blindside him, I–I don’t know how long we could… hold him. MARTIN: And, in fairness, he’s happy enough to use the police against us. ARCHIVIST: Quite. And I’d rather not be staring down a kidnapping charge on top of everything–

(MAG114) ARCHIVIST: And Martin… he’s okay with it? DAISY: It was his idea. ARCHIVIST: Yeah. You think it’ll work?

(MAG117) MARTIN: These last couple of years, I’ve always been... running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but… but now it’s my trap. And, well. I think it will work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but… it felt good, weaving my own little web. […] I guess I’m just… sick of sitting on my hands, drinking tea and hoping everyone’s okay. This way I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but… I’m ready.

(MAG120) ELIAS: I must admit I’m impressed, Martin. I knew you were all planning something, of course, but I didn’t believe you specifically would have the… er, capacity for boldness that you displayed. It took me quite by surprise. MARTIN: You didn’t just see it in me? ELIAS: Honestly, I didn’t look. For all my power, I will admit I am not immune to making the occasional lazy assumption. I presumed that I knew you thoroughly, but by the time you demonstrated otherwise… well. There was simply too much to keep watching over. I only have two eyes, after all.

(MAG138) ELIAS: Besides which, don’t forget I am still living At Her Majesty’s Pleasure, due in no small part to your actions. […] MARTIN: … What? [HUFF] That’s it? No, no monologue, no mindgames? You love manipulating people! ELIAS: That makes two of us.

(And once again, it is VERY interesting that Elias likened Martin’s depiction of him to Martin himself on the subject of manipulation. Once again: what do you know about the spiders in the Institute and about Jon’s ties with the Web, Elias…)

- It really feels like Martin was Our Protagonist, during this episode? From Jon barely catching him in MAG124, to Martin’s own work alongside Peter at the end of MAG126, to Martin reading a statement in MAG134 to… Martin being the character we follow in different locations in MAG138, getting his point of view (going to see Elias, reading a statement, doing his own follow-up, revealing a bit more of his own agenda).

;;;; I’m still so “!!!” over Elias and Martin being in the same room. Elias was absolutely shitty with him, but at the same time, there is an undercurrent of… honesty? behind their exchanges? Because Martin knows that Elias knows about his relation to Jon and:

(MAG118) ELIAS: [EXASPERATED BREATHING] … Did Jon put you up to this? MARTIN: You think I’m doing this for him? ELIAS: No. It’s just the sort of half-baked scheme he’d come up with. And I’m well aware that you’ll do just about anything for him– MARTIN: I– ELIAS: –and I don’t need to read your mind for that one. […] MARTIN: Well, I hope you've got something better than that pathetic dig at my feelings for Jon. ELIAS: It’s baffling, really. Such loyalty to someone who really treats you very badly. MARTIN: Oh, is that supposed to be, what, a revelation? ELIAS: [CHUCKLE] You know, I really should have gone for that. Find something that would finally manage to shatter that precious image you have of him.

(MAG138) MARTIN: […] Why am I only hearing about this now, and why doesn’t Jon know?! ELIAS: […] as for our… dear Archivist, I’m afraid I no longer have any real control over what he does or does not know. Unlike yourself! [PAUSE] I notice you haven’t told him either. MARTIN: Yeah. Well. I’m still not sure I really believe it. [EXHALE] A–and, I don’t… I–… I’m, h… ELIAS: Worried he might charge off into another coffin. [SILENCE] … Quite.

… I feel like we always get a glimpse of what Martin isn’t saying, when he speaks to Elias? It’s not the whole picture, it’s not Everything about Martin’s feelings, but there are some bits, some weaknesses that are getting exposed. (And I don’t know if these were Gratuitous Jabs at Martin or if they were meant to get Martin to do exactly the reverse of what Elias was denouncing ;; Because the episode did end with Martin making sure that Jon would know, though indirectly…)

- I’M ABSOLUTELY DDDD: OVER THE FACT THAT

Ahahaha, “This is too important for me to jeopardise with cheap ‘mindgames’” says the guy who sent Basira (and potentially Jon) to focus on The Dark and DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE EXTINCTION TO THEM, and, in the meantime, discusses The Extinction with Martin when he brought it on the table and DOESN’T MENTION THE DARK’S ACTIVITIES AT ALL WITH HIM. Guess who is back to manipulating through information: THIS GUY. So, there is definitely an agenda behind it; he’s not seriously concerned by The Dark, isn’t he. It’s just a matter of throwing a bone to Basira and making sure that Jon gets to Experience The Dark, isn’t it.

- On the Relationship Between Elias And The Apocalypse:

(MAG080) LEITNER: The Unknowing. ELIAS: [CHUCKLE] Creativity never was their forte. LEITNER: You of all people should want to stop them. ELIAS: And we will. But I don’t think we’ll need your help.

(MAG092) ELIAS: The Unknowing. I need you to stop it. ARCHIVIST: Again with– What is “The Unknowing”? Exactly. ELIAS: A ritual. The Stranger and its kin attempting to gather power enough to bring it closer.

(MAG102) ELIAS: I should have thought preventing the horrific transformation of our world is not solely my concern!

(MAG126) MARTIN: Yeah. You said. … But if things are really so urgent, then why didn’t Elias say anything? PETER: [LAUGH] Because, behind all his bluster, Elias’s just like all the rest. He’s so preoccupied playing the game he doesn’t pay attention to the big picture. He managed to convince himself that he could get his ritual off first, which would have made all of this a… bit moot, but that’s not really an option anymore.

(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. […] 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. […] 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.

(MAG138) MARTIN: So why haven’t you helped him?! ELIAS: My relationship to the apocalypse is more… complicated. MARTIN: [UTTER DISBELIEF] Oh, seriously? ELIAS: Seriously.

TECHNICALLY, we only have Peter’s word that Elias wanted to launch ~his ritual~ because Elias was obviously Very Silent on the issue, but. What is your “relationship to the apocalypse”, Elias – is it just a matter of getting it the way you want it, or not at all…?

(In the way he answered Martin, it sounds almost as if he wouldn’t have been against The Extinction wrecking the world, hence his inaction but? He was probably implying that he had other plans to stop it which involved Beholding’s ritual?)

- Regarding Elias’s agenda:

(MAG122) BASIRA: Elias is locked up. […] A bunch of Section’d officers took him in. He made some sort of deal, I think. But… he’s not getting out anytime soon.

(MAG127) ELIAS: Our… arrangement with the Inspector notwithstanding, I… rather feel that right now all the distrust is very much your own. […] I’ve made it clear my cooperation’s contingent on his not seeing me, and my terms have been accepted thus far.

(MAG138) ELIAS: As for why I’ve done so little about such a looming existential threat… to be blunt, I have been rather busy. MARTIN: [BARELY CONTAINED SNORTING CHORTLE]

Was Elias talking about his activities while still running the Institute, or what he’s currently doing in prison? But oh yes:

(MAG138) MARTIN: Great. Great, great. So, what you’re [NERVOUS LAUGHTER] actually saying is that you’re gonna be… no help whatsoever! ELIAS: … Just like old times~ MARTIN: I don’t know what I expected. [INHALE] Right. Right, we’re done here.

Elias has always been a Very Busy Person.

- … And Peter Has A Very Busy Social Life apparently, too:

(MAG134) PETER: Right! Then, if you’ll excuse me, I have a family thing to get to. […] Okay! Now, I really am running late, so if you don’t mind?

(MAG138) MARTIN: … Peter? [SILENCE] Huh. Maybe he has gone to a party.

Technically, maybe he’s trying to make Martin feel Very Alone by showing off that he has a lot of things to attend, but still. Does anyone even realise he’s there.

- Have I mentioned that ELIAS FINALLY ACKNOWLEDGED PETER’S EXISTENCE? Incredible, I can’t believe, etc.

And he did it in the BEST POSSIBLE WAY:

(MAG138) ELIAS: Come on, Martin. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Let’s not start with lies. MARTIN: [LOUD SIGH] Fine. ELIAS: I am so very pleased to see you. MARTIN: Mm-hmm. [SILENCE] ELIAS: No time for pleasantries? Very well, then. To business. What can I do for you? Tired of running budgets for Peter? I know I would be.

Absolutely unprompted and to gratuitously complain about Peter – ALSO, L-O-L ELIAS, “let’s not start with lies” but WHO is lying here. We ALL KNOW that you’re dying to do these budgets, that you’re probably doing them in your head a millisecond before Martin by watching him, seething that he’s doing YOUR precious scheduling and budgeting.

And

(MAG138) ELIAS: [INHALE] Everything Peter has told you is true. MARTIN: Oh… ELIAS: For all his… many faults, Peter is legitimately trying to stop the end of the world as we know it.

…………………. Listen. It’s getting harder and harder to keep in minde that they might NOT be marrying/divorcing for the sixth or seventh time. It sounds so much like bitter exes/nagging spouses………………………. And I mean………………… they deserve each other………….?

(Though, if season 4 is any indication: Elias’s true OTP is with hand gestures. He’s getting WORSE and WORSE with the chain rattling sound.)

Title for MAG139 is out and HHHHHHHHHHHHH once again. Immediate thoughts are for AGNES? AGNES? AGNES? PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE? (Reminder that The Desolation still hasn’t gotten a statement in season 4 so far~). Agnes statement from Gertrude’s stash…? (Is there a tape with Agnes’s voice, somewhere?) Or maybe about The Dark’s victims, to keep with the theme; Julia? Julia’s mother?

And second meaning could as well be about Martin, or more likely… Jon, very obviously. I guess ;;

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #the magnus archives #tma spoilers #tma season 4 #mag138 #tma liveblog #long post/

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evilsapphyre · 7 years

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Sapphy’s Spoilerific Review

Season 7 Episode 1

In case the title isn’t specific enough, this will be a very spoiler-filled review for Game of Thrones.

You have been warned!

Welcome back to HBO and Westeros. It's been a long 13 months or so. But finally, we can find out what is in store for our intrepid heroes, and villains, and people we just kind of wish would stop existing.

After a lengthy previous on, we open at The Twins, with another feast hosted by... Walder Frey? Wait, didn't he get his throat slit after eating pie made of his sons. Apparently, he gathered all his sons to feast them again… And he wants them to eat and drink and be merry. Mostly. He still has his dislike of them women of his.

Of course, his actual speech seems a bit strange, almost like he's not really himself. And sure enough, as they all drink their poisoned wines, Arya rips off her Walder suit to watch them die too. And as the women stare on in horror, she tells them to spread the word - The North Remembers.

Yep, you better believe it, bitches! (Someone from the North had to!)

We then head beyond the Wall, where, in case we forgot, the White Walkers are coming. And if that’s not terrifying enough (and it's a really gorgeous shot over snow with mist), there are at least 3 undead Giants! Oh snap! If only they hadn't wasted the last living Giant on getting back Winterfell from Ramsey. RIP Wun-wun!

It seems we get that vision courtesy of Bran and his ever-flowing weirwood wifi connection. Thankfully, Meera saw Wonder Woman this Summer and dragged Bran to safety, as IIRC, Uncle Benjen left them quite a hike away from the gate. Lord Commander Dolorous Edd greets the wayward pair at the gate, wanting to know if they are wildlings. Meera introduces them, but the new LC is rather doubtful. Rather than prove who they are, Bran just states all he's ever seen about Edd, and they are admitted back to the proper North… south of the Wall.

Up next, we find ourselves in Winterfell. Jon is being all Kingly, dictating orders on how they are going to get ready for the coming War. He wants all their dragon glass, and beyond that all able bodied man, woman, and child will prepare for the upcoming war. What, women can't, or shouldn't, fight?! Old School Northern Man tries to claim (in front of Brienne no less!).

Fortunately, we still have hope for Westeros. And to continue making old men look dumb, young Lyanna Mormont slaps him (and any other male daring to think like that ) verbally upside their heads. I'm pretty sure that she’s the true leader of Westeros. I wonder how long it will take the rest of the Queens to realize it?

All hail Lyanna, first of Her Name.

What will Ser Friendzone do when he finds his baby sister on the Iron Throne?

Anyways, I digress!

Jon asks Tormund and the Wildlings to man Eastwatch by the Sea! Good riddance, I say! Tormund needs to go far away from my Brienne, as she awaits her maiden fair. Tormund must realize he’ll never have her and agrees to his suicide mission. (Not before a later scene with a lustful sigh from the Wildling as Brienne tries to dissuade his advances by beating up on Pod.)

Next, Jon needs to handle business regarding the family holds of the Umbers and Karstarks. He wants the families to keep them. Old School Lord wants to destroy them. Sansa pipes up and wants to reward faithful houses with the new keeps. Jon and her bicker in front of the Lords, and it is clear she wishes she was in charge. Jon finally slaps her down with his stern voice, reminding her that HE is king. He asks tiny Lord Umber and Alice Karstark (uhm, why isn't Tormund all about her? He married her in the books) to say the words. And that was the end of that squabble.

Except Sansa and him keep squabbling once they leave the meeting. He tells her plainly to not undermine him in front of the lords. And she whines about not being able to voice her opinion. Now I'm all about female empowerment, but there is a time and place for voicing opinions. Apparently, she forgot. Much like she forgot about telling Jon about the Vale Knights last season.

Anyways, she practically calls him Joffrey because he doesn't want people to see him bicker in public with people. Because it does undermine his authority. He's appalled at the comparison, but she quickly recants saying he's a good ruler. The conversation turns towards Sansa feeling they're looking the wrong way for War. They should be looking South. She diatribes about how awful and cunning Cersei is, but Jon says he knows how bad the real threat is. Plus, no Southern army could last in their Winter. After all, they're Siberia.

He also points out how Sansa seems to admire Cersei.

Which segues us to King's Landing... and Cersei walking across a huge painted floor map of Westeros. Jaime follows her and establishes that he may still be pod-Jaime. (BOOO!) I'm also sensing a theme of bickering siblings as the two are squabbling over things like... how many Kingdoms and dynasties.

Jaime is more sensible than Cersei pointing out that they essentially have no allies (especially since the report out of the Twins has come down) and that all of their children are dead. There's no one left for a dynasty.Especially since Cersei disregards her other brother who she knows is Hand of the Queen for Dany. That only makes her seethe more, and she throws that in Jaime's face.

And really, don't get me started on pod-Jaime and how he wanted to talk about losing their baby boy. He knew King Butters killed himself, so does he know his sister went all Mad King on Sept of Baelor? (Hint: The only acceptable answer is HELL NO! Otherwise, she'd be dead.)

Anyways, when discussing all of their enemies, there are two major foreshadowing hammers: Highgarden, home to the Queen of Thorns, has all the food, and Dany will land on Dragonstone. All the more reason that they need allies in this upcoming war. Cersei points out that she does have an ally in mind, and she learned quite a bit from her father. (Doubtful!)

Enter Euron Greyjoy and the Ironborn fleet, looking for love in all the wrong places. There is an overly machismo display by Euron as he tries to display his plumage for Cersei. He paints a picture of how they were both betrayed by family who defected to the Targs. He makes a few promises and then proposes marriage. After all, he has two good hands. (Pod-Jaime pantomimes quite well in the scene, offering to stick him with his sword.) She declines him, but he says he'll prove he’s worthy and leaves.

We move to Oldtowne and the Citadel, where Sam… Has become an indentured servant of the Maester Order. If we weren't sold on how awful his "tutelage" is, we are given a lengthy montage where he puts away books, cleans filthy shit-filled chamber pots, and pours soup that looks quite like the shit in the pots. Blech! He wants to desperately get into the restricted book section, but he sadly doesn't have a Cloak of Invisibility like a different would be wizard in another series. So instead, he heads off to speak with Ol' Slughorn himself.

Slughorn gives him some advice on what it really means to be a Maester, and how impartial they should be. He reminds them that even in the darkest of hours, ages of ago, people succeeded, and so they will again. But he still can't have access to the books. I mean, horcruxes and all. So, Sam steals the key, steals a bunch of books, and goes back to his Wildling baby mama and kid. He then discovers that Stannis told him the truth about there being a bunch of Dragon Glass on Dragonstone. We also get one brief glimpse of Ser Friendzone, who managed to get to Oldtowne in search of a cure. He's still hung up on Dany too. Even as he turns to stone.

The Hound and the Brotherhood are still moving towards the North. It's snowing pretty hard in the Riverlands, and their banter is kind of boring. (To me anyways.) However, they come across the cottage where The Hound stole the silver of the kindly farmer who helped him and Arya years ago. He wants to be a better guy, and now he has guilt for the fact that he may have killed these people - indirectly.

The Hound has a funny comment about how he ended up with a cult of fire worshippers, but he sees the power of the fire when Beardy McTopknot tells him to. And it works just like that, as Clegane sees the upcoming icy death of the North. If that didn't bond them, Beardy McTopknot and Clegane also bury the dead farmer and his kid in the middle of the night.

Arya and Sansa are spotted each in different scenes. Arya stumbles across some Lannister soldiers, and she does the age old "Tell them the truth" after she befriends them, but they just laugh at her comment about killing the Queen. For a moment, she looked like she would kill these soldiers, but she hasn't become a full sociopath yet clearly. (Although, props to them for singing the song that the musician wrote in the books about Shae.) Sansa has a small chat with Baelish, and I'm sure it leads somewhere, but I wish she would decide who she is supporting - even if it's herself. This waffling of hers... It's getting old! Prove you've learned the game by doing something that will actually accomplish something. (And if you want to top Cersei, just side with Littlefinger long enough to get what you want and then dispose of him.)

Finally, we come to Dragonstone, where Dany has finally come home!

There's not much to say other than that this is a beautiful sequence, and they spared no expense on this set. Nothing is said, and really, it would have taken away if people said anything. And can I just say that the throne at Dragonstone is like so much more awesome than the damn Iron Throne? Sign me up for the interior (and exterior) decorator. I could use some dragon accents around my house.

That pretty much encapsulates the episode. Tune in next week to see what happens next As Westeros Turns.

#game of thrones #review #got #got review #tongue in cheek #s7e1 #sapphy's spoilerific reviews

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renlyisright · 5 years

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Season 7 Episode 4: Dragonfire and Ruin

In this episode: Things continue being bad and people don’t think far enough into the future, but some people think far enough into the past to learn interesting things:

Highgarden has been sacked of all its riches, and Randyll Tarly has his men gathering the harvest from the peasants. The gold is going to the Iron Bank, and Cersei plans to use their new goodwill to get help to destroy Daenerys. And after that, there’s finally going to be peace under her rule.

Bronn doesn’t believe that. Compared to someone like Varys, who plays by the rules of the horrible world but believes that it can change for the better, the big softie, Bronn sees the world as a static dog-eat-dog place, where the only difference is who happens to be at the top at any given time. Soldiers will soldier, and Bronn, even though he is good at soldiering, knows that the clock ticks and sooner or later he will die in battle or from a disease. So he wants out to cosier jobs.

The big question looming behind every other question: is there enough food for the winter? The war in the Riverlands was super bad for the farms, the North missed its last harvest, and now the Reach is being sacked. Let’s say that there will be peace soon (no idea how long the last 10 episodes will take, as people have to move around a lot), and the White Walkers are defeated before the winter has lasted more than a year. At that point Daenerys rules Westeros and has defeated all her enemies. The winter will last for many years, as the maesters say that long summers correspond with long winters, and this summer was very long. Where does she get food?

Okay, we are near enough the end that I can say my prediction for the final end of the show ( :o it’s so close): That “let’s say” situation above, with Jon and Daenerys saying “If we can get the people to work together, we will survive to spring.” Fade to black, and credits.

In “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, there are many adult characters who, during the series, don’t listen to the children, and because of that mess things up for them. In the penultimate part of the story, some of them are in a burning building, and the kids warn them about the fire. It’s clear that if they just listen to the kids, they will get out easily and not die horribly. It’s left ambiguous if they do, so the reader can decide themselves if the characters have learnt anything and so get to live. Something like that would work for this show too. Have the people learnt anything about working together?

Of course, there are two roadblocks before we could get there. One of them is the Night King, the other is Queen Cersei. The latter is currently being congratulated by the banker from Braavos for her quick repaying of debts. She only had to antagonize half of the South and then sack it. Why didn’t Tywin think of that?

Jaime confirms that there is no High Septon, so what does the Faith of the Seven even look like currently? That would be interesting to know, but the point of blowing the Sept up was to remove the Faith from the plot completely, so that’s it. They are gone, as are the Baratheons, the Martells and the Tyrells. Cersei has likely seized all their assets to pay for the war and the coming winter. The common people’s opinion? Doesn’t matter at this point either, events move too quickly to get word from the street. Cersei won’t be removed by an angry mob. The High Sparrow tried that, and failed spectacularly. Daenerys needs to look like a big saviour compared to Cersei before the people will rally for her.

Currently that doesn’t look too good. The invasion force from the East is stuck in the emptied Casterly Rock, and attacking the Lannister army with another invasion force in the form of the Dothraki on an open field, Ned, and a big fire-breathing monster doesn’t give her “the returning rightful queen of the Westerosi” vibes.

She knows that, but if she stays in Dragonstone Cersei just gets more time to get more forces, from the Iron Bank or the recaptured Reach and Dorne.

In Winterfell, Littlefinger gives Bran the dagger. The Dagger. He tries to show his loyalties with this gesture, but… Bran sees things. Oh my goodness. I thought this would never come up, but now it obviously will. Who gave that dagger to the assassin! “The question that started the War of Five Kings”. I thought that nobody would care at this point, because in the books Tyrion figured it out long ago, and the show didn’t show it.

But did Tyrion figure it out right? He never confirmed it with anybody. Or the show can have just changed the culprit anyway, it doesn’t matter what book-Tyrion thought. Ooh, exciting. But for the answer to give any satisfaction, it would have to be someone still alive, or someone dead we thought of as a person who would never do something like that.

Another reason why I didn’t think that the show would ever answer the dagger riddle was that so many of the people involved are dead already. Who can you ask about the events during the king’s visit? But now Bran can just see everything. He likely knows already. For a series where so much of the mystery was “whose side are these people on anyway, who is going to betray whom”, now there’s a main character who simply knows.

But he’s not telling, no. Our Bran says that he is not our Bran anymore, he is the Raven. Now he gets to be the mysterious person with all the knowledge and hidden motives for everything he does. Meera doesn’t like it at all, and leaves him saying “you died in that cave”. Which would make her the only survivor of the whole journey.

Arya is home! Everybody gets a reunion! But first she has to “outwit” the guards. Who are a comedy duo. In this superserious part of the story, in this superserious castle filled with superserious people? I want to know where Jon found these two.

Arya wants to fight with Brienne. They do, and she waterdances. It’s been seven real-time years for me since she started her training with the First Sword of Braavos. Since then I have learnt a trade too and found a full-time job doing it. I have grown up with these people just as much as I grew up with the students of Hogwarts before them.

Sansa, Arya and Bran. It’s now these three in charge of the North. All of them have seen and experienced traumatic events, and they are, what, teens now? Daenerys isn’t much older than that, never mind Robin Arryn, so of the current rulers Cersei, Randyll and Euron are the last of the old guard, trying to keep these teenagers down. The world usually belongs to the young sooner or later, now it’s going to be very soon.

But that’s in the future. In the past, this all happened before. Jon shows Daenerys carvings in a cave. Made by the Children of the Forest long long ago. This is so cool. I always get a weird feeling when I see cave drawings. If the person doing those was transported to our time as a baby, what would they then do with their life? Would they be an artist? Would they scribble on a lecture notebook? Instead of looking at fire, would they look at Game of Thrones?

The Children created the White Walkers to fight against the humans, but it backfired horribly, and after that at least some Children and some humans had an alliance to not get killed. Was it wide-spread, or a simple necessity for a small group? How long after the first Walkers did this happen? The Night King pictured has a beard, is it a different Night King, or did he rock a beard millenia ago?

Daenerys and Jon are still stuck. Jon doesn’t bend the knee, and Daenerys doesn’t offer armies and dragons without it. And then she gets the bad news. Oh, how the turntables. Now it seems likelier that she can’t win the war without Jon’s support. But there’s no time for the North to march South at this point.

More reunions! Theon and Jon meet again. It’s not a pleasant reunion, with Jon saying that the only reason he doesn’t kill Theon on the spot is that he saved Sansa. Once again I’m glad that the good deeds also have consequences.

With both Daenerys and Tyrion gone, Jon and Theon now have to work together (with Missandei, let’s not forget her) to help her. Can they work together?

The Lannister army gets the gold inside King’s Landing, and are ready to get the rest of the army there as well. Randyll worries about ambushes, so they have some reports of enemy movements. Not that they do them any good, since they are still ambushed.

By the way, interesting rock formations so close to King’s Landing, have we seen this area before?

Dickon seems like he’s got a good head on his shoulders. If there’s no other valid contestant in the end, he can have Highgarden.

Suddenly, they hear sounds. Daenerys has landed on Westeros, the main continent she wants to rule but which she has never visited even as a baby (IIRC?). And she does that offscreen, unless she flew all the time. Tyrion has also returned home, but he just pops up at the end of the episode, to see those he likely commanded during the battle of Blackwater get massacred by the Dothraki and dragonfire.

Here they come! The Dothraki on an open field, Ned! I knew this would happen this season, but it happened what, 10 minutes after Daenerys says she’ll leave Dragonstone to war? The battles this season don’t have any buildup, they just happen. It makes me a bit anxious. Nobody is safe from a sudden battle.

The Lannister forces are spread thin, and so the Dothraki can swamp them easily. Daenerys enters the battle and starts burning all the wagons on the road. I winced.

So the food burns. But the gold is safe. Yay.

Using dragonfire is horrible, but dang they are majestic creatures.

Some episodes ago I told about how every larger battle or massacre has had some named character die in or immediately after it. No offence to unnamed infantrymen, but their deaths don’t matter as much, so it’s good to show that every time a lot of them die, also someone more important to the story does as well, so it has immediate consequences. Last week the conquest of Casterly Rock didn’t have any, but that one was meant to be a distraction on the Lannister side (great job distracting, unnamed infantrymen!).

But that made me very nervous now. There were Jaime, Bronn, Randyll and Dickon, all of them in a position to die, to make this “the battle in which we lost X”. When Dickon saved Jaime in the beginning of the battle, I expected a Dothraki to cut his head off immediately afterwards. When Bronn ran to the scorpion, I expected him to die in dragonfire after shooting the thing. When he shot the thing and it hit the dragon, I braced myself for its death. And when Jaime did his foolish Saint George attack, I shed a tear. A tear for this brave foolish sometimes very horrible man. I laughed when he lost his arm! He gave Olenna the poison that killed her! And now I cry for him, I’m a big softie.

But Dickon saves him a second time (unless he drowns, but I don’t think so), and cut to credits. So none of them seems to have died at the end of the episode. Randyll and Bronn may escape to King’s Landing, Jaime and Dickon get taken prisoners. The dragon may not be able to fly yet, but it’ll survive too.

So, King’s Landing next? Or a surprise battle in let’s say… Oldtown?

#game of thrones #renly is right #field of fire

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nobodysuspectsthebutterfly · 7 years

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Much of the fan debate on what happens in the final two books centers on which theories are supported by the narrative and which are not. In your opinion, are there any events in the first five books that WEREN'T really supported by the narrative? Anything at all that made you think 'that doesn't really work' even if you eventually changed your mind?

…not really? I’m trying to think over all the various events of the books, and there’s nothing that really comes to mind?

Like, okay. When I first read the books, I read them fast. My brother had gotten them from the library, and as soon as he finished he passed them to me, and as soon as I finished I passed them to my other brother. So I went through AGOT-AFFC extremely quickly, in less than two weeks, and it was pretty much a rollercoaster ride of events. I didn’t have time to analyze anything. Then afterwards, the w.org FAQ answered the few questions I had, and the w.org forums were so deeply unimpressive that I didn’t bother engaging with the fandom or in any further analysis of the narrative. (Short of discussing the books sometimes with my brothers, once at a meetup-con, and once briefly on fandom_wank, uh probably during the Diana Galbadon “fanfic is like white slavery” wank ‘cos IIRC GRRM had his Usual Opinions in that one.)

However, on my reread before ADWD was released, that’s when I read slowly and in depth. And because I’d already read the books, I could see where GRRM had steadily built up events in the narrative, leaving little clues, pulling plot threads together, so that even supposed “twists” were usually telegraphed far in advance. Which is in fact GRRM’s preferred mode, because he says doing otherwise would be bad writing. And he’s not a bad writer. A gardener-writer, in that often plots and characters grow organically, not exactly where he thought they would go, but when something like that happens he always makes sure to go back and support it. Y’know he doesn’t write one chapter and then the next and then the next, right? Instead he’ll work on one POV for a while, and if something happens in that POV that requires support/changes in another POV, he has to go back and rewrite the pages of that POV he’s already written. Which is one reason his writing takes so damn long.

Anyway, so, I can’t think of anything I ever thought didn’t really work? Sure, there are characters whose development doesn’t always work for me (Euron and Darkstar, maybe a few others), but not any plot developments. (And for those characters, it’s not their relationship to the plot that I’ve rolled my eyes at.) Like, the other day @poorquentyn was talking on twitter about various twists, and the only one he thought wasn’t well supported was the resolution to the Bran’s assassin mystery. And even that one, we knew from the beginning it wasn’t Tyrion due to (among other things) the bit with the betting on Jaime, and still, the answer that it was Joffrey who hired the catspaw is developed over several chapters of ASOS. (I think it’s possible GRRM originally had someone else in mind, though, maybe Robert due to his ownership of the dagger? And maybe Robert’s character developed otherwise? But you can still see a sense of it in that Robert was the one who said (while drunk) that Bran should be put out of his misery, he’d just never actually do that, but Joff would to impress his dad.)

But in general, I’ve always been impressed by GRRM’s patient plotting. Murderous little Big Walder, how Raff the Sweetling ended up in Braavos (which is how I figured it out before it happened, not by guessing, just by putting the pieces together), Jon’s assassination, all the everything leading up to the Red Wedding… you name it, there’s always clues and reasons for plot developments. (Which doesn’t necessarily mean everything is a clue. Sometimes the Three Stooges are just the Three Stooges.) And I find GRRM’s foreshadowing often facepalmingly entertaining. But maybe I’ve overlooked something. If there’s any plot event that you feel (or anyone else feels) wasn’t supported by the previous narrative, let me know, and I’ll tell you how GRRM got from Point A to Point Z. :)

#sassyeggs74 #asoiaf #asoiaf meta #grrm #writing #mysteries of asoiaf #the bran's assassin mystery

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ais-n · 7 years

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Hi ais! I've just finished re-reading icos and I once again feel so sad that it's over again. Do you have any nook recommendations or books that you like?

Aww thank you for reading ICoS the first time, let alone rereading it! That’s sweet of you

I could have sworn at some point I compiled a list (which I was going to link only because I have the worst memory and forget things I love whenever I try to list it all) but I can’t find anything! What the hey.

So, I made a list below the cut :D I broke it up between M/M, nonfiction, fiction, YA, and anime/manga. You should know ahead of time that I tend to read mostly manga or nonfiction, and/or I tend to gravitate toward “darker” stories or stories that deal with a lot of nuance and complexity. I don’t tend to gravitate toward stories that are really black and white (but idk about the ones I mentioned from when I was a preteen/teen because it’s been so long since I read them).

That may tell you if you might like any of these or not :) I wrote a little about the book by most of the names to give you a bit more of an idea.

Hopefully at least one of these looks interesting to you :) Let me know if you need links on something if you can’t find it, or if you want a bit more of an explanation on anything. Some (honestly, most) of these books I haven’t read in forever but others I periodically reread just because I

BOOKS BOOKS AND MORE BOOKS BELOW

**M/M:**

All for the Game series by Nora Sakavic - m/m, super awesomesauce series, it’s my fave in general. First book free, second 2 books 99 cents each. Nora was having some issues with the first book not being on the site with the rest so I put it on my site until she’s got that figured out, so people can still read the series. Get the first book here: http://aisylum.com/tfc/ and then I link the other books on there.

Raised by Wolves series by W.A. Hoffman - m/m, this one is a very different series and style of storytelling. I personally adore this series but it’s also the sort of thing some people may not be into for various reasons. But for me, I read the series all the way through and instantly started over and reread it all again. First book is Brethren.

**NONFICTION:**

anything by Simon Singh but especially The Code Book and Big Bang - these are nonfiction books and if that makes you go “UGH NO WAY” then know that Simon writes nonfiction like fiction so they’re really great and easy reads, plus you get lots of great info. Also, The Code Book is what I used as research for Jeffrey’s knowledge base + the whole thing with the message in Evenfall and the OTP comment. (If you’re like “Hey yeah what WAS all that about?” I answered it here.) (Also also, if you saw Imitation Game, then you should know that the Code Book covers at least part of the same history as that movie)

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (follows the story of one of my favorite humans, Paul Farmer who founded/co-founded Partners in Health which is one of my favorite charities) also Tracy writes other books that look intriguing to me but I haven’t read yet.

Erik Larson - Devil in the White City, Thunderstruck, and other books by him – he, like Simon, writes nonfiction in a way that reads very easily like fiction. I like the way he interweaves various stories of various people into one book. Devil in the White City might be my favorite of his that I’ve read? Mostly because it combines architecture + America’s first serial killer + the 1893 Chicago World Fair and all of these things make me go YES PLX

Troublemaker by Leah Remini and Rebecca Paley - this is about scientology; I listened on audiobook–it was interesting and informative

Also, I listened to Dan and Phil’s first book (The Amazing Book is Not on Fire) on audiobook and that was also entertaining–although if you have no idea who tf Dan and Phil are, that may be less entertaining to you lol

Death’s Acre, or Beyond the Body Farm, by William Bass and Jon Jefferson - so, Bill Bass is super interesting, tl;dr is he’s a frontrunner in forensic anthropology, these books are about a farm people donate their bodies to where they decompose in various states to help forensic anthropologists learn more on decomposition which then helps in murder trials and elsewhere. If you’re into forensic anthropology, check out Bill Bass

Dismembered by Susan Mustafa and Sue Israel - this is true crime about a serial killer in Louisiana. It is, therefore, quite graphic and you should heed the title as quite accurate representation of what you will be reading about in the book. But if serial killers or true crime intrigue you, I really liked this book and have been on the lookout by more from these ladies. I thought it was written well and told the story well.

**FICTION:**

books by Jefferson Bass - there’s a whole series called the Body Farm series or something. Jefferson Bass is the combo if the two people for Death’s Acre, except that pseudonym is for their fiction series based on scientific reality/facts. It’s a pretty interesting series from what I recall but I never finished it. But if you like forensic anthropology and want to read a sort of murder mystery/detective type of series written by an actual acclaimed forensic anthropologist with all the science being legit, this is your series

Tony Foster series by Tanya Huff (starts with Smoke and Shadows) - ok so, Tanya Huff was SUPER nice the one time I messaged her. I like her a lot as a person. I will say that this series is not the actual best writing you will ever read–BUT Tony Foster is such a freaking great narrator that I love the series. Also, Tony’s a gay male which is always cool to have as a lead, especially in a sort of fantasy like this :)

Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman – honestly, just about anything you pick up by Neil Gaiman will be good. I’d have to reread all the books to say which is my favorite but I do recall liking Good Omens a lot, which he cowrote with Terry Pratchett. But Sandman is what got me into graphic novels, eventually manga (because I was used to reading GNs by then) and Neil Gaiman as a whole. I fucking love Sandman and will forever recommend it, but it’s a GN so it may not translate well to nook? idk

Speaking of Terry Pratchett, if you like stories that are easy to read and oftentimes have a fair amount of humor infused into them, I recommend him and probably any of his books but my particular recommendation would be Mort as well as the Sam Vines books. I think the first time we see Sam Vines is in the Guards! Guards! book.

Otherland series by Tad Williams - ok in all honesty, I never finished the series (got partially through 3rd of 4 books) and it’s been probably 20 years since I read them, so maybe my opinion would be different now. But Otherland was such an interesting sci-fi ish series which I honestly think is probably going to end up being somewhat realistic to our future. Basically, VR is a thing and people choose to live there instead of in reality sometimes, and now people are dying IRL because their bodies are wasting away and a diverse group of people from around the world get together in the virtual world to try to figure out what’s happening and how to stop it, but they don’t realize the politics and danger involved. Why didn’t I finish reading, you wonder? It’s because I read this series when I was a teenager when it first came out, and I think when I read reading the 3rd book the 4th hadn’t even been written yet. Anyway I was suuuuuper engrossed in the series–so much that when a certain thing happens related to my favorite character in the series, I was too emotionally affected by it I set the book aside to take a moment to reset my emotions before continuing, and then I just…. never continued…. ^^;; I got too distracted by other series but I always plan to finish it. Also side note, Tad Williams is a super nice author who actually wrote back to little teen me(!), taking my email seriously and encouraging me to write. Also side side note, Tad Williams wrote a bunch of books and I recall liking all of his fantasy series I read too but I don’t think I’ve read all his stuff.

Tamir Triad by Lynn Flewelling - first book: Bone Doll’s Twin. It’s been a while since I read this (as is the case for pretty much everything on this whole list) but I remember thinking this was a really interesting trilogy with a rather unique story, especially for the time this was written. If you ever read Lynn’s other book series (Nightrunner, m/m) then know that the Tamir Triad is set in the past of the Nightrunner world, by I don’t remember 500 years or something– also it’s written TOTALLY different than Nightrunner. The two styles are like night and day; if you don’t like the Nightrunner style, totally give Tamir a chance. If you do like Nightrunner, I still think you should read the Tamir books because I think they’re better, even though I did like Nightrunner in the beginning :)

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. This book is the inspiration for the wildly popular musical Wicked (which I also recommend you see because it’s omggggg

**YA:**

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer - for the most part, I quite like this series. It’s a very easy to read YA series that re-imagines the Disney Princess/fairy tale female leads into a sort of cyberpunk Earth with space adventure future. Most of the females in this series are pretty strong female characters, leading their own stories, having agency, not being overpowered by the male characters like in their Disney or fairy tale versions. It has kind of a Sailor Moon vibe in some aspects, mostly because Marissa’s a total nerd who loves Sailor Moon lol

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo - this is actually part of a series but tbh I liked Six of Crows more than the other book. Basically this book is a heist novel with young adult MCs. It’s a freaking BEAUTIFUL hardcover btw, like black edged paper and cool illustrations on the chapter pages and omgggggggg so this is one I recommend you buy in print if you like it, rather than just getting the ebook. It has an MC (Kaz Brekker) who I swear to god is like if early Evenfall Boyd and Hsin had a baby lol

Books by Sherryl Jordan - it’s been approximately forever since I read any of these books so maybe my opinion would change if I read them now, but back in the day I loved the fuck out of Sherryl’s books when I found them as a preteen/teen. I remember feeling like a lot of her female characters felt strong or at least I thought they were cool. The main one I remember liking back then is Winter of Fire. Mind you, Sherryl Jordan’s books are now really hard to find–turns out she’s a New Zealand author and a lot of the books went out of print at various times. But if you happen to run across one, you can check her out and see what you think. I mention her because her stories stuck in my head for 20 years.

Mage Heart (and the Chronicles of Dion Trilogy) by Jane Routley. Another one from forever ago–no idea what I would think of this if I read it today but I remember really liking it when I read it as a teenager, and the story has stuck in the back of my head since. I don’t remember a lot about the actual plot, just that I was inspired by the story/world.

Aaaaand that’s probably enough. You’re probably regretting asking XD

There are a couple of other books I remember from when I was really little but you probably don’t care about those lol The only one I’ll mention is Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede - that’s the first book in a YA series. I quite like Dealing with Dragons, but tbh I was really frustrated by the other books. You could read just the first if you wanted to check it out.

Lastly, if you like manga/anime at all, here are some other recs: fave anime/manga recs, plus here’s another good manga

#ask ais #book recs #book recommendations #Anonymous

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