#that it's not hilarious that mr self involved tim | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

soveryanon · 4 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG167!

- I did appreciate a loooot that little “break” to deal with (past) interpersonal problems and how they intertwined with the Fears. Characters-of-the-day in this season have been feeling mostly interchangeable since they’re rewritten/decontextualised from their past lives, and the narration covering multiple individual nightmares doesn’t really help, so… It felt safer and more comforting to go back to characters being themselves, even when that also ended miserably?

- I got super excited on first listen because !! New names!! New random tiny tidbits of lore regarding the past of the Institute! Pre-Gertrude era!

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “When she first joined the Archives, she took the place of a man named Angus Stacey, whose face was torn from his skull by a creature of masks and smiles. Gertrude had thought of it as “The Grinning Wheel”, and it was one of the first things to fall at the hands of the Institute’s new avenger. Appropriately enough, Gertrude used fire. […] Angus Stacey had, in the long tradition of Institute Archivists, been a disappointment to the man whose eyes then sat in the smirking face of one ‘Director Richard Mendelson’. Angus had been too keen to learn, too ambitious in his academic legacy. He had had grand plans to revise Smirke’s Fourteen and, in trying to do so, burned through his resources; his luck; and ultimately all but one of his assistants. When Gertrude was appointed to the role, there was a single survivor left in the Archives: a woman by the name of Fiona Law.”

So:

* Angus Stacey was the previous Archivist, killed by a creature of The Stranger… which, aouch (Gertrude wasn’t killed by one, but had spent a good amount of time thinking about their ritual before her death, didn’t feel like she was putting out as much energy against The Dark honestly? And Nikola wore her skin during The Unknowing. The Stranger was all around there at the beginning and at the end, uh…).

* Interestingly, Angus was aware of Smirke’s taxonomy, and so was Gertrude at least towards the end of her life (since Gerry mentioned that he liked to use his classification in MAG111); I wonder if there used to be documents about it in the Archives, potentially by Smirke himself, before Jonah possibly hid them away to ensure that Jon would be kept in the dark about it…? (It’s also possible that such documents exist and Jon didn’t have the time to stumble upon them: he’s been Head Archivist for only three years).

* OOFT that the Archivist pre-pre-Jon wanted to “revise” Smirke’s classification… which highlights, once again, that that classification was subjective and an interpretation, but not something set in stone – despite what Smirke was attempting to do with his architecture.

* Confirmation that Gertrude knew another one of Jonah’s identities when she began to work in the Archives! James Wright was Head from 1973 to 1996, so that had always been a possibility. When Elias commented about how “Fifty years is a long time! [CHUCKLE] End of an era.” in MAG158, it really wasn’t an exaggeration. Gertrude lived through three of his identities.

- I’m really glad to know that, since Jonah used to be a “Richard Mendelson”… his nickname must have been “Dick”.

As Jon, master of redundancy, said in MAG096: “Cocky prick.”

(My only regret is that Tim didn’t live enough to know that. He would have made Elias’s life hell about “Dick” TT__TT)

- Laughing very hard that Jonah’s main characteristic is definitely… his way of smiling.

(MAG092) ELIAS: Now, you have something to ask me? BASIRA: Go for it. DAISY: Before I strangle the grinning bastard.

(MAG108) PETER: I have a meeting with him today. He suggested… I’m sure he’s watching from his office, grinning from ear to ear.

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “Angus Stacey had, in the long tradition of Institute Archivists, been a disappointment to the man whose eyes then sat in the smirking face of one ‘Director Richard Mendelson’.”

HOW the heck did he manage to attract and to give that aura of seriousness to his peers back in the 18th century? Is it a case of arrogance being perceived as confidence back then, when it’s just making Jonah obnoxious and insufferable nowadays? (It’s also SUPER FUNNY that Elias was, at the beginning, identified as kind of… bland and unremarkable, passive, a bit lazy, thanks-for-nothing-dude? While, once he reveals himself, it seems to go hand-in-hand with grinning/smirking faces. Gods. Basira, you should have punched him some more.)

- I recognised the name “Fiona Law” on the spot, since MAG029 was one of the first episodes to mention past details of the Institute, with the Elias Timeline Problem! Statement of Nathaniel Thorp, left on June 4th 1972:

(MAG029) ARCHIVIST: Fiona Law, the research assistant who took the statement, passed away in 2003 from complications following a liver transplant, and with two exceptions no-one else working for the Institute at the time is still employed here. Gertrude Robinson was there, of course, but we can’t exactly ask her, and Elias was working as a filing clerk at the time. I followed up with him, and he does remember there being something of a commotion around that time about someone self-harming while giving a statement – rumours said they’d cut off their finger or something – but he wasn’t directly involved and didn’t know much more about it.

Regarding “Elias”, since he’s meant to sound “middle-aged” (and not “old”): I’m still choosing to assume that MAG049’s information was correct, and that Jonah slipped up and mentioned a time when James Wright was working as a filing clerk, since he would become Head of the Institute the following year and that’s probably when Jonah took his body. The strange thing is still that Jon just accepted without a question that Elias was 20+ years older than he looked, but eh.

The HILARIOUS and accurate detail is that, regarding Fiona’s tendency to pass out when in danger?

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “Fiona was the most fascinating combination of curiosity and cowardice, pushing forward and forward into the unknown, until the very first moment of threat… crystallised. And then she was away. Of course, retreat is not always possible in such a line of business, and when that proved to be the case, there was a single trait which Fiona possessed that saw her surviving encounters which had killed far braver souls than her. Because when she was pushed to the very limits of her terror, Fiona Law… would faint. And while there are those things in the dark that would kill you as you slept, most get no real delight from it, unless you are awake enough to know what is happening. And so, through cowardice and unconsciousness, Fiona had survived an entire generation of Archivist.”

It may have been A Thing that happened in MAG029!

(MAG029, Nathaniel Thorp) “The end, I suppose. Thank you for indulging me, you’ve been very patient. I’m well aware I came in to tell you my own story, and instead have rattled off some old folktale, which you’ve dutifully taken down. I do feel now, though, that I’m at a place where I can tell you of myself. But for one final bit of context, I need you to watch this. Pay attention.”

ARCHIVIST: Archivist’s note: After this point the rest of the page is covered in what appears to be a large bloodstain. The statement resumes on the page afterwards, in a somewhat shakier hand.

“Apologies for that. A bit dramatic I know, but I always feel a demonstration is best in these situations.”

She might have passed out and then resumed taking the statement when she woke up x”)

- Sarah Carpenter took me a few more seconds on first listen, but given that Paul McKenzie had been put back on the foreground with MAG146, the name still quickly rang a bell (statement given on August 24th 2003):

(MAG027) ARCHIVIST: When this was originally logged, apparently we did send a then-member of the research staff, one Sarah Carpenter, to take some readings of the house. Apparently she felt there was little enough danger to justify an overnight vigil at the place, but like everyone else in Mr. McKenzie’s tale, she encountered no strangeness or intruders on the upstairs landing, or in any other part of the building. […] The only other thing that stands out from this as strange is that Sarah Carpenter, the researcher originally sent to look into this back in 2003, took some rather detailed photographs of the interior and layout of the house. Looking through them now, it strikes me that the bedroom door, to which Mr. McKenzie refers so often, does not appear to have a keyhole, or any sort of lock.

“Research staff” (Fiona was also identified as a “research assistant” in season 1) but, given that Jon didn’t even know that Gertrude used to have assistants by MAG080, it’s likely that the data about (past) Archives staff is… hard to get / hidden a bit.

HEAVY SOB IN GERTRUDE/AGNES that the thing Gertrude saw in Sarah was her “fire”:

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “Eric was replaced by another assistant, not so young as Michael, and hardened with some encounters of her own. She was eager to prove herself, and exactly the sort of person to intrigue the ageing Emma. There was a fire to Sarah Carpenter, perhaps the one which led to Gertrude hiring her, and Emma’s curiosity ignited once again, this time keen to find out exactly what it would take to break this brave investigator of the unknown.”

Like, wow, Gertrude, please, you had a type.

- I love how, with just tiny brushes, it really felt like Emma-Eric-Fiona-Gertrude were indeed once upon a time a team, with their own dynamic?

It gave me season 1 flashbacks, with Tim&Sasha commenting a lot about Martin being jumpy, Jon groaning about Tim’s April Fools Prank, etc. Own team with its own flavour.

It also reminds me that Jon had mentioned that some files were in better order:

(MAG060) ARCHIVIST: The mid-to-late 20th century seems marginally better filed than most of the archives, so we haven’t seen as many rogue statements cropping up from that period.

So: Emma-Eric-Fiona-Gertrude used… to do the work, back then, probably? Eric, at least, had the qualifications.

- I was really hoping that we would learn about “Emma” since Eric had mentioned her, Jonny had announced in the season 4 Q&A that we would:

(MAG154) ERIC: You know, you were never actually that nice to me when I worked for you, Gertrude. Not like Michael, or Emma.

But WOW, I. wasn’t expecting her to be that bad. It’s really strange, because for the first half of the statement, I thought that Emma was the quintessence of Beholding? Scheming bad things to experiment and observe them from afar? And turns out she was going Web?!

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “But Emma had a sickness. As much as she might have despised the ageing Fiona, it was the same one that plagued her: curiosity. That desperate, grasping need to know. […] The experiments were simple enough. When a statement was close enough, and real enough that finding its source seemed a possibility, Emma would volunteer herself and Fiona to investigate it. […] Once out near danger, Fiona would always find herself… ever-so-slightly ahead; always seeming to be inexplicably the first through the door. And more often than not, it would close behind her. By the end, the poor woman genuinely believed spontaneously locking doors were a tell-tale sign of the supernatural. Emma would do her best to observe from safety, making notes, only retrieving the often unconscious Fiona when the danger passed. She watched, as her poor guinea pig stumbled through a maze of whispering grubs; she timed the intervals at which Fiona emerged from a hungry fog; and recorded her barely escaping the Sandman, who came to take her eyes. Poor Fiona never suspected a thing. […] When Emma came to tell Gertrude what had happened, she found the first of the cobwebs in her hair, the ones she would wash from it every morning for the rest of her life. And Gertrude mourned the first of many losses, and did not suspect the truth. […] And all through it, Gertrude could not see what was happening. And certainly the Spider smoothed things, elided questions, wiped away evidence, but it barely had to. Far better to feed Gertrude a steady string of plans to foil, and rituals to derail. […] When Emma Harvey awoke to the searing heat, she knew she was already dead. As the fire took her, and left her flesh running off her bones like oil, all she willed was not to give it the satisfaction of being afraid.”

* Down to the detail of Gertrude dealing with it with fire, when it’s been highlighted by The Lightless Flame that The Web is vulnerable to it (Eugene’s statement in MAG139, Agnes against Fielding at Hill Top Road, the spiderwebs burning in Jack Barnabas’s flat when Agnes was waiting for him).

* It’s interesting that Emma didn’t seem to be aware that she was going Web-y? Or, at least, had no particular devotion towards The Web as a concept, and felt like she was simply doing her stuff – like she got involved with the Fears, and they twisted natural traits into something terrible. Or is it that The Web was using her and hollowing her out without her being aware?

* We know that Raymond Fielding’s house burned on Hill Top Road around 1974, and that Annabelle was “created” (shortly?) before November 2010. There was a gap in Web avatars/activity in that time, potentially filled by Neil Lagorio (culminating with Annabelle visiting him in 2012). But Emma’s activity does coincide nicely in-between Fielding and Annabelle – was the Web focusing on her in that time, until the tree got uprooted at Hill Top Road?

* It was already a surprise in MAG145 to learn that The Web had been active in the Archives during Gertrude’s youth (it didn’t arrive there with Jon and Neil Lagorio’s original cuts), I’m even more surprised to learn that it had rooted itself this deep and so close to Gertrude back then. It couldn’t have been closer to an Archivist than by touching an assistant! (Well. Or by touching/marking/digging its roots into an actual Archivist. *squint at Jon*)

* Emma really reminded me of Leitner experimenting on his assistants, and of Annabelle’s creation? It’s interesting that “arts/stories” and “experiments (on humans)” seem to be the two main Web-related activities. It’s also interesting that Emma’s experiments… led to Fiona and Sarah being touched by multiple Fears (and just barely escaping them), as if prepping the modus operandi for Jon?

* I’m still REALLY surprised that Emma didn’t turn out to be the Quintessence of Beholding budding associates; Webholding…?

* … My main question being: if Emma turned out to be Web, HOW COME Jonah Magnus is officially of the Beholding. I MEAN.

(MAG092) ELIAS: Jonah Magnus did leave him in that place, Jon. He got the letter, oh yes, and was on good terms with Mordechai Lukas. He could have interceded, perhaps even saved him, but he did not. And it was not out of malice, or because he lacked affection for Barnabas Bennett: he retrieved those bones sadly enough when the time came. Bones that you can still find in my office, if you know where to look. No, it was because he was curious. Because he had to know, to watch and see it all. That’s what this place is, Jon, never forget it.

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “When Smirke first gathered our little band – Lukas, Scott and the rest – to discuss and hypothesise on the nature of the things he had learned from Rayner… I felt what I believe we all felt: curiosity, and fear.”

Down to the “curiosity”?? Sacrificing people just to see what would happen??? That’s textbook what he did??? (But then, I’m REALLY not sure that part of Elias’s head hasn’t been filled with cobwebs for a loooooong time.)

- I’m gonna laugh for a looong time that Elias gracefully allowed murder as long as it didn’t take place within the Archives.

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “It was a trivial matter to convince the man who now watched from the skull of Elias Bouchard to allow it, so long as the deed did not take place within the Archives itself. But it didn’t need to. An employee’s home address is a simple thing to acquire.”

Too much paperwork to fill? Or afraid of fire in the Archives? (I was surprised that he allowed it in the first place, because… what were his feelings towards Emma? Loving that little monster? Annoyed that this little shit was killing off employees and that he had to work on the cover-ups? Frustrated that The Web had invited itself within his Institute? Irritated that their methods looked so alike? With MAG145/MAG158, I had gotten the feeling that Jonah might have tried to smooth over his relationship with Gertrude with the death of James Wright – since Gertrude had identified that he was spying on them, and that Elias&Gertrude seemed to collaborate from time to time afterwards (Gertrude had realised he was Jonah, but Jonah only understood that right before killing her). So maybe it was just to appease Gertrude?)

- Regarding the “curiosity”, really loved how it felt like a form of disease taking hold of the assistants and pushing them to their dooms (taking risks / experimenting on them):

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “Fiona was the most fascinating combination of curiosity and cowardice […]. She had never got deep enough into the mysteries that plagued her to slake that burning curiosity. And she never would. […] But Emma had a sickness. As much as she might have despised the ageing Fiona, it was the same one that plagued her: curiosity. That desperate, grasping need to know. […] There was a fire to Sarah Carpenter, perhaps the one which led to Gertrude hiring her, and Emma’s curiosity ignited once again, this time keen to find out exactly what it would take to break this brave investigator of the unknown.”

And… crying a bit about Sasha and Jon, once again ;;

(MAG026) SASHA: I should really quit, you know. We, we all should. I don’t think this a normal job. I, I don’t think this is a safe job. ARCHIVIST: You’re probably right. Do you want to quit? SASHA: No. I’m just… I’m just too damned curious, I suppose. You? ARCHIVIST: No. Whatever’s going on, I… need to know. Get some rest.

“Curiosity” was something Jon&Sasha both shared… if Sasha had stayed around for longer, would she have turned like Emma over the years/decades…?

- The episode’s title seemed to refer both to Emma (and the assistants)’s “curiosity”, and to Martin’s own – Martin deciding, after the story, that he didn’t want answers to some of his own questions (he learned! ;;). But also, it puts to mind what Jonah had said about Gertrude:

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “More than once, I thought [Gertrude] must secretly be of The Hunt, but there was never that sick joy in her, that thrill of predator and prey. She had simply decided that this was her position in life, and went about it with a practicality that even I found disconcerting at times. I once asked her… what drove her, what had started her down that path. She told me The Desolation had killed her cat…!”

Curiosity Kills The Cat. (Though: in this case, it was The Web/curiosity which “killed” Emma.)

I’m also CRYING because this exchange took place in 2013-2014, so after Gertrude had already got rid of Emma:

(MAG162) GERTRUDE: Find anything [ITEM FALLING ON THE GROUND] interesting– GERRY: Oh…! GERTRUDE: –back there? [DOOR CLOSES] GERRY: Yeah, sorry, I was just, hum… yeah. GERTRUDE: Curiosity is a very dangerous trait in our line of work, Gerard. GERRY: So is ignorance.

And what did Gertrude THINK and FEEL when she saw Gerry trespassing and taking an (unauthorised) look at her things? When he looked like he himself was succumbing to “curiosity”?

- Regarding The Web’s threads being involved in the derailing of rituals…

(MAG111) ARCHIVIST: And Gertrude wanted to stop [the rituals]. At… any cost. GERRY: 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.

(MAG134) PETER: There are two Powers that, to my knowledge, have never attempted to fully manifest, never had followers set them up for a ritual: Mother-of-Puppets, and Terminus. The Web, and The End. The Web, I’ve never really been sure about: if I were to guess, I would say it actually prefers the world as is, playing everyone against each other, and so on.

(MAG151) SIMON: And honestly, the idea that this is all some… “grand cosmic joke”, thousands of us running around spreading horror and sabotaging each other pointlessly while these impossible, unknowable things just lurk out there, feeding off the misery we cause… [INHALE] I find that interpretation quite appealing…!

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “By this point, Gertrude was fully lost to her plots and plans and struggles, and as long as her assistants played their parts when asked, she paid them no more mind. And the frequency of genuine encounters grew, as the season of hurried rituals came nearer. […] And all through it, Gertrude could not see what was happening. And certainly the Spider smoothed things, elided questions, wiped away evidence, but it barely had to. Far better to feed Gertrude a steady string of plans to foil, and rituals to derail.

Was it to ensure that they wouldn’t succeed? Or was The Web having its kick with organising and derailing the rituals around? It really reminded me of Simon’s words, the idea that even if rituals weren’t successful… they were still feeding the Fears with the overall commotion.

- Was the man who killed Sarah Diego Molina? He fits the description:

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “He was bald, dressed in dreary office clothes. To a cursory examination, unfit and unremarkable, save for his peculiar surroundings. […] He split open like a flower bud blooming, and inside there was only the most terrifying heat. She had no time to run, and by the time she thought to scream it was too late as the thing enveloped her, closing tight – until she was simply more ash, trapped forever inside that charred and hollow shell.”

… And ;_; Gerry killed Diego Molina in December 2011. One or two years before Gertrude would contact him and offer to free him from Mary, and they began their collaboration. Did she feel some gratitude that he had avenged Sarah, back then…?

- Regarding Gertrude’s collaborators, I’m surprised to see Salesa included in the list:

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “And with that, Gertrude Robinson was without assistants. She never hired another. She worked with those that seemed useful until they were no longer so: Leitner; Dekker; Keay; even Salesa on occasion. But she never again allowed herself to trust.”

From what we know, Salesa was occasionally selling items to the Institute and had given a few statements (MAG115), but I don’t recall clear-cut examples of them working together. Are we meant to learn a few more things about Salesa…? There is still the mystery of his death (?), the explosion (MMMMM…), the absence of body and the camera being retrieved in Floyd’s statement (MAG141)…

- Alrighty, elephant in the room with this episode: ~*timeline problems*~!

This is the information we had so far regarding the chronology of events surrounding Hill Top Road, Agnes, and the Archives/Institute drama during Gertrude’s tenure:

* Since 1957: Raymond Fielding inherited a house on Hill Top Road, where he raised teenagers for spider egg sacks material. (MAG008)

* In the mid-60s, in the middle of a winter: Agnes was send to Raymond Fielding’s house by The Lightless Flame. (MAG059, MAG139)

[* For the estimated date above: Ronald Sinclair was born in the late 40s and saw Agnes’s arrival before he turned 18; he lived for three years with Raymond Fielding, just managed to escape after Agnes broke the threads binding/puppeteering him. He gave his statement on November 29th 2005. (MAG059)]

* 4th of June 1972: Fiona Law took Nathaniel Thorp’s statement, and Elias “was a filing clerk at the time” – possible slip-up of Jonah who had trouble recalling which body/identity he was using at the time. (MAG029)

* 1973: James Wright becomes Head of the Institute. (MAG049)

* In 1974, a five-year-old named Henry White goes missing near Hill Top Road, is not found; the house burns down shortly after, and Raymond Fielding’s corpse is found, missing its right hand. (MAG008)

* Shortly after (since Gertrude was around 25 years old): Gertrude found “a tin box in the ashes of Hill Top Road” containing strands of Agnes’s hair and, thinking she was working on a counter-ritual, was manipulated by The Web into binding her existence with Agnes’s. (MAG145)

* 1991: Elias Bouchard began to work at the Institute, in Artefact Storage. (MAG049)

* 1991–1996: Eric managed to quit the Archives, before getting killed by Mary Keay a few months afterwards. He had crossed paths with Elias before he became Head of the Institute, and remembered Emma and Michael fondly; Gertrude was already suspecting (and had shared that information with at least Eric) that James Wright was spying on them through eyes. (MAG154)

* 1996: Elias Bouchard became Head of the Institute / Jonah Magnus body-hopped from James Wright to Elias Bouchard. (MAG049, MAG154, MAG158)

* 1999: Statements were leaked to the public, deteriorating the Institute’s reputation. (MAG068)

* 2003: Fiona Law died “from complications following a liver transplant” according to Jon’s follow-up. (MAG029)

* August 2003 and some time after: Paul McKenzie left his statement on August 24th 2003, and Sarah Carpenter was sent to investigate, took pictures of his house. (MAG027)

* Autumn 2006: Jack Barnabas went on a few dates with Agnes Montague, as described in a statement left on March 18th 2007. (MAG067)

* Mid-November 2006: Ivo Lensik reported the strange occurrences happening in a house on Hill Top Road, crossing paths with Father Edwin Burroughs. He left his statement on March 13th 2007. (MAG008)

* 23rd of November 2006: Agnes Montague and Jack Barnabas went on a final date; on an impulse, Ivo Lensik hit Hill Top Road’s tree, which started bleeding, and then proceeded to “destroy” it. He found a wooden box containing a green apple, which turned into spiders; Agnes made a phonecall about a “tree falling” and gathered members of the Lightless Flame in her flat in Sheffield, one of them bringing a container full of tiny spiders; Agnes told Jack goodbye, kissed him at his request, and was later found hanged in her flat, with a human hand tied by a chain to her waist. (MAG008, MAG067)

* 30th of November 2006: Eugene Vanderstock was sent on Arthur Nolan’s behalf to tell Gertrude about Agnes’s death. (MAG139)

* 2nd of September 2007: during one of Gertrude’s recordings, her assistant Michael is heard on tape. (MAG099)

* 3rd of July 2008: Mary Keay visited Gertrude in the Archives, left Eric’s page with Gertrude. (MAG062)

* 21st of July 2008: Gertrude invoked Eric’s page and had a conversation with him. Eric mentioned that Emma and Michael were “nice” to him when he was working in the Archives. (MAG154)

* June 2008: Gertrude fed the Vast-touched Jan Kilbride to the pit, stopping The Buried’s ritual. (MAG097, MAG126)

* October 2008: Gertrude, with Adelard’s help, stopped The Flesh’s ritual. (MAG130)

* 2nd of February 2009: Arthur Nolan was ~invited~ by Gertrude for a talk, and they discussed amongst other things Agnes’s death, Eugene’s report of it two years earlier, Gertrude’s protective ritual having been disrupted and things having gone badly for the trespasser. Gertrude told Arthur that she had never met Agnes. (MAG145)

* “in the middle of February” [2009]: Jason North discovered and disrupted Gertrude’s ritual hidden in a forest in Scotland, was cursed by The Desolation, left his statement on August 6th 2009. (MAG037)

* Early October 2009: Deborah Madaki reported having received an invitation to assist The-Worker-In-Clay in Sannikov Land. She left her statement on October 11th 2009 and said she had received the letter a week earlier. (MAG126)

* ??? in-between: Gertrude took Michael to Sannikov Land and used him to disrupt The Spiral’s ritual, making him fuse with The Distortion. (MAG101)

* By 2011: Gertrude had lost all her assistants – Leitner mentioned in February 2017 that he had met Gertrude “about six years ago, after she’d lost the last of her own assistants”. (MAG080)

* 14th of August 2013: Adelard Dekker sent a last message to Gertrude, informing her of his incoming death. (MAG157)

* Around 2013: Gertrude and Gerry began to work together, for two years until Gerry’s death. (MAG111)

-> Michael replaced Fiona. Since Eric had left before Elias became Head of the Institute and worked with Michael, it means that Fiona was imprisoned by the Coffin before 1996 – although she was reported dead in 2003 from complication following a liver transplant (MAG029).

Proposition: anyway she was a prisoner in the Coffin, so there was no body found, and the operation-thing was just a cover-up. Back then, seven years were necessary before a missing person was presumed dead; so she could have disappeared anytime, and the Institute/Elias finally decided on a cover-up years later, when it was safer, to clean the records. (+ given how Jon asked Elias directly in MAG029, it’s possible that Jon got the information about Fiona’s “death” from him, and he could have falsified/provided whatever).

-> … really really more bothering: the idea that Agnes and Gertrude met after Gertrude had fed Michael to The Spiral. Considering that the day of Agnes’s death was reported multiple times as being the 23rd of November 2006; that Michael-as-an-assistant was recorded in September 2007; that the Great Twisting happened after October 2009. So, when Agnes had been dead for three years.

Jonny’s allusions to it doesn’t feel like it was intentional, but rather that it was a genuine mistake, which ;; (What is the fun in trying to unravel some mysteries if some information is accidentally contradictory, aarrrrg…). If it were to be intentional, I would suggest that Agnes… actually managed to free herself from The Desolation by self-sacrificing for them (in the same way that Eric quit the Archives by blinding himself), and hid from them afterwards? Or that she was a fire ghost, or that Gertrude met with her at Hill Top Road, where we know from Ivo Lensik and Anya Vilette that time is weird (Anya experiencing time differently, Ivo meeting with a young Ray Fielding and catching a glimpse of Agnes as a kid)?

If the Great Twisting indeed happened circa late 2009-2011, and Gertrude met Agnes “in some manner or shape” afterwards, it would mean that her declaration to Arthur in February 2009 wasn’t a lie:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: Well, for all The Web bound us together, I never actually met her. What was she like?

Since she would only meet Agnes after making that statement.

- SOBBING a lot about the concept of Gertrude and Agnes meeting, since:

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “The rage she felt was ice-cold. And so, Gertrude went to the one person she was certain she could trust on the matter. Agnes Montague and Gertrude Robinson only ever met once in their lives. Even if The Lightless Flame had allowed it, what would there have been to say? The bond between them, real as it was, was no one’s choice but The Web’s, and neither of them were keen to play its game any further than they had to. Their discussion was brief, and tinged with a melancholy, an awareness of mistakes, of their choices and duties and destinies. Neither of them smiled. But Agnes did confirm what Gertrude knew, and the details of Sarah’s suffering only sharpened that deep and wounded hatred.”

It’s so powerful and beautiful and sad? My shiiiiip…

- Speaking of fire ghosts: could the one mentioned in MAG100 actually be Emma…? (Since it didn’t match with the location of Agnes’s flat.)

- I really liked how this statement humanised Gertrude: season 2 had shown her more in control than Jon previously thought, aware of what was happening around her; season 3 cemented that she knew how to navigate and survive around the Fears, cruelly efficient (feeding Michael to The Spiral and then able to protect herself from him, being work-orientated in Gerry’s eyes…); season 4 had shown her in control, but also needing to think and discover things (learning that The Slaughter didn’t need to be one of her concerns in MAG137) and not immune to getting manipulated (The Web binding her to Agnes in MAG145). I like how this episode really conveyed that Gertrude… hadn’t grown out of thin air; that, yes, she impressively managed to survive for so long in that world (around fifty years!), but that what we heard from her… was mostly her last twenty years of life. She used to be young! To operate slightly differently! She made mistakes, and hardened herself, and even though she traded sentimentality for a form of “efficiency”, it wasn’t perfect, she made her choices and they had consequences:

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: “Alongside this inherited survivor, Gertrude would add two more assistants: Eric Delano, and Emma Harvey. They were young, like her, keen to delve deeper into those strange secrets that back then were spoken of more openly. To them, Fiona seemed something of a joke; a middle-aged chatterbox who told stories of the Blitz and jumped at the long shadows in the corners of the Archives. Emma in particular was Gertrude’s confidante, the one whose knowledge and instincts she trusted, and the only other member of the Institute who ever knew of the strange bond between Gertrude and Agnes Montague. […] This time, Gertrude did have an inkling as to what was happening, but had her own escalating conflicts to concern herself with, and recognised the potential in a truly ignorant assistant. […] By this point, Gertrude was fully lost to her plots and plans and struggles, and as long as her assistants played their parts when asked, she paid them no more mind. […] And all through it, Gertrude could not see what was happening. And certainly the Spider smoothed things, elided questions, wiped away evidence, but it barely had to. Far better to feed Gertrude a steady string of plans to foil, and rituals to derail. […] And with that, Gertrude Robinson was without assistants. She never hired another. She worked with those that seemed useful until they were no longer so: Leitner; Dekker; Keay; even Salesa on occasion. But she never again allowed herself to trust.”

True, Gertrude worked as an Archivist wayyy longer that Jon; he probably would have worked differently over time too, experienced more losses, changed his mind about a few things over decades. But it’s interesting that Jon’s trajectory, right now, has been the reverse of Gertrude’s; where she decided to stop trusting, he…

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

(It wasn’t pitch-perfect trust: he dissimulated that he had been attacking people from Daisy&Basira&Melanie in season 4. He trusted Martin but ultimately decided that the news of Adelard being dead and acknowledging that he might have been wrong about The Extinction was a deal-breaker and that he needed to help/save Martin from Peter’s plans. But he also decided to save them at all costs: rescuing Daisy in the Coffin, sharing the information about how to cut oneself from the Archives to Basira and Melanie, allowing Melanie to escape, and saving Martin in The Lonely.)

- Aaaaand the answer to whether or not Martin was going to immediately tell Jon about Annabelle’s call seems to be… no. Since Jon used his powers to find out about it.

(MAG167) [CLICK–] [FOOTSTEPS] [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: Help us with what? MARTIN: ‘xcuse me? ARCHIVIST: Annabelle, help us with “what”? Our–our, our journey, killing Elias, vanishing the Entities – what? [FOOTSTEPS STOP] MARTIN: Please don’t do that. ARCHIVIST: Do what…? Oh! Oh. Right, I, I see, yes. [STATIC FADES] Well, I– … [FOOTSTEPS RESUME] Sorry.

But it was apparently still on Martin’s mind, so… even if she had told him things he already knew, it had been enough to make him insecure/ill-at-ease. And to not share with Jon. (Because he feared that Jon would panic over The Web and what Annabelle was doing, trying to second-guess and getting lost in interrogations? Confirmed by the way Jon erupted into questions as soon as he Knew about the exchange.)

- The fact Jon did another breach of privacy, while confirming that he had more control, felt very well-handled to me?

(MAG167) MARTIN: It doesn’t… feel great, having someone looking inside your head…! ARCHIVIST: You can… feel it? MARTIN: No, but that’s hardly the point– ARCHIVIST: Oh! MARTIN: –Jon… ARCHIVIST: No, I see. Sorry, hum… Alright…< MARTIN: I mean, I don’t want to keep secrets from you, but– ARCHIVIST: You should at least… be able to. MARTIN: Basically, yeah…! ARCHIVIST: I–I suppose that’s fair. […] MARTIN: You said you could control it now. ARCHIVIST: I can, I–I just… It… [INHALE] You’re absolutely right. I will refrain from knowing anything about you. MARTIN: Thank you. ARCHIVIST: Unless you’re in danger. MARTIN: Physical danger. If I’m in danger of being mad at you or something– ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] MARTIN: –you’ve got to figure it out the old-fashioned way. ARCHIVIST: Fine, agreed.

* “It doesn’t feel great having someone looking inside your head” => HI. REMINDER OF WHAT ELIAS DID TO HIM IN MAG118. It’s trigger-potential territory for him, so Martin honestly took it kind of well, considering his own experiences?

* Mmmm, setting up a situation where Martin will be in physical danger and Jon would have to use his powers to try to reach him again…?

* ! Jon messed up on his first instinctive preoccupation (whether his powers were hurting Martin and/or whether the subject could feel something when he did), but he quickly understood the nature of the problem – that Martin should have the freedom to choose to keep things for himself, that there is an imbalance, and that, plainly, it’s making Martin uncomfortable so, if Jon values Martin’s comfort, he should stop. I like how it felt like both of them worked on finding a consensus? Overall, I really liked how Martin managed to express his discomforts and when Jon’s powers were bothering/frightening him; he didn’t shame Jon for it, but didn’t fall in the trap of bottling up his feelings either. At the core of it, he still has the fear of losing Jon – so, it’s good that he was able to convey his discomfort.

(I feel like next step should be about Jon’s own discomfort about using Beholding powers to murder monsters, but I feel like they might be laying groundwork for this and for Martin to acknowledge that Jon… is still ill-at-ease with it and about his situation, and that clinging to his discomfort has also prevented him from going full-monster until now. We’ll see!)

- There is a discrepancy about Martin’s description of Annabelle’s call, and the call itself, and I’m not sure what to think about it:

(MAG166) MARTIN: Hello? ANNABELLE: Hello? Is that Martin? MARTIN: Don’t do that. ANNABELLE: What? No stomach for games? MARTIN: Well, your “games” aren’t exactly fun for everyone, are they? ANNABELLE: Very few games are…! MARTIN: [SIGH] Look, look, look, I’m talking to Annabelle Cane, right? ANNABELLE: You never gave me your name – so why should I offer mine? MARTIN: Just, what do you want? ANNABELLE: I want to help you, of course. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … No. Thank you. ANNABELLE: It’s a hard place to find yourself in, maybe I can be of some… assistance…! MARTIN: You can assist me by giving the… “creepy phone” thing a rest…! ANNABELLE: He is more powerful here than he’s ever been, isn’t he? [PAUSE] And you’re not sure what that means for you. MARTIN: [INHALE] I’m hanging up now. ANNABELLE: Does he even need you at all? MARTIN: Bye! [BEEP]

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … So. What did Annabelle say? MARTIN: She offered to help, but she didn’t say what with; she… asked us where we were going. I didn’t tell her, but… [SNORT] it was pretty obvious she had a good idea. ARCHIVIST: Did you… feel like she was… influencing your mind at all? MARTIN: I don’t think so, but I mean… who knows? ARCHIVIST: I could. MARTIN: But look. She didn’t control me into asking you not to look into my head, if that’s what you’re thinking. That’s all me. ARCHIVIST: Martin, I’m not… looking for a l–loophole. MARTIN: Well, good! ‘cause this isn’t one.

Jon had already uncovered the bit about Annabelle offering her “help”; but after that… on the one hand, Annabelle didn’t ask about their destination at all (contrary to what Martin said); and on the other hand, she needled Martin about Jon’s powers and whether or not Jon needed him (which Martin didn’t mention at all).

It could be faulty memory – that Martin got the impression she was probing about their destination, and that it became part of the exchange for him. It could be to test whether Jon was still using his powers (he wasn’t, we didn’t hear static, but Martin couldn’t have known). It could be a deliberate lie.

Personally, I would lean towards the interpretation that Martin was indeed checking whether Jon was still using his powers (it’s not a damaging lie: Annabelle knew when and where to contact him, so they’re quite clearly monitored already and Annabelle probably does know where they’re heading to and why); and didn’t mention the other part of his exchange with Annabelle because… he managed to get his answers in his own ways, without having to “involve” The Web in his discussion with Jon. If Martin had mentioned that Annabelle had asked him whether Jon needed him, would Jon have answered this easily that Martin was his reason? Or would Jon have panicked, thinking The Web might be manipulating him into saying it?

- Anyway, I feel like this episode might have been exactly what Annabelle was trying to instigate last time, which is… to get Jon&Martin to talk about their feelings, and for Martin to get a reassurance from Jon that he wasn’t managing to ask for, and that Jon had trouble wording without being pushed by the context.

(MAG167) MARTIN: [INHALE] [SNORT] Ssso. If you say Gertrude wouldn’t have been able to go on without a reason… ARCHIVIST: Yes, Martin, you are my reason. MARTIN: Just wanted to make you say it…! ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] MARTIN: Cool.

Not sure that it was what Annabelle was aiming for, but it’s a possibility: that she needed Martin to be reassured before they would reach The Lonely’s domain or something, because she wants them to get through.

(I loved Jon’s tone! I pictured him rolling his eyes because there was no way to say it without sounding too sappy to his own ears =D)

- Jon The Theatre Kid confirmed.

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: … Methinks the Spider doth protest too much…! [BAG JOSTLING] MARTIN: Jon. ARCHIVIST: Joking! Just joking.

(Fun fact: in the play, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” is pronounced… by Queen Gertrude. Jon, please.)

(It’s a joke, and a bit of truth and self-derision at the same time: how The Web… made Jon second-guess everything. When The Web tells you to go into X direction, is it reverse-psychology? Reverse-reverse psychology? So Martin denying being under influence could just be the proof of influence, or genuine. No way to know! But Jon has made the choice to trust him.)

- I felt like Martin was still… touched-by-Beholding in this one, mainly because of his probing, but also learning to keep his own curiosity/questions in check to not fall into the Fears’ influence?

(MAG167) MARTIN: [DEEP INHALE] Why did it have to be us? ARCHIVIST: You’d rather be a bystander? Trapped in… one of those places? MARTIN: I don’t know. “No”…? I just… [INHALE] I bet Gertrude would be able to do this, you know? She, she would eat a hellscape like this for breakfast…! [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: I… don’t think she would have done very well here… MARTIN: No? ARCHIVIST: No… MARTIN: Do you… know that…? [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: [DEEP INHALE] “To say that Gertrude Robinson never had a friend would not be true. […]” MARTIN: Well, let’s… try to avoid that next time…! ARCHIVIST: … Yes. Quite. MARTIN: [EXHALE] So, what? Without assistants, she’d be bad at the apocalypse? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] ARCHIVIST: Wi–without… trust, without a, a reason… Gertrude needed both the purpose her mission gave her, and the control her position allowed. To be here, like us, without a, [INHALE] a reason, without someone to ground her, she… She’d have power but… no control. No real… purpose. Perhaps she’d dedicate herself to a, a doomed quest like us, but– … [QUIET] No… I think this would have broken her. And she’d have resigned herself to… ruling her domain. MARTIN: What domain? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] ARCHIVIST: We all have a domain here, Martin. The place that feeds us. MARTIN: Oh. [PAUSE] Where’s yours? ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLE] I mean, we’re… traveling towards it. MARTIN: Oh! Right, obviously. [CHUCKLING] Duh. Hum… What about me? ARCHIVIST: … Would you… like me to… ? MARTIN: No, no. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. ARCHIVIST: … Okay!

* I felt like there really was a progression from Martin, from asking and asking (and accidentally making Jon spill about Gertrude’s life) to… refraining himself and choosing that he would rather not know about things that are not impacting him right now.

* ;; So, Martin has a “domain”, “the place that feeds us”. I’m… not sure about what Jon meant by “us”: monsters and avatars? That would be acknowledging that Martin indeed is regarded as one after his involvement with The Lonely? Or is it about everyone, and the places are “feeding” people through their own fears? After all, they don’t need to drink or eat or sleep – what is sustaining them? Are the Fears “feeding” them in turn through the pain they cause to each other, following the “feed it or it will feed from you” that Jude had told Jon?

* If Martin has a domain… Where? Hill Top Road? The Panopticon?

(MAG158) PETER: It’s a significant site of power for The Beholding. From the tower in the centre of this room, you can see everything. MARTIN: But there’s nothing in the cells…! PETER: [CHUCKLING] I don’t mean the cells, Martin – I mean everything. […] I want to use the powers of this place to learn about The Extinction: what it’s doing, where it’s manifesting. Then we can stop it. MARTIN: And you need me for this? PETER: Correct! Without a connection to The Eye, any attempt to use it would likely end… very messily indeed! But thankfully, it just so happens that you hold such a connection. MARTIN: So that’s it… Both “lonely” and “watching”. PETER: You must admit you’re the perfect candidate. MARTIN: I suppose I am.

“Both Lonely and Watching”, so…

* I really loved how that episode made it clear that… right now, Gertrude wouldn’t have been able to do what Jon & Martin are doing. That Gertrude was good at some things, bad at others. That there are things that only Jon&Martin can do, that they don’t have to live in her shadow. It follows what Jon said at the end of MAG162, that Gertrude didn’t think there would be a way to reverse the apocalypse – but also that they’re not her, and will try to find one themselves.

(* I’M WORRIED, THOUGH, THAT JON SAID THEY WERE ON A “DOOMED QUEST”? NOT VERY OPTIMISTIC ARE WE ;;)

- Gertrude might have crumbled if she had been plunged into the apocalypse, and Jon&Martin aren’t since they have each other… So there was this part of relief, of removing one’s guilt a bit about not being “enough”, that we also found with what happened this episode:

(MAG163) MARTIN: Jon… ARCHIVIST: They sit here – [STATIC RISES] the image of everyone they hold dear locked in their mind, knowing they’ll never see them again. Waiting for the order; dreading the bullet or the drone or the barbed wire that will tear them to shreds and leave them nothing but a bloody– [STATIC REACHING A PEAK] MARTIN: J–Jon, enough! Enough! [STATIC FADES] … Please don’t tell me these things.

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: I… don’t think she would have done very well here… MARTIN: No? ARCHIVIST: No… MARTIN: Do you… know that…? [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: [DEEP INHALE] “To say that Gertrude Robinson never had a friend would not be true. […] . But she never again allowed herself to trust.” [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] [STATIC] ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] I, I–I’m sorry, I–I didn’t, hum… MARTIN: No! No, it’s, uh… I–it’s okay. [COUGH] I just… I couldn’t… not listen, or interrupt, or… ARCHIVIST: I–I–I promise I–I didn’t know I was going to do that…! MARTIN: I, I understand…!

Back in MAG163, Martin had managed to interrupt Jon, which was not the case this time around – probably because he didn’t recognise what was happening as a statement soon enough? But since Martin was “trapped” in the flow of the story… it’s also confirming something that wasn’t addressed, but could have been a cause of guilt on Martin’s side: the thought that perhaps, if he had been there in MAG160, he could have stopped Jon from reading Jonah’s letter. If this episode was any indication, no, he wouldn’t have been able to. His not being there didn’t change anything.

- Reaaaally curious because the way Martin described it reminds me of Jonathan Fanshawe in front of Albrecht:

(MAG127, Jonathan Fanshawe) “Again he ignored me. Instead, he took the seat opposite me, and started to tell me… a story. And then another. And another. A stream of… strange tales began to pour out of him, and I just sat there, transfixed, [STATIC] desperately wishing I had the strength of will to stand and leave, but all I could do… was listen. […] He told me so many terrible things. [STATIC FADES] And at the end of it all, the only thing I could think to ask him… was where he read them. […] [STATIC] ‘You do not understand,’ he said to me in German. ‘I do not read the books. They read me.’ [STATIC FADES]”

Was Albrecht Jonah’s first attempt at creating an Archivist…?

- I’m still wondering WHO is narrating in Jon’s statements this season… a few “you” and “I”:

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: [DEEP INHALE] “To say that Gertrude Robinson never had a friend would not be true. She was close in her way to many people but, looking back, [STATIC FADES] I wonder if she ever realised just how strongly she herself reeked of The Lonely.”

Is it Jon-as-an-omniscient-entity-that-might-be-The-Archivist/Archives? Is it something else…?

- I feel like this episode also brought an interesting contrast to season 4 overall. On the one hand, we had Jon admitting that Martin was his “reason” (anchor?) to not crumble, to keep moving forwards as long as they’re together; that’s… a healthier approach than Jon being Martin’s “reason” in season 4:

(MAG158) MARTIN: I… When I first came to you, I thought I had lost everything. Jon was dead, my mother was dead, the job I had put everything into had trapped me into spreading evil, and I… I really didn’t care what happened to me. I told myself I was trying to protect the others, but honestly? We didn’t even like each other. Maybe I just thought joining up with you would be a good way to get killed. And then… [SHAKILY] Jon came back, and… and suddenly, I had a reason: I had to keep your attention on me. Make you feel in control, so you didn’t take it out on him. And if that meant drifting further away… so what? I’d already grieved for him, and if it meant now saving him, it was worth it!

… where Jon was Martin’s “reason” to push forwards into sacrificing more bits of himself. (A shift might have happened with Jon making Martin see him in MAG159, but I wonder if we’ll go back to Jon-as-Martin’s-reason too, and whether Martin has changed his opinion about it. In what aspect is Jon “Martin’s reason”, nowadays?)

The other contrast is about Jon’s self-destructiveness – I’ve seen a lot of discussion about it, but I didn’t really feel like the end of episode was tense, or horrible for Jon, or that Martin was being insensitive by twisting the knife in a wound?

(MAG167) MARTIN: Oh, ju–, uh, just, uh… Before we do. ARCHIVIST: Mm? MARTIN: A moment ago, when you were talking. ARCHIVIST: Right. MARTIN: The old Archivist, Angus. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] MARTIN: You said Fiona was… “released”– ARCHIVIST: [EXHALE] MARTIN: –when he died. ARCHIVIST: … Yes. MARTIN: If you had died… ARCHIVIST: [FAINT EXHALE] MARTIN: … Would the others have been able to quit? ARCHIVIST: … Yes. [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] I didn’t know. MARTIN: If you had… would you have told them? Would that have, have changed what happened? ARCHIVIST: … [SIGH] I don’t know, Martin. I… [PAUSE] I don’t know. [BAG JOSTLING] [FOOTSTEPS] [CLICK.]

… I actually felt like it was Progress regarding Jon, and how he valued his own life.

First of: there is a possibility that Jon didn’t want to answer Martin because he knew, was convinced, 100% sure that he would have killed himself to free the others, with or without telling them first. But I find it interesting to think that Jon answered genuinely, that no, he truly doesn’t know if he would have! That he’s slowly admitting to himself… that no, he doesn’t, and has never wanted to die, even when he was ready to take risks, harm himself, endanger his life:

(MAG159) ARCHIVIST: Listen – I know you think you want to be here, I know you think it’s safer and w– … well, maybe it is… But we need you. I need you. MARTIN: [DISTANT, VOICE ECHOING] No, you don’t. Not really…! Everyone’s alone, but we all survive. ARCHIVIST: I don’t just want to survive! MARTIN: [DISTANT, VOICE ECHOING] I’m sorry. ARCHIVIST: Martin… Martin, look at me. Look at me, and tell me what you see.

I still feel like Jon has always clung to the hope that he could make it out somehow, and the end of season 4 had him… acknowledge that he didn’t just want to “survive” – that is, he wants to “live”. He wants some quality of life. He wants something out of living.

But more importantly: season 5 began with a string of interrogations of hypothetic scenarii. What would have happened, if Sasha had been chosen as the Archivist? What would have happened, if they had listened to Gertrude’s testament at the beginning? Here, Jon was able to tell that one of the “what if” scenarii (Gertrude being thrown into the apocalypse) wouldn’t have been better; so him also admitting that he didn’t know whether he would have told the others… might be saying that no. He can’t know. It didn’t happen, since he didn’t know. And if he had known, maybe it wouldn’t have changed a thing; maybe it would have made things worse, too. I feel like it’s more optimistic than “I regret that I didn’t know, because then, I would have done it in a heartbeat”? So, I don’t know, but I felt like Martin’s probing was a way to try to get Jon to acknowledge that… maybe Jon telling the others would have changed things, maybe it wouldn’t have; but mostly, things wouldn’t have been necessarily better if Jon had chosen to sacrifice himself.

(I’m not convinced that Jon would have done it, and I’m not convinced that the others would have tried to kill him (even Tim!), and I’m not convinced that it would have made things better for everyone – by the time there were tensions, Tim probably wouldn’t have wanted to feel like a murderer when he had just been accused of being one, and would still want a shot at revenge for his brother; Melanie was already curious about the ghosts and was already infected by The Slaughter when enrolled; Martin didn’t have many other options for a job and wouldn’t have had a reason to not fall into The Lonely with Peter’s guidance; Daisy would have still been under The Hunt’s influence, and Basira involved with her.)

MAG168’s title is MMM again. I really love how last titles make a lot of sense in retrospect but were so hard when trying to guess! It feels like a lore-heavy one, but probably not twice in a row? But if it’s the case, it could relate to the Institute, to Jon, to Jonah, to Martin.

Fears-wise: could be The End (it has… a connection); I’m obviously thinking about Hill Top Road/Albrecht’s end again, so could be Web-y…

#the magnus archives #tma season 5 #mag167 #tma liveblog #long post/#tma spoilers/

13 notes · View notes

madmaudlingoes · 4 years

Text

No man is a failure who has comrades

Last night we had Christmas with my MIL, which involves watching It’s a Wonderful Life and then as many versions of A Christmas Carol as we can find. (Muppets > all others, btw.)

It’s weird that some of America’s most beloved Christmas movies aren’t about Jesus or Santa, right? It’s weird that they contain such an implicit critique of capitalism?

I mean, it’s not a hardcore critique. Scrooge and Potter are both exemplars of greed, the Cratchitts and the Baileys of poverty, but both stories seem to conclude that problem isn’t a system that allows such monstrous inequality but the personal morality of the rich and powerful. George Bailey is also a capitalist, but a “bad” one, who puts kindness ahead of the B&L’s profit margin.

(Though apparently the FBI totally thought that Potter was deliberate Communist propaganda designed to stir up a hatred of bankers. It’s also interesting that Potter’s plot to ruin George unravels without Potter actually getting punished. He just steals eight grand and gets away with it. That’s a violation of the Hayes Code, that is.)

Charles Dickens was absolutely writing from a “fuck capitalism” perspective, and most film adaptations leave out some of the preachiest parts. Frank Capra was absolutely not intending to write anything anti-capitalist -- dude was a conservative who hated FDR and was obsessed with the American Dream and the idea of the self-made man. And yet the movie gives us lines like this:

Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about... they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?

::cups hands around mouth:: WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY MR. POTTER. GET BENT

As @lofrothepirate pointed out to me, the state is pretty much absent in both stories -- we never see the mayor of Bedford Falls, and while Scrooge famously mentions taxes, the only people trying to actually improve the lives of the working class are Beaker and Honeydew the rich guys soliciting charitable donations from other rich guys. George Bailey was apparently born with an unshakable sense to duty to others, even as his personal ambitions curdle unfulfilled; Ebenezer Scrooge learns a kind of noblesse oblige under the threat of eternal damnation. It’s all about personal virtue, not structural remedies. Having a dictator wouldn’t be so bad if we could ensure it was always a “good” dictator, right?

And yet. The stories are mirror images in a lot of ways: Potter and Scrooge are both landlords, though we never really get into Potter’s head beyond George’s description of a “warped, frustrated old man;” he’s almost more of an abstract emblem of Vice than an actual character. Bob Cratchitt (and even moreso, Tiny Tim) is just the opposite, a walking icon of Virtue in the face of all hardship; George breaks down, lashes out at others, and has to call the divine suicide hotline. Scrooge has to speedrun empathy and face the threat of eternal damnation to change his ways, while George just has to be reminded of the fact that he cares about other people to free him from the Lonely break him out of his spiral.

(Also, the single most hilarious part of the film is the abject horror everyone holds of Mary becoming a spinster librarian. MY GOD, ANYTHING BUT THAT.)

Another thing that sticks out is that, despite the dystopian world being called Pottersville, Mr. Potter himself is completely absent -- there’s no scene where George passes him on the street or runs up to his mansion to see him lighting his cigars with wads of burning cash. All of the suffering Potter has caused is not actually attributed to Potter, but to George’s absence. And nobody ever does realize he stole the money. In parallel, the ghosts force Scrooge to confront how other people talk about him in his absence -- both in the present (his nephew makes fun of him, Emily Cratchitt cusses him out) and the future (people joke about his death, in contrast to the genuine grief the Cratchitts feel over Tiny Tim). But all the bullshit they witness IS Scrooge’s fault, if only as sins of omission, and he tries to make amends.

And finally, the epilogues: Scrooge is transformed from a miser into a philanthropist, while George is consumed with love for his community instead of a dreary sense of duty. Scrooge spends money, while George recognizes the power of solidarity friendship when half the town shows up to “loan” him the missing money. Which somehow nullifies the warrant and obviates the inevitable fraud investigation? Like, the bank examiner and the sheriff are right there, they know that there’s still an $8k error in the books. But LOOK PAPA THE BELL IS RINGING SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT AND NEVER BROUGHT TO MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIND

Ahem. If Christmas Carol is about “the rich must be supernaturally terrorized into acting right,” then Wonderful Life is “local man cannot ask for help without literal divine intervention.” They’re both ultimately populist with a soft Social Democrat slant, and yet they’re the staple Christmas movies of the modern American kleptocracy. Also, Christmas Carol fetishizes the specialness of Christmas to a degree not seen outside of a Hallmark movie, usually, whereas Life is almost incidentally a holiday movie at all.

It’s weird, right?

14 notes · View notes

spaceorphan18 · 6 years

Text

Finding Kurt Hummel: Old Dogs, New Tricks

Masterpost

5x19: Old Dogs, New Tricks

Previously on Glee: Everyone else is doing things - while Kurt has his collections of neckerchiefs. Kinda wondering if Chris wrote that one, lol.

So.... Yeah, this is the episode that Chris Colfer wrote. And what do I think of it? Because I know you guys are all here for my very professional opinion on all these things... lol. It’s... fine. There are some things that really work -- Santana as a publicist - excellent!! Sam and Mercedes’s relationship issues -- great. Dogs dragging Lea Michele down the road because of her bratty behavior - totally here for that. Honestly, I think the Kurt portion of the story may be the weakest aspect of this episode, but this is Chris’s first try at a TV script, and I think he’s done a lot better than a lot of people out there -- including whoever wrote I Kissed a Girl, ug.

I do think there’s some dialogue that’s a little stiff, and Chris has a tendency to write a little on the cheesy side, but I’m really sad that season 6 wasn’t longer to give him another go at it, cause I think TV writing might have been a good avenue for him. And I really hope that some day he gets to head his own TV show - because I think it’s something he’d do rather well at. So - that’s my two cents.

I will say - this episode is mostly stand alone. And with the season drawing to a close -- I really am missing those extra two episodes that were chopped off the end of the season. I really would have liked to play around in this sandbox for a tad bit longer, as I think there were most definitely more stories to tell. At least I am grateful for what we got.

Problem Child

So, I’m not going to spend much time (or really at all) trying to figure out how Chris feels about this or that as evident through the script. I mean -- TV is a collaborative process -- and even if Chris wrote the script, I’m sure a lot of people still had their input, and he didn’t direct it, so... But I think this still is a good indicator about how he felt about Rachel. I mean... yeah, it’s probably how we all feel about Rachel, tbh.

So as we open -- Kurt wants to see a movie, but, well, Blaine is too busy doing stuff with June, Santana just doesn’t want to, and Rachel’s freaking out that image is being tarnished because she fucked up in the previous episode. And, as most things do, it becomes all about Rachel. Santana, however, steps up to be her publicist -- which is -- incredibly inspired!! Can I just keep the headcanon that Santana sticks to being a publicist, this is a fantastic choice for her. Thank you, Chris, for this.

Anyway - Kurt’s more than annoyed -- and even has to tell Rachel to keep her voice down because they’re in side -- because he is, more often than not, Rachel’s care giver. Because seriously, this girl cannot seem to function on her own.

So -- here’s my thing. This script is a little awkward going forward -- a lot of it is Kurt harping on how his ‘friends’ aren’t there for him, though only specifically focusing on Rachel. And while I think the Rachel was the safest route to go, and one that’s been clearly building for a while, I do think it might have been interesting to see how that played out with others -- such as Mercedes or Santana or even Blaine. (Though, honestly, I’m glad Chris did the smart thing and not include a lot of Blaine in this script. I totally get why he did -- because he really didn’t want to be harassed about it -- and that was the wisest choice for him.)

Oh and then to everyone’s shock - Rachel goes to yell at someone for putting their dog in their purse. I mean, is this an LA thing? I kinda wonder if this is an LA thing that pisses Chris off and he gets to yell through Rachel. It kinda feels like it, lol. Anyway... Kurt’s in the background, but his ‘wtf are you doing’ look is classic.

Pillsbury

So - this episode has to do with three of Chris’s favorite things: 1. Dogs (animals); 2. Old People; and 3. Fairy tales. I mean - I don’t think it gets much Chris-ish than that -- unless you wanted to throw in aliens. I do find it hilarious that he brings all these things to Kurt, because they aren’t really there before -- but it seems to fit in pretty well.

Anyway - we get June Squibb in the form of Maggie Banks (Do you see -- it’s a combo of Maggie Smith and Mrs Banks from Mary Poppins -- at least that’s what I assume is the inspiration.) I’m not going to talk too much about June Squibb’s performance -- because it’s awkward at best (I can’t tell if it’s her acting or if it’s the lines). But it makes a ton of sense that this actress just coming into her own in her 80s is who they got to play the part. I assume Chris adored working with her.

Anyway, this old folks home is doing a rendition of Peter Pan (get it - cause they’re old, and they want to stay young forever -- this script is full of stuff like this. I can’t tell if it’s clever or not.) And Maggie’s gonna start screaming elder abuse if the poster doesn’t go up in the diner. But -- that doesn’t stop her from noticing that Kurt’s full of his usual ennui.

Hilariously, he says he files all his problems away and lets it out during an episode of Long Island Medium. (This is another Chris-ism. Yeah, I can’t stop pointing these out.) While questionable choice of reality TV aside, I do think this is a fascinating beat for Kurt -- he’s internalizing all of his issues. Maybe it’s cause no matter how far he gets in his life, and partially cause he does have super involved in themselves friends, Kurt’s not one to reach out when he’s got issues. THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING KURT!!

You wanna know why Kurt and Blaine break up a second time? Cause Kurt pretty much sucks at letting people know he’s struggling with something. He thinks he can fix everything himself, and you know what? You can’t sweetie -- so talk to people!

Well -- here he gets to talk to June, and let’s it out that he’s feeling a little left behind lately. Santana’s starring in vaginal cream commercials, Mercedes’s is becoming the next Beyonce, Blaine has found a sugar mama, and Rachel has already hit her mid-40s where she’s fucking up her Broadway career for a shot at TV. And Kurt feels like he’s gotten nowhere. Which -- yeah he hasn’t. And that’s not a bad thing, not really, since he’s the only one on a sure and steady course, but when everyone around you feels like they’re miles ahead in their lives, it can feel heavy being the only one not /there/. (I getcha kiddo, I really do.)

Also - I think it’s hilarious that he says he’s the mother in a Nancy Myers movie. (That is so Kurt, and so Chris.) And, god, yeah, let someone else take over handling Rachel. Geez.

Kurt then finds out that his therapy session is with /The/ Maggie Banks -- the woman who once starred in the worst Broadway show of all time, a musical about Helen Keller. (Eesh) And after being awkwardly asked to come back to the home, she invites him back to watch them rehearse. Sure - why not, he doesn’t have anything else to do.

Look at what a happy little goober he is -- he’s gonna hang out with old people!

Broadway Bitches

Oh Broadway Bitches. I have a heancanon that Chris came up with this at 2 in the morning and immediately texted Ashley cause he thought it was so funny. Is it clever? Yes. Is it something I’d use as a name for an organization dealing with kids? No... But moving on...

Can I just reiterate that Santana as a publicist is hilarious. Also her line -- ‘a designer so fancy I can’t even pronounce his name, there’s hardly any vowels’ is a line Chris probably came up with way back on the season 1 press tour and never got to use.

Anyway - to rehabilitate her image, Rachel, Santana, and Mercedes are going to do a show. And Kurt wants in -- cause Chris remembers continuity and Dani’s off doing roller derby and Elliott’s at a yoga retreat so no more One Tree Hill. You know - I hate to say this - but I kinda see why he’s not invited here, cause it is about imaging - but they don’t have to be such awful people about telling him no.

Santana actually says if he’s there he’d probably pull focus which is a) meta and b) probably true. But Kurt’s rightfully hurt. They get to continue to roll around in their self-involvement while Kurt gets to be shoved aside. Again.

I’m kinda surprised Kurt hasn’t taken up a drinking problem at this point.

Memories

So Kurt goes to check out the retirement home. They’re getting ready for their production -- and there are three different headshots of Maggie on that board. Just saying. Kurt thinks it’s pretty cool. And I mean -- I think there is a cool story there to be told about actors who are now considered over their prime when in fact they’re still awesome and kicking butt.

This episode is going to be a bit heavy handed about it -- cause as much as I love Chris, he’s incredibly heavy handed in his writing -- but it’s a nice sentiment. And I do think it’s proper that Kurt would be infatuated with stars of old.

I don’t really have any thing to add -- it’s just a nice shot of Kurt. He’s amused by this sweet little production.

Also! I suppose it’s time to bring up Billy Dee Williams and Tim Conway, who have really minor roles in this episode. I kinda wish they were in it more - their characters are a bit fun.

And then the woman who plays Peter dies. Okay, so I kinda find the dark humor funny. (Also Chris-ism.) It’s fine guys. I’m sure she had a delightful life.

After the commercial break, and after Maggie’s irritation that the dead woman was selfish for dying and ruining the production, we get some more heavy handed commentary about how old people need a reason to keep on living. Which -- is fine? Chris not to edit your script but you gotta work on more showing and less telling

And then we get this weird beat of Tim Conway wanting to sit on the chair. Move kid - it’s his chair! idk. I think it’s funny?

Kurt claims he can fill in, unless they have rules against that. They only really have two rules -- a) don’t loose your teeth and b) take the correct meds. Sure. The guy claiming he was a pterodactyl however steals the show with his delivery. It’s absolutely hilarious.

Meanwhile - Kurt goes on to say how much he adored Mary Martin’s Peter Pan back in the day (which explains a lot. Also Chris-ism. Five bucks that was one of Chris’s favorite movies as a kid.) Anyway - he also still sings like a girl so he can totally take it on.

The retirement home has standards so they have to at least have to hear him sing -- which is great! Cause Kurt always carries around sheet music just in case, lol. That’s such a Glee-esque line. What?

And then Kurt sings a perfectly adequate version of Memory from Cats.

Okay - I don’t have a lot to say about it, tbh. It’s nice, Chris sounds just fine on it -- and I’d guess this would be his last solo of the series if Maggie didn’t come in at the end. But, you know, the song is more about cherishing the memory of these actors -- and people in general who are worth remembering for their great accomplishments - even if they aren’t doing as such any more. Again - a nice sentiment. But I don’t really have anything to meta about on Kurt.

Also I don’t like this song (I’m sorry! don’t send me hate mail).

By the end - Kurt’s inspired everyone to get up and keep on living. And has proven to himself that he can handle Andrew Lloyd Weber.

Btw - the couple of guys dressed up as the lost boys are super cute.

Homocchio (Ha!)

The scene before this, btw, is Rachel being dragged by dogs a block. I mean - it’s funny, yes, but also, c’mon -- are you really going to tell me it’s not at least a little bit of payback?

Anyway - Kurt bounces in to let Rachel and Santana know that he’s scored the role of Peter in a retirement home’s production of Peter Pan -- to which they are like - eh, okay, nice try Kurt. And well, Kurt doesn’t take that too well. I mean, sometimes a role is a role -- and Kurt’s obviously excited about it -- so if you’re a good friend, you suck it up and at least congratulate your friend. I mean seriously. But this is Rachel and Santana - Santana mocks him and Rachel gets incredibly self-involved. This has been the case since season 1 - so I’m not sure what Kurt was expecting.

Kurt asks them to go - but they say no. Santana’s honest about it being dumb, but Rachel claims she has her image to keep up and her stuff is more important. And Kurt finally lets her have it -- he’s right, she calls him day and night to fix her shit, but when is she ever there for her? Honestly, this rant could have gone on for another five minutes. It’s nice to see that I’m not the only one irritated by the unbalanced Hummelberry dynamic that’s been going on since season 3.

Kurt storms out of there cause seriously, he’s had enough.

Dress Rehearsal

Hey - it’s time for an awkward dress rehearsal with some pretty entertaining jokes and some more heavy handedness about how you’re only as young as you feel. I don’t think it’s a bad idea -- but does every scene have to have a speech about it?

Anyway - Kurt’s sweet in his attempt to inspire them and himself, and suggests updating the music.

Btw - there’s this line: Ever since you were a question on Jeopardy, you’ve been a know-it-all. (ha! that made me laugh)

And then we get some back story on Maggie - how she sends herself flowers because her daughter is estranged. And Kurt feels sad. I mean there’s some stuff in there about how Maggie’s daughter is like Kurt’s friends -- not really there when needed, which again, is a nice parallel. I’m just not really fond of Kurt feeling like he’s gotta fix things with Maggie instead of trying to fix things with his friends. YMMV.

I Hate This Scene - Yup, I’m Going With That as a Header

So - Kurt claims he caused an oil spill in a national park and gets himself in to see Maggie’s daughter. Oh my god - Kurt, no... At least Clara directly calls security (one guy - cause it’s Kurt) and then when Kurt claims it’s about his mother -- she thinks he’s ‘dating’ her to get her money.

Oh, god, Chris, why did you write this scene??

So here’s my real issue. The crux of it is about Kurt trying to get Clara to see her mom again cause Maggie misses her so much. But Clara tells him that basically -- Clara was emotionally abusive to her, which is why Clara doesn’t go see her. And then Kurt gives a song and dance about why she should just get over that -- and omg NO KURT NO!

Look - I get the sentiment here -- that we should maybe try to make amends before it’s too late. But - Clara made the healthy choice of cutting out an abusive family member and looks like she’s just doing fine on her own. And to have a stranger, who has no understanding of the situation come in an tell you to try to fix it is over stepping like whoa. Kurt is so in the wrong here - and I can’t even a little bit defend him.

This story would have worked just fine if Maggie had her regrets and talked to Kurt about living his life and not having them -- it wasn’t needed for Kurt to fix Maggie and give her a happy ending. Stories don’t always need to have happy endings to make their point.

Anyway - Clara rightfully throws him out. But not before Kurt goes on to talk about how his mom died and he wished he’d had one - so she should be grateful that she does. And be the better person and take care of Maggie now that she’s old - even if she sucked as a parent. Again - no - this is also emotional manipulation. Kurt, no! Stop! This scene is just... no!!

I am glad that Clara just doesn’t say anything and gets him out of there.

My Old Ladies Are Better Than Yours

To make up for the atrocity that was that previous scene - we get a Klaine scene that is really quite beautiful in its simplicity. Chris didn’t have to put this in here -- but he did, and I’m grateful, because it’s sweet and warm and old married-like, and while Blaine really isn’t in this episode, I’m glad that they were allowed to have this small moment and leave the drama for someone else to write.

So -- Blaine jokes that he’s missing stuff with June to be there for Kurt -- but ultimately, of course he’s there for Kurt. Because he’ll always be there for Kurt. Like I said earlier -- this story is more about Kurt’s issues with Rachel (and himself for feeling like he’s going nowhere) more than anything having to do with Blaine.

I do think it’s interesting that Blaine comments on how happy Kurt’s been -- and how that hasn’t been the case lately. I like that Blaine’s checking in, even if Kurt isn’t fully open. Kurt admits that he feels like this role is finally a step forward in his life, and being with the retirement group is giving him something that he’s been missing -- but I do think there’s an underlying sadness that Kurt’s not addressing.

Kurt’s not opening up to Blaine about his insecurities and his feelings -- and that is going to cause a problem. While they are mostly fine -- I do think Kurt’s continued withdrawal from admitting how he feels is going to blow up in his face later. Communication is key, guys, do it!

How adorable is Kurt in this outfit? :)

The other thing I really love about this scene is the casual intimacy of familiarity. They are an old married couple in this scene -- from Blaine helping Kurt with his costume, to Kurt telling Blaine to sit a row back cause Gladys can’t keep solids down. It’s not in-your-face affection - it’s light touches and smiles and I really love that during this arc they finally allowed Klaine to have that.

Peter Pan

Before the show - Kurt asks Maggie if she’d like to be his family, since their own families are too busy for them. It’s a sweet moment - but I’m also like -- Kurt, seriously -- talk to your friends!! But yeah, sometimes you do need to carve out your family where you can find it. Non-tradition is an okay thing.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, Kurt breaks down and calls Rachel -- apologizing for yelling at her (seriously?) and tells her he hopes her own show goes alright. Kurt’s a good egg. Rachel’s lucky to have him as a friend.

She rushes him off the phone -- but only because she’s sitting with the rest of the gang waiting for his show to start. And he’s stupidly excited. See -- they love you Kurt -- they do!! (Plus, it’s my headcanon that Blaine had something to do with rounding them all up...)

And... then we get the whole reason Chris wrote the episode -- so he could fly around as Peter Pan while singing Madonna’s Lucky Star, with an entourage of old people in the background. Lol. The whole thing is cute and ridiculous and cute. And of course, it works for the show, and gives a chance to Chris Kurt to completely geek out. I mean, yes, I know, Kurt in that costume, but the old people are also ridiculously adorable in this scene.

I’m not sure about the whole old people turning into little kids thing (man with the heavy handedness, the metaphor works fine without it) but it’s nearly blink and you miss it, so I won’t really even comment.

Clara ends up showing up and reconciling with Maggie. And I have a cold, dead heart because the scene just doesn’t work for me. Like I said earlier -- not everything has to have a happy ending.

But at the end of the day, this show is still Glee.

But the important thing is that Kurt’s friends all showed up. Rachel gushes that some day they’ll be old folks in a home (eesh) and Sam goes straight for the crotch to comment on the harness squeezing, um, things, lol. But ultimately - Rachel’s set it up so that the old folks can come do the performance again -- so we can combine old people with puppies and could this episode be any cuter? The only thing missing is aliens.

Kurt: What do you say, Maggie, you think you got a second act in you? Maggie: I never used to believe in second acts. But you’ve proven me wrong.

Omg. Chris - this should be your submission for a place on the staff of a Disney show.

Take Me Home

See -- look how adorable?

After a rousing speech from Rachel about being shallow is dumb and you should care about things that are bigger than you are -- they break out into a chorus of Take Me Home. And this is where I appreciate Lea Michele - because she’s able to sell the incredibly cheesy dialogue better than June Squibb. I mean, look, I like cheesy - I do -- but it’s dialed up to 11 in this episode. Chris, I love you to death, but you don’t have to try so hard to get your point across <3

I’m sorry if I came off as extra harsh about the episode -- I don’t think it’s bad, and it’s certainly better than about half the other episodes of the show. I think it’s just me nitpicking - cause I do adore Chris and I really want him to push himself to be better. This is a great first try, and I really do hope he gets more tries in the future -- cause I do think he has potential. I just want someone there to soften the rougher edges of his writing. That’s all.

And the episode ends with a mutual love fest for everyone. Cause it’s not a true Glee ending without everyone barfing glitter and rainbows. Lol, I’m only half being facetious - it’s cute, and a little wrong about Rachel, but fits the episode perfectly.

Oh my goodness - one more season 5 episode left...

#finding kh #kurt hummel

39 notes · View notes

queerbycrs · 5 years

Text

so... i’m not finished writing this yet, but since apparently the idea is So Popular going by @iamalivenow‘s post, i thought i’d... lay out the basis of my the magnus archives good place au? vague spoilers up to current canon of tma (ep 120) and definite spoilers up to the end of s2 of the good place

my basic thought, at first, was that this isn’t a “full” tgp fusion -- it would incorporate elements of tma canon, and involve various kinds of amnesia. so, the characters are tormented by not remembering bits of their lives, or remembering things that line up wrong, or having flashes of memory that don’t make sense.

so, in this au, the characters already knew each other in ways that are similar but not identical to canon. that’s part of the reason elias-as-michael is so confident it’ll work out: that idiot michael just threw together some humans and hoped they’d click perfectly horribly. these people have history, and it’ll torment them or just be informational, as required.

so, elias is michael, obviously. pre-redemption. (my thought for this is that the torture actually works so it never proceeds to the actual plot of tgp s2-onwards, so no need to figure out how it would work with elias. alternately, the humans go off through the afterlife without architectural assistance. who knows)

i’m not set on who janet is, but i might go with the suggestion of distortion? because that sounds hilarious, honestly

and there are def soulmates in this au, because it makes things ALL THE MORE PAINFUL. from most-to-least solidly formed ideas:

basira and daisy. basira remembers a picture-perfect life on earth, fifty years of marriage, dying in each other’s arms.

daisy remembers being a serial killer and trying to hide it for years until basira caught on and daisy killed her in a fit of rage, and spent the rest of her life regretting it.

neither of them have accurate recollections. but according to their first day in the good place, basira is correct, and daisy doesn’t know what the hell is going on or why she’s here, with the love of her life, who she thought she killed in the biggest mistake of her life.

(basira prolllllllllly doesn’t belong in the bad place, but elias prolly just snatched her up for his Evil Plans. no one better to torture daisy with, right?)

next: martin and jon. they remember working together, in... an archive? or something? and martin was in love with jon, and jon was oblivious.

well, the official matchmaking systems of the afterlife have chosen! you’re the perfect match for each other! have fun!

martin is completely blissed out at first! it’s wonderful! he spent all those years in hopeless love, and now he gets to spend eternity with the man he thought could never love him back!

and at first, jon is actually... okay with it? he’s a little nervous, because he’s never had a relationship that didn’t crash and burn (okay, sample size of one, but that says a lot in and of itself) but it feels so easy, at first, and it’s... okay. it’s nice.

but then his memories start to get... weird. he has dreams of the archive where he worked, except it’s... different. he remembers worms, and running, and a man’s body on the floor of his office.

he remembers a tape recorder, and he starts recording here, too. just in case.

eventually, as jon’s paranoia starts to build and build, things start going bad for martin, too: he’s having nightmares too, of worms and crushing loneliness, and jon is retreating and won’t talk to him, and this cute older guy who works at the kayak rental/canoe group/scuba-diving-but-without-equipment-because-we’re-dead-and-don’t-need-to-breathe place keeps hitting in him and he’s kind of into it and he feels Really Bad about it

and then i get to, like, melanie and tim and georgie, and in this version of the au i don’t know what to do with them, so i would probably pair up melanie and tim -- their respective responses to stress don’t work well together, at All, so i guess if the tension started turning up they’d probably torture each other pretty effectively.

which leaves georgie. and i’m thinking, maybe elias just doesn’t know how to torture her. she was added to his carefully-planned group without advance notice (probably as a test, those goddamn suits in the department don’t understand how difficult and complicated this is--) and so he just. tells her that her soul is perfectly complete on its own, and she has the admiral for company, but she doesn’t have a soulmate.

georgie’s like, sweet. she can live her best life (afterlife) and hang out with her cat that will be with her forever! this is awesome.

(the admiral probably died of natural causes a few years before, after living a full and very happy life; it got a lovely afterlife until georgie arrived and they got to hang out again. this is how it is for all pets. don’t @ me you know i’m right and i will not take suggestions)

it’s not perfect, because elias just keeps throwing Problems at her to see what’ll stick. but she’s doing pretty good.

alternately:

basira/daisy, and

jon/tim. tim’s reaction to jon’s paranoia is probably a lot more external than martin’s is, which probably leads to some nasty fights. jon probably thinks tim is turning against him, it’s a whole big mess. tim might get seduced away a couple times to increase his guilt and add some depth to their bad relationship, because this is Literal Hell.

melanie/georgie, because Wrench Thrown Into Plan, had to make some adjustments. there’s probably some memory mismatch and external pressure, but it’s not too bad.

martin is a complete person who needs no soulmate to make his afterlife perfect. not a monk, like jason (elias scoffs at the heavy-handedness, the unsubtlety of that.) just perfectly fulfilled in solitude.

he probably gets fully seduced by peter lukas, aka mr. “kayak rental/canoe group/scuba-diving-but-without-equipment-because-we’re-dead-and-don’t-need-to-breathe place” guy. and then there’s a lot of, “oh god this was a mistake what will we tell our soulmates” from peter (externally) and a lot of “i’m going to be alone for literal eternity and even my hookup doesn’t know about it, because it’s so unusual to not have a soulmate” from martin (internally.)

looking at it now, version 1 does seem better and more thought-out, so if i do actually progress with this i’ll prolly go with that. but hey, if someone wants to run with version 2... (or one, idc really) please do, i will love it.

SO. onto: demons!

you know in the beginning of tgp season 2, when michael is doing the pep talks to the demons and one of them keeps asking if he can bite the humans?

okay, that, but with jane prentiss

she just wants to infect them. just a lil. just a few worms in their houses, even

(elias screams internally. why are his demons so incompetent.)

nikola is a mannequin in the windows of one of the stores in the cute little town. she moves... just a little bit... whenever you look away (like a weeping angel.) she probably shows up in people’s houses in the middle of the night and stands at the foot of their beds. when elias is asked about it, he assures them that it was just a nightmare.

there are so many spiders in this afterlife. martin loves it. nearly everyone else... does not.

jude perry owns a pizza place with a classic pizza oven. it’s... weirdly hot in there? (”she spent all her years on earth perfecting this pizza,” elias explains to someone who feels like they’re dying of heatstroke. “she adapted to the heat. it would be cruel to take it away from her.”)

the pizza is delicious, once it’s burned the roof of your mouth to bloody strips

mike crew runs the skydiving/flying place. the humans don’t understand why it’s so painful and weird when they do it. they’re clearly just doing it wrong! why don’t they try again. and again.

not!sasha is there, and sasha isn’t. (i don’t know, i can’t think of how it would work.) (maybe she kept throwing a wrench in elias’s plans so he didn’t want her in his neighbourhood.) she’s soulmates with some random demon and is probably out there, idk, tormenting people with weird uncanny valley.

she runs a wax museum, like the museum in tgp s2, when the gang goes to the real bad place and it has plaques for the first person to do some petty bad thing (telling a woman to smile, sending an unprompted dick pic, flossing in an open-concept workplace, etc.) the wax figures also move in creepy ways, just a little bit.

i’m sure once i write this i’ll flesh out more of the demons, but one last thing:

who is mindy st. clair, you ask?

my answer is: it’s not one person. it’s gertrude and gerry.

but how, you ask? isn’t that like, a really special, one-time thing?

well, dear reader, for one thing, points and afterlife designations work differently in this au than they do in tgp, for practical reasons of getting all the characters i care about into hell. and also, the system doesn’t make sense.

so gertrude and gerry either a) both evened out the points (and medium places aren’t very uncommon) or b) this is an au where you can be “claimed” by the good place or the bad place at random, and neither place wanted them. either/or.

the thing is, though, that the medium place is not meant to be torture. and for the vast majority of people, being alone for eternity with only the most mediocre entertainment and literally nothing to do? is torture.

for mindy, she was incredibly self-centred; being alone is fine. she doesn’t mind being around other people for short periods of time, and she probably wants to get laid, but she’s okay in her own company.

most people are not. and obviously we don’t actually know much about gertrude and gerry’s relationship, but what i’m going to guess is that they didn’t hate each other, or especially like each other, but they aren’t each other’s favourite person, either.

thus, the best person to spend eternity with for absolute mediocrity, they can both be alone when they want and also have company when they need to not go completely off the deep end.

and that’s what i have so far.

and here’s a bonus if you read this far: i also started writing a tgp magnus archives au, where michael (tgp michael) got the gang together in s3 by sending them all to the magnus institute to give a statement. i have most of eleanor’s statement written. still not sure what i want to do with it, but there you go: fusion-ception, an au both ways.

#anyway i plan to write this but also everybody should write this au #the magnus archives #the good place #nicola.txt #nicola writes things

11 notes · View notes

penniesforthestorm · 3 years

Text

“I’m officially requisitioning this chicken”: ‘Justified’ Season 1, Episodes 6-9

As we move into the second half of Justified’s first season, things are heating up all over Kentucky. We get more insight into the operations of the Crowder clan, plus some even larger adversaries who’ll come into play further down the line. These notes cover Episodes 6 through 9, the next batch will be 10-12, with the finale getting its own entry. Notes on the pilot are here and Episodes 2-5 can be found here. Drop me a line any time-- if I could be sitting next to you in a dive bar, I would be. (Not much for Jim Beam, though, or, if I’m being honest, bourbon in general, owing to some unfortunate shenanigans in my early 20s. Mine’s a Jameson and ginger ale, with a squeeze of lime.)

Episode Six: “The Collection”

-We open with Raylan visiting Boyd, on his feet again after the shooting, and Boyd bending Raylan’s ear about his newfound ministry. Raylan doesn’t buy it for a minute, and he asks Boyd for dirt on Arlo.

-Raylan passes along Johnny Crowder’s warning to Ava about Bo-- she’s not overly concerned. Art, coming to pick Raylan up for the day’s work, is not terribly pleased to find Ava in his motel room.

-Case of the week: civil forfeiture, centering on a man named Owen Carnes trying to offload paintings purchased with stolen cash. Art and Raylan pick up a gallery owner, Karl Hanselman (Robert Picardo) in Cincinnati, and drive him down to Carnes’ place. Carnes and the gallery owner begin discussing his collection of Hitler paintings. Art, in disbelief, asks, “You mean Adolf?”

-Raylan, disgusted, wanders out and finds Carnes’ wife, who doesn’t seem particularly surprised or upset at the turn of events. I have in my notes “another blonde in trouble Jesus Raylan”--there’s nothing untoward, but... dude.

-On the way back to Cincinnati, Hanselman tells Raylan, with a smirk, to come see his “collection” any time. Raylan, never one to mince words- “I’d rather stick my dick in a blender.”

-Raylan finally meets ADA Vasquez, after some folderol at the office involving the now very dead Owen Carnes. Later, Winona shows up, asking Raylan to run a list of names through various criminal databases. Raylan visits Gary, and informs him that if Winona comes to grief through association with any of Gary’s shady dealings, Gary’s going to make another enemy.

-Back at the Carnes place, Raylan unravels the scam Caryn Carnes and the horse trainer, Greg Davis, are trying to pull-- he knows Owen didn’t kill himself, and he pulls Davis to his side by telling him, in an abstract way, about Gary, and how many more people he might have to kill. “Where will it end?” he asks.

-Finally, he goes to see Hanselman, and reluctantly agrees to see ‘the collection’. This is a great moment- the camera stays on Hanselman and Raylan as H. explains how his father used to work for Hitler, “a very charismatic man who knew who was to blame”. After the war, dad recanted publicly, but held onto his repugnant views in private. The camera then shows us shelves of glass jars filled with ash-- Hanselman has been tracking down Hitler’s paintings and burning them, in revenge.

-Raylan goes to see Boyd, and asks him to forget about Arlo. “I met a man whose whole life was crippled,” he explains. “I’m just going to let that old dog lie.”

Episode Seven: “Blind Spot”

-We open with Ava in the hardware store. Johnny Crowder comes in and loudly asks the proprietor for some specialty items-- rope, duct tape, plastic sheeting, and a shovel, on orders from the soon-to-be released Bo Crowder. Aunt Helen sees his bluff and raises him, aiming a shotgun at him-- a warning he wisely heeds.

-Later, Raylan visits Ava and she talks about Bowman, explaining that things weren’t miserable all the time. “I keep going back and forth, between light and dark,” she tells him. Just as they’re getting comfy, a masked intruder bursts in, blasting away, but Raylan manages to wrestle him out through the open second-floor window, firing off a few shots.

-Sheriff Mosley takes Raylan to question Johnny Crowder. On the drive, he explains his beef with the Crowders-- a certain Henry, widely known as ‘the good Crowder’, raped and killed Mosley’s ten-year-old niece. Johnny, for his part, knows nothing about the shooting, and confesses his affection for Ava.

-the next morning, we see a man watching Ava outside the Harlan County Sheriff’s Office. We then catch up to the actual shooter-- a cringing kid called Red, and we get a name for Ava’s watcher, Mr. Duke.

-Raylan gets chewed out by Art, since he has now literally tampered with the investigation against Boyd Crowder-- “Were you in her bedroom?” Unusually, Raylan has no smarty rejoinder.

-Ava and Winona share a strained conversation in the courthouse-- “You ever get tangled up with a law enforcement officer?” Winona asks. They’re interrupted by Sheriff Mosley, who asks Ava to come with him.

-Raylan visits Boyd, looking for answers. After a false start, Boyd explains that Bo didn’t order Ava to be shot, and plants a flea in Raylan’s ear-- what if Ava wasn’t the target?

-Answers arrive quickly: Mosley is in cahoots with the Miami cartel. Duke was supposed to kill Raylan, but, since Duke isn’t familiar with Kentucky, Mosley supplied Red. Mosley shoots Duke to prevent his mistake being exposed, and hatches a plan to bring Raylan to the cartel. Red, driving a bound and gagged Ava, gleefully expounds on Ava’s desirability among the straight men of Harlan County. Ava frees herself enough to strangle him, and the chase ends with Raylan and Ava free and Mosley under arrest. In a passing comment, Mosley brings up the Dixie Mafia, and their current alliance with Miami.

-Finally, we meet Bo Crowder (M.C. Gainey). Boyd’s ongoing conversations with Raylan have not gone unnoticed by his fellow inmates, and just as they start beating on him for being a snitch, Bo intervenes. “It’s good to see you, Daddy,” Boyd says with a smile.

Episode Eight, “Blowback”

-At a diner in Lexington, the newly-released Bo slides into a booth with Ava. He’s out early courtesy of Mosley’s arrest, and he delivers a truly nasty innuendo about ‘homemade pie’ before Raylan arrives on the scene.

-Case of the week: a prisoner, Cal Wallace (Deadwood’s W. Earl Brown), is in Lexington for a few hearings, pending transfer to a ‘supermax’ facility.

-Winona arrives home in the middle of the afternoon, to find an unexpected guest-- Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns), self-styled ‘home security consultant’ and possessor of a luxuriant blond coiffure. Right away, Winona smells a rat, and sends Duffy packing, but not before he snidely sends his regards to Gary.

-Prisoner Wallace places the Marshals’ Office under a hostage situation, and Art tells Raylan that if he gets a clear shot, he should take it. Raylan, due for a meeting with Vasquez, begins chatting with Wallace, attempting to defuse the situation. Wallace is a colorful sort-- he has no particular illusions about escape or amnesty. Eventually, Raylan teases out that Wallace is furious with the prison system for dehumanizing him, and under mounting pressure, offers Wallace some fried chicken, sending Tim Gutterson out to get it before Lexington SWAT arrives.

-Winona confronts Gary about Duffy’s visit-- he initially tries to play dumb, but then gets irritated when he realizes how much she knows. Duffy was on the list of names that Winona gave to Raylan in E6.

-Another parable from the Book of Raylan Givens: “People in terrible situations stay alive not because they think things will get better, but because they want to see how the story ends.” For now, Cal Wallace’s story ends in fried chicken, a shot of bourbon, and not dying on the carpet.

-Unfortunately for Raylan, he still has to meet with Vasquez, who brings bad news: thanks to Raylan hopping into bed with Ava, the case against Boyd Crowder has essentially disappeared. Raylan goes to greet an ebullient Boyd. “Who are any of us to fight the will of God?” Boyd proclaims. Raylan promises that he’ll see Boyd locked up again before long, as Boyd practically skips into his father’s arms.

Episode Nine: “Hatless”

-Raylan, on a week’s suspension, is drinking away his sorrows when he eavesdrops on two bros talking derogatorily about women. “I didn’t order assholes with my whiskey”, he sneers, and all three go outside. Hilariously, it’s the middle of the afternoon. In short order, Raylan gets the tar kicked out of him, and one of the troublemakers even steals his hat. Winona, who he was supposed to meet, finds him on the ground. (One has to wonder how many times she found him in these exact circumstances.)

-at Raylan’s motel, Winona asks him about Duffy as she tends to his wounds. As yet, he doesn’t know much, but it paints an unpleasant picture.

-Gary, meanwhile, goes to visit his old college friend Toby, a former football star. He’s trying to worm money out of him, but Toby tells him he can’t spare any. He offers, instead, to provide a little intimidation.

-Raylan tracks down Duffy in his shabby office. Duffy’s lackey makes a few menacing remarks, and Raylan, his face still raw from the bar fight, calmly says, “I already got one ass-kicking; I’m not looking for another”, but mentions that if Duffy goes after Gary and Winona, they’ll have more to discuss. After Raylan leaves, Duffy orders his pal to tail him and ‘put him in the ground’.

-Duffy makes a phone call to his boss, a Mr. Arnett, asking him for more instructions. Gary shows up with Toby, who gets slightly carried away with his role as a heavy. Gary, meanwhile, blabbers on about how Arnett could double his money on the land deal if he just waits.

-And it’s our buddy Arnold Pinter, back from a disappointing sojourn in Tahiti. (An aside: in my experience after more than a decade in NY, there are few people more parochial than born-and-raised Brooklynites. And, y’know, fair dues, it’s a great place, but it’s really fucking funny to this Montanan.) Pinter gives Raylan the rundown on Duffy and Arnett-- Arnett is with the Dixie Mafia, operating out of Frankfort, and Duffy is a dangerous loose cannon.

-Raylan tracks down Duffy’s sidekick Billy, who turns out not to be so tough on his own-- he reveals that Duffy plans to kidnap Winona that very night. Raylan immediately goes to get Winona. On the drive to safety, she tries to explain why she’s with Gary, and says maybe the most devastating thing she’s said so far, “I needed a little hope in my life.”

-After a talk, Raylan and Gary go to confront Duffy and Arnett. Gary offers Arnett the deed to his proposed ‘shopping destination’, and to everyone’s surprise, Arnett accepts. Duffy quite literally goes ballistic, screaming at Arnett, “Show me the Benjamins the homies are always rapping about!” But cooler heads (eventually) prevail, and Raylan takes Gary back to Winona.

-Finally, Raylan recovers his stolen hat, thanks to the bartender. He mocks the thief, saying, “That’s a ten-gallon hat on a twenty-gallon head.”

#tv #recap #long post #justified #did you miss my heart on purpose

0 notes

catty-words · 7 years

Note

thoughts about the new crazy ex-GF ep?

okay anon. i had to watch the episode a few times to be able to answer this because – as is the case with most ceg episodes – there’s so much! you really have to let yourself sit with each moment to get everything there is to get out of them, you know what i mean?and also? one of the cool things about this show is that episodes don’t feel complete on their own? during one of my rewatches i was struck with how what i was watching felt very much like a chapter in a larger story. we’re missing so much context and i’m sure that stuff we will view a month from now will shed new light on these first couple episodes.

but enough stalling! my inevitably long-winded thoughts below the cut:

paula: we don’t see very much of paula in this episode, but the scenes we do get are so quietly amazing. for example, in the beginning scene with rebecca, she’s so steadfast and draws some solid boundaries about how low she’s willing to stoop for rebecca’s revenge. she’s grown so much since her blind commitment to s1 shenanigans, and this scene really highlighted that development. the shine of getting the daughter figure she’s always wanted has worn off, and now paula’s acting like a much healthier model of a parent, which is great for all involved.

also – the scene at the end with her and tim !! of course the dialogue was amazing and paula’s ‘here’s another disinterested, scathing observation that’ll change the way you think about your entire life’ was hilarious and clever. but what i really loved about the scene was paula studying? i don’t know if i could even really articulate why, but it felt so incredibly refreshing to check in with her working hard toward her goals. she seems so grounded and focused and i’m really happy for her.

tim’s stroyline: of which maya was the hero. i’m totally biased, but maya’s every line and facial expression was amazing (can we talk about how happy she was when paula was like ‘you have never ever ever given your wife and orgasm’? also ‘I DON’T PURCHASE PERIODICALS THAT ENGAGE IN BODY SHAMING’ I LOVE HER SO MUCH)

*ehem* anyway…it was the perfect balance of funny, light, and educational. it made a great c-plot (c- or b-plot? i’m not really sure if tim or josh got more of the focus. in either case, my point stands) because there wasn’t a whole lot to chew on, but it still amused. plus, it was really great to see mrs. hernandez and maya helping tim out in a really open and non-judgmental way. no matter if they were doing it for him or for a fellow woman who wasn’t orgasming, it was great to see them all working together.

george: he’s baaaaaack! and everyone seems to be remembering his name! good for him, i bet that does wonders for his self-esteem. i wonder, though, if he’ll stick around past the chae won assignment nathaniel hired him for (are we already past that? i know george was in the promo pictures for 3.03 so who knows if that’s going to come up again.)

josh: first of all, rounds upon rounds upon rounds of applause for ‘i’ve got my head in the clouds.’ it stood out in an episode of excellent musical numbers (by the way, i was totally worried when cast members started alluding to the fact that there’d be more music per episode this season because fucking glee’s quality tanked when they did the same thing, but i should have known better than to compare ceg to that shit show. the music was all so good and never detracted from the story…and now that i’m typing this i had a realization that i’ll bring up when we get to the rebecca section of my thoughts ahhh!)

ANYWAY. all the bits about josh not really understanding the basic tenets of his own religion were funny and they all landed, but? idk, they also bummed me out. religion is such a huge thing in josh’s life, and it’s in character for him to not get in too deep to the meanings and practices and whatnot. but still. i like josh and i understand that his Thing is that he’s not big on self-reflection and is therefore in a state of arrested development – which is why him and rebecca bring out the most childlike behavior in each other. but i need it to go somewhere new, you know?

i feel like everyone has a pretty clear picture of what moving forward and growing looks like for rebecca, but what would it be for josh? it’s something i’ve been thinking about since i saw the episode but don’t really have an answer for yet…drop me an ask if you have any ideas of your own!

nathaniel: him and rebecca made out and had sex and he tucked her hair behind her ear and sfkbslndgg

whew! sorry, the shipper in me can’t resist geeking out about that shit. on a more serious note, i’m really looking forward to the continuation of nathaniel’s struggle to fit into his own picture of (toxic - toxic as all hell) masculinity while also dealing with the fact that his feelings for rebecca have opened up a vulnerable, soft side of him that he really doesn’t know what to do with. i’m also looking forward to dealing with the fallout of his overcompensation to be masculine this episode. (he was gonna have a man killed wtf!!!) but because this episode felt very much like the beginning of the journey, i don’t have much else to say on the subject but BRING IT ON.

rebecca motherfuckin bunch: HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL she went through a lot this episode. and, like, all in the span of the last 15 minutes. that last song is a masterpiece that i have yet to fully come to grips with. because like? rebecca’s in her wedding dress and josh is in his would-be wedding suit and she’s fucking aggressively chasing him down the aisle (hello metaphor for the entire show !!!) and then she gets to storm off. and it is both the most empowering and most unnerving and emotionally raw scene i’ve ever watched. like….FUCK.

what a perfect use of a reprise, right? because, like paula’s initial rendition, there’s so much self-denial going on. the characters are both trying to dress up their unacceptable behavior in such a way that excuses them of contrition. paula wasn’t being fair to rebecca with her sentiments in ‘after everything i’ve done for you’ and rebecca’s not being fair to josh in ‘after everything you made me do’

(i want to say, though, that paula’s version was almost like her rock bottom. with the help of darryl she rises above her perceived high ground, admits that she was in the wrong, and then, a couple episodes later [2.02], steps away entirely from the scheming that put her in the position to do all those terrible things in the first place. i’m hoping against hope that ‘everything you made me do’ will have a similar function for rebecca)

but despite the fact that she’s dressing up her actions in a way that blames josh for her behavior, rebecca’s coming! clean! about! all! the! shit! she! did!!!!!! and that really excites me. all that dirty laundry is out there now. there’s no turning back from this – rebecca has to confront that she hasn’t behaved in an acceptable way. and where can she go from there? THERE’S AN ENTIRE SEASON OF ROCK BOTTOMS TO HIT I’M SURE OF IT. but this still feels like a turning point.

now i’m gonna talk about the promo for next week’s episode and the revelation i had, like, ten paragraphs ago. so, it looks like rebecca’s gonna spend the next episode locked in a downward spiral with her younger self. so far, her younger self has remained fairly contained to musical numbers, flashbacks, and conversations with only rebecca. but the fact that she’s coming out to follow rebecca around in her day-to-day life is a clear sign that adult rebecca’s mental state is worsening. and you know what? THE INCREASED NUMBER OF SONGS IS ALSO EVIDENCE OF THIS I CAN’T BELIEVE IT TOOK ME THIS LONG TO PUT IT TOGETHER kajdfbnsdgb

so…lots of pain to look forward to, clearly. i’ve already gone on for far too long so. [insert abrupt conclusion here!]

#crazy ex girlfriend #anon #replies #crazy ex spoilers #crazy ex meta

45 notes · View notes

fyeahbatcat · 7 years

Note

What are your top 10 favorite catwoman comic books?

In no particular order:

The Catfile by Chuck Dixon

During a heist gone wrong Catwoman becomes involved with ashady government agency, much to her chagrin, and blackmailed into committingan impossible robbery. Things go from bad to worse and Catwoman uses herparticular set of skills to turn the tables on the agency. This story doesn’t get talked about enough but it’s a very fun arc and Chuck Dixon has a humor about him that works so well with Catwoman. A lot of Catwoman’s more recent stories seem to get bogged down with grimdark but this story really shows that at her core Catwoman is at her best a joyful character.

Catwoman (v2) #15-18

Larceny Loves Companyby Chuck Dixon

This is probably my favorite arc from Catwoman’s secondseries. It’s a truly hilarious caper tale about Catwoman teaming up with aragtag group of ne'er do well thieves for a big score. Check out my review fora more in depth analysis.

Catwoman (v2) #28-30

Cataclysm by Devin Grayson

Part of the crossover event in which Gotham City isdevastated by an earthquake. I don’t think any singular issue of Catwoman has evercaptured her character so masterfully. The story is an evolutionary tale inwhich Catwoman transforms from a thief to a reluctant hero. Her first instinctis her own survival but she quickly shifts into hero mode and tries to get theother survivors to safety, but as every hero knows you can’t save everyone andCatwoman is unable to save a badly injured little girl. It’s kind of atradition at DC Comics to not sugarcoat death and they acknowledge that in theworld of superheroes and villains there’s going to be collateral damage andinnocent people are going to die. What’s striking about the Cataclysm event isthat it wasn’t caused by anything. It was a plot by the Joker or any othercostumed psychopath; it was a natural disaster, and yet the results were thesame. This issue in particular encompassed everything Catwoman is: a thief, asurvivor, and a defender of the innocent. Despite her sometimes very selfishmotivations Catwoman is at heart a good person who cares about people. Upon seeingall of the death and destruction in Gotham, she breaks down and cries for her city.

I know that Devin Grayson isn’t really popular in the fandombecause of some of the things she did when she was writing for Nightwing, butshe could write some damn good Catwoman.

Catwoman (v2) #56

Only Happy When it Rains by Devin Grayson

This storyline went on for a bit too long, but it wasdefinitely worth the payout. Scarecrow concocts a fear serum that’s onlyeffective on women. Catwoman’s only way of defeating him is by conquering hergreatest fear which is revealed to be dependency. She even has a hallucinationabout needing Batman to rescue her. It was in my opinion a conspicuous feministstatement. Catwoman values her independence so much she’s actually afraid of dependingon someone else. I have some other thoughts but I think it would becounterproductive to talk about what I think it means in terms of herrelationship with Batman, so I’ll leave it here.

Catwoman (v2) #58-60

Relentless by Ed Brubaker

This story is not everyone’s cup of tea and therewere moments that even I found off-putting and kind of disturbing. All in allit’s a very cohesive story which I always appreciate in a comic book. EdBrubaker’s run of Catwoman was a lot darker than any in her previous series andnone were darker than Relentless the story of the fallout from Catwomancrossing paths with the dangerous psychopath, Black Mask, and how that impacts herfriends and family. Catwoman tried to do something positive (use stolen drugmoney to fund a community center) and it colossally, majorly, epically, andliterally blew up in her face. The story is really gripping and features somehella cool action sequences. The following arc “No Easy Way Down” also shows theemotional aspect of extreme trauma, how it affects those around us, and theprocess of both external and personal forgiveness and healing. Overall a verywell rounded story. Check out my review for more of my thoughts.

Catwoman (v3) #12-19

Wild Ride by Ed Brubaker

“Wild Ride” was welcome relief following “Relentless” and “NoEasy Way Down”. Selina and Holly go on a road trip to forget their troubles andget out of Gotham for a while and of course get caught up in shenanigans alongthe way. It was a surprisingly fun story about Selina and Holly’s friendshipcoming from Ed Brubaker and it was nice to see Selina outside of her usualGotham setting and interact with villains and heroes alike including CaptainCold, and Hawkman and Hawkgirl.

Catwoman (v3) #20-24

Catwoman: When in Rome by Jeph Loeb

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale is my collaborative dream team and withoutthem I wouldn’t be the batcat blogger that you know today. I love getting toapply the noir and mystery genre to Catwoman. Loeb also showed tremendousrespect for Catwoman history by including a lot of subtle nods to aspects fromher second series such as Catwoman’s fear of dependency, which is surprisingfor a series published in 2004. DC kind of threw out the baby with thebathwater on Catwoman’s second series once her third series hit the stands. Check out my review for more of my thoughts.

Catwoman: Defiant by Peter Milligan

This little known story actually comes through with somepretty profound feminist themes about self image and patriarchal standards ofbeauty. Long story short: a proprietor of all things beautiful, Mr. Handsome,steals beautiful things in Gotham, including people. Catwoman gets caught inhis trap and must survive being thrown in an underground prison with a deadlybeast. She meets an unexpected ally but everything is not what it seems. I won’tspoil the ending but there’s a twist. Catwoman: Defiant was all about the highvalue that society places on the youthful femininity of women and discards themwhen they no longer live up to those standards. I know deep right? I’m not wildabout Catwoman’s grey suit but it’s a really good read.

Shadow of the Cat by Len Wein

In many ways this was a classic Bronze Age story, but afterhaving spent an extensive duration as Selina Kyle is was good to see her backin the suit again. The CBCA was still around in 1980 so it was good to see thatCatwoman had still retained some of her best characteristics. Check out my review formore of my thoughts.

Batman #323-324

Batman: Hush by Jeph Loeb

Okay so this technically isn’t a Catwoman-specific comic but she was definitely featured enough in it to count. Jeph Loeb, in my opinion, writes Catwoman better than any writer past or present. Even though Catwoman’s role in the story was focused on her relationship with Batman she never loses any of herself. Loeb understood that Catwoman wouldn’t sacrifice anything that makes her who she is to be with Batman, at times having Catwoman aggressively assert her independence and refusing to be treated as damsel in distress, but also shows why Batman and Catwoman’s relationship works; they’re equals. This is the only time ever that Batman has revealed his identity to Catwoman on panel although they previously dated inside and outside costume and it really put them on equal footing. This story also was a huge game-changer for Catwoman’s role at DC Comics; it give her an in with the batfam which expanded to capacity of her stories. Check out my review for more of my thoughts.

Batman #609-619

#ask #anonymous #personal note

58 notes · View notes

antialiasis · 7 years

Text

FAR TOO EARLY THOUGHTS ON GROUNDHOG DAY THE MUSICAL

Because I am, ahem, a little actually full-on obsessed with this thing right now. Damn you Tim Minchin and your delicious deliciously dark serious humour.

(Far too early because I have not seen it and have no idea what I’m talking about and am trying to judge exclusively from listening to the soundtrack a lot, ahaha clearly I am Qualified to comment on it)

So in lieu of being able to actually see the musical, I rewatched the movie the other day, and along with some repeat listens to the soundtrack, it gave me Thoughts.

The movie is a fairly straight comedy. There is an element of existential horror to the premise, but it’s pretty much entirely played for laughs. Phil accepts the bizarre situation he’s in without much fuss aside from comical confusion and annoyance. There is, yes, the suicide montage (the most memorable part of the movie by far for me, because I am me). But it’s kicked off by the absurd, hilarious sequence where Phil kidnaps the groundhog, steals a car and then dramatically drives it off a cliff. “He might be okay,” Larry comments before the car explodes, then, “Well, no, probably not now.” Definitely played for laughs, and while the following montage isn’t comical in the same way until after the end (”I really, really liked him. A lot.”), it’s too short to actually whip back from comedy to any kind of serious emotional impact.

The premise of Groundhog Day interestingly invites the viewer to consider how the people around them are also people living their own lives, whose lives might be positively or negatively impacted by one’s own actions - Phil gets to know the life story of practically everyone in Punxsutawney, and eventually his character growth comes in the form of deciding to be a positive force in the lives of all these people - at least for this one day. But it is a bit of a shame that despite this premise, the supporting characters in the movie are pretty one-note and not very fleshed out - Rita gets to be a real, developed person who reacts to Phil in organic and fairly believable ways, but characters like Ned Ryerson are just standard exaggerated comedy people, who we get to see being exaggerated comedy people in a few different variations. It’s hard to truly get a sense that Phil has come to care about these people, because the movie doesn’t make them seem like actual people, just obstacles in his path that he eventually learns his way around. (Or, if you appreciate video game analogies, they are pretty much just NPCs with little sidequests that he’s learned to speedrun). As a result, I actually find his character development less convincing than it could be - there are really good moments that strengthen it (when he realizes on the day that he’s honest with Rita about what’s happening that she’s an infinitely better person than he is, and when he tries to save the homeless man), but the actual bit with him trying to help everyone in town falls flat in comparison, becomes a mere comedy routine rather than giving a real sense that he’s changed as a person.

So, what I’ve noticed from the soundtrack of the musical version is that it takes the premise a lot more seriously than the movie ever did, which is pretty exciting. Phil’s suicidal despair is actually dwelt on a bit and gets a pretty serious song exploring his tortured mental state as he tries to kill himself repeatedly - I also gather that his first suicide attempt involves him shooting the groundhog and himself with a gun, which definitely sounds a lot less comical than the version in the movie, although I can’t confirm that myself (God I want to see this show). And the second act appears to go to pains to spotlight at least two of the supporting characters (Nancy and Ned) as real people with their own rich inner lives, not simply props in Phil’s personal universe, which I imagine probably makes it a lot more genuine and rewarding when Phil starts to truly treat them that way. I really dig that; I hope that’s what they were going for and that it’s doing more of that (although obviously they wouldn’t have time to give a spotlight to every bit character).

ANYWAY. The soundtrack. I have listened to it enough to start to really appreciate the songs. Here are my favorites, not in much of a particular order.

Hope

Obviously. This song was written for me specifically, thank you Tim. Even if it weren’t about suicide, it’s a beautiful song and I love Andy Karl’s voice.

Favorite lyrics:

After acid and gas and guns and razors and rope, you may want to live but baby, don’t give up hope - I have buttons okay. In fact I’m pretty sure I have a special button just for characters listing off suicide methods, in pretty much any context; I seem to recall this just always gets me. Why? Who knows, but either way, FFFF

And in your head that leaden dread, the fucking roads have all been trod and there’s no way and there’s no God and God, oh God, this goddamn weather will last forever - leave it to Tim Minchin to punch me in the gut with precision F-strikes and repeated invocations of God.

Day Three

I just like listening to his mounting incoherent desperation. It makes me grin helplessly. Again, I have buttons. Also, the actual music is glorious, taking Day One and twisting it around and making it sound hellish and sinister. It’s great.

Favorite lyrics:

No. No. No! No! Come on! Don’t ring! Do not ring! Do not-- God, this--the hell’s happening? This--goddamn! God... damn! Somebody! Okay. I can figure this out. Figure it out, come on! Christ! Come on! Oh, damn it! Oh, God! What the hell! Help me! - yes, good, this is exactly what I wanted from this musical, A++

Day One

This one’s just really catchy. I have had it stuck in my head for days (specifically the first half, what I think people refer to as “Small Town, U.S.A.”, although on the track listing it’s just Day One).

Favorite lyrics:

And I’ve no qualm at all with your small-town people, I admire their balls getting out of bed at all to face another day in a shithole this small - just look what a gloriously condescending dick he is.

If I Had My Time Again

I really love this song musically, but the lyrics are even better; Rita with all her dreams and ambitions and desire to do things better is such a fantastic contrast to exactly how inane and self-centered Phil’s activities have been. I’m assuming this is played as the trigger for his character development, and it’s exactly spot-on. In the movie he just says that she’s such a much better person than he is; the musical shows it, in a way so achingly clear that there’s just no way for Phil to not see it himself.

Favorite lyrics:

Rita’s I always dreamt of learning how to dance / it’s so exciting / a new beginning every morning / to have the time to strive for more, interlaced with Phil’s Sometimes I go out without pants / I slept with 90% of women in Punxsutawney between 18 and 84 / and one dude when I was bored - Phil, striving for more.

Similarly, Rita’s I always fancied learning how to climb / I’d study math / and search for meaning / and run up hills / and learn to paint / just to know I can simultaneous with Phil’s I once masturbated seven times / in the bath / in one evening / it wasn’t fun but still / a man my age / it’s nice to know I can / it’s nice to know I can - w o w. Who wouldn’t slink back and rethink their entire life after this. (Also, it’s hilarious.)

And if you knew the endless nights that I have wasted getting wasted contemplating different ways to suicide - never mind me, just me and my buttons again.

One Day

I actually mostly love this one musically, but it’s also just a great ramble from Rita developing her character, and alongside its humour it establishes she has a bit of a romantic fantasy going on beneath a lot of layers of cynicism, setting up why she might nonetheless end up falling for a guy in the space of a day.

Favorite lyrics:

And I’d rather be alone if the only other option is succumb and settle down with some condescending clown with a great rating from some dating service, some self-professing Mr. Perfect, another narcissistic legend made a million out of hedge funds, another sexually ineffectual self-obsessing metrosexual pseudo-intellectual getting drunk and existential every time the Steelers lose a game - Tim Minchin in full form.

ANYWAY, I am a little obsessed, hopefully I can think a little less about this now that I’ve gotten some of it out of my system.

#groundhog day #groundhog day the musical #tim minchin #ramble #comedy #review #kind of #my buttons #adaptations #groundhog day musical

17 notes · View notes

awed-frog · 7 years

Text

Stuck in the Middle (with You)/Like A Virgin

“Gay subtext always makes every movie better.” – Quentin Tarantino

Note: this is me squealing about Tarantino. For the actual meta about the Supernatural episode, Stuck in the Middle (with You), click here.

One: if you haven’t seen Reservoir Dogs, stop reading. This post is going to be full of spoilers, and this movie is a masterpiece and deserves to be seen without knowing in advance what’s going to happen. And two: if you’re under the age of seventeen, and/or uncomfortable with a certain degree of profanity and violence, maybe wait a few years before giving this movie a chance. It’s rated R for a reason.

I’m a big fan of Tarantino and I love Reservoir Dogs - in some ways, I like it even more than Pulp Fiction, simply because it’s so miraculous - it’s his first film, and he wrote the script in three weeks, and he was hellbent on filiming it with 30K before Harvey Keitel basically gave him a million dollar, and even then Tarantino shot the entire thing in a month - seriously, I don’t even understand exactly how much work goes into making a movie, but everything about this just blows me away. I also have a weakness for huis-clos movies, and this is as close as you can get to huis-clos by respecting Tarantino’s unusual filming style, so, seriously - I’m in awe of it all.

And let’s be fair: there probably was no malicious intent (or very little malicious intent) in picking this movie as inspiration for a Supernatural episode. Tarantino is a great director, his movies always tell compelling, brutal stories about fully fleshed-out characters, and the Supernatural people love to play around and pay homage to various bits of cinematic and television history - this is part of what makes the show so interesting to watch. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to be a little shit and point out that Reservoir Dogs is a freaking Bible of gay subtext. The thing is in every other scene, and it’s so obvious you can see it from the damn moon. And, sure, probably those people who’ve never heard about subtext started to blink a bit too fast when the big reunion between Mr Blonde and Nice Guy Eddie went down, but let’s be honest - the movie actually opens with the sentence, “Let me tell you what [this] is about. It's all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick. Τhe entire song - it's a metaphor for big dicks.” - so that’s it and we’re all set. Weirdly enough, they’re actually discussing Madonna’s Like A Virgin (she made a point of sending a copy to Tarantino and signed it, To Quentin. It's not about dick, it's about love), which is hilarious right from the start, because remember that scene? The first scene of what we thought would be a serious and violent heist movie - of what, as it turns out, is a serious and violent heist movie - and yet here are these career criminals, discussing Madonna songs. And that’s your first piece of gay subtext and queer coding, right in the first five minutes. So, I apologize for the mess, let’s do this right, Buzzfeed style and all -

The Five Most in-Your-Face Moments of Gay Subtext in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (a love letter by me)

[Just as a reminder: Larry is Mr White (Harvey Keitel), Freddie is Mr Orange (Tim Roth) and Vic is Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen)]

1) The song

As I said, that entire first scene, not only because it’s unusual in itself that men like these would be discussing the subtext of a pop song, and not only because the main characters are actively telling you, in the fucking opening scene, that subtext is important and worthy of discussion, not only because the character telling you that is played by the actual director and writer of the movie, and not only because Madonna is, like, the gayest idol of all times - but mostly for the fact that that conversation is actually about the movie itself. Is Reservoir Dogs about big dicks, or is it, as Vic says, about a girl who's very vulnerable, who’s been fucked over a few times and then she meets a guy who's very sensitive and it’s like being in love for the first time all over again? Hold that thought - we’ll find out.

(Let’s just note, for fun, that as Mr Brown, aka Tarantino, is relaying the story, the camera moves from Larry to Freddie, and it’s immediately clear not only that this is about them but how comfortable they are with each other.)

2) The mirrors

In theory, Reservoir Dogs is about six characters plus two (we’ve got six thieves and two bosses), but the reality is, this movie is about two distinct couples who play off each other, a Greek chorus, and three random extras.

(I say that just because I’m in a hurry, by the way - I don’t mean to imply Mr Brown, Mr Blue and Joe Cabot are not important - I’m just skipping ahead because this meta’s not about them.)

Mr Pink (Steve Buscemi) is the outsider. He doesn’t know anyone, doesn’t bond with anyone, doesn’t tip and is generally the voice of reason (a weird, skewered reason, but still). As he says several times in the course of the movie, he’s a professional. His problem is that he’s got to work with a lot of unprofessional people - namely, Larry and Freddie on one side (Mr White and Mr Orange) and Vic and Eddie on the other (Mr Blonde and Joe’s son). All of these men are unprofessional because they don’t stick to the rules, and they don’t stick to the rules because they’re way too close to each other.

To me, Vic and Eddie are a bundle of negative stereotypes and toxic masculinity. Their dynamic reminds me of that other toxic thing going on between Nikolai and Kirill in Eastern Promises (an absolute favourite of mine, but, again, R rated, so proceed with caution): Eddie is the boss’ son, and Vic works for his dad, but at the same time it’s clear that Vic’s the one with the upperhand. There is some sense of loyalty between them, but, again, it’s out of balance. Vic’s loyalty is to Eddie’s father, and Eddie clearly feels like he can’t keep up with Vic’s efficiency and brutality - but he’s just as clearly determined to, and the way he shoots that cop - without thinking and repeatedly - is a beautiful way of showing what his entire character is about. You’ll remember that Vic was in prison, and when they see each other again, they engage in banter which is full of homosexual overtones while at the same time being the very opposite of what every relationship is about: their conversation is always half a step away from becoming a real fist fight, they make barbed remarks about rape and who gets to top, and they constantly try to put each other down.

(And let’s not mention those elephant tusks which are, uhm, rather strategically placed.)

At one point, Vic says Eddie wouldn’t be good enough even for a dog, and we, the audience, get a definite feeling that this is what Vic actually thinks - because, like Larry and Freddie, we have no emotional connection to Vic, and we can actually accept he’s a dangerous psychopath - but there’s something in Eddie that prevents him from coming to the same conclusion himself. In fact, even after Larry describes the disastrous shoot-out at the bank, Eddie leaves Vic in charge of the captured cop, thereby sealing everyone’s destiny.

(Compare and contrast Larry and Freddie’s relationship, which develops naturally and is based on respect, mutual trust and shared jokes.)

3) M/M, Archive Warning: Non-Con

In fact, Vic is not only a psychopath, but presents all the characteristics of deranged alpha males everywhere, the chief one being the absolute need of being in control and the obsession of being disobeyed and disrespected. I mean, this is not subtext. It’s text. We’re flat-out told that the reason this experienced criminal, someone who had enough self-control to serve a long prison sentence while staying focused on his eventual release, completely flipped his shit and opened fire in a busy bank was - people not doing what he’d told them to. According to Vic himself, he warned the bank’s employees not to sound the alarm, and yet someone did - and from the way he tells the story, he clearly feels that was directed at him - was an unforgivable lack of respect towards him - which is why he killed five innocent people and put his accomplices in danger. Add in the way he acts around Eddie and the whole episode with the cop (who, in this movie without women, assumes the traditionally feminine role of damsel in distress and hostage and murder victim) and the building of this fascinating character is pretty much done. His taunting of the man he’s just tortured, which is also very openly sexual and a clear rape metaphor (“Was it as good for you as it was for me?”) is just the icing on the cake.

4) “Would you please hold me?”

We don’t know what, if anything, went down between Larry and Freddie. What we do know, however, is that they weren’t supposed to get close - Larry’s on a job and he knows from experience things get dangerous when he’s involved with a partner, and Freddie’s actually a cop and his goal here is to lock all those people up - and yet they do. In fact, by the time of the bank heist, the two characters are prioritizing each other over their respective missions. Freddie doesn’t intervene when Larry kills two cops who were closing in on them, and Larry defends Freddie to the hilt in front of his accomplices, choosing a man he’s known for a few weeks even over Joe Cabot, whom he clearly sees as a mentor of sorts. Still, this is a tragedy, not a romance, so what intimacy we see between them is desperate and bloody: the fil rouge of the movie, giving it urgency and momentum, is Larry’s distress and anger, and Larry taking care of Freddie after Freddie’s been shot. This is a traditional way of showing queer subtext in those testosterone-fuelled movies where queer text isn’t allowed at all, and those moments (death, pain, high risk and illness) are, sadly, also the only moments when most men feel it’s appropriate to get close to other men at all (physically or emotionally) - but still - there is a peculiar tenderness in those scenes between Larry and Freddie which makes it very hard to read their relationship as completely platonic. The ones which resonated the most with me were probably the very ending and the heartbreaking moment when Freddie asked Larry to hold him.

(Rewatching it now, it also reminds me of that stupid scene in Merlin, but let’s not go there.)

5) The song - yes, again

Remember that song thing? Like A Virgin? According to Tarantino Mr Brown, it’s about this girl who’s been fooled before, someone unlucky in love, who finally finds someone who can make her feel like it’s the first time all over again. And, sure, the whole thing’s framed really crudely, but the metaphor’s not very subtle: Mr Brown’s talking about love here, not sex. And Larry - Larry fits the profile just right. We know he’s done time, we know he’s been tricked by undercover cops before, and we know he used to work with a woman who was (most likely) also his lover but that things didn’t end well between them. So, well - Larry knows very well he shouldn’t trust again. This is probably why he’s taken this job in the first place: so he won’t need to get to know a new partner, someone who can break his freaking heart, again - no, this is a clean thing, in and out and nobody will ever know his name.

Except that’s not what happens, because Freddie is there, and in the space of a few weeks, the two men become close - way too close, because this was never the deal - and the whole thing goes from heist movie to Romeo and Juliet.

And, whatever - it’s called subtext because you need to read between the lines to read it, but in this case, the lines aren’t blurry at all. When Freddie gets shot and asks Larry to hold him - you know how that Madonna song ends, right?

Feels so good inside

When you hold me, and your heart beats, and you love me.

(Sigh.

Anyway - this was just a silly little post. You can read a wonderful analysis of Freddie and Larry’s relationship in Reservoir Dogs here and an in-depth piece about the general queer coding of the movie here.)

BONUS - The whispered sweet nothing Larry uses to make Freddie laugh when hs’ hurt can’t be heard clearly in the original version of the movie, but that scene was so obviously intimate, even sexual, that every single dubber around the world just said Fuck it and put in a random innuendo (according to IMDb, in the French release of the film he says "You don't want a blow job by the way?", in the Italian dubbed version he says "Do you want me to give you a hand job, too?", and in the Spanish dubbed version he says "I'll comb your hair so you look handsome").

#spn 12x12 #stuck in the middle (with you)#quentin tarantino #reservoir dogs #spn meta #sort of

157 notes · View notes