Bonzo!Bonzo!!Bonzo!!!

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

What DPHW Means, and Its Relationship to Smirke's 14

The following contains spoilers for all of TMA, TMP (eps 1, 2, and 3 released currently if you’re in the future), and the ARG. Spoilers for all of this are throughout so I would advise against reading any of this unless you've listened to everything mentioned. It could also spoil episodes of TMP that have yet to release but if it does I don't think it will be a major spoiler. If I'm right I think I'm only right about a fairly trivial piece of information. 

Theory of Fears; or, Zur Furchtlehre

Part 1: Opticks

Smirke's 14 isn't the truth. With or without Dekker's +1. It is, however, necessary and correct. It has also been talked about ad nauseam and isn't a topic I want to dedicate a lot of time to. Smirke's 14+1, or even TMA in general, isn't the focus of this theory nor is it that relevant past its necessity as a point of comparison.

There aren't 14+1 distinct entities in the TMA cosmology. There is a singular entity that has been given divisions by fear and labels by those that have witnessed it. There is no objective line in which to draw these divisions. No matter where you put them or what you name them these concepts will always bleed into each other. Aspects of one Entity will manifest in another because the labels are invented and Fear is a storm of concepts crashing into each other. That's not a flaw in Smirke's list but its strength. A single entity of that scale is impossible to discuss in meaningful terms, the concept has too much gravity to be properly conceptualised and so an entire spectrum of fear must be divided in order to combat it. Categorisation is a vital part of TMA's cosmology and Smirke was as correct as anyone to put those lines down where he did. The real flaw with Smirke's list is forgetting the spectrum exists and stopping seeing the shades in between the Powers.

Finding a way to categorise this concept is important, but the methodology isn't. Smirke's 14 isn't the truth. The only truth is there is a singular whole. But branding goes a long way both in terms of research and in terms of following. This branding lacks accuracy though, it is in large part arbitrary and by its nature removes the shades and the bleed. TMP takes a different approach, one only hinted at, but one that I think is now fully explainable. 

Part 2: Lost in Translation

Perhaps the most interesting mystery in TMP thus far is DPHW. However, I think based on episodes 1 and 2 of TMP (and now 3), and the Klaus excel sheet from the ARG, we have all we need to explain its utility.

In order to show that conclusion in a satisfactory manner some basic facts need stating, and the order of my thoughts on those facts needs explaining. Firstly, each DPHW is 4 digits. Secondly, each DPHW is read as 4 numbers rather than, say, a pair of 2 numbers. Thirdly, these numbers can change independently of each other. Fourthly, incidents may share CAT#R#'s but have a different DHPW as found in the Klaus sheet (a German document listing OIAR-style incident reports). Finally, the German equivalent of DPHW is TSHU also found in the Klaus sheet. We can use those facts to determine something important. Each letter of this initialism is paired with a digit meaning that DHPW is a group of 4 categories. If that is true we can intuit some of its meaning. It is likely that these numbers are a rating of sorts for each category there. To prove that's the case we would need to know the categories and fortunately we have a starting point to understanding it, German.

If the categories that DPHW describes start with the letters TSHU in German then what needs to be done to find the categories is quite simple. You pair each letter up and then find a suitable word to categorise the supernatural whose first letter starts with the respective letter from the initialism in its language. D/T, P/S, H,H, W/U. After some brainstorming in the Statement Remains PLUS Discord server we had come up with strong candidates for 3 of the 4 pairs.

The first was Deadly/Tötlich, a seemingly solid start that gave this theory some legs. Next was Painful/Schmerzlich which was a distinct enough category for the threat of an incident that proved this was a strong direction to head it. H/H proved more troublesome. To my mind the two strongest contenders here were Hypnotic/Hypnotisch or Helpless/Hilflos. Both sound very reasonable but that in itself is a problem. However the last one was found relatively easily as Weird/Unheimlich. With 3 of the 4 it seemed like this was all but correct at this stage. However, I had been thinking about this backwards and it wasn't until I had a revelation that the pieces really fell into place.

Unheimlich sounded familiar when it was suggested but not in a way I could place. It wasn't until the next day that the aforementioned revelation happened. The ARG had a huge focus on Germany, and Ep 1 of TMP revealed why. FR3-D1 uses German source code which makes German the original language for the OIAR's methodology. Meaning DPHW is the translation, and I now think it's a shoddy one at best. The reason unheimlich sounded so familiar to me is because it's a fairly important part of psychology's history.

DPHW's Weird isn't weird, DPHW's Weird is uncanny. A direct translation could give you weird but a more accurate one, especially in this instance, gives you unheimlich. Unheimlich as in Jentsch's "Zur Psychologie des Unheimlichen", and Freud's "Das Unheimlich". Both of which are essays on the uncanny. It's all about the fear of the unfamiliar, and a central example of this is Olympia from Der Sandmann, a seemingly living doll.

The German word unheimlich is obviously the opposite of heimlich, heimisch, meaning “familiar,” “native,” “belonging to the home”; and we are tempted to conclude that what is “uncanny” is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar... - Freud, The Uncanny

This is incredibly relevant to a lot of what has been discovered so far. The uncanny as a topic in psychology was kickstarted by two Germans, and a central part of their essays was the German Der Sandmann, and a German, SSandman, was a large presence in the ARG. The strength of this connection all but solidified this theory in my mind. And, briefly, this is also related to Masahiro Mori's uncanny valley hypothesis which I'm sure I won't need to explain.

The obvious way to test this is to take the few W ratings we have been given and compare them to the incident to which they're assigned. The first is from Ep 1, “dolls comma watching”, and was given a 7. This is a good start both in that a 7 feels appropriate as an "uncanny rank" but also that a doll is a focal point on the essays on the subject. Also in Ep 1 is "Reanimation (Partial)", again with a 7. Another very appropriate number. The last in Ep 1 is "Transformation (eyes)" with a 5. Certainly less uncanny than the previous examples so this is still strong. In Ep 2 we get a 5 for Bram Stoker's Dracula, which seems more than fair for a strange man like him, and a 7 for Frankenstein which gives parity for another story of the resurrected dead. Finally we get "Transformation (full)" at a 7, more uncanny than "Transformation (eyes)" which tracks nicely.

With what I felt was such a strong theory for the W/U pairing it helped clarify the ideas of the others. The final digit rating the uncanniness of an incident gives an idea of how these categories work and the breadth of their definitions. Up until this point I was leaning towards Hypnotic/Hypnotisch for our H/H pairing. But giving it more thought, and comparing it to TMA's own groupings, it becomes apparent that Helpless/Hilflos is more appropriate. Hypnotic effects are too aligned with things that would already be very aligned with Uncanny ones, the Stranger's Not!Them alter memories and prey on the fear of something being not quite right, so as a categorisation tool I think it makes less sense because of the greater overlap. Helpless on the other hand works better for things like The Dark, The Buried, or The Lonely. Aspects which I don't think show up in our current other 3 groups. But given the current definition of the strongest category, the fear of the uncanny, I think that helplessness is a more apt label. The fear of helplessness. Which makes H Helplessness/Hilflosigkeit.

With this level of breadth established re-examination of the final two categories is warranted. Painful/Schmerzlich is more likely to be Pain/Schmerz. Not just incidents that are themselves painful but the fear of pain, possibly including the emotional. A comparison to TMA gives this rating a strong affiliation with Entities such as The Desolation, The Corruption, or the Flesh. Similarly Deadly/Tötlich should now be broadened beyond the fear of things that will kill you, to the fear of death in a broader sense. Which makes D/T Death/Tod instead. To compare again to TMA this is The End, The Extinction, or The Slaughter. Although, while I might be describing these ideas as the fear of ____ I think it's important to know that they do appear to be more conceptual in nature rather than just if something is scary or not.

Comparing each of these assumed categories against current DPHW’s strengthens this argument. “Dolls, watching” scored 1157. It’s a very low fear of death and pain, but they present a medium fear of helplessness and a high fear of the weird. For a fear that’s rooted in paranoia that makes good sense. “Reanimation (Partial)” got a very similar rating, at 5257, but it being a corpse cranks up its fear of death. “Transformation (eyes)” got 2155 which, again, seems to fall in place with what we know. It’s more human than the doll is so it’s less weird but a physical and alarming transformation naturally seems like more of a terminal concern. Combine that with some good ol' internet death threats and it's not nothing, but not much.

As a small aside, while it's not come up in the episodes so far the Klaus sheet shows DPHW's are 0-9. There is a good bit of evidence to suggest 0 might be read as 10 here. 0 most commonly showed up in that sheet for P and the incidents often had the notes "Kriegsvolk". Literally "war people" but more accurately "army/soldier". So pain of 10 for those would track better than P of 0, and it explains why things like the watching doll rate a 1 for D and P instead of a 0, and Dr. Webber's infection is a P of 1 despite entirely removing physical and emotional pain as it goes. Because 1 is the lowest.

For Ep 2 we start with Dracula scoring a 7465, he’s undead and a killer for high death, if he kills you it hurts but it’s not extreme, he’s both hard to physically stop and has mental tricks, and he’s just a weird dude in general who always seems off somehow. Frankenstein at 5337 has aforementioned parity with the reanimation incident as you’d expect but notably less on the helplessness rating as he is just a man. Next is “Transformation (full)” at 1567. This is generally a more severe rating overall than Transformation (eyes) and you’d expect that, but I think it does show something interesting. At no point did Daria want to end her own life. The transformation is far more severe, arguably looks more life threatening, and was clearly more painful but it is explicitly and repeatedly not about dying. I take that as a suggestion that these ratings take into account more than just the mundanely observable nature of the incident. She looks very sick which would make you think of death but it rates low for it because of the emotional, or maybe supernatural, purpose of the incident. She didn’t want to die, the manifestation didn’t try to kill her, and so despite its appearance it’s low on death.

Then finally in Ep 3, we have "Infection (full body)" with a 8175. (Although I'm assuming that's a misfile and it should be Infection (Arboreal)). I think D and H here are more interesting to dig into. P is pretty obvious it's the lowest rating because it seemed actively pain-numbing as it went. W being 5 tracks too is certainly uncanny and has strange geometry but it's not full Distortion levels. So with those two out of the way we can get to the good stuff. D is the most interesting of the two to me. Because while it's pretty clear he died I don't think that's got much to do with it. Rather I think the 8 is more specifically about the way it deals with death, decay, and rot in relation to new life and the growth of other things, plants and insects. Thematically, I think there is a lot more emphasis on death as a broader concept beyond the terminal nature of the infection. For Helplessness there is also an additional element beyond whether or not he was able to do something about the infection, and that's whether he wanted to. As the symptoms worsened his desire to treat them decreased. Initially he was worried about the infection and determined to seek attention when able, then he was happy to let someone else help instead (a hallucination, which makes things more helpless), before finally wanting it to happen. These sorts of elements are things I think we're going to see factor in quite a lot.

In summary; it is my belief that DPHW is a way to rate incidents that the OIAR catalogue based upon the strength of the fear they elicit in the categories of death, pain, helplessness, and weird (uncanny). This system is effectively the TMP equivalent to Smirke's 14 from TMA. Rather than assigning each statement to an Entity each incident is rated for those qualities. These systems are distinct methodologies but each is a way to categorise the supernatural.  

Part 3: On Analogy

That is the juicy bit of this post out of the way so now I have to put a bow on it and touch upon the overarching analogy here. As alluded to by the title and some turns of phrase, it's colour theory. It's a somewhat common analogy for TMA's fears but I think it applies in equal measure to TMP and taken together might provide an insight into how the cosmologies will differ. So, to me, colour theory is not only the perfect lens in which to view the Fears as a whole, it's the perfect lens to view these methodologies.

Smirke is Newton. He broke up a singular spectrum into wide chunks. The Dread Powers themselves are very analogous to a colour wheel. Colours bleed into each other and the boundaries of where one stops and starts is up for debate but red is still red, and blue is blue. That is a useful context for them, it aids discussion. Try talking about red without ever saying red and only referring to a representation of a divided whole. But all too similar to Newton's 7 colours Smirke's 14 lacks nuance, it lacks shade.

On the other hand we have DPHW and this is all shade. DPHW is CMYK. It's not one thing or another with DPHW. You don't have the pitfall of Smirke's methodology where one manifestation is in one arbitrary box. Here, assuming I'm correct, each incident is made up of constituent parts. The OIAR, and presumably its German forebear, are less interested in Smirke's occult ancient gods and more interested in bureaucratic precision. Smirke was doing research while the OIAR are doing administration. As such DPHW takes a wholly different approach. It's now all shades. This has its own problems in that it's harder to discuss in broad terms. It's such a specific methodology that it's lost a lot of what Smirke triumphed with. This is well represented already given that no one has been shown to know what it means at all yet. But if there is a truly different cosmology at play here we might see the axes of DPHW being where alliances fall.

All that leaves us with is a comparison of these two. The only way to really do that is to talk about how Smirke's 14+1 would fit in DPHW's system. This is something I touched upon briefly. Death is strongly related to The End, The Extinction, or The Slaughter. Pain to The Desolation, The Corruption, or the Flesh. Helplessness to The Dark, The Buried, or The Lonely. Weird to the Stranger, or the Spiral. But that's not all of them and even within those it's already clear that something like The Vast isn't just about helplessness, and we've already seen Daria who would likely be an avatar of the Flesh rank highly in Weird. Which hits upon what I feel is the most interesting aspect of this entire theory. We've seen what happens with Smirke's boundaries on the Entities. We don't know if Entities even exist in this setting, or if they do exist whether they'll be the same ones, or even if they're not the same ones whether they'll function under similar rules. But now we get to see what happens when there aren't those boundaries. We get to see much broader mingling than TMA showcased. It was hinted at there, especially early on before the lore really settled, but now that mingling seems to be the whole point.

And as a brief mention, and to further labour the theme, I don’t think there is enough information to really discuss how CAT#R# works but there are some analogies to work with here. From the Klaus sheet we can infer that CAT# has the following values 1/2/3/12/13/23/123. Or three non-mutually exclusive groups. What those groups are is hard to say right now. There is some soul/body/spirit stuff for the alchemic tria prima that's got some nice connections but doesn't map well now that Ep 3 is out. Either way, this is RGB. An incident can be all red, or red and blue, etc. R#'s values we can infer to be C/BC/B/AB/A/S with maybe an AS in there too. That's a linear scale of similarly unknown value but could represent something like potency/threat. If that is the case then R# is saturation. Some things are more intense than others. We also know from the Klaus sheet that CAT is the German from the "kategorie" meaning "category" the R was from the German “rang” meaning “rank” and so probably has more meaning to it than currently implied.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 52 & 53 Thoughts: Double Action

The last episode of this would've been on time but I started gearing up to write it a couple of weeks ago, saw a dead body (I'm fine), and decided I wasn't in the horror mood. Then I procrastinated until now so it's a two-for-one special this week.

Episode 52 is a pretty simple one as these things go. Especially for my purposes, it was a very very strong episode but not one I think I have a lot to say about. So, fortunately, that segment will be somewhat brief and we can get into episode 53 as that's the biggest episode we've had in quite a while. It's not really something I have huge amounts of history or alchemic lore but does do a lot to tie into prior theories. So we'll see how long that ends up being.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 52 & 53 below the cut.

It's genuinely galling that post-eldritch-nightmare-apocalypse London is currently not suffering through a drought and has the far nicer weather than my current reality, but it is nice to be back despite that. Not least of which is to see [Error] again, and, man, she's being very chatty this time around. Which I just love. Having her evolve into something that more concrete and, importantly, distinct from other characters sharing the title is wonderful to see. I'm not sure what the general sentiment is between her being Jon but that's always seemed like the least interesting direction to take it to me. It's still hard to say much of what she's planning but it does seem like she's got an interest in the Panopticon, which only makes sense. It also makes sense you can't make a deal with the eldritch horror. But who could've known that?

The statement is a good old fashioned one. There isn't a lot to say on it but it might be one of my favourites in a good while. It's got some really strong writing and Peter Bramhill does an amazing job with this statement and I'm half-convinced they should just be hiring VA's that were prominent in FFXIV. I've always found the post-Change statements tend to be more interesting thematically in regards to their Entity's purview and this is no different. Taking the Dark's fear of the unknown and twisting it into a deliberate othering and a continual fracturing of what's the in-group and the out-group is a clever exploration of it. Plus, I always love when it shows that the domain of an avatar will make them its victim should it get the chance.

Likewise, there isn't a lot to add with onto the scene with Sam, Basira, and Georgie. I do think Sam is getting some more character development here than we saw from the last episode's cast. That was more of a reminder episode and this feels like there is a bit more progression to it. It's all pretty explicit progression so there isn't much for me to speculate about but I'm liking that it seems to be going in a direction of making Dreamers more and more of a focus. That might be the most interesting part of the Primeline's setting to me so far. Also Georgie mentions a vault and those sorts of things never stay closed for long.

Anyway, on to episode 53.

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Episode 53 is great for a lot of reasons. But, honestly, I've just missed Gertrude's statements. Always highlights for me in TMA and even if this is maybe blatant fanservice I'm here for it. Even just Gertrude obviously owning a gun is great. As is the entire interaction between Alice, Celia, and Gerry. Hard for that to not put a smile on your face. But there is more to get into than just that so I won't dwell even if this scene might be one of those ones you really look forward to on a re-listen.

A big deal is that Gertrude burned down the Institute. I'm not entirely sure there is a lot to add there but back in my post for Episode 8, Running on Empty, I said that her burning it down to save Gerry was the scenario I saw being the most likely. Turns out it was and it was explained pretty clearly here so it's hard to say much on it. It's nice to see that her being capable of dispassionate violence is a constant though, I always liked how pragmatically ruthless she was. Although she was dropping a lot of death flags this episode about how old and tired and brittle she is. So that's not super chill. No more of that please.

There is a good amount to talk about in terms of Gerry though. Him being a "catalysed subject" is interesting in a few ways, and not just for more Institute lingo. The first is it's the thematic opposite of his characterisation in TMA. He's gone from a depressed victim of an abusive parent and getting trapped in skin book misery prison to, well, probably still having an abusive parent but at least ending up with supernatural positivity from it. Outside of the thematic parallel there it also gives some credence to the Institute's stance of finding a way to "invert" Dread and transform someone for hope. Because on the surface that statement is entirely cope. It's generic "we're not evil honest, we only sacrifice children to save the world" bad guy cope at that. However, with Gerry, they do seem to have managed it? It's obviously not moral, humane, or ethical in any sense. You can't experiment on children nor should you rob a person of their emotions like that, or inflict it upon others, but it's not just rationalising either. Which does raise the question of whether or not Gertrude has made things worse. If the Institute had finally managed to turn Dread into something positive has burning the place down only removed something that could forestall, or even entirely halt, Dread's effects? It also casts more of a shadow on the O.I.A.R. than they already do by themselves. The Protocol might be a net negative. It'll be interesting to see how that develops because we have seen what happens when Fear wins. We've seen that Change. We've not seen what happens if you go the other direction with it.

Gertrude's mention of the Archivist, and specifically the Blood-Brewer in similar context, does more or less settle some debates too. It's now pretty clear that these are names assigned to them and not titles within the Institute itself. They're labels, not jobs. Not that I'd exactly put it passed them to need a Blood-Brewer on staff but it doesn't seem like the Archivist is the Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, Manchester, it seems like she's "thing that collects stories so we'll call her the Archivist as a subject name". Which is just fine by me, I'm more interested in what they can do different than what they can do the same.

The mention of locations being able to catalysed in the same manner as beings or objects is worthy of a mention on two fronts. The first is we've seen the Institute search out locations they think might be candidates for that before. I'm not 100% sure Hilltop is one of those necessarily but we did see them in the process of using the Millennium Dome for that in Episode 21, Breaking Ground. The second thing is this isn't the first time a character has mentioned three things you could describe as people, places, and objects. Which is a somewhat popular theory for what CAT1, 2, and 3 refer to. I'm of two minds on this. I wrote a whole thing about why I think that methodology is fundamentally flawed based on the information at the time. I still think it doesn't really line up well. However, I think it's maybe pretty likely to be true anyway. But having said that this incident is CAT123 and its heading is Transmutation (Human). Which does a lot to narrow it's focus onto just people. With Gertrude's mention of "the first of the transmutation rituals" it could be that CAT is related to that in some aspect, which could also tie into Collin's dramatic transformation as that is the only other 123.

Phase 2 of the ‘Great Work’ isn't something I'd usually mention at this stage. It's come up a lot, the "great work" or the "magnum opus". It's usually the creation of the philosopher's stone and the imagery for it is all over the O.I.A.R. logo and it's been talked about a lot. That's not super interesting. What is though is what I alluded to while talking about Gerry. The Institute's mission of "hope not evil" or whatever might be genuine and that reframes the Great Work. Before this point it seemed like more of the same Watcher's Crown deal. Harness Dread to do some big Dread thing. Now it seems more like "harness Dread for sunshine and rainbows", or at least that might be their aspiration. Lots to look for going forward, and maybe lots to re-examine too.

I love that the only time Gwen seems professional is when she's telling Nigel Dickerson she doesn't care about doing her job well. I love the energy but she's gonna get everyone killed.

Great ep all around. Hopefully it'll keep this pace up in the final stretch of this season.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet (actually updated)

I'm skipping 52's here because it's XXXXs and there isn't anything to say on those.

DPHW Theory: 4565 is pretty normal. It's interesting in that it's very balanced which may or may not matter for what happened to Gerry but DPHWs don't map directly onto a subject like that from what we've seen. So it likely has very little bearing on what was done to Gerry

CAT# Theory: 123 is something we've seen before in Episode 31, Compartmentalising, where Colin turned into a meat server. That one had more wiggle room for if there was in fact a person, place, and object relevant to it but given this episode's focus I don't think it's hard to assume that 123 is merely a level of total transmutation that we've not really seen elsewhere. I'll need to do some number crunching at a later date and see what comes of it.

R# Theory: ABC is also something we've seen before. Episode 38, Circling Back, with the haunted carousel was ABC. At the time I was unaware of that because the transcript had a mistake within it. I still haven't fully integrated it with my current theories about how it relates to the evidence and therefor the urgency of response needed. I'll need to do some letter crunching at a later date and see what comes of it.

Header talk: Transmutation (Human) -/- Catalyst (Alchemical) is pretty explicit. Although it's worth mentioning this is the same heading as Episode 51, Legacy Issues.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 51 Thoughts: Matters of Fact

And we are back from a very long hiatus. Has it been a year? Two years? My whole life? Impossible to know and I'm not going to try. The hiatus, and upcoming fortnightly release schedule, has certainly done a lot to temper my hype for this series but we'll see if I can remember how to do one of these.

It's a nice easy one to get back into. It feels a little bit like a catch up episode to make sure we're all on board with the main themes of things, in places at least, as nothing new really happens. But I'll not complain about an Augustus episode, only the relative lack of them.

Also, I'm unsure if this is just a me thing here but this episode might've sounded better than the prior ones?

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 51 below the cut.

The opening with Celia and Georgie is a little of what I mean in the preamble to this. It seems to mostly serve to catch-up for what these peoples' deals are. Celia is sleep-walking, Georgie is a conspiracy nut, cows are good. I'll be curious to see how this feels to people who recently caught up in the hiatus rather than last listened to TMAGP last decade or however long it's been. I also meant to listen to spin-off but didn't. So let me know if that's worth getting to.

A very topical insight into Gwen's role as a department head because this is what the UK government is like at every level. Otherwise mostly just a catch up that she's in over her head and that none of her employees show up to work now.

But all is forgiven as the real meat of this one is the glorious return to Augustus. Who outside of Heinrich is the best part of this for me. Although despite said forgiveness this is actually more of the same sort of recap energy. It's a fun listen and has very strong vibes but it's not progressing the plot much.

Robert Boyle is a character/real historical person we've talked about a few times here. Of note episode 19, Hard Reset, is a letter from Robert Hooke to Boyle. This episode's letter serves as a sort of prequel to that one. In Hard Reset he's discussing the "Protocol" and "Dread emissions" and how much of a fuckup Isaac Newton is being. With the understanding being that the Royal Society of London is, in some way, a precursor to the OIAR's mission and might've been formed specifically for that purpose.

This letter clarifies that somewhat. The "invisible college" he mentions here is a precursor of sorts to the Royal Society. It was a sort of private group of like-minded philosophers and scholars and some of its members were founding members of the Royal Society which existed for similar purposes but more publicly and better funded. So all of that isn't exactly new information but it's interesting background. It also further emphasises the importance of balance in these factors, as talked about by a lot of characters given its relevance to alchemy, as well as the clandestine nature of their work. Balance and ignorance.

He's also briefly mentioned in episode 27, Driven. Y'know the one where that carriage ate a dude. But it's less relevant.

Boyle isn't the only character of import here though. W_ is just as central and given that he seemingly survived his own death and the mention of mutare materia it seems pretty likely that this is Dr. Welling of Welling Mutare Materia. Dr. Welling is a central figure of episode 21, Breaking Ground, which discuses the Magnus Institute's plans to use the Millennium Dome as an alchemic catalyst but he's shown up in a number of Institute related statements.

The only other character to talk about is H- who is probably Samuel Hartlib. Hartlib was an intelligencer the "Hartlib Circle" overlapped with Boyle's aforementioned invisible college and did help with getting the charter to found the Royal Society. Although he died soon after and so isn't very relevant beyond this. Another H-named, although fore- rather than sur- is, Henry Oldenburg. He's relevant in that he was also a founding member of the Royal Institute and served as its first secretary and was a diplomat and theologian that was very influential in the formation of the Royal Society. Although the specifics of that are up for debate. Both of these men were intelligencers and both fit the timeline. It's probably Hartlib in specific here, even if he's arguably more of a minor figure in all this, but I might as well squeeze in more history.

And just to make sure its' all covered; chrysopoeia is the transmutation of base metals into gold. Welling is done with that shit. Old hat. Prima materia we'll have talked about before too but as a refresher that's the formless base matter of all things. Mutare materia is a TMAGP invention AFAIK but is the bad version of that. It's possibly the source of all the major mutations and such we've been seeing and might be the "physical" influence of this setting's Dread entities.

Oh how I've missed Gwen and Alice hating each other. I don't think much is said here that needs to be talked about but I have missed these two at each other's throats.

Alice's section has a reminder of both Luke, and Teddy. Characters they've not really done a lot with but do keep bringing up. Teddy obviously has some shit going on with him and our handy-dandy OIAR state-sanction lie-detector does make it painfully obvious he's neither just swamped with work, or, indeed, "good". I'm not 100% sure what more there is to say on Teddy right now. Nice to have a reminder that he's still around all the same though. Luke has even less going on. While it is fine for a character to not exist for more than that it'll be somewhat of a surprise if he remains that way. It just doesn't feel like it's really building to much right now.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

Klaus Watch: Klaus was mentioned. Only reviving this bit to remind people that Schweitzer is their last name. In case you forgot. Like I did.

DPHW Theory: I'm gonna have to remind myself what I'm doing with these segment. My theory from episode 2 was correct outside of a synonym but it doesn't seem like I settled on how to handle this now I'm not talking about a theory. Although given I was 95% right I suppose it makes the most sense to keep talking about how accurate these seem. In either case 3456 isn't a super surprising value. I'm sure my DPHW intuition is pretty rusty but it doesn't strike me as odd.

CAT# Theory: 1. This is a bigger one to deal with. I think the most prominent theory for this is Person/Place/Object? Which is something I've spent time talking about for why I don't subscribe to it. I think this is more of the same on that front. Is it the process or the subject? The apparatus or the result?

R# Theory: My theory here is about supporting evidence and old written accounts have all ended up as B, I think? I'm not gonna check because I'm writing this minutes before I post it and don't wanna do that research. But Driven and Hard Reset were both B's too. Which is good enough for me right now.

Header talk: Transmutation (Human) -/- Catalyst (Alchemical) a very straight-forward heading that says what it is.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 50 Thoughts: Snap Decision

I'm back from the dead in time for the arc finale. I figure if I didn't do this one I might not ever do another, especially with the fairly huge break we'll go on. I also quite enjoyed this one, which hasn't really been the case for the last couple. I think we're finally getting to the part of the show where it's dealt with its history and is starting to be more of its own thing again. Which is just what I want it to be.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 50 below the cut.

Housekeeping up top. I had very little to say on the last two and not much motivation to force that. So, for those interested, 48 I though was fine. Anya coming back was expected but not unwelcome, but she did sorta explain her whole deal so there wasn't a lot to say from me. For 50 I hated it so much a post would've been really bitter sounding. The stoner Elias thing I thought was a joke run into the ground shortly after it was mentioned, so a lot of that episode grated on me. Sure, Augustus channelling Charles Dance's dramatic readings of Mel B's autobiography is a fun idea. There were a couple of bits of Magnus lore sprinkled in there too, the baths neighbour the King's College Strand campus which was a Smirke project so Elias was digging into all that stuff, and Gwen had some great moments. But I was sick of the incident well before it ended and felt it best to spare you all my endless moaning.

Onto the main event though, and it's the main event quickly too, one of the quickest starts-to-statements we've had, I think. I really liked this one over all too. Some fun extinct slaughtery vastness. I don't think there is much going on under the surface, as it were, but it was probably my favourite bit of the episode overall. I wasn't suuuper sure about the actor to start with but think he nailed the landing.

The rest of this episode I think is another Primeline episode. It speaks for itself. They're always quite explicit and don't require much from me in these. [Error] isn't John, which I feel is going to piss some people off but I also felt like this was confirmed in the casting, and then with every time it spoke. I understand why people want more Jon, even if I want something new, but it felt like a really big stretch to me. Especially with .JMJ, which gives the whole "that voice it's not him" a bit of a double meaning. Melanie so readily believes [Error] isn't John because it's not his voice. But, y'know, there is a voice that is John's. Which seems like the best, albeit somewhat meta, acknowledgement of that. This whole thing is also why I keep calling them [Error] in lieu of their title because I haven't wanted to conflate them with the other Archivist. Sam also might be the most cursed little guy in existence. I'm curious where that's all going to end up. It feels pretty incidental right now but there is obviously something going on with Sam and [Error] but it seems unrelated to his statements thus far. Oh yeah, also PL Alice died but honestly I think that was pretty weak as character deaths in the show go. Maybe next act will do some more with it but it felt like it was brushed passed pretty quick to me.

I'm conflicted about where this one ends. I don't think the Primeline episodes have been half as interesting as the Protocol timeline has been. Having more Primeline stuff doesn't super excite me because so much of it has been retreading TMA. I love TMA, don't get me wrong, but the first season of this was exciting because of how fresh it was. The PL narrative, in contrast, has seemed like a regression to me on that front. However, the ending seems to suggest it'll be taking a step forward. I'm hoping it'll be a big step and that some of the baggage of being a sequel to TMA has been thoroughly unpacked and it can focus more on being TMAGP and the 2 in TMA 2. So it's a hopeful place for this act to end, I'd say. Not for them, but I like it when the blorbos suffer.

See you all in the new year, because that's when this show is back if you hadn't heard.

Skong.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: N/A

CAT# Theory: You know the drill. See episode 34's post for thoughts on this.

R# Theory: N/A

Header talk: See episode 34's post for thoughts on this.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

So I am trying to assign DPHW numbers to several horror characters (more specifically the killers from dead by daylight) and I was wondering if you might have any advice for assigning my own DPHW numbers to stories/people?

The only character who I already have a canonical answer for is Dracula with 7465 (technically dbd's dracula is castlevania not the novel one, but theyre similar enough i let it slide).

Not really, sorry. You know as much as I do at this stage and I have no real familiarity with DBD. Just take a look at the existing cases and see what things are close to the characters you're looking at so you can use it as a basis, and don't forget that there is a vibes element in play too so if whatever you land on feels right, then it probably is.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 47 Thoughts: Going Through the Motions

A nice short one today.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 47 below the cut.

Gwen Gwenned the hardest she's ever Gwenned this ep, I rate it Gwen out of Gwen. It's so funny to see Gwen be so Gwen to Celia and it feel incredibly undeserved and knowing nothing will happen, then for her to turn around and be extra Gwen to Ink5oul, the person who might deserve it the most, and it being the worst fuckin' choice she's ever made. She just have a handle on anything. I'll miss her when she's dead, although that'll likely be after the rest of the staff. I figure she's pretty likely to go all in on Starkwall after this too so hopefully we'll get to see some more of that side of the setting.

Honestly, didn't really care for this incident. It was fine but I don't think there is a load to comment and I thought it was fairly rote all in all. Which is fitting, in its own way. I don't think I have anything more to say than that while not just shitting on it.

Heinrich is just the best. I'm really gonna miss that fucked up Pinocchio Geppetto mash up. Him and Alice are always just so good together too, and it's nice to see Alice continuing to get moments of being a good person to offset the rest of the cast. Can't wait to see what kind of fucked up haunted Speak & Spell is going to end up with Jack. I'm sure that'll go well.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: Still haven't decided what I'm doing with this yet.

CAT# Theory: 1 is for all the reasons we've talked about tattoo categorisation before.

R# Theory: C is a shame. Such a perfect fit for the old theory. When I'm out of the funk I'll sit down and do some more work on that.

Header talk: Distortion (Cyclic) -/- Retribution is funny. Mostly because Ink5oul is a petty bitch, but also because it's not Tattoo which has been pretty common.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 46 Thoughts: Risky Business

This is an interesting episode. Jonny wrote this one so it's a big plot one but there are some things to dig into here. It touches on a fair few other cases and expands upon one of the one's I've always held up to be quite important. It also does some lore dumping but with a format I find really enjoyable rather than dialogue.

Also, yes, I didn't do one last week. Had a bit of a breakdown and didn't feel like it, but luckily for the TMAGP luminaries I had nothing to say on it. Just one of those explicit plot ones and I'm not sure I had any real insights to share. I would've named it Skeletons in the Closet though. And the titles are half the reason I write these.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 46 below the cut.

Alice's and Heinrich's interaction is the saddest thing that's ever happened in Magnus. Alice is going back home and Heinrich won't come with her and now we lose the (second) most perfect character that's ever existed. I'll never get over this. Also, if Gwen wasn't so tight-lipped about everything this whole trip would've have needed to happen. Another reason why Gwen in the girlboss we all need.

Speaking of, the scene with Gwen and Celia is sweet. It's nice to see the both of them open up to each other a little. Even if they're doing it in the most "All right then, keep your secrets" way.

Unsurprisingly, an Elric Capital board of directors meeting looks a lot like every board of directors meeting. Not the first time Elric has come up and it won't be the last. You'll remember that the name first appears as the Elric Rehabilitation Initiative in episode 35, Terms and Conditions, and then again as Elric Capital Ltd. in 36, Out of the Box. This meeting mentions both those episodes as well as a few we didn't know were connected to Elric Capital, plus a few incidents we've not yet heard about. So in order it talks about Zorrotrade, the evil app where you can trade on your own, literal, future from episode 13, Futures. Then it's Booth which is the evil VR machine from the aforementioned episode 36, Out of the Box. W Liebowitz, a.k.a. “Teeth” is an unknown AFAIK, there isn't an incident we've heard that takes place in Scotland around that timeframe. Nothing in the Klaus doc matches it either. After that we hear about G Meers, a.k.a. “Inside Out” who is another unknown with even less to go on. So Elric Capital is certainly looking like a much larger organisation than perhaps hinted at previously.

Then we get to the real meat of the matter, as it were, Dr Augustine’s grief counselling proof-of-concept, Adam. He's a zombie. But not just any zombie, he's the first monster we got to see. He's Arthur Winstead's walking talking corpse from all the way back in episode 1, First Shift. Which may or may not strength a very old theory post of mine; JMJ: Frankenstein; or, the Modem Prometheus. The TL;DR of that, although you should read it IMO, is that the gang that might be in the computer are all smashed together as a horrible amalgam being and that Adam was a representation of that. With his reappearance, role as an aid to process loss, and the references the the Primeline gang's grief over 2ish of JMJ, it might have more legs than before. Or it might not. And that's modem with two m's. I mention it because I'm stupidly proud of that pun, works on a few levels too. It's even more appropriate now we know the zombie has taken the name Adam. In the actual Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley the Creature compares himself to the biblical Adam, as he is Frankenstein's first creation, and Adam seemingly took the name for much the same reason. So there is a good bit going on there.

Just a quick mention but Geoffrey Malachi is an interestingly named character too. Malachi is yet another biblically relevant figure except this time as an author, writing the eponymous Book of Malachi, with his name meaning "messenger" although the contents of the work itself is likely not relevant here. And while I'm talking about names I'm sure the Redacteds are going to end up relevant in some fashion and will be a Bouchard or something.

I really enjoyed this one over all. It had some really explicit stuff but mixed into some less obvious things and more importantly just a strong format for its delivery. I hope we'll see more lore dumps like this and less like we've been seeing in the Primeline episodes.

Shock horror, Celia fucking over Sam didn't solve all her problems. Who could have foreseen the consequences of her actions? Zero genre awareness in a rare Celia L.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: I'm thinking I'll probably do a follow up to the DPHW post. Might be this week, might be in the break, might be never. It depends how much I have to say and if I can get excited to talk about the topic again. I might've made myself sick of the subject and I'm pretty sure no one else is that interested, so we'll just have to see. Otherwise, there isn't a lot to discuss for these unless a rating looks massively wrong.

CAT# Theory: 1 is very 1. I'm still not sure if I wanna sit down and do work on this.

R# Theory: BC is frustrating. All the ones that aren't obviously breaking the format that was (seemingly) established in the first season still fit my theory so well but the ones that don't obviously have no place. So I might be on the right lines but need to broaden its scope in somewhat.

Header talk: Reanimation (Variable) -/- Purpose genuinely made me laugh. We've been told that the first few episodes likely have incorrect headings assigned to them, but this is pretty close to it while Celia obviously doesn't give a shit. Sam was trying and got it wrong, Celia wasn't trying and so this is probably wrong too. But Freddy might've done it so who knows anymore.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 44 Thoughts: "danced around it a bit"

This is an interesting one for a lot of reasons. It's a big explicit lore dump sort of episode which, as you're aware if you read lots of these, isn't exactly what I go in for. I obviously love all the history to the setting but answers to mysteries are never as satisfying as solving the mystery yourself. Luckily for me, I think I more or less did.

It's also interesting in that this is the first episode where you might be just as confused as Alice unless you're reading along with the transcripts.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 44 below the cut.

Heinrich being a boomer only improves his character. It's also really fun to get to see more of him being the monster we all are fully aware he is. Not least of all to ex-Stasi. Hard to hate a guy terrorising the secret police. Speaking of which, this is the translation for his poem. I think that's really the only thing that needs translating in full as the rest is easy enough to get from the context or is explained by the characters.

KLARA Ha! And then, what, they beat an old woman to death? These fat, lazy children have no stomach for such work. Your threats do no not frighten me English. HEINRICH But I do, don't I Klara…? There is a girl, small and delicate, the angry Klara. She hates the children, and mocks them meanly, she never plays with the crowd. She complains about the boys who shout evil, and the girls who tease her. She made them pay, paid them back until everyone went into hiding. Oh poor Klara, old and rigid, no child wants to play with her. And when the laughter no longer sounds clear, Heinrich will stop her.

The cafe is gone, Heinrich is demonic, Alice is disturbed and Klara is terrified.

HEINRICH Look at me, Klara. Look at me!

The bold text is translated and the italic is the description of the event.

The incident itself is a weird one. I'm not sure we've had one of these that's so explicit about something like this. I think the most interesting bit of all this isn't actually the incident itself but the gap between where it left off and where we know he ends up. He ends up in the OIAR and Lena tried to shoot him. We've known that since all the way back at episode 4 Taking Notes, and all this explains is really what he meant by "I could disappear again". There is so much intrigue left in Klaus that I'm really looking forward to seeing explored. Especially with how Alice's and Gwen's respective arcs will have to intersect if Alice keeps following Klaus' trail. And that's especially interesting because Sam doesn't readily fit into that, but obviously must in some fashion. All of this is leading up to the biggest mystery this series has: does Fr3-d1 stand for something or is it just leetspeak? Obviously that JMJ thing is probably important too but bigger questions to be asked. It's a weird one where it tells you so much but it's basically incidental to any of the questions you'd want to ask. A crazed dude built a magic computed while half-starved is foundational to anything I think we'd really like to know. I really enjoyed the format of this one too, it was a nice break from JMJ: the Computer Crew. Not quite a TMA style one but not far off either.

The best part about this episode is that it didn't conclude this arc and we're going to get more Heinrich. I really do love every second he's been in this show.

Lena and Gwen always have such great chemistry. I love their begrudging acceptance for each other and Lena's absolute zero amount of patience. So, obviously, some major reveals from this conversation. I think it might be somewhat surprising to hear I didn't really find any of this stuff particularly satisfying. Anyone that's been reading most of my posts on this show I'd expect would assume this stuff would make me elated. Which is a fair enough assumption. What excites and interests me about things of this nature is the mystery. I like having a puzzle to solve and the answer is only as satisfying as the journey taken to get there. However, this isn't where the answer has been for me. This is the confirmation. I've been very certain of the answer for a long time and not in an arrogance-fuelled sense that because it's my theory it must be correct, but in the sense that puzzle pieces only go together so many ways. The way I envisioned the pieces of this puzzle meant that when I fit them all together the end result largely spoke for itself. You don't need to look at the art on a jigsaw puzzle's box to know it's right, you know its right because all the pieces fit. Obviously, I could've been wrong about this and I've been more than happy to throw theories out in the past. Can't be wrong all the time though and I was all but certain I was right on this.

So, with the preamble out of the way, for those of you who aren't familiar with my DPHW theory, back at the launch of the series when eps 1 and 2 came out I wrote What DPHW Means, and Its Relationship to Smirke's 14. I posted to the hellsite after episode 3 dropped, but it's on Reddit earlier than that. To summarise I said that DPHW meant Death, Pain, Helplessness, and Weird. I arrived at that because we had TSHU as a German equivalent, and that those categories fulfil a strong narrative role. The official W is Wrongness but I think that's largely a semantic difference in this context and in my post I posited that Weird was a mistranslation as it was. I think they've just gone with a different mistranslation. We'll know for sure if we get the German version but U in the German version I think is Unheimlich, as in Uncanny, as in the Uncanny Valley, which could both be described as weird or wrong. Wrongness could maybe translate to something more like Unrecht but unrecht is more about being wrong in a moral sense, which doesn't align as well with how we've seen W get used. Although they might have renamed things on account of Heinrich having a banger of a name. But in either case Mr. Bonzo and Lady Mowbry are both doing some awful things in a moral perspective but only one of them is capital W Wrong, because ones Mr. Blobby's murderous cousin and the other is an old lady. So I'm happy enough to say I nailed it. Which is cool, don't get me wrong, it's really really cool. And I've loved seeing everyone comment on it and see the other takes on what it could be and all the community discussion and everything. My fun just came from solving the puzzle, and now I need a new puzzle.

The other big thing here is the Protocol and Dread but I think this is a similar situation. More of an explicit confirmation than anything else. Back in episode 19 Hard Reset, the Newton's dog one, we saw both words come up and used in contexts that implied what was revealed here. I think the more interesting stuff that'll come from this is how Dread is different and exactly why it doesn't ever seem to dissipate. It's a system you can add more and more fear into but not one in which it ever leaves. Which does seem quite different to how the Entities worked in TMA as they fed on the fear, to an extent. But maybe that's the point. TMP's world is so uniquely fucked because the Entities aren't their to siphon things off and so it just builds and build. The balance is important so no one aspect can assert itself but beyond that there isn't any major measure you can use to mitigate it. Maybe eldritch entities were good, actually.

The worst part of this episode is this arc possibly being concluded and we're not going to get more Lena. I really do love every second she's been in this show.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

Klaus Watch: This is the most Klaus Watch episode yet. This incident wasn't in his sheet but Klaus was in it, and he was being watched.

DPHW Theory: Very correct as it turns out. 2175 is pretty normal for this too, I think. I'll need to renamed this now, probably, or I might not. Depends if any more crumbs come along as there is still a little more to unpack about the balance thing.

CAT# Theory: 3 is very 3. Maybe I'll sit down and try to crack this one next as I've never been very happy with how Person/Place/Object aligned with it. Even if I do think it'll be correct in the end.

R# Theory: AC is another fucked one. This could be more fun to have a stab at than Categories. My last theory seemed to work really really well until we started getting ACs and ABCs and all of that.

Header talk: Prescience (Computing) -/- Equilibrium requires very little explanation or comment.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 43 Thoughts: Prim and Proper

We're back with the first guest-written episode in quite a while, but it's one I've been very much looking forward to. This week's episode is written by Jon Ware write of The Silt Verses and I Am In Eskew. Both of which are some of the best the medium has to offer, The Silt Verses especially. Of all the things guest writers have written that's probably the one I'd direct you to with the most fervour. Read this, then go listen to that.

It's a great episode all around. A few little things that are very big things, and good amount of reference to earlier happenings.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 43 below the cut.

Alice and Heinrich, are perfect together. I need a spin off, or at least a fluff ep, of these two. Just give me the buddy cop of bad cop and monster cop. Or Heinrich reads the IKEA catalogue. I will miss him so much when we leave Germany.

We get yet another name drop of Oscar Jarrett, they've been explicitly mentioned in episodes like 11, Marked, and 20, Social Stigma, and as I'm sure you all remember was a particular interest to Ink5oul. They were largely trying to recreate Jarett's work, to limited success, but as we saw it was effective even when done relatively poorly.

This whole section also really hammers home the GDR connections that were such a major part of the pre-season 1 ARG. Klaus himself is a very interesting figure and with the reveal of his last name I think we have an awful lot to go on about just how important he is. But I don't get to use the Klaus Watch section of these posts often enough, so that stuff will be at the end. It'll be a chunky section though. Lots to dig into there.

This was a really solid incident. I think all in all it's fairly explicit about what's going on and what it all means so there isn't a lot to dig into for me from that angle. It's very The Silt Verses-coded too. So if you want more spooky benthic horrors, and a lot more idolatrous worship, then you should really check that show out. It's pretty fuckin' fantastic. This incident does a lot in a pretty short time too. I'm not 100% sure we'll see more of our Diva here but I do like that it's, seemingly, another from the PoV of an "avatar". This one leaning quite hard into the "if you think it happens" angle of the last few episodes. The horror only really started when she thought there could be a hand down there. It'll be interesting to see how this sort of self-manifestation happens in the future but as of yet I'm not in love with it. It does recontextualise some things like how [Error]'s victims were affected but I think I'll need to see how it ties into the broader metaphysics before I'm happy with it.

However, we do have a repeat "character" here too and it's a sneaky one. Very blink and you'll miss it. Both this incident, and the one from episode 29 Keyed In, are pieces of evidence collected by David Collins and taken to North-West Long-Term Evidence Storage. Given this is a guest-written episode that's something Jonny and/or Alex would've had to have specified and as such will likely be relevant down the line. The two have a lot of watery drowning themes in common too. We've also seen a lot of the eldritch monsters that lurk in the deep throughout other incidents as well, in addition to a good bit of drowning. If I were the sort of man to throw out wild, and oft baseless, theories I would say that ol' Davey could be an avatar/external/angstjäger related to such phenomena, or perhaps an agent for the other forces of the world that's cataloguing such things. Alas, I'm not the sort of man that would do such things.

Celia and Gwen's interaction at the end of this ep doesn't have much going on. Gwen is presumably going to be having that Starkwall meeting though so that should be fun next episode. Celia being all on her on will totally be fine and nothing spooky will happen to her, I'm sure.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

Klaus Watch: Another Klaus mention. Now we've got his last name too, Schweitzer. Which basically means someone Swiss. But that's not the interesting bit of this name. As I'm sure we're all aware the most of characters are named after historical alchemists in the same way TMA characters were named after horror authors. Klaus likely gets their own surname from Johann Friedrich Schweitzer. Which given the way those two names are intertwined thus likely makes this our first two-for-one as far as namesakes go. But there is more here beyond just that too. Johann is most well known for The Golden Calf, or, to give it its full title:

THE GOLDEN CALF, Which the WORLD ADORES, and DESIRES: In which is handled The most Rare and Incomparable Wonder of Nature, In Transmuting METALS; VIZ. How the intire Substance of Lead, was in one Moment Transmuted in Gold-Obrizon, with an exceeding small particle of the true Philosophick Stone.

And as you may be able to glean from the title it deals with the Great Work, the Magnum Opus, the creation of a the Philsopher's Stone. What's more, he ostensibly completed the task. Lead to gold and all. Which, while not uncommon, isn't something most of our other namesakes claim. Freddy and Klaus being all tangled up in that both speaks to what we know of them thus far, and probably isn't a good sign for things to come. Add on to this the Jarrett connections and how we know that Jarrett's work was transmutative in nature and it's all looking like Klaus might really have been onto something serious.

DPHW Theory: 4153 is pretty normal I reckon. Weird might be a little low as these things go but that's nitpicking.

CAT# Theory: 1. Mhm, yep.

R# Theory: B would've been such a good fit for the old idea. Shame.

Header talk: Idolatry (Music) -/- Compulsion (Drowning) is mostly normal, drowning is a bit of a weird one though. Not super weird just not super accurate.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 42 Thoughts: Spooky Scary Skeletons

We're back in the Primeline for a very lore heavy one. Y'all know what that means. I've got very little to say on this one over all as I know you lot are smart enough to not need me to just recap the episode for you. I thought this episode was fine over all but I am hoping the PL stuff is going to move beyond TMA fairly soon. As much as I adore TMA I'm not really one to get much from the exposition in these types. Still, a couple of bits to talk about that may or may not mean anything.

I still haven't gotten around to 40's post. I'll do that soon. Probably. Well, maybe probably.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 42 below the cut.

So we pick up very shortly after 39 left off and everyone clearly had a lovely time running away from [Error]. I can only assume it was so hype that the budget wouldn't allow for it to be shown. Sam's new body mods are reminiscent of RedCanary's jaunt to the Institute's ruins and it does make me wonder why Sam didn't put that together. I feel the link is pretty obvious and when that's his special interest you'd think it'd be on his mind. It's hard to say if it really means much of anything being the continuing transmutation themes though.

Near enough the whole gang is back together now we've got PL Basira, and she seems to be doing about as well as you could hope. I think all the interactions here were great but there isn't a lot to say on it for why you, dear audience, reads these things. I think it's doing a reasonable job of straddling the line between sequel and standalone in so far as providing new information along with the requisite exposition for new audience members. However, I also think this episode sort of cements the whole thing as just not really that standalone. If you didn't listen to TMA in the season 1 break then this one probably doesn't improve things.

MELANIE Meh. A guy called Jonathan Sims. He was the archivist for the Magnus Institute, and we all ended up working there at one point or another.

Another sneaky avoidance of having to mention the B-word. The B-word being Bastardman Bouchard.

SAM Oh uh, I think it was something like: Alchemy cross referenced with human bones or something-

Ackshually it was Transmutation (Human) -/- Ceremony (Academic). Duh. Although we never actually saw that one get filed and this implies that [Error] harvested the statement and then it became a case. So that's something.

Then something changed. I don’t know how to describe it exactly. It was like the fear inside me, mixed with something, became something entirely new, not just inside me anymore.

For my money this is really the interesting thing here but there isn't a whole lot to say on it. It's not the first time we've seen this sort of thing happen. Heinrich's story involves people essentially manifesting their fears into reality in much the same fashion. Which ties nicely into the overarching alchemical themes given it's essentially a physical and spiritual transmutation, and that's sorta the whole point of it. I'm hoping this doesn't turn into something like "Sam is just very special and so it happens to him" and it's more of a universal phenomena. Which could be caused by, say, the Powers being sent through a cosmic blender and suffusing the fabric of the setting more completely than their TMA-style outside of reality vibes.

BASIRA Anyone else clock when it turned into a statement?

Of course not. As discussed in 39's post the crew is largely oblivious to this stuff. I'm curious why Basira noticed and not anyone else but I'm also pretty sure it's not something that'll get an explanation.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: N/A

CAT# Theory: The drill, etc. See episode 34's post for thoughts on this.

R# Theory: N/A

Header talk: See episode 34's post for thoughts on this.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 41 Thoughts: Heart of Gold

We're back from what felt like a very long break, but time isn't real any way. As tends to be the case with these X1 episodes, not a whole lot really happens as it's more or less setting up the direction of the act. So this will likely be quite a short one (this is a lie). And, yes, I am aware that 40 is missing. I plan to add that before next weeks episode is out and I'll probably alter the posting date to be in line with the release if possible, no idea how that'll affect how it shows up though.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 41 below the cut.

Not a lot to comment on with Celia and Gwen. Mostly just a reminder that Alice is in Berlin. Also that she hates Gwen, but who could forget that?

I can't say I'm a massive fan of this incident. I think it might be suffering from having to set up some details that'll be more relevant later, as well as reminder the audience of recurring themes. We've got doppelgangers and transmutation and all sorts of alchemically relevant materials. I think my real feelings on this will have to wait until the season, or maybe even the show, is finished. It feels like setup and as such is easier to judge in retrospect.

There are a few things to mention here all the same. Marconi Alchemics is likely another Magnus Institute satellite or partner like Welling Mutare Materia and the rest of them. The body being covered in salt, the head in sulphur, and the lung being full of mercury is some of the most direct reference to the tria prima we've had so far. I've covered this in other posts so I won't dwell on this too much, suffice it to say Paracelsus had a big theory about the base alchemical traits of things and these materials represent those in their truest form. They also correspond to the body, soul, and spirit respectively. The body being covered in salt is a fairly obvious link to make but I think the associations they were going for with the head and lungs is a little murkier. In these contexts spirit is more akin to your imagination and higher reasoning, where soul is more about your emotions. Which has strong parallels to the Greek concepts of psyche and pnuema which are often translated as soul and spirit. Pnuema meaning breath, which does have an obvious connection to the lungs, but pnuema is more akin to sulphur's soul than mercury's spirit and the same is true for psyche.

The perhaps more interesting thing here are the transmuted organs, including the aforementioned lungs. While the organs themselves do have some minor alchemic association it's not particularly compelling stuff IMO. What's more interesting is how many there are and what they are. Aside from the lungs the brain turned to silver, heart to gold, liver to tin, kidneys to copper, spleen to lead, and gall bladder to iron. That's seven metals and not just any seven, its the seven planetary metals. Each of the Classical planets has an associated metal: Silver corresponds to the Moon, gold with the Sun, mercury with Mercury, copper with Venus, iron with Mars, tin with Jupiter, and lead with Saturn. While the alchemic associations with these organs isn't too interesting, what's more important is the Hermetic Qabalah and Paracelsus' own adoption of it. Unlike with most alchemical concepts the organs aren't really symbolic of these planets but are analogous to them. The heart and the Sun aren't connected in any metaphysical sense but the heart is like the sun in that it acts upon the system of organs and provides them with life. And so on for each organ and planet pairing.

If you'd like more of Paracelsus' views on these sorts of things the Volumen Medicinae Paramirum would be the place to go looking for his own words, or something like The Devil's Doctor by Philip Ball if you'd like a more biographic view of the man. Great book, very well researched and cited, albeit quite the read.

It's very lovely to hear from Lena again and I'm really glad she's going to be more a part of this act from the sounds of things. There isn't a whole lot to say on it at the moment but I hope it involves showing Gwen the scope of what the OIAR deals with.

Heinrich has stolen all the scenes he's been in and I love him dearly. He's got some really great chemistry with Alice, the two play off of each other really well. I also love that he's so unapologetically a monster and enjoys being a monster. None of the German is particularly exciting to translate but "Angstjäger" would be something like "fear hunter" depend on how you wanted to translate it. Which is likely the German equivalent of External, or, perhaps, Avatar. I do love that we're going to get more Heinrich too from the sounds of things. I could have a whole spin-off of just him to be honest.

The Friedrich is version 6 thing is interesting but also not interesting. It's been a bit of a weird red herring for a start. Klaus seemed like the obvious suspect for who made it, and then it was Friedrich, but Friedrich and now it's "KS" who is very likely Klaus after all. But what I think is actually interesting is that, presumably, Klaus made a Friedrich version, then nicknamed that version Freddy, and then obfuscated that as Fr3-d1, which was then read as Freddy again because it's just leet. Just sorta circular in an odd way.

Fun fact: in the German spelling alphabet H is for Heinrich.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

Klaus Watch: Klaus probably mentioned babyyyyy

DPHW Theory: 5535 is pretty normal looking all in all. Notably the same as episode 27's incident too.

CAT# Theory: 1 works for P/P/O, although without looking into it I feel like that clashes with how corpses have usually been categorised?

R# Theory: B isn't far off my theory but the last couple of incidents have had fucked up Ranks so IDK anymore.

Header talk: Transmutation (Organs) -/- Experimentation (Metal) is not a particularly interesting heading as these things go.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 39 Thoughts: Meat Dreams

It's a rare Alex and Jonny co-written episode this week. It's also a very short and sweet one, although I am told that's to buy time for some longer episodes that are upcoming. However, it'll also be a short and sweet post from me because the nature of this one does mean I've precious little to say. I thought the episode was pretty good over all. I'm not a huge fan of the statement here but I do think it was well-written and well acted, it just didn't do much for me. As always though, there are a few things to pick at for the show's wider mythos.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 39 below the cut.

This is probably the simplest episode of the show so far. While there are scenes they're all contiguous and, as such, does make this episode fell quite small. Which is good and bad. It gives the episode an air of intimacy — which is apt for the content — but it does also leave little unseen and unsaid which is bad for these things.

I don't have an awful lot to say about this one. I think the takeaways and themes here are either very explicit or will be up to personal interpretation. Meaning you either don't need me to explain, or I cannot explain, the various goings-on in this episode. Although of note the official affix to denote who is a TMA character is now PL [name]. So this was PL Alice, as opposed to regular Alice. PL meaning primeline, as in prime timeline. And talk of the timelines is interesting to me because a prime timeline is a different thing than a prime dimension. Lots of things can change dimension to dimension but a series of timelines suggests some sort of common starting point. Timelines are different because events are different rather than the fundamental nature of things. I don't necessarily think that's the case here given the scope of the changes in regards to things like the Fears but we know the underlying metaphysics are at least compatible. Which might suggest that the only reason things are different in TMAGP is because people did different things. The Fears are different, or non-existent, because they were never fed or never born rather than simply not being a factor of the world. It's hard to know how much any of that will matter but they're at least framing it in terms of choice and consequence rather than a different set of rules from the get go. Although as Sam's appendicitis shows it does appear as though these timelines are trying to converge on some sense of uniformity.

Post-statement Sam and Georgie make it halfway down the road before finally clocking the very statement-y nature of Alice's statement. Which I'm taking to mean that [Error]'s abilities do involve a level of passivity or obfuscation when they're pulling these statements out of people. At least when the tape recorders are the vector. If that isn't the case Georgie has gone from telling the Wardens to be very aware of people statementing to letting Alice monologue for 6 unbroken minutes. I'm curious to know if we'll be seeing more of this sort of thing, or if it's more of a one off. I do also think it's quite odd Sam didn't ask Alice some of the more pressing questions. Sam knows the Magnus Institute is a fairly large deal in both universes. He's got first hand experience with one of them and in the primeline he knows it was the centre of the Change and that the event that ended it is named after it. He knows it turned into a big tower, knows everyone could see the big tower, and knows they blew up the big tower. Given Sam and PL Sam both had appendicitis, and both got together with Alice, you'd think a "weird question: did your Sam ever go to the Magnus Institute and see a dude turn into a skellington?". It might not elucidate anything, what with them being in different places, but it does seem like the sorta thing you'd at least ask about given all that context. But it does seem like they'll be stuck together in the next PL ep, so maybe he'll ask then.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: N/A

CAT# Theory: You know the drill. See episode 34's post for thoughts on this.

R# Theory: N/A

Header talk: See episode 34's post for thoughts on this.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 38 Thoughts: German Lessons

It's another guest episode this week and much like the last one of those it's only co-guest written. This time it's Jonny and Amber Devereux of Tin Can Audio, who has done a lot of things I'm not familiar with. I thought this episode was really solid though so I'm sure it's great stuff. The statement is very Archives to me, but the rest is very Protocol and it's really picking up pace. Just good stuff all around.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 38 below the cut.

We start as all good things do, talking about Colin. I'm holding out hope for the eventual Colin read incident because I do miss that man in this show. I love that Alice doesn't cave to Celia's bullshit. There isn't much to really dig apart here. The mentions of alchemy and the specific elements aren't particularly meaningful outside of their reinforcement of those themes. But it's plot development which is all good stuff.

While Celia for sure deserves the attitude Gwen deserves better than that though, smh Alice.

ALICE Well, it looks like Freddie was originally made in Berlin, back in the late 80s, maybe early 90s. There’re a lot of references to someone called “Friedrich”, who I think might have been the original programmer.

While it is pretty funny that Friedrich might have named his app after himself in leet, might be worth mentioned that Dr. Welling's first initial is F and we don't know what that stands for currently. He's currently been on the periphery of things but has been their more than just a throwaway character would've been. So there could be some sort of connection there.

ALICE Colin was certainly thought so. He was trying to find out more from a contact over there, some guy called “Heinrich Unheimlich”. GWEN I’m sorry, “Heinrich Unheimlich”? ALICE Yeah. What? GWEN Alice, do you speak any German? ALICE No, not as such. Why? GWEN Unheimlich. It means… Creepy, weird. I don’t think it’s a real name.

This bit is a fairly big deal IMO. If you've read a lot of my stuff you're likely aware of my theory about what DPHW means. If you aren't this is a fairly large hint that I am on the right lines there. Very briefly I think DPHW stands for Death, Pain, Helplessness, and Weird and is a rating system for incidents. The reason I think it's those things is because we know from the ARG that the German version is TSHU. Those meaning Tod, Schmerz, Hilflosigkeit, and Unheimlich. The translations are all pretty direct with the exception of Unheimlich which would generally be more like uncanny rather than weird, but uncanny is also much more in line with Magnus' use of the weird as horror.

On to the incident and, man, I liked this one a lot. Just some good old fashioned weird stuff happening. I don't think it was super creepy or unsettling, it didn't surprise me or have me on the edge of my seat, but it was thoroughly enjoyable through and through. It's a somewhat novel twist on the bogeyman archetype and everyone likes a good bogeyman scary story. It's also very German and as has been made very explicit in this episode that's a big deal for the world building here. It's come up a lot before, and was all over the ARG, and is central to a couple of core mysteries. A German "external" in the form of Mr. Cat Eyes is also exciting to see given the origins of Freddie. Germany clearly has had a lot of problems in the spookem department. There are also some implications here about a network of spooky people doing spooky things so I'm curious if this will come up in the future. The ending gave a "time to join the family business" sort of vibe to me that I'm hoping will come back around.

Mum said that she thought it was an old toy, maybe from East Berlin. I guess maybe it’s because East Berlin was also old.

As I've talked about the ARG before in these but of note here is that a large portion of it was dedicated to an East German diaspora newsgroup, and we (members of StatementRemains+ Discord server, not me personally) ended up traveling to a Berlin bookstore to find some documents. Which is to say they've been playing the long game on this one and if season 3 was a whole new cast of German characters it'd make a lot of sense given its foundations.

For those curious about the rhyme, it's roughly this

Heinrich Unheimlich, will you play with me? Heinrich Unheimlich, are you in the hallways? Heinrich Unheimlich, oh, are you in sight? Heinrich Unheimlich, don't eat my parents.

in English. I was going to make it rhyme but then I ran out of time.

First off, it's great that Alice continues to not buy into Celia's "don't investigate my crimes" bullshit. Secondly, I'm really liking how much this episode is advancing all sorts of threads. Now we've got Gwen following up on that Starkwall offer which is another element from the ARG that now seems like it's pretty vital to the foundation of where the show started. All great stuff.

GWEN Meaning I know the risks! Besides, those are properly vetted externals who have signed an agreement with the British Government to-

Need a loicense to be spooky if you're Bri'ish.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

Klaus Watch: C'mon this was prime Klaus territory. I've not forgotten about him.

DPHW Theory: 2153 isn't super interesting all in all, although it is also the DPHW of last week's episode. Which is fun. What's actually interesting is that they said the word "Unheimlich" nine times and Gwen translates it was "Weird". Which is further reinforced by the last episode she was in and her talk about balancing W and Mr. Bonzo, who is similarly a bogeyman-esque character. Albeit through a very different lens. I've not had much doubt I was right about this even from ep 2 but it would be wild for me to not get at least a little excited about this like this. It's probably the first major hint that I was on the money outside of how the numbers lined up.

CAT# Theory: My transcript had it as CAT1 so I had a whole thing about it but it's actually meant to be CAT13 which does mean I don't super care.

R# Theory: AB seems a little high. There is some evidence here in the diary and the mother's actual disappearance but nothing obviously weird like with RedCanary's eyes. B seems more apt to me. Assuming I'm right about it, I mean.

Addendum: So apparently my transcript was wrong on this too and it's actually meant to be ABC, assuming that's not an error of some sort (in or out of universe) I'm not 100% sure what to make of that. It's just weird. It's the first time we've seen them break from an apparent scale and implies these are non-exclusive categories, but also it makes there being an S even stranger because you could just add a D for something that falls outside of its scope. Very, very strange indeed. More data required on that one. Or someone can ask Alex about it.

Header talk: Carousel (Toy) -/- Disappearance (Parent) is a pretty explicit description of things. Hard to add much to that one.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 37 Thoughts: Roommates

We're back with another Tale From The Primeline tm, and another big chunk of exposition. It's a lot of fan service and fairly blatant conversation. None of which is a bad thing, but you know me. So don't hold your breath waiting on me to say anything interesting on this one. Although up top this is the first TMAGP ep reusing a TMA ep title. TMA's Scrutiny was all about the invasiveness of non-consensual statement taking, while this one is sorta about the opposite. So that's a fun bit of metatext if it's intentional. It wouldn't be Magnus without reused names so it could very well not be.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 37 below the cut.

If I had a nickel for every time the main character of a Magnus series moved in with Georgie Barker, I'd have two nickels— which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

I think the statement of this one was very solidly written but I didn't particularly care for it. I understand what it was going for and think it was doing a good job at that but it didn't do much for me. Lucky for me, and for you, I also don't think there is much to actually unpack. We both listened to the same thing so you don't need me restating it, and while it's nice to see an example of people that have been Stockholmed by the Change there isn't a lot to say on it IMO. So we can move along to something I do think is a little more interesting, [Error]'s deeper characterisation. [Error] has thus far been very direct and has had little room for other people doing much of anything that isn't doing what they want. Standard scary monster business really. However, with Ashe she was taken aback and almost empathetic. It's nothing earth shattering or anything but for a character that largely consists of question marks having there be something deeper to them is appreciated. It's hard to know if they'll ever really become a character with motives and goals or if it's all just feeding instincts but it is nice to see all the same.

Additionally, the way [Error] moves seems to be better realised now. Prior to this episode they just sorta emerged but now there is some proper description for it that book ends this statement.

It is dank, derelict and ruined. The Archivist flows through like mustard gas, exploring and formless... The Archivist suddenly coagulates, coalescing into a specter we recognize. Eventually the Archivist slowly dissolves back into the wind and moves on...

A lot of the following conversations don't give much to talk about. I think it's all about what you'd expect from a post-Change society and is all stated as so matter-of-fact that there is little to truly speculate on. Melanie seems to be in a much better place, as you might expect, and thinks of John as a friend. Sam is caught up on all the big stuff in the primeline that'll likely be of use when he gets back to TMAGP's universe. All the information about John isn't likely to be of great merit vis-à-vis Chester as most of, if not all, the tapes that have a sample of his voice are all gone. What is likely to be of use is the information about the Fears. We know from the Q&A that TMA's metaphysics and TMAGP's are compatible so there could be some insight gleaned from there. However there is a more pressing matter that Celia has talked about all this Fear stuff more than once. Eventually all of that is going to have to come out, although I think it's kinda weird it hasn't already. What with all of Sam and Melanie's conversations about their respective dimensions eventually he's going to have to mention the person who the portal actually wanted, who knows more than maybe they should, etc. etc.

SAM and MELANIE are preparing food. SAM is peeling potatoes badly whilst Melanie does all the real cooking.

The man can't ever catch a break.

No Admiral: 0/10

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: N/A

CAT# Theory: See episode 34's post for thoughts on this.

R# Theory: N/A

Header talk: See episode 34's post for thoughts on this.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 36 Thoughts: Breaking the Fourth Wall

Another guest written episode today, but unlike the rest where Alex and Johnny get editing credits, Alex co-wrote this one. I'm assuming that means that Dylan Griggs, presumably best known for Woe.Begone, wrote the incident and that Alex wrote the office sections? Those are quite "technical" this time around and that is his baby. Unfortunately, I'm not really a fan of this one. The incident is just one of those ones that did basically nothing for me. I don't expect them all to be hits though so I'm not too displeased about it, and hopefully this is just me going against the grain and it resonates with the audience at large.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 36 below the cut.

CELIA (To herself) Okay so that would be… Flaying… subsection… Voluntary… cross referenced with Betrayal and-

Oh you know that's going in the doc. Shame we don't get to hear the fucked up flagellation case though, could've been a fun one. Not enough high P incidents either and this is a shoo-in for that but, alas, we are kept from yet more juicy incident. I'm still waiting for Dog, and the eventual incident that's Collector and has that dude from episode 4 in it.

While we can all agree that Celia's betrayal triggered panic attack is very karmic, I do sorta hope this isn't laying the groundwork for her to go save his ass. I like that one of the main cast is basically the villain and I think on the whole it's more interesting if she stays that way. Not that I think it will happen. She's fairly obvious guilt ridden and was seemingly about to, if not confess her sins, confess more than would be prudent to keep that secret. I do really like that Alice is all in on it being basically Hell though. While it's not exactly accurate it is at least in the right ball park. Especially in regards to how the Powers from the Primeline tend to manifest in physical space.

As mentioned in the intro I just really didn't love this one. I don't really have anything bad to say it just one of those ones I listened to but didn't really find anything exciting about. Hopefully I'm just missing a masterpiece though. IDK, something about this one felt disconnect to the rest of it somehow but I'm not really sure I could tell you why. It's not doing anything new or off-theme but something about it doesn't make me go "That's a TMAGP incident", y'know? There is a mention of an Elric Capital Ltd, which is presumably related to last week's Elric Rehabilitation Initiative. That's pretty interesting because I can't recall them name dropping something like that so often. Hopefully it's the start of a trend and we'll get more of the Institute's satellite companies soon enough. Assuming it's one of those, of course. The more exciting bit about this though is that this whole incident is very different than what you'd assume a "Rehabilitation Initiative" involves and so Elric Capital Ltd seems to have a lot going on, which does make me hope they'll end up a major player this season or the next.

It didn’t diminish all at once though, instead it disappeared into a pinpoint like an old CRT monitor.

This is very curious phrasing. We have another unknowable acronym but I think the implication is clear, just like the OIAR monitors DPHWs. Using my immense initialism cracking skills I think CRT is some sort of old DPHW system that didn't take off. Creepy, Revolting, and Terrifying just don't have the same sorta utility. Makes sense why they switched.

ALICE “Salt config manager” and found an “unmonitored orphan process” which-

While Salt/SaltStack is a config manager, and it would have a legitimate use case in the OIAR, this is most likely used to reference salt's importance in alchemy. It's one third of the tria prima and represent concepts like the body, and stability. It also means that Colin has now referenced all three with his dropping of sulphur and mercury in episode 19, Hard Reset.

GWEN Look, I don’t need to know every detail of the thing to be the manager I just need to know how to balance it. So, either tell me how I can increase “W” here or get out.

I don't think there is a lot to say on this other than it's a fairly obvious confirmation that the role of the OIAR, and the Externals as an extension of that, is about balancing the ways the supernatural manifest so no one force becomes too dominant. I believe I talked about this in my episode 13 thoughts, but if not it was somewhere. Probably.

ALICE Good. Now, unless I’m wrong, which, lets be honest, is pretty damn likely, when we cross reference this shortlist for common terms we’ll find out what Freddy thinks you need and that… is… more… The computer pings up a tone. ALICE (confused) Bonzo?

I've been telling people Mr. Bonzo is the answer to all their problems for a while and now it's not a meme. He really is the true main character of this show. When his spin-off happens just know I'll be a hipster about it.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: 2153 is the first DPHW in a while that's made me go "huh". I was expecting more W than this by a fair bit. Like with Architecture (Liminal), but I also couldn't make a strong case for it so it can't be that far off.

CAT# Theory: It's a 3.

R# Theory: I'm getting better at judging these as they go on because it's very B to me. Which I'm taking as a sign I'm right on this whole thing.

Header talk: Entrapment (Virtual) -/- Isolation (Experimentation) is fairly uninteresting as these things go. That is what it is.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 35 Thoughts: Pen Pals

We're back to what I like to call "the real podcast". More seriously, I'm just happy for more of what this one is about. I'm really enjoy how this series is building out these multiple plot threads and there are a lot of good call backs in this one. This is one of those ones that makes me thing they've got a really really well fleshed out plan about how everything is going to come together.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 35 below the cut.

Starting off pretty simple really, Alice is very upset that she's a dummy and Colin went mad. Just more reinforcement with the Freddie stuff. Nothing much to say about it all in all. Besides, more important things afoot.

It's a Mr. Bonzo episode, baby! Unfortunately, it's mostly about a pretender but any Bonzo is welcome. We get a proper introduction to Terrance Menke (previously spelled Menki), the Bonzo Butcher mentioned in episode 10 Saturday Night. As you may recall from that episode Menke's crime in the Mr. Bonzo costume basically killed off the entire brand, but I don't think there is an awful lot to get into about the specifics of the crime. Not that it means there aren't things to dig into, but what is interesting about it is the mention of his suit growing tighter, and getting slick. As we know eventually, and for some reason, the Mr. Bonzo suit stopped being just a suit. However, Menke's description of his own suit does seem to imply that any suit, even one with the colours back to front, does seem to work as a host for whatever Mr. Bonzo really is. Is Mr. Bonzo born from the concept of Mr. Bonzo and as such is bound to depictions of him, or is it simply something the animating force prefers? Given how prevalent Mr. Bonzo is in this series I'll be shocked if we don't get an answer to at least some of that soon.

The next thing of importance is Allen Stolas from the Elric Rehabilitation Initiative, both of these things are fairly overt references. Stolas is a goetic demon who're mostly commonly associated with the Lesser Book of Solomon, although a lot of its contents is based on the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. Stolas is a demon prince and his role is that of a teacher of astronomy, herbs, and precious stones. All of which are quite important to alchemy. The name Elric is very likely a reference to Edward and Alphonse Elric, the main characters from Fullmetal Alchemist. Taken together, and with the general emphasis placed on celestial bodies in episode 21 Breaking Ground, then it would seem likely that the Elric Rehabilitation Initiative is another of the Magnus Institute's organisation. Much like with Welling Mutare Materia research program which also incarcerated people.

For more mundane things Strangeways is a fairly interesting pick for this. Its current official name, and what it would be during this incident, is HM Prison Manchester. It's not particularly interesting as prisons go IMO but it being in Manchester, along with TMAGP's Institute, does mean it parallels TMA's Institute and Millbank prison. It also came up very briefly in the ARG as a cracked theory involving triangulating Manchester landmarks.

Overall, I liked this incident a fair bit. It's always interesting to see things like this revisited and more Bonzo never hurt anyone. As with the ep a few back, I still don't love the whole multi-people talking transcript style but it's a fairly minor complaint all in all and with all the information in this ep it's hard to be too annoyed at it.

Back the OIAR crew and there is generally quite a bit to touch on. Some of that's fairly minor, Celia is still trying to link back the incidents to the Fears she's so familiar with. That's something I'm quite interested to see expanded upon. We can infer from the fact it's a sequel that whatever is going on is at least somewhat compatible with TMA's metaphysics and cosmology. Something that was confirmed in the Q&A. How they tie together isn't super clear right now though. At least, not beyond the more basic takes of "X ep is Y Fear". There isn't anything wrong with assigning those things but we've been pretty constantly shown that those classifications aren't a good fit for TMAGP's incidents so I'm eager to see the ways those are good fits. Also, Gwen both being taken about by Alice being somewhat kind, and also having no idea how to actually socialise with the OIAR crew, makes me sad. She deserves better. Probably.

GWEN Not really. It’s just going on and on about how important it is to “balance the books.” Alice, do you know if a guy named William Price ever worked here? ALICE If he did it was before my time. CELIA Hang on… “Bill Price” and he wants to balance the books? That’s got to be a fake name Right?

This deserves quoting because it reads to me as a very intentional bit of manipulation by Celia. This isn't the first time we've heard of William Price, and it's not the first time Celia has either. William Price, as mentioned by Sam in episode 20 Social Stigma, was the head of the OIAR's response department. Now, Alice was in that conversation too but at the time she was pretty over Sam's whole Magnus rabbit hole. Celia was very much pushing him forward though, and has been trying to cover her tracks since. I don't think this will deter Gwen any and I'm ever hungry for more information about what the OIAR is actually doing. The “balance the books.” bit is well in line with how Lena described the OIAR's purpose to Gwen in episode 13 Futures as monitoring the various forces in the world and balancing them as required. And, obviously, balance is a central idea of the show with Celia's explanation of why Sam needs to get booted to the primeline being explained that way, and with the Institutes own rituals requiring it. All of which is largely a continuation of TMA's ideas when it came to the rituals.

ALICE steps out the main door with her headphones in. She walks into a heavy trolly, bashing her shins and knocking a couple of items, including the camcorder we’re listening through. ALICE Ah! Mother-[fucker!] Hmmmm. Ow. What the hell is- Teddy?

Teddy's back, and I swear I thought this was going to end up being a "Teddy is homeless" bit, but it's worse.

ALICE Anything exciting? TEDDY It’s fine. [bzzt]

Poor Teddy. This man deserves better.

ALICE walks off. The Camera zooms in on TEDDY. His tension transitions into fear once she is out of sight. TEDDY (To camera) I’m Sorry! I’m on my way okay? It won’t happen again!

Man, you quit one nightmare job only to end up on the proverbial nightmare fire. Poor Teddy, man. Dude is gonna end up being Freddie's meat puppet and eventual host. It's gonna suck.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: 4778 is more or less what you'd expect. As with other incidents where people die but it's not all about capital D Death you get a bit of that, but lots of killing, incarceration, and fucked up clown men on a war path does get you a lot of PHW.

CAT# Theory: 1 is the same Category as the previous two Mascot incidents. Not much more to say than that.

R# Theory: B is also the same Rank as the previous two Mascot incidents and as with those, it's very B.

Header talk: Mascot (Incarceration) -/- Retaliation (Imposter) is an interesting heading to me in that it reframes what we hear as being all about Mr. Bonzo.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 34 Thoughts: Burying the Hatchet

This is a very exposition heavy episode but it's not a lot of new information IMO. I think most of the big stuff here is more confirmation of what I would call, potentially arrogantly, obviously inferable information. Which isn't a bad thing but as you're all probably very aware by now I don't really retread the explicit stuff in these. So we'll see what I've got to say.

And, yes, I did forget what day it was on Thursday and then procrastinate this until now. Blame the Spiral. Tomorrow's post will probably be on time.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 34 below the cut.

Okay, so, as I've mentioned, this is all quite explicit. Sam's in TMA London and it's all spooky still. I do love how over everything Georgie is, and it's nice to see her fearlessness expressed as apathy and annoyance. Even with all the blatant info dumping there are a couple of interesting things to pick out from this whole section though. Part of London, presumably the part that was around the Magnus Institute/Panopticon, didn't revert to its pre-Change state but the interesting bit is other parts of the world didn't either. Obviously the Institute, being the epicentre of the Eye's power on Earth, makes sense but what other places didn't change back? Did every Fear have a location like the Panopticon and those all remained? Is it about the domains of powerful avatars? It doesn't seem like the creatures in the London Exclusion Zone are particularly related to the Eye, so is that true of every location still affected? Or is the Square Mile unique in this respect because of the Eye's central position for the Change? A lot of things going on there. I'm not sure any of that will come up to be honest, I think most of that is probably irrelevant, but it's got a lot of world building potential.

The other thing to note is them being called "wardens". The major organisation people would think of for civil defence in the UK would be either the Civil Defence Service (1935–1945) or the Civil Defence Corps (1949–1968). The Civil Defence Service started its life as the Air Raid Precautions Department and then later created the Air Raid Wardens' Service. These wardens were largely responsible for making sure communities were doing what they were meant to as to not get bombed to shit. As the nature of civil service in the UK evolved both during and after the war so did the role of the wardens but it was generally about community organisation and leadership, recon, and reporting. Captain isn't a rank of Warden in any incarnation as far as I'm aware, but the UK also doesn't really have current civil defence either. Which is interesting in so far as the implication that the UK government is treating it like war. At least in the primeline, in TMAGP's time it seems a lot more clandestine than that.

The section with Georgie and Dave I don't have much to add to. It's all something we've seen with [Error] before and in the interest of getting this post done I'm not going to talk out my ass like I might usually do.

Sam and Georgie do some more exposition. Honestly, this is mostly just a last season recap and I've talked about all that before. Obviously Georgie is worried this is John, and I've seen a lot of people wanting it to be, but I think that would probably be the worst thing they could do here. Especially with Chester in the mix doing the whole "John is a monster" thing and having John be all monster feels a little trite to me. I'm fairly sure they're not doing that in either case. Especially when they've cast Beth Eyre as [Error] already, the bait and switch there would feel sorta shitty IMO.

The Gardener's statement was really well done. I know the TMA season 5 statements are contentious but I think there are some incredible bits of short form fiction in there. This one is no different and I think builds upon season 5 wonderfully by subverting the expectations those statements built. In TMA season 5 the statements were pretty aggressively about their Fear. It wasn't often, if at all, that the listener was ever in suspense about what the Fear at play was. This statement initially seems no different. Starts off very Buried but is very clearly a Slaughter domain by the end of it and it's a really interesting one too. Very boiled down to the basic aspects of the Fear. Good stuff, well written, well acted, no notes.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: N/A

CAT# Theory: XXXX, I guess? CATXXXX is actually pretty interesting in that it's basically the only way you can wrongly X out that string. The dates got the correct number of Xs for the maximum length a date can be in the DMYYYY format. CATXXXX doesn't match the maximum length, nor any reasonable combination. It's pretty much the most wrong thing they could've written. Which does, obviously, mean it was directly aimed at me and written out of spite.

R# Theory: N/A

Header talk: ERROR (Unknown Source) is probably the single most interesting heading we've ever seen. Back in the TMAGP universe we've seen that Freddie has no problems with filing incident reports that [Error] has collected. In TMA there was some implication that the audience was the Eye only to then subvert that expectation. The current implication is that our PoV is that of Freddie and this reinforces that, it got a fucked filing but did get a filing, but I do wonder if this is laying the ground work for that sort of twist. It also raises the question about what makes this incident different to any of the others. The obvious reason is that the Gardener is from another dimension but [Error] doesn't seem to be operating any differently. So either the Mechanisms are quite different or is the experience. TMAGP's universe never has a Change, as far as we know, and so hasn't had domains and as such there wouldn't be anything to file this under assuming Freddie can accurately do that. The link between Freddie and [Error]/her tapes, is also interesting too. Is this unique to [Error] or can Freddie do this to anything that's connected via a tear? If it's unique to [Error] is that because of JMJs connection to the Eye, and [Error's] status as an Archivist, or is there something else at play? Like I said, more interesting than Building (Angry).