hey magheads, just quickly reminding everyone that ink5oul uses they/them pronouns. they have been spoken about in the third-person extensively with only gender neutral language. we're all going to stick to that, right? we aren't going to mysteriously start using gendered language after learning their legal name and hearing them speak for a long period of time, right?
Royal Mint Court is a building complex that according to Wikipedia was first a plague cemetery during the Black Death then abbey then the British Royal Mint whose architecture was completed by one Robert Smirke.
Guys so many people are missing the point. It is reductionist to just say "lol old man writer doesn't know internet slang. silly writer, words are for kids!" No! Its commentary! It's a way of showing that she's disingenuous! Her "goth" personality is all microtrend bullshit, her vlogging style is the type meant to built the parasocial cult of personality, her clumsy cringe appropriation of AAVE is a direct presentation of the lengths this girl is going to be famous, and how everything about her is fake!
Media analysis PLEASE. It's one of the most analyzable podcasts on the mainstream horror circuit. Nothing is accidental.
- lied about a MASTERS in PARAPSYCHOLOGY in his cv. why did he choose such a niche study like how many jobs could that even get you
- writes the most terrible poetry you’ve ever heard (said with love) and plays background music while recording it onto a tape recorder for the vibes
- when encountering a terrifying worm lady that tries to add you to her flesh hive, he MAKES SURE to keep some of her worms just so he can stick it in his bosses face
-the rudest guy in the world (said boss) does one nice thing for him that he didn’t expect and he immediately falls in love (this is real to me ok let me have this)
-wears video game shirts to work
-goes on rants about spiders importance to the ecosystem to a guy with the worst arachnophobia ever
-hides CO2 cans so that ‘the worms don’t find it’
-forces his boss to go on lunch dates with him so he doesn’t completely lose it to paranoia
-walked into his bosses office, found a DEAD BODY THAT WAS DEFINITELY MURDERED, and all he says is “oh jon 😕😕”
-has practically the same reaction later on when someone tells him his boss compelled them to relive their worst trauma
-gets told the guy he’s been in love with for multiple years treats him horribly and goes “yeah and”
-outsmarted an avatar of the lonely despite being in a horrible depressive episode with no contact to anyone else
-manages to make peter fully believe he’s dedicated to the lonely even as his crush of many many years is practically confessing his love at every interaction
s5 martin is my favourite id need a whole extra post for him loml
seeing so many people refer to the language used in the statement portion of TMAGP 16 as gen z language, influencer slang, etc is driving me insane. to me it is clearly and obviously at least in part about white people misusing and appropriating AAVE? the writers aren’t stupid. they know the language being used feels forced and unnatural. that is the point.
no person talks like this. this is not them making fun of gen z, it is a statement on influencers constant misuse, bastardization, and appropriation of terms originating from black queer communities.
it seems people don't understand. a GLUP SHITTO is a character in a very popular piece of media (like star wars) that if you asked a random person or even a casual fan, they wouldn't know who the fuck that is. a BLORBO is just your little guy. can be any kind of character they're just your little GUY. a POOR LITTLE MEOW MEOW is a villain, usually with a sad backstory, who you are defending and woobifying. they've done WRONG. not everyone can be a poor little meow meow. just because they're pathetic doesn't mean they're a meow meow that mf had to commit CRIMES. if you want a pathetic little fucker of any moral persuasion that is a BABYGIRL. usually male, doesn't have to be. just has to be kind of fucked up. get your terminology CORRECT
What a fucking episode. No complaints at all. It's just solid gold all the way through and just like gold it's a dense so there is lots to dig in to, and not much point in a preamble.
Spoilers for episode 15, and all of TMA, below the cut.
I really like the introductory office drama portion of today's episode. It's not particularly enlightening, and there isn't anything new in it, but it sets the stage well. Yes, that was a pun. Alice reacted to the news as I knew she would, because she can't help herself. But other than that I really like the mention of Luke playing at The Glad. Magnus stuff always does a really good job of peppering in real places.
This incident was also incredibly short. However unlike last week's episode I think it utilised that time so much better. All of it was a slow build up to one event and was really just three scenes. Set up, hunt, conclusion. Simple and to the point but incredibly effective. Last week's episode felt like too big of an idea bent to fit too short of a time, while this weeks felt like a good story that was given the time it needed and no more or less. Really big fan of the whole thing.
The incident didn't have too much to really get into here. If I were live blogging you would've seen me say "Lady Mowbray?!?!" when the Caterer said "the really high-end stuff". I have been waiting for something aristocratic. The set up is a little cliché but I really like the subversion of Battle Royale instead of The Most Dangerous Game. It's not only an effective twist when the story is from the Caterer's PoV it's a much better insight into the characters were being introduced to. It also highlights something fairly interesting about TMP vs TMA. This incident is one of the most singular in terms of its representation of a TMA Entity but that expectation is somewhat subverted by having these characters hunt each other for another rather than all be hunted down. It wouldn't be out of place in TMA but it is taking a bit of a different approach.
Speaking of the characters though. Fuck Yeah. Lady Mowbray. Finally. I, and probably all of Statement Remains, have been waiting for her appearance since last October when some lucky folks got to meet her bodyguards as part of the ARG. I didn't have her pegged for a badass cannibal but here we are. She really surpassed my expectations. I love aristocratic monster people so I had high hopes and I am still pleasantly surprised.
Celia and Lady M's interaction is really great. I love that we're getting more and more evidence that Celia is clearly more than she's letting everyone else in on. I, obviously at this point, think she's from TMA's universe for a lot of reasons. Lady M not being able to place why she smells so wrong but picking up on her being out of place is just more evidence of that. Celia holding her ground and not taking any shit from Lady M is also incredible. She just listened to how she eats people, gets jumped scared by her, and then instantly tells her to fuck off by way of not giving her a name. She's really living up to the Ripley namesake and I love every second of it.
I will not soon forget that tiny little tease about Bouchard lore either. Actually cruel.
Luke and Alice at the bar wasn't a big moment but it's nice to see her interact with more than just her co-workers. Meeting Luke and he being seemingly normal was also nice, be a shame when he dies.
The final section was phenomenal. I really love it when these shows break format and what a format break it was. So first things first this was recorded on a tape recorder. Significant for likely obvious reasons but unlike the last time these showed up this one isn't an incidental placement like the Institute's one. It was being carried by the woman. We know Alice feels like she's been followed since that incident and this is likely related to it but I don't think it's related in the most obvious sense. There is a very obvious conclusion to draw from TMA knowledge but I feel like that might be folly here. It seems a little too obvious and a little too strained at the same time. The Institute and [Error] being so related to that and in this fashion I think would feel a bit forced, and so this feels more like a red herring to me. Something is going on with them but I don't think it's going to be that.
So Drowning Victim, as she is credited, is super intriguing for a million reasons. Continuing on from that prior thought it's quite possible that the tape recorder and Alice being in the same place is entirely coincidental. It's one of those things that feels like a scheme from TMA context but everything being linked feels too TMA to me for right now. But what she's saying is really interesting. Because with those tape recorders it sounds like a statement. It's not just random mumbling but a fairly coherent narrative. Or a recalling of prior events. Whether the Drowning Victim is the original PoV for that potential statement is hard to say. I doubt it but it would be possible. Another strong idea here is that it is linked to [Error] and her deal might be another archive. Instead of just collection and storage she could be able to force others to relive them through the statements. That's a TMA parallel I think would be a much stronger use of TMA's theme.
Outside of that Alice's interaction with her is so so well done. I think it's really important to show that Alice both has a heart and is able to stop with her attitude when it's really important. Getting to see that when push comes to shove she can step up is going to be something that'll come back around. We all know that everyone at the OIAR is in for a world of hurt and I think Alice is the person the fanbase has the biggest issue with in that sort of context so far. And her singing Nellie the Elephant for compression rate is sort of heart breaking to listen to. Just a really fantastic performance from Billie and people better be nicer to Alice after this. I better not hear her getting any shit for running away either. She gave CPR to a woman who basically attacked her, drowned in the middle of London, died, and then kept talking.
Also, quite note, this episode had five new voice actors in it.
Klaus Watch: Wasn't expecting this to return so soon but here we are. This incident doesn't appear on Klaus but what does is this, CAT1RB2373-10072023-########. This has the accompanying note "Dame M" and a location "London, England".
DPHW Theory: 6451 is a pretty reasonable rating for this. Hunting mostly focused on the killing part of it. Some mental compulsion, seclusion, and obviously the predator/prey dynamic. The 1 in Weird is more evidence that 1 is the lowest rating with 0 being the highest. Nothing Weird in this one really.
CAT# Theory: CAT1 has a person in it.
I'm still debating whether to do a post on that theory because part of me does feel like it'd ruin other people's fun. Another part of me thinks that theories as prolific as that deserve to be scrutinised as intently as possible. Although there is a problem with that idea because my DPHW theory that has become the default does seem to be mine and I've not seen any cases of parallel thought on that one. The CAT theory has 10+ individuals all coming to roughly the same conclusion though and I'm not sure if that makes it more fair game or not. I, personally, welcome any challenges to my theories and I know some people who have posted the CAT theory do but that's not the same as them all holding that stance. It's not really possible to single anyone out either as it's not about any single person but the idea itself. IDK, give your thoughts on it.
This one does solidly fit into that theory though.
R# Theory: B sounds good to me. Although it's worth mentioning that there is a hyphen in this header between the rank and the DPHW.
Header talk: Hunt (Aristocratic) -/- Compulsion is interesting for two reasons. First off it being Hunt sort of precludes, secondly Compulsion is a strange filing for this IMO. There was an element of it but it was fairly minor and didn't seem like the thrust of the episode. The Caterer was compelled to be quiet but wasn't forced to hunt the rest of the brigade. He chose that when he realised what Lady M. was getting at.
placing my hands out placatingly, asking everyone to please be cool and not reignite og!elias burnt out gifted kid discourse. okay? okay. I think this is setting up some more sam and gwen parallels. from mag 193, we know that elias bouchard (original flavor) was told from a young age that he was smart but lazy, he was squandering his advantages, and he was wrong to envy other children because they were meaningless and he was better. he seemed to internalize this to some extent, because by the time he was in his early twenties he had no friends and no family and no real life, just the certainty that he was destined to deserve better.
I think it is reasonable to assume that gwen received similar messaging during her childhood, as she seems to be treating the OIAR the same way elias treated artefact storage (as a stepping stone job to a bigger career waiting for her up the ladder), and she takes a lot of offence when she feels disrespected. from magp 03, we know she's reticent to tell her friends that she's still working this same job, especially because the friend's party she was going to was to celebrate making partner at a law firm.
from this episode, we know that sam was declared "gifted" as a child and his parents rigorously enrolled him in every program they could find, and it started going down hill when the magnus institute rejected him (did they reject him outright or was he there for a bit and then kicked out? what he said to celia doesn't quite fit his earlier statements, but moving on). he has a lot of pent up and fixated feelings about not being chosen by them, he didn't get into oxford, he just missed the highest grades, and he's reticent to tell his parents that he's working this job, especially because he used to be at a law firm.
we know the bouchards are a wealthy and influential family, and as sam speaks with a south asian accent I think it's safe to assume that his family immigrated. of course, there's a massive amount of variation in the socioeconomic statuses of south asian immigrant families in the UK, and I don't know enough about how british gifted kids programs work to know if sam having been in a bunch of them would imply anything about his parents' disposable income, but nonetheless I still think their different backgrounds potentially say a lot about how they handle these feelings of not meeting the high standards that were expected of / promised to them. gwen is fighting to be on the same level of social status and power as her peers, and sam probably felt like he was he had opportunities for upward mobility in this brand new place but kept failing them. it's causing both of them to be very active characters, they are the two people pushing the story forward the most by far, but the ways in which they are active diverge greatly.
gwen, until recently, had felt like she was unfairly stagnating, like she was "not most people" and was cut out for better, and being constantly barred from climbing the ladder made her both resentful of lena and extremely paranoid / insecure about her own worth. now that she's starting to crack it into the "real work," it's obviously taking a great toll on her, but she doesn't want to back out, she wants to prove herself and take what's rightfully hers and not show herself to be unfit for real power. her actions appear to be guided by an ethos that her life hasn't been wasted yet, she still has time to make good, she just needs to ignore that weakness masquerading as a conscience, please god don't let her fail.
sam feels like he's made mistake after mistake after mistake and led himself to his own desperate state where he only just managed to avoid destitution because his ex was kind enough to hook him up with an emergency job that is actively destroying his physical and emotional health, and he has pinned all this frustration on trying to figure out what the magnus institute was all about and why it didn't choose him. like gwen, great things were expected of him, but unlike her he doesn't seem to still be striving for them, that dried up when he had a breakdown at his last job. now he just wants to figure it out and make sense of it, as if solving the mystery will let him fix it and undo all that time and un-waste his promised potential. his actions seem to be guided by an ethos that, even though he's already screwed everything right up, solving the ghosts that haunt his life will some how lessen their burden and maybe, just maybe, give him closure on the Flaw That Doomed Him and allow him to move past it without dragging it still forward.
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