Hi @barkingcrows sent a long ask and because it's an unsustainable format, I'm posting their ask under the cut
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
HELLO AND WELCOME TO MY FAVOURITE EPISODE! i love you mag85. its not even really the pre- or post- statement that i love (though when jon amends his opening, you can HEAR the 😒 in his voice and its lovely) but its the statement itself. i simply love it So Much. theres something about it that stuck out to me and i dont quite know what
(cont. under cut)
i adore the tone the statement is given in. the statementgiver sounds almost hysterical in a falsely composed manner. think : the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart. they sound like theyre moments away from begging you to believe them and begging you to tell them you understand. like theyre trying their damnedest to make themself understand just as much as theyre trying to make you understand…… a bit like helen in her first statement, even. but far more gone than her. helen is still holding onto logic as her lifeline, refusing to let go of logic and reason for the sake of staying sane. 85’s statement giver went mad long ago, and doesn’t care about why or how it doesn’t make sense—they just know it doesn’t make sense and there’s nothing more to it. they’re looking back at it all with a “i can’t fucjsking believe this happened to /me/” lens, sort of. i think so, at least
the contradictions are a fun thing. they make the statement stand out and grab your attention back even if youre doing something else while you listen. in order to wrap your head around it, you have to pay attention. It starts out simple, eases you into the senselessness. after all, if it threw you in headfirst then you wouldnt know what to make of the statement. it would make no sense because youre looking at it through the wrong lens, defaulting to applying rules to it that simply dont apply. “Because nonsense is what it is. It is playfully impossible. He cannot be not there. But he is. He was. And so am I. I did not meet him on the staircase as well.” it takes a second for you to make it make sense, but then just trading out every “i did not meet him” for “i did meet him (its just that he was the man that wasnt there)” and suddenly it makes the senselessness make a lot more sense, and puts you into the correct mindset for this episode.
but it only stays simple for a short bit, quickly upping the absurdity more and more until its depicting batshit stuff that you cant even understand by backwards logicing out of it. but by now youve accepted that this statement giver’s story is not one that is meant to make sense, and you can listen to the impossibilities without it breaking your immersion at all. In fact, it enhances it. a fun example of that is: “My father said nothing, as I had taken him up the stairs an hour before, and he now lay dead in his chair, his heart unsuited for the expedition. [...] Eventually, after almost an hour descending the spiral, he keeled over in his seat and lay lifeless. My mother got abruptly to her feet, and told my father that they were leaving. My father got to his feet, and silently followed her out.” its senseless! its plenty comprehensible, but it just doesnt make sense! are the stairs metaphorical or literal? did the dad die in a dream and wake back up? if he died on the stairs, how did he get to the chair? did he die and his corpse got up and walked out? the listener doesnt know! jon sure as hell doesnt know! and i really doubt that even the statement giver knows! its not like theyre there, anyways. no use in figuring out the hows and whats and whys of events when theyre hardly a who or what themself.
i feel like it sort of raises the question of if there was ever a man not there in the first place that the statement giver fell victim to, but that’s the point, isn’t it? there was no one there. “The stairs were real. He wasn’t there, but the stairs were.” note the word choice. ‘real.’ not ‘the stairs were there,’ but that they were real. is it possible to do something like this to yourself? the man who was not there became real as time progressed, yes, but any delusion can become real to someone if they believe it sincerely enough. mix the Literally Supernatural spiral into that and you have one hell of a trip. is it possible to lose yourself in a poem so much that you lose your own self? have you ever considered this statement being largely metaphorical? turned literal only by the spiral finding a new plaything? they say that he did not offer them to join him on the stairs. so is that to say the man who was not there did not offer simply because he was not there, or that the statement giver’s spiral (heh) was self-inflicted? “He didn’t come back until I made… a horrid mistake. I called to him. I stood on the landing and shouted at him to go away. I asked him if he was there. I demanded he show himself. All utterly impossible, of course. I was shouting at nobody but myself, and so it was into my own mind that my curses and pleas burrowed and nested.”
personally, i think it makes for a more interesting statement if it’s litera; there is, in fact; a man who was not there tormenting the statement giver. but for it to be metaphorical would make for a much more interesting question
“I walked and I walked. And then I didn’t walk, and that got me moving much faster.” i just like this line
“He had sworn at me as he tried to climb them to the top, telling me I was no son of his, and I was trying to agree with him, but if I could have done so, then he would have been wrong.” THIS line. if there’s one thing i want you to take away from this rambling essay of a loveletter to mag85 then it’s this line. i want everyone to look at it and just. think about it i guess??? it’s my favourite sentence in this episode. something about it is so interesting and i really don’t know how to put it into words. “I was trying to agree with him, but if I could have done so, then he would have been wrong.” GOD i love that ?!!!??!?? its so good
i love the twist on the poem at the end too. changing it to “i was a man who wasn’t there”
i don’t think enough people talk about just the statement for this episode, so i’ll leave off my thoughts on the post-statement banter. not to mention that this post is already far longer than it should be HAHA. i love georgie and season three is very eventful, but this statement by itself should be highlighted more often when it has such an interesting premise <333
finally, while i’m here: i would absolutely recommend listening to The Man Who Sold The World by David Bowie after listening to this episode. or whatever cover you prefer of the song—i personally enjoy Nirvana’s most. The Man Who Sold The World, just as mag85, was at least in part inspired by the poem Antigonish. (and the timeline would allow for mag85 to potentially be partially inspired by both the poem AND the song, but i don’t believe that is confirmed or denied anywhere.)
it’s a great song and i never have a reason to talk about how this episode was actually the thing that introduced me to the song
thank you for bearing with me as i rambled about the episode i can never find a good reason to ramble about!
