#iipl

[martindykewood]

okay so i havent actually been keeping track of the iambic pentameter bc it is a lot of work but it is actually sort of uncanny how s5 leans into it so much harder than the previous seasons. like i was thinking that i just had notes for more s5 eps bc that was when i started paying attention to it but ive been paying attention to it the whole time and it is i think far more prevalent here. insanery

[martindykewood]

was 165 in iambic pentameter? i had to put like Actual Effort into hearing the words he was saying cause the rhythm was so Like That (and i mean that in the best way possible! i LOVE episodes like this one!) but i'm not sure if it was because it was iambic pentameter or no

it isn’t in iambic pentameter as such. it has a lot of iambic rhythm, but it isn’t divided into lines of five iambs at a time, not like a sonnet. i suppose you could break it down like that, if you tried, but it’s easier to chop it up in larger chunks bc of the way jonny wrote it: it’s very twisting, winding, flowing kind of things, not so much like short bite-sized phrases. so you can see below, it’s actually a lot a lot a lot of iambic meter (italics), a bit of trochaic meter (bold), some extra ending syllables (parentheses), and a few fun instances of dactylic and choriambic meter (brackets). 

Your face is not your face is not your face around the curling carousel it twists in place to take from you and all the tattered stolen souls  whose sense of me is swollen and distended into no(thing).

Round and round and round it goes and (when) it deigns to stop who you might be you cannot know, so touch and feel the skin atop your skull to test the limits and extremities of where this canvas comes to rest, in robbed identity and peeling names that you could swear were never yours.

The music swells through you. The music vomits from you. The music calls a name that through the tears of half-grasped memories seems almost and eternally familiar.

So dance. [Dance to the / beat of the / thump of the / chase of the / still] and plastic horse hooves which cannot break from where they are secured by bolts and glue and eggshell-thin reality that paints a visage of sense almost enough to tell you that the nausea that swells and pushes at the limits of your mind is incorrect.

There’s nothing wrong.

The world in which the carousel will twirl is not the hollow hell you fear; it is the world. Just the world. A world where if you’d wished to have a name it must be stolen, carved and pulled full-bloody from the frame of others who had wished in vain to hold their selfness close.

You want a face? Take it. There are so many here, and those who cannot hold them, well, whoever chose to give them such a gift must take the blame, knowing they could never keep it in a world of so much thieving strangeness.

And soon enough they will forget they ever even had one, rest assured; it’s best to step the dance and keep your face  secured as much as you are ab(le). 

Just. Keep. Running.

Your feet- or are they just the shoes with emptiness within?- will pound upon the creaking wood of carousel-top, or perhaps the only ground there’s ever (been), so struggle not to look behind - though can you trust your eyes to tell you quite what it might be that dogs your steps and see the poor procession of those gory, faceless wretches who have lost possession now of all their treasured wants, identities to those who are now them?

Like you.

You tire of the chase, of course, the fire and all-relentless pace of competition reaching for  a name, identity, and face that has long since worn through all reserves of hard, enduring vigor in you. Yet still you only stay a self while willing on your aching legs that feel like breaking just to keep you forward of the frenzied fray of hazy clawed who-are-(yous).

So run. Just run, and listen to the music of your panicked flight from those who long to take what you have stole from those no longer worth a name.

Ever-onwards-forward on the curling (path) of [merry-go-round] that’s twisted, wound, and spinning in its [harrowing sound] of organ-piping-circus-tunes that [merrily hound] the steps of your escape.

Could you turn a thought and burn your lead on your pursuers, an ankle change a charge now perpendicular to your intended line of best retreat, and stake it all on one last hope, your bruised feet pounding to the edge?

The boundary. Don’t stop the ride, but you still want to get off.

But no, for all the dreams of bounding, leaping off into the great unknown, you see the ring of broken mewling wretches who have shown the sting that comes with such rejection of the truth, so seldom spoken yet inside you all- that there is no way off the merry-go-round.

And so perhaps the twirling round that pushes all who passenger the carousel might help you stay ahead, and so you seize the rough and peeling pole of ancient wooden horse, ignore the sloughing, screaming wood that comes away in clumps, and grip the saddle hard, in hands that should be clean but now have never seen a day they were not caked in glue and slaked with blood of all the robberies existence deems the only way to live.

Ride away. Just ride away.

Up it goes. Down it comes.

Hold [fast to the joy of the rise], despise all thoughts you might descend. And in the end, protest against that fall back down to painted wooden spinning earth, with all the tear-streaked grasping of the mass of gasping, still unnamed oppressed.

Cry to the horse, Go higher! Faster, offer painted apples that you think perhaps it might desire, but the frozen face is still the same, the simple cast of equine terror, framed and caught in wood and plastic bulging eyes of fear.

Its pace remaining as it ever was; it does not care for coming pains as you are torn.

Doesn’t it know who you are? No.

And soon, neither will you. Although to call it “all is lost” is more dramatic, yes, than has been earned. For those upon this carousel who have not been you already, perhaps they know without a memory how good it is to have a face and name.

It’s not the same as what you had when first you climbed the brightly painted stairs, but not the worst who you have been. And as the horse drops through the air into the crowd of eager, waiting thieves you are unbowed and, yes, afraid, but still the music plays, and turns the world upon its gaudy ax(is).

You will be someone again, someday.

The hands and fingers reach and breach the gentle veiled complacency and respite that had just been yours upon your mount’s ascent, and now the wood is bent and bowed as faceless things who long to be a who pull splinters from the rot of screaming saddle and of rid(er).

You, who feels the mask of sharp and (hard) identity begin its gentle fracture into jagged shards of names that you once were.

I’m still Hannah! you try to scream, but are you? No. Perhaps there’s some Veronica as fragments there, or Julian, or Anya, but- no. You feel the last of names and who you might have been be torn away and borne towards new bod(ies). New pages, blank, determined to be peop(le).

The rotten, ragged rush of fetid fingernails that dig and push and reach around the edges of your face until they scrape against the bone in such a rough, scratched tone, that rocks and echoes through the space that was your mind, and when they peel it from you, like [the skin of an orange, the skin of an apple, the skin of a pig, the skin of a child, the skin of a you], then comes the briefest flash that surely now it’s done, so much perhaps the pain will be somewhat lessened.

There’s no way it could hurt as much as you rememb(er).

But it does, and so, of course, you (scream) and scream and curses foul, obscene will tumble garbled over where there once sat other people’s lips or yours now gone and teeth that once shone yellowed ivory a crimson in the flowing sanguine flood.

And as you lie in agonies and fading dreams of personhood, of knowing who you were and what that might have meant, you hear the bitter whispers of recriminating seekers who have found the treasure of their eager dreams, but see, it seems there’s not enough for all.

And so they fall to frantic ter(ror) and conflict, just as vicious as it was when it was bearing down on you. You lie there in the fugue of vivid pain and feel that gentle rain from violence overhead; some fall dead, or close as this place lets you (lie), for- truly thus to die would be too eager an escape, and listen to the ebb and swell of slow, melodic wail that well you know conducts the flowing rhythm laced into this endless, faceless dance.

At last, a victor breaks away in clinging heartfelt terror of his former comrades, sprinting bold and holding to his skull the severed face that was once yours. Willing it to stick as those who notice try to pick themselves back up and give pursuit to close the gap.

Perhaps you should arise and follow on the things that once you had despised but now have joined. You are, of course, a faceless thing as well, and so should quickly match the pace of those who chase the self-same prey.

But now it is too late; they’ve gone. Their chase will not abate until their former friend is ripped apart in turn. And you have learned to wait.

For there are many faces out upon the carousel, and many names that you might be. So bide your time a while and wait the coming of another one whose fate and face might sit upon your grinning carmine skull.

[So turn with the turn of the merry-go-round and dance to its jolly old song. Who will you be, with a name or three, and a stranger’s face worn wrong?]

[martindykewood]

the prose in this episode is magnificent, and the rhythm of it hit me very hard. i have a keen ear for incidental iambic pentameter and there’s not a lot of that here but there are a good few instances of trimeter and tetrameter, and it feels so natural and so comfortable, which is sort of the point of any iambic meter. it’s smooth and it sounds right and ‘it feels right’. 

so when it’s manipulated so masterfully to tell of things that aren’t right, it just makes it more eerie, because the words are so unsettling but the rhythm is so familiar. especially with the subject matter being what it is, a place that wants to make you feel at home and lull you into a false sense of security when everything is so wrong, it just really drives home that uncanny divide between safety and horror. 

taken by itself, something like ‘the warmth of joy this love may claim to gift’ is just a beautiful and slightly profound phrase, but in context it’s almost self-referential. it’s describing the deceit of the metaphorical shelter of love and the physical shelter of the cabin, but the line itself is performing its own deceitful role, worming inside your heart and taking root, beating in time to cover its true purpose as a vehicle for fear.

it’s a trojan horse. ‘this is no longer a world where we can trust comfort’. we can’t trust prose that’s built from pretty words and rhythms we can feel inside our bones. jon and martin can’t trust cups of tea and they can’t trust their cosy cabin and they can’t trust that their love will be enough to protect them. 

of course, the start of all of this ties in as well: elias’s ritual disguised as a run-of-the-mill statement and tucked in a box from basira. we can’t trust statements, we can’t trust packages, we can’t trust friends. we can’t trust the saccharine comfort of elias’s platitudes, his ‘don’t worry, jon. you’ll get used to it here in the world that we have made’. we never could trust elias, and he has always worn this mask of respectability that translates to safety for most people.

we absolutely, surely cannot trust the heartbeat pattern and the easy flow of his ritual, nor can we ignore it: ‘you who wait and wait / and drink in all that is not yours by right. ... bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is / the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds / and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves / and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies’.

that comfort brought about the end of the world, and it continues to perpetuate the horror in order to perpetuate itself, to feed hope in order to feed fear. false reassurances are a recurring theme in the story of the magnus archives, but they’re also recurring in the way the story is presented to us. the language, the cadence, the acting, the effects; all of it is used to make the story more poignant and more immediate, and it’s very, very effective.

[martindykewood]

literally no spoilers no discussing content obv but this ep fully BROKE the iipl. blew it out of the water

[martindykewood]

hi! i saw ur post abt iambic pentameter in today's episode and i.... don't rly have any idea what that is. u don't have to elaborate if u don't want, of course, i can totally look it up, but i'd love to learn abt it as smth cool u noticed. thanks! i hope u have a nice week! also happy birthday

oh yes im happy to elaborate!! so uh. an iamb is a metrical foot made up of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. so like a lot of two-syllable words are natural iambs: a-lone, a-bove, be-fore, a-head, dis-guise. and an iambic meter is a verse in which the lines consist of a certain number of iambs. 

so iambic trimeter means a line has three iambs, like “our hope in years to come” / “and our eternal home” (isaac watts’ version of psalm 90). iambic tetrameter means a line has four iambs, like “she walks in beauty like the night / of cloudless climes and starry skies” (lord byron, she walks in beauty). iambic pentameter means a line has five iambs.

iambic pentameter is notable for being the standard metric line used in english sonnets. a typical shakespearean sonnet consists of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter following a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. outside of the actual sonnets, though, a lot of classical drama is written partially in verse, and often in iambic pentameter. for example, beatrice’s monologue from much ado about nothing 3.1 is almost a perfectly formulaic sonnet, with slight rhythmic variations:

what fire is in mine ears? can this be true? stand i condemn'd for pride and scorn so much? contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu! no glory lives behind the back of such. and, benedick, love on; i will requite thee, taming my wild heart to thy loving hand: if thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee to bind our loves up in a holy band; for others say thou dost deserve, and i believe it better than reportingly.

(those 2 “thee”s at the end of lines 5 and 7 are “feminine” endings, where an extra unstressed syllable is added to the end of a line of iambic meter)

so, in his lengthy dramatic monologues, jonny sims includes a lot of iambic meter - mostly trimeter and tetrameter, because just by virtue of being shorter, it’s easier to come across by chance. but occasionally there are incredibly gorgeous instances of incidental iambic pentameter, or deliberate iambic pentamater, i don’t know i haven’t asked jonny. i think it’s equally likely that it’s purposeful or accidental, considering how highly i esteem jonny’s writing, and my own experiences being that i often write in verse by accident. 

anyway mag164 “the sick village” has eighteen lines of iambic pentameter that i could count listening to the episode six times. some of my favorites are: “the spreading patch of darkness on her back” / “something between a pilgrim and a moth” / “those strips of cloth that never seem to burn” / “the air feels thick and soupy in your lungs” / “this brave new world in which we find ourselves”.

also, just for funsies, here’s a selection of things i’ve said just today that fell into accidental iambic pentameter because i was thinking so hard about it for so long that my brain switched into sonnet mode: “he doesn’t need to go and make it worse” / “nobody knows how any of this works” / “they have their love, and they won’t let it go” / and of course the delightfully thematic: “ my brain is only functioning in verse / just kidding most of that post is in prose / but iambs come so easily to me / i don't know how to turn this setting off / and make my head use words the normal way”

[martindykewood]

Part 2 and now with the question. You have been doing some research into the rhythm of the episodes for lack of a better word and I want to know why I find Upon the Stair and Insomnia to be so similar and why I love listening to them. Also if there is a link that can be dissected are there more episodes i can look forward to that are similar in cadence. 🎙️

!!!!!!!! yeah upon the stair is a good one i think. i haven’t gotten that far in my serious analysis but i remember that one having a really nice cadence. as far as other eps, i don’t know about the empirical data as far as the actual text goes, but here are some with the same sort of feeling of total immersion and transportation and that sort of hypnotic narration: 

88 dig; 99 dust to dust; 103 cruelty free; 108 monologue; 130 meat; 134 time of revelation; 144 decrypted; 147 weaver; 152 a gravedigger’s envy; 159 the last; 160 the eye opens; 162 a cozy cabin; 164 the sick village; 165 revolutions. also i foresee the rest of season 5 following the same pattern but you’ll get there when you get there.

[martindykewood]

hello! i love ur iipl and i was wonderin what ep of tma so far has the most that you've found? im rlly curious as to whether the "lyricism" of the episode has an impact on the iambic pentameter (cos i'd assume that eps like 32 hive or 85 upon the stair would have lots cos they are v poetic but idk) anyway! thanks i think ur analysis of the language is rlly cool!

hi omg this is such a nice and validating message thank you so much!! i haven’t fully indexed a lot of episodes yet, just the first few and the last few, bc to do it i have to sit down and listen to the episode and not do other things while i’m listening, which is very difficult lmao. but the episode with the most so far is mag164, which has 18 lines in iambic pentameter. i’m really fascinated by the differences btwn eps and i’m excited to get more of them done so i can get into some real analysis!!

[martindykewood]

i have no idea what jess and jordan are talking about but jess just said “when airborne fungi take the form of spores” and i had to resist the urge to butt into their conversation to tell her about the iambic pentameter