somehow, I kept missing one of the letters in the corner which told me that it was a Township Range Section code like the others. (It’s also been a while, so when I picked it up again yesterday, I forgot the alphanumeric code wasn’t a straight a1z26 until I re-read my notes.)
The whole message reads /R*X=(ty) S=z+x+V T=vo). From that, substituting the code in the TIF file gets you the algebra of /R*2=(4*8) S=1+2+3 T=3*13).
This gets you S6 T39N R16E, which is a blip in California at 41.2389793″N, -120.1534348″W.
I also tested S6 T39N R24E, since it was possible “(ty)” wasn’t indicating multiplication but instead numerals. That spits you out in Nevada at 41°16'44.7"N, 119°14'52.3"W between two other points on the map (41.021093, -119.597453 and 41.292798, -118.426796, respectively).
For the future, the meridian used to situated the RST numbers is the Mount Diablo.
(i will do a “crater crazy” post later this is a conspiracy theory)
so my crazy theory is that Official is a manifestation of Death
... you heard me right. Hold on for evidence.
So we know these things about Official:
-He says Frey would not want to see him
-He has a twin brother and an insane number of siblings, some of whom travel to the surface
-He also has a mother
-He resides almost permanently underground in a place called Exiero (latin for “I have departed)
-He has naturally white hair and pale skin and is super tall
-He is incredibly offended if you call him a vampire
-Official is not his real name
-He is convinced we would not like to know when he will meet him (in response to a question about what he supervises)
-He has books which include Frey’s name at least, but he does not write them
Here’s the theory - Official serves as the god/lord of the underworld while his siblings (specifically Austen and Bronte) serve as psychopomps and bring ghosts and souls to him. Frey, as an immortal being, has come close to death or even died and come back from the dead multiple times. The books could be accounts of the dead, like what Midas consults in Greek myth, and so he wouldn’t write them so much as consult them. Being called a vampire would offend his sensibilities about his own job, in that they cheat death and he deals with the dying.
(I might be willing to postulate that Wander Leaks is Sleep or Hypnos, if we follow greek myth, since Death and Sleep are considered brothers in that tradition, but i think that’s a harder case to make since he rarely seems to get any rest anyway.)
(another thought I have is that Frey’s green eye comes from at least one of these deaths. since she herself has many ties to Norse myth, where Odin gouges out his own eye to gain wisdom, i feel like she could have made that sacrifice and then gotten a new one from Algernon the Green, who i think is the plant making up ‘attle. This would explain her reluctance to talk about the eye and meet Official, who was the reason she lost one in the first place)
woooo boy am i behind. let’s see what’s happened since.... literally everything happened
so apologies first off for not getting something like this out sooner. finals and work have kept me busy, but now it’s summer, so here we go!
-since my last post (on april 23), the chess game has progressed a bit to this point:
Note: the newly moved black knight is called the Officer, thus showing that the pieces do seem to refer to specific people and are not groups (? if that sound confusing, I wasn’t absolutely sure the names referenced people until now, since the two knights are called different names)
- Frey’s portrait has now been filled, and she appears to be wearing a Glowball shirt, holding a human femur, and in a long, grey hallway with numbers rooms. ------Considering Glowball seems unique only to that town in episode 3, for her to get that shirt, Frey has to have been there, meaning that she may have followed the Wanderers for a time?
-------The human femur is clean, at least, but why is that associated with her?
-------What is this long hallway? a testing facility? school? lab? hospital? makeshift dungeon?
-------There’s also a few more crystals on the art (!)
-As for the blog runners, my theory of them being writers is debunked, but officialjim claims that Frey is in a few of of his books. I guess that means Frey is a recurring character in his library, and that perhaps we should look for an archetype she fits in literature (perhaps children’s literature) and see who she is.
------also, during the chess game officialjim mentioned he had to help “the sisters” and when pressed, affirmed that a couple of their sisters were in the same line of work and needed help. not sure what that all means... are their sisters watching a group of people themselves?
-Morse code at the end of messages confirmed WanderLeak’s doing
-finally, before we get into the episode, today wanderleaks posted this. From what I can tell, the message reads “CAN’T UPDATE TILL I FIND A SAFE PLACE. STAND BY.” the missing letters are, in order, AUAIINAACN, and they don’t appear to reference a coordinate through the master key or make a concievable anagram. The best I have for now is that if you take all the letters individually, (auinc), it can rearrange to “cuian”, which means “little dog” in Gaelic and a bunch of other nonsensey words.
THE EPISODE ITSELF (MAILROOM MISHAPS)
- okay so the children are being stolen by a hive mind type thing and its creepy as HECKIN
-Julie, as the first child we meet, has black eyes when she’s losing control. This directly references the Morse from “Into the Frey”, which was EYES OF PITCH STALK FROM THE SHADOWS
Julie is also wearing a glowing crystal like the ones in “Candlewick”, which could be sinister but could also mean all those children were previously captured and managed to free themselves from the Swarm and run away (optimism!!)
-Ok, I didn’t realize until I read the script just now that the Swarm voices are her fellow mailkids. god, that’s creepy.
-I also just want to point out that Tango has an aversion to the concept of lost. Last season Charlie complained they were lost and Tango rebutted that, and in this episode Frey says losing friends is hard and Tango says that she know exactly where Charlie is. This isn’t a psychoanalytic thing so much as an interesting character trait and I love it a lot for Tango and the message behind it.
-Frey has a last name, and it is Stoker. This could be a reference to Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, but its etymology means “fire-raiser” or, from old Gaelic roots, “war trumpeter”. We already know Frey is a hell-raiser (cough biting squops cough), but bear in mind the first Morse of the season is THE SLAIN RISE IN TATTERED GARB SOUND THE HORN OF WAR... idk what this all means but it’s a heck of a coincidence
-the ending Morse code (and thanks to @buildinginferno for helping solve it when I couldn’t earlier this weekend), is ASHES TO ASHES SAYS THE CLOCK.
------this may be a reference to the clocktower in Good Lucky that fell down, or the glowing clock that Nico stole in The Shifting Town
-------this also kind of references the fact that the parents in the Candlewick house are burned out of the photographs
-------it’s really easy to see this as a threat of ending something or time running out, but @buildinginferno also thought it could be a return or renewal or even a reversal. This could mean time is reversed, things are renewed that were once dead (like the zombies and THE SLAIN IN TATTERED GARB) or even (and this is a pet fan theory, so it stretches the limits of this a bit) that the Wanderers themselves will deage or start over somehow (NICO, DO YOU REMEMBER HIM? HE MISSES YOU sounds like a horrible flashback to me)
--------despite that, knowing wanderleaks’ style and his recent frantic stand by, it’s probably about time running out.
tl;dr: the children are possessed and controlled by The Swarm, which handles them through the crystals. The blogs are both sassy but not authors but also own lots of books. Wander Leaks is holding us on standby. I still know squat about chess, so idk who’s winning. Frey is not afraid to hold body parts as weapons and has a confusing, possibly dark, past.
heyooooo im creeped out, are you creeped out? just me? ok
so, before I get into the episode, I want to recap this week’s activity.
-officialjim posted some art with Tango, Jim, and Nico. Frey is still a mass of plants, not a person in her portrait, and there are crystals covering the edges. Nico is covered in stamps, possibly in protest for his late mail. Tango is enjoying a snack.
-wanderleaks answered my ask, saying that his brother (officialjim) follows the threat more than is the threat. Officialjim rebutted, claiming he is the calm after the storm.
-also, they have 14 siblings??? and all from their one mother?? They name dropped Hugo, Irving, and Blake, which are all last names of famous writers Victor Hugo, Washington Irving, and William Blake, leading me to think this is one large family of writers exploring weird things (also explaining wanderleaks’ obsession with Eliot. I bet his name is Eliot. dork.) who have one mother (like unto a Muse - if she is a muse, I’d bet she’s Calliope, muse of epic poetry) As for the number 16, the only thing that could tie in is that’s the number of MBTI types available, but i find that connection highly doubtful.
-still know squat about the video (sorry)
-current chess board (4.19.17)
the black rook is the Bandit and the white knight is the Beekeeper (hey, Matilda)
Now, for the episode and co.
-the episode title references Candlewick from Pinocchio, who tempts Pinocchio to go the the fun island and ends up a donkey. since there were no candles in this episode, I’m inclined to believe the allusion is the important part.
-the gang finds a missing commune of children, which is creepy enough, but the crystals all over the place insinuates that the children became the crystals. Also, this was a gradual process, as some of the art is fresh and the candy good, but the drink was not.
-the parents are burned out of the photographs (why? and why did the crystal at the end spark and burn a bit more?) but the portraits of the children have their eyes scratched out. Since the children probably burned the photos, who scratched the eyes? I can’t imagine the children would do that to themselves.
-----NB: the last Morse Code message was “EYES OF PITCH STALK FROM THE SHADOWS” which could reference this?
-Frey is immortal (! maybe my peter pan theory lives on) which EXPLAINS WHY NO ONE GETS HER METAPHORS why did i not get that.
-The morse code reads “NICO, DO YOU REMEMBER HIM? HE MISSES YOU.” which is CREEEPY but also reminded me of the unidentified THEM from the last episode and the HE that prompted wanderleaks to look into the wanderer’s case. As of yet, the morse code doesn’t seem to predict much, but it is getting more pointed.
TL;DR
-Frey is immortal, the children may be crystals, officialjim and wanderleaks have crazy insane holiday get togethers with their massive family, and some crap is really going down in the post-apocalyptic Northwest
