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Reviewing time for MAG124 /o/

- There was a delicious echo between this statement and MAG021, in the sense that it had been the first statement involving Simon Fairchild (The Vast! ~Distance~!), with its follow-up interrupted because of… Martin popping up:

(MAG021) ARCHIVIST: […] It might just be a coincidence, but I recall the name “Simon Fairchild” was one of the ones used by– [DOOR OPENS, CHAIR TUMBLES] My god! Martin?! [SOMETHING SQUELCHES] What… What the hell is–? What are these things?! [CLICK.]

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: […] Still no sign of Peter Lukas of course, or Mar– [STATIC] Wait– Wait. [CHAIR SCRAPING] [OPENS DOOR, FAR:] Martin! Martin!

From Martin coming back from his two weeks-long Prentiss siege (where~ he was~ all alone~ and nobody~ had checked~ on him~~~) and forcing himself into Jon’s office, to Jon running out of his own office to finally see Martin again after a week of being back to work (following his six months “coma”). It just… installed, right away, the shift between then and now? It hurts thx I hate it ♥

- *OBLIGATORY LOUD SHRIEKING* since in MAG120:

(MAG120) MARTIN: W… what… What are you doing here, mister Lukas? PETER: Please, call me Peter. MARTIN: N–no. No, I think I’m okay. PETER: As you like. […]

And now:

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: Wh–where have you been, I–I mean, I–I–I thought– MARTIN: N–no, no, I’ve… I’ve been here, I just, er… Y’know. Been busy. ARCHIVIST: Busy. MARTIN: Yeah. ARCHIVIST: … Right. Working for Lukas. MARTIN: N–no, Pe–Peter’s… eh. It’s complicated. ARCHIVIST: … Right.

1°) *weeps loudly* Martin, what the heck happened for you to get on first name basis with “Peter”, now… (Answer: “Relationship Status: It’s Complicated”.) 2°) By contrast, I don’t think we've ever heard Jon ooze quite so much disrespect towards someone. I mean, calling Peter by his last name like this? Jon? Jon??? Even in the previous episode, he was still using first+last names (MAG123: “Working for Peter Lukas.” and it was exactly the same phrasing!!), he tends to use honorifics or mention people through first+last names or first name only, even for monsters… So by contrast, this makes it sound like he’s Out For Blood. Someone is reaaaally not enjoying the idea of Martin working for someone else, uh. 3°) … Martin literally denied working for “Lukas”…?? Is it a matter of “this is not what he’s doing right now”, is it a matter of Martin actually doing something for the Institute/something that is technically not Lukas-related, is it a matter of making a distinction between “Peter” / “Lukas”, is it a matter of a third party being involved? Or… Well. I have Questions And Ponderings about where Martin is (presumably in the Lonely dimension?) and what control he has over his comings and goings… but I also do wonder, since Martin slipped and almost said something when Jon spat Peter’s name, while Martin had been apparently very cautious not to tell Jon anything about his current whereabouts all through the exchange… what if. actually. Peter was there in the room right now and Martin knew it? MAG120 had demonstrated that characters not seeing Peter doesn't indicate that he isn’t actually witnessing events himself, since… he knew how Elias had behaved before revealing himself to Martin:

(MAG120) ELIAS: G– goodbye, Martin. Be seeing you. [DOOR CLOSES] [SILENCE] MARTIN: [LONG EXHALES] [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION] PETER: Must be a relief. MARTIN: H– uh– PETER: Honestly, I thought there’d be more of a scene, but… he always surprises me.

… So, given that Jon is not hiding his annoyance about the mere concept of Peter (and given Jonathan “Bad Decisions” Sims’s luck overall), I… wonder… if this wasn’t Martin almost slipping up to say that Peter was there too, before remembering to not say anything about it? (But even if it wasn’t that during that scene, overall: I’m still wondering if Peter mightn’t be just roaming the Institute and having the time of his life listening to Jon’s complains about him and just. Not showing himself to him. Best way to avoid compulsion and to get on Jon’s nerves.)

- Curiously, the tape recorder got into static mode when Jon spotted Martin – not the distorted screeching sounds from Peter’s appearances (MAG100, MAG108, MAG120): usually, with Peter, there is a “peak” of it during his arrival/departure (well, departure in MAG100; the tape stopped while he was still there in MAG120, and he left through the door in MAG108), and a constant screeching as long as he’s there. Here, there was only a peak of static when Jon spotted Martin and, I think, nothing afterwards? Can’t 100% guarantee it, but I think it was the same static from Jon’s compulsion, which… could mean that it was Jon’s powers which allowed him to See Martin, because he was thinking of him?

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: […] Still no sign of Peter Lukas of course, or Mar– [STATIC] Wait– Wait. [CHAIR SCRAPING] [OPENS DOOR, FAR:] Martin! Martin! MARTIN: Oh. … Hi, Jon. ARCHIVIST: Martin, i–i–it’s… I, I–I haven’t seen you– MARTIN: Yeah. S–sorry.

Or was that Jon’s… “Insight”, like when he knew Tim when would be there in MAG114? He was waiting for Tim, back then, so it was something he already knew; maybe the static here was Jon Knowing right now about Martin’s presence? There was something akin to a ruffling noise, back in MAG099, too, when he mentioned Gerry in relation to Gertrude (something he had never learned prior to that), and I’m not able to tell if it was Jon’s clothes ruffling or actual static… It could be the same thing in all cases, perhaps? … aaaand now that I think about it, the fact that he knew/felt that Basira had a statement in her bag in MAG122 could also be not because he Can Feel Statements Overall Since He Is Tied To Them (smells like food.), but due, also, to that ~Insight~, since same static. Don’t know! Jon, what the eff are your powers, what the eff are you, what the eff do you know about them, etc. But the static in MAG124 could also be unrelated to Jon: Peter’s appearance (with the huge screeching) had been preceded by static in MAG108, while Martin was deciding to ask Basira about Melanie and calling for her to no avail (implying that he was already getting isolated at this point, since Basira heard him call for her afterwards). Static might be showing up when people are getting Isolated/released from isolation, while the sharp distortions are Peter’s sounds specifically? We’re lacking data so far, since we don’t know much about what is happening exactly with Peter’s appearances and that other dimension overall? For example, were Peter’s three appearances in season 3 him sneaking his way into reality (and the tape recorder reacting to the intrusion and his presence because he’s a spook), or Peter swallowing a piece of reality into the Lonely (and the tape recorder reacting because it’s not in the right space anymore)? I wonder, more and more, if there isn't something about time being involved with the Lonely, rather than only space: Peter had made a lot of references to time in season 3, and there was the fact that Basira came in to see Martin as if he had just called her name (despite the fact that the whole Peter-Martin exchange had happened in the meantime)… *squints, once again, at Elias’s clock*

- Anyway, if it wasn’t a coincidence nor Martin’s decision to pop up, and if Peter was behind it: hey Peter, remember about that? :w

(MAG108) PETER: […] And what’s Elias like to work for? Aside from orchestrating unsettling encounters? MARTIN: That’s… that’s a lot of it, to be honest. PETER: And that’s not something you look for in an employer, I assume? MARTIN: Well, he’s… I mean, you just… you’ve just said he’s watching us.

(Jon, if you still can’t meet Peter: blame Martin, it was probably because of this that “unsettling encounters” don’t happen anymore around here.) (Martin had asked for less murder, too!! I still hope that the researchers from 3rd floor are okay >:()

- Yyyyeaaaaah, so Martin basically confirmed that, even though he is unreachable (MAG122: “We don’t see him around the Archives much these days. Best I can figure, he’s working on something with Lukas. […] he comes and goes. He’s busy. Well, he seems it.” / MAG123: “Martin is working very closely with The Lonely, who is, predictably enough, isolating him”), he’s basically here, though in the Lonely dimension/space/whatever?

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: Wh–where have you been, I–I mean, I–I–I thought– MARTIN: N–no, no, I’ve… I’ve been here, I just, er… Y’know. Been busy. ARCHIVIST: Busy.

Is it the exact same place of reality as in Barnabas Bennett’s letter (MAG092), since Barnabas has… ended up as bones? If it is the same one: *screams* about what Martin is risking and/or the implications behind the fact that Martin is still alive so far D: Is it because the Institute/Archives are Beholding’s territory that both spaces are still able to interact a bit? Barnabas had felt the difference (“I know that what is done by those I cannot see might be felt here – I have found glasses broken and pages torn that were not so the night before. It is my hope that if I leave a letter here, in your institute, you might find it, you might be able to save me.”) and Elias had confirmed that his letter had reached Jonah Magnus, so it indeed looks like the Institute/Beholding can pierce through it or act as a bridge or diminish the Lonely’s influence…

- Okay, so regarding Martin himself: it was abundantly clear that he doesn’t want to tell Jon anything about what he’s doing, but also… He was shit at giving Jon reasons not to worry, and we have had ample proof that Martin can be very good at lying (he’d lied to everyone about going to uni for at least seven years before Jon extracted a confession out of him, and gave a stellar performance of getting surprised and hurt and offended when Jon asked him to stay behind in MAG116 in order to lower Elias’s guard, before suddenly turning steel-cold and in control as soon as Elias had left). So. How come Martin Blackwood wasn’t able to convincingly deceive Jon here? Was it because Jon spotting him was a surprise? Was it because Peter had suddenly dropped him back in the Archives as a ~little joke~ (Jon had mentioned Peter right before mentioning Martin)? Is it because Martin is still too weak to Jon / was very tense because he feared that Jon would compulse the hell out of him? Was it because he’s really really uncomfortable with what he’s doing, and fearing Jon’s reaction? Was it because he didn’t even care about being convincing? ;; He wasn’t surprised about Jon being awake and back, so either he had been able to see Jon even though Jon couldn’t see him, either Peter told him about Jon’s return. So… definitely, Martin is doing his thing and it’s ;; worrisome. I don’t think it’s worth hoping that the six past months (and Martin’s current… work…) haven’t messed him up, but I’m not sure that his exchange with Jon was indicative of his current state? It was mostly Martin trying to slip like water between Jon’s fingers, and trying to say the least possible (that part was obvious). So whatever he’s doing, it’s… probably not pretty, or could easily be interpreted as very bad without the full picture… (Martin is not stupid; he agreed to something in the trailer; he probably felt like he didn’t have much of a choice, or that he could get something valuable in exchange, and it clearly sounded like a sacrifice. That doesn’t mean that it’s not probably meant to backfire, but at the same time… he’s not currently being a victim?)

- BUT HAVING JON AWKWARDLY TRYING TO REACH WAS SO PAINFUL AND ~*IRONIC*~, rfdjfvjnfd I’m crying but I’m laughing and I love and I hate it. Jon not used to Martin trying his Best to not talk to him, Jon being the one who is trying to make small talk, Jon asking Martin about his poetry………………………. the stuttering, the long pauses, Martin perpetually trying to announce his departure………….. (And it also highlighted how… Jon doesn’t know much about Martin? He knows that he likes spiders, he discovered (creepily.) that Martin writes poetry (progress!! Jon didn’t say anything mean about it this time around, focusing on the activity rather than the result. Careful, Jon, next time, if Martin Gets Better, he’ll probably ask for your honest opinion about a piece and you’ll be screwed.), he knows that Martin makes tea, he knows that Martin used to write letters to his mother… that doesn’t make a lot of topics to try to grab his attention.) There is still something comforting in the fact that Jon is now trying, though? That he’s aware of what he has lost, and is trying to change, to reach, to inquire about others? Of course, it’s heart-wrenching that it’s not currently working, that the situation has changed, that it doesn’t evolve into communication, that… it might be too late. I don’t feel like it’s getting depressing, though (… not yet maybe.), because there are still efforts coming from Jon, and he seems to be following his decision from MAG117 about trusting and trying even when things don’t come to him naturally anymore. Season1!Jon wouldn’t have bothered. Season4!Jon might be too late for this, but he’s trying, and there is still hope (… for now) that it will matter in the end? (Or, precisely: it will fail, again and again, and the new tragedy will be that Jon and the others never managed to reach out at the same time.) Even with Martin’s departure, I wonder if Jon wasn’t still aiming for something:

(MAG124) MARTIN: … Look, Jon, I, I’ve really got to go, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh, er, okay… MARTIN: I’m, I’m sorry that you– ARCHIVIST: Wowowow, it was… good t–, it was good to see you. MARTIN: … Yeah. [STEPS LEAVING] ARCHIVIST: … yeah… [CLICK.]

The fact that Jon stopped Martin’s reflex to apologize and that “It was good to see you” meant that he wasn’t shutting Martin off, and maybe… throwing out an awkward attempt to give him something to fight off the Lonely? Those words are especially nice, especially caring (like Jon wasn’t asking anything out of Martin but giving something?), and it’s not a sentence that you would have expected coming from Jon’s mouth.

- There is currently a Thing about Jon coming back to his roots as Head Archivist (the statements from MAG122 and MAG123 were at the end of Gertrude’s direction/the beginning of Jon’s) and here, we kinda had a nod towards Jon’s first steps in the Institute… given that “Simon Fairchild” was one of the first cases Jon had studied as a researcher!

(MAG051) ARCHIVIST: […] One of my first cases as a researcher for the Institute in 2012 was looking into the history of a jeweller in Hackney, that had reported cases becoming cracked in the night. Nothing was ever taken but, each morning it would be like a heavy weight had been dropped upon them. Looking into it, it turned out that the jewels had, in the 1930s, belonged to a con artist and fence, who had attracted the displeasure of the local population. When one particularly irate customer threw him out of a fourth-floor window into a crowded street at midday… no one claimed to have seen anything. A minor possible haunting with a decidedly pedestrian backstory, but notable because while I was never able to discover the original name of the con artist, one of his many, many aliases was Simon Fairchild, and it appeared on several business listings around the time. Whether it’s a coincidence or not is something of a moot point at this stage, however.

(YEEEET) So, Simon again. I had stupidly assumed that he might have died in MAG051 (August 2006, expedition to retrieve antiques from a 19th century steam yacht, “The Maria Fairchild”), because there had been no trace of him after the events and the statement-giver had been told by the Captain, when inquiring about him, that “The sea is a dangerous place”. But nop, he was still active in 2012 and it looks like it’s his Thing to just… come and go (after taking someone in the process). Woopsies. But since he’s someone who is tied to Jon’s first steps in the Institute, and that Jon said that:

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: Simon Fairchild is one of the… recurrent figures that I think disquiets me the most. Not simply for what he does, the endless spaces of highs or depths to which he’s so quick to condemn his victims, but… the joy he seems to take in doing so. And I don’t think there is much to this tale beyond that: an evil man tormenting and killing simply for his own pleasure, and to feed the power that sustains him. […] I do not think I ever wish to meet him.

1°) Oh My Gods, Jon, Don’t Bring It On Yourself. (10 episodes later (probably): Jon Meets Simon Fairchild.) (I mean. You know your luck, Jon. Don’t tempt fate.) 2°) The casual shade towards (other) monsters, Jon, please… Hey, old man! Jon finds you stereotypical and too random for his taste. I’m really reassured that Jon is using a few keywords such as “victims”, “evil”, “tormenting”, and that he’s… looking down on him. That’s also good. The less neutral Jon will be about Avatars hurting people, the betteeerrrr ;; (I’m afraid of him getting… used to that dynamic, insensitive to it? Perceiving it as something normal, and mostly concerned about the ~creativity~ displayed?) (Simon had been compared to a “vulture” back in MAG051, and we also had the case of Mike Crew preying on the acrophobic brother back in MAG075… it’s not even specifically a Vast thing (since we’ve also had Elias swooping in as soon as Melanie mentioning being desperate in MAG084, or Peter around Martin) but I’m still nervously laughing that they just. Go nnyYYYOOOOOOOOOOMM as soon as someone vulnerable to their Patron is feeling things.)

- (Simon was fairly recognizable, it wasn’t especially “!!” that Jon went straight to the… meat during the post-statement, and highlighted right away that it was him although he hadn’t been named. It just makes it even more surprising that he didn’t even mention the possibilty of the girl being Annabelle Cane in MAG123. Jon, are you hiding something again? Or are the spiders encouraging you to not think too much about her…?)

- (I’m not mentioning the statement much in itself but: that was dreadful, really loved it, really resenting the fact that the episode just happened to be released when we got snow in Paris, really reassured that I could avoid the tramway during a few days and that I don’t go to the mountains anymore =D)

- nervouslaughter.wav that the statement had a son and his mother (and no father anymore) being close and then drifting away => poof! Martin invoked in the adjacent room. (mARTIN……)

- “It’s been a week and… Melanie’s attitude towards me hasn’t softened” => It sounds like Jon is back to the ~casual~ rhythm of one statement a week, which was more or less his cruising speed excepting for awful accumulations due to Circumstances. That’s a kind of normalcy he can have some control over and it’s a bit reassuring that the statement dependency doesn’t seem to have escalated, what’s with his new… status.

- Still no reference to MAG118 and MAG120’s tapes but That Means Nothing given that Jon tends to overall hide things and to reveal them much later. (He didn’t ask Martin about his mother, at least.)

- (Also: who is currently in possession of the Web lighter right now? And has Jon... stopped smoking, since he woke up.)

- Okay so if they don’t leave the Institute much and kind of live in the Archives nowadays, what are they all doing with all this free time, since…

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: […] No notes or follow-up in the statement, and obviously no research done by myself or… my team. (MAG123) ARCHIVIST: […] The investigation is tricky, I don’t want to impose on Basira and, obviously, Melanie and… Martin… aren’t available, but I did do some light searching myself on Gregory Cox. (MAG124) ARCHIVIST: […] In other cases, I might think for locations noteworthy, might to try to piece together some wider plan. But Fairchild seems to travel far and wide for his victims, with no motivation other than… variety. I do not think I ever wish to meet him. … Of course, even if I did want to do research into the statement, I wouldn’t have any help doing so.

… they’ve never been this bad at doing the follow-ups, holy heck. But ;; Sasha was the one who could hack, Tim was the one flirting his way into records, and they’re both gone. Martin sometimes went to talk to people (and have them weep on him) and he’s unavailable. Melanie is, uh, not keen on helping. Which leaves Basira, who had connections in the police, so mmm. Indeed, if she’s not helping Jon with follow-ups, what is she doing…

- So !!! regarding Basira!!

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: […] And Basira, though she is very willing to talk, still doesn’t seem to trust me enough to let me in on whatever plans she might have – if she has any plans at all, of course. I could… make her tell me, I know that, but… I can’t afford to burn any more bridges.

1°) =D Yeah, Basira said she was “more of a talker” in her first appearance (MAG043). I wonder (due to that “very willing to talk” which sounded like… Jon.) if she’s trying to keep Jon updated with the Institute’s mundane gossip. 2°) I had somehow not considered that Basira could be planning something, and I feel so stupid about it… she’s Basira! Aaaaaaaaaand. I wonder if she’s been researching The Watcher’s Crown by herself? She picked up that their ritual was still a possibility (MAG123), she had been the one to notice the regularity surrounding The Dark’s (MAG108): she’s very good at drawing connections between data to understand patterns. And it would also explain why she’s so cautious around Jon: as long as she has no way to be sure that Jon is against their ritual, as long as she doesn’t know what state Jon currently is in, it wouldn’t be a good idea to share what she has found. Jon by himself hasn’t done much to be reassuring, since he… Knew that she had a statement on her as soon as he woke up, and asked for it even before asking for water. From an external point of view, his awakening made him look more inhuman than human, even though he’s also been quite good behaviour-wise since then… 3°) Jon’s argument for not compulsing her is a tiny (TINY) bit creepy, since he’s thinking about the strategic consequences more than uuuuuuuh, Basira’s feelings on the matter??? But it’s also… typical Jon. The fact he’s aware of consequences is even an improvement compared to season 1? But it’s also highlighting that either the need to know, either the stress of people hiding things from him, is taking its toll on him, and I don’t know how long it will last before he snaps ;;

… I do wonder if that won’t be Jon’s dilemma pretty soon: trying to trust the assistants like he had decided to at the end of season 3, not probing them too much, waiting for them to open up to him when they feel it’s Right, not compulsing the truth out of them (and accepting that they’re taking risks and could get harmed in their own involvements), or… compulsing them hard and extorting what is actually happening (losing what remains of their trust in the process, directing their disgust/hate towards him maybe, but also ensuring that he would be able to save their lives)? I mean, for Jon, Tim just happened. He chose to trust Tim, to give Tim the opportunity Tim sought, and Tim didn’t come back from that. That could change his perspective a bit about his way to try and save the assistants.

(Overall: AHAHAHAHAHA, SOBBING ABOUT MARTIN, WOW THAT WAS SO RUDE. SO, SO RUDE. At this point, only Elias will to be happy to ~see~ that Jon has woken up, uh.)

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