2021-08-17 22:52:03 ¶ ●

Okay, I don’t know what was going on this morning with regards to Mike Crew, but here is my objective-as-possible report on some of the things talked about. Here’s the overly comprehensive report no one asked for.

Mike Crew’s Character, aka Would I Have Strangled Someone For Thirty Minutes?

I draw on the wiki for this, as 1) I don’t want to do it myself and 2) I might bring my own interpretation into this. The wiki (we can only hope) does its best, as a creation of many people, to only state the facts of things that happen. There is a personality section for many characters, but not for Mike.

“He bound the creature pursuing him to it and devoted himself to The Vast, becoming an avatar.[2] In 2005, he walked by Stephen and Grant Walker’s house and watched their attempts to enter through a window using a ladder. In 2006 he encountered Stephen and Grant again on top of the Tour Montparnasse, the tallest public building in Paris. Using the power of The Vast, Michael transported Grant to a reality where he was alone at the top of an infinitely tall building and had to climb down a ladder, one of his greatest fears.“

We can see that he has already used his powers to essentially create a domain for someone. As we know from Jon’s many statements on actual domains, those are not fun. Evidently, he has already given into his powers and into feeding his patron. Mike even tells us so in his statement: “In the end I threw myself into the arms of that vast emptiness, and I bound my tormentor to the book.“ (MAG 91)

Now, reading the transcript, we see that Mike has already let Jon into his home and given him tea. Only when Jon asks about the scar does he mark him with the Vast. This hardly seems like something a reasonable person would do. (As, of course, if it weren’t done to a half-formed avatar, it would be at least attempted manslaughter if not actual manslaughter.) Mike was being civil, and then apparently Jon was too nosy and Mike strangled him.

Now, this is in character for an avatar. No one appears to like the Eye very much, nor did they like Gertrude, the former Head Archivist (c.f. Jude, Nikola I think?, other Stranger manifestations). So. What Mike did is not reasonable or kind or legal, but it is in line with avatars’ sense of schadenfreude. He wanted to shock Jon, to add to that fear by letting him relax a bit. (Probably. Pardon my subjectivity; I’m a humanities person, not a science person.)

Jonah knew he would do that: “Then it was just a matter of feeding you statements to lead you to a few Avatars I thought were likely to harm you – but probably would stop short of actually killing you. Jude served her purpose exactly as I had hoped, as did our dearly departed Mr. Crew, marking you for the Desolation and the Vast.“ (MAG 160) Which does back up my analysis.

And Jon did not deserve to be strangled for half an hour by Mike. While that is subjective, I don’t really mind.

The Cause of Mike’s Death

Someone said that they thought Mike’s death was caused by beating with a blunt object, á la ‘extended sounds of brutal pipe murder’.

I believe they are thinking of

“[MIKE]

Can I hel– UGHH!

[SHORT-LIVED SOUNDS OF ALTERCATION]” (MAG 91)

Which does sound like Elias’s murder of Leitner and like someone being beaten by a blunt object. Probably Mike was. But he does not die from it. Later we have:

“DAISY

Okay.

[ADDITIONAL SOUNDS OF KICKING]

Doubt he can do it in a coma. Now turn that off, and help me get him in the car. Don’t try to run.” (MAG 91)

Daisy, I think, would know if she had beaten him to death or merely coma. After all, she is Hunt enough to mark Jon here:

“[GURGLES MORE AS DAISY GRABS HIM ROUND THE THROAT]

DAISY

Stop… asking… questions!

That’s how you want it? Fine. You brought a knife. So we go through the voicebox.” (MAG 91)

“…in the hope that having a Hunter in the mix would eventually lead to a confrontation, and setting you up as a killer certainly hastened that.” (MAG 160)

Now, Jonah also says that Mike is dead (MAG 160, see above). So we can assume that

“[GUNSHOT]“ (MAG 91) is Daisy shooting Mike.

We have both the transcript and the content warning (”gun violence”) agreeing that this was a gunshot. Someone has claimed it was a car trunk closing. It certainly sounded more like a gunshot, although I have not heard many. However, we have the murder of Gertrude Robinson (which by Word of God is done with a gun; also a gun cocks very clearly) on tape in MAG 158. We also have other gunshots, too, which sound a bit different from the 91 one, like there’s more space around them.

The gunshot in 91 sounds similar to that. We have a van door closing in MAG 99 when Jon gets kidnapped by Breekon and Hope, which definitely does not sound like a gunshot. We also have a trunk opening in MAG 107, which admittedly doesn’t help much, but we also have more gunshots, which sound similar but not so echo-y.

Also, why would a trunk close when it never had cause to open? Daisy does tell Jon to help her get Mike in the car (see above), but the gunshot comes up in a different recording, to show time passing. The trunk has already closed; it sounds like Daisy is driving them somewhere.

The Ability of Daisy to Hurt Mike

Daisy is, as established, powerful enough as an Avatar to hurt a half-formed one and mark him with the Hunt. We also have instances of many avatars dying by mundane means.

Gertrude Robinson, who, while she did a lot to stop her transformation, was nevertheless under the watch of the Eye for fifty years, got shot. Simple as that. Agnes was hanged; Daisy was shot; Jonah and Jon were stabbed. And while in all if not most of these cases there was a bit of dream logic involved what with death and life and avatardom and emotional bonds, the mundanity level is high. Nikola, who was almost never human herself, was exploded during the height of her ritual. It stands to reason that Daisy, a powerful Hunt avatar, could hurt, if not kill, another.

Someone has also pointed out that we have Adelaird Dekker in MAG 113 saying that “As you know, I am not by any means a Hunter, and if Justin Gough was as far gone as he appeared, it was likely he was no longer human enough for me to remove him without the aid of one.” Implying that at some point in a transformation, you can only be killed by a Hunter. (Which is interesting considering Nikola’s death, actually. Dream logic?)

Please don’t yell at me for this post. I tried to keep it as objective as possible; I hate disproving people like this, but I felt like it had to be objectively researched.

(Do tell me if I can do better or point out something I said wrong; don’t yell at me. Two different things.)