MAG 4: Pageturner: this was a year after him getting hospitalized after the incident with the desolation, which means he totally had tattoos and also a lot of burns but the only description we’re given is that he looks unshaven, very tired, and that his hair is an “artificial black.” (in the statement givers defense, it was 2 am and a lot was happening) he’s also wearing a “long, dark leather jacket” which he apparently carries lighter fluid in. Dominic Swain, the statement giver, says that if he hadn’t opened the door for Gerry, he’d probably just keep waiting outside Swain’s apartment. Gerry Keay is kind of a weirdo.
MAG 12: First Aid: only statement that mentions his tattoos (which the nurse mistakes for “small black scorch marks”) even though this is before his travels with Gertrude. also says that he has burns all over his body except for his tattoos and that the burns end at a line on his neck that makes it look like he’s wearing a choker. also says he has dyed hair, and is wearing a suit with his jacket on top. it’s the same suit that the lightless flame guy was wearing, which i think means Gerry was doing cult stuff. the nurse also says that Gerry made her very afraid “despite the sheer quantity of painkillers we had given him.” also he shaved!
I’m gonna take that axe of yours, and when it all goes wrong, I’m going down swinging. And when I do, you’d better take the chance and stay out of my way.
I couldn’t reach the walls. I flailed and I grabbed and I shouted, but somehow, it was all just too far away. And I knew all at once that I would float there motionless until I died, and I saw the pointless illusion of the station - of the planet below - all hiding me from the uncaring expanse of the universe, in which I was now eternally trapped. The station was a hollow pretense of a shell that did nothing to separate me from the void. And that cry came again, so loud and long and deep that it couldn’t not be the sound of a living thing, so vast and so ancient that thinking about it made me weep. And I screamed in turn.
Yall ever miss season 1 tim stoker so, so much?? When he was happy and carefree and flirting with everyone within a one mile radius? When he was always trying to get his coworkers to lighten up and enjoy themselves? When he was the quick to smile, quicker to laugh guy? Do ya’ll remember tim stoker before all the anger and bitterness set in because I do and I miss him like hell
*cecil palmer voice* and now my dear listeners, as the sky stares back at us, fear surging in our hearts and minds with a magnitude we cannot singularly comprehend, i bring you, for hopefully not the last time,
I need more violence from yall when you write jonalias “microbursts of homicidal rage” magchard mf has 100% broken a wine bottle over peters head during a funding dispute. Peter was fine of course but it was still a fucking insane thing to do and elias refuses to acknowledge that it happened. Yall call jon feral but elias pipe murdered a dude and then called it an “overreaction”. Hes a rabid fucking animal masquerading as the most boring occultist in the world in a Dolce&Gabbana suit.
One time he shot simon fairchild in the thigh during a debate over “balancing the powers” and they didn’t talk for 20 years. Another time he dumped his cocktail on peter at a party and then broke the stem off and used it to stab him in the chest (because elias is 5’4 inches of BARELY repressed rage and could not reach his throat). No yelling or really visible anger preceded these moments just 0-60 pure violence. Peter called him “eli” to annoy him one time at a budget meeting with the fairchilds and elias stabbed him through the palm with a letter opener and pinned his hand to the table. Jon is a little fucking baby in the woods compared to elias/jonah who used to use his beholding powers to blackmail his way out of prison on assault charges until he discovered the meditative powers of budgeting and microsoft excel. He’s hideously fucking boring until the rabies switch gets flipped and he fucking kills someone with a plastic fork because they cut him in line at a cafe.
Sure jon you rip statements from peoples heads but have you ever gone fucking ape shit after peter said “well they are to me” during a debate on if a turtle was an amphibian or not like it was an actual fucking argument after both beholding powers andgoogle proved him wrong and broken his nose and then tried to beat him to death with a paperweight? No? You’re not feral then
The only reason why elias isnt the slaughter is because he’s too fucking smug and likes to lord shit over people and the slaughter didn’t want to deal with his weasel ass. Thats it.
Ugh ok, not to be all pretentious and fucky about this (especially because I’m not really a theater scholar) but after this episode… oh man. Ok. We know that The Magnus Archives is going to end in tragedy, because it’s cosmic horror and because Jonny’s told us as much. But I think there’s more than that: it won’t just end tragically, it is, i think, fundamentally A Tragedy in the Greek and Shakespearean sense.
And tragedies very often have a point where things very nearly get better. Very nearly work out. Hamlet could have stayed on the pirate ship and escaped to somewhere else and lived out the rest of his days far from Elsinore, and so many lives would have been spared. Romeo and Juliet’s timing could have been just a liiiiittle bit better, and the the fake-death plan might have worked. There’s a line I love from the end of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that goes “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said no. But somehow we missed it. Well, we’ll know better next time.”
And it’s so poignant and ironic because a) R&GAD is an absurdist play, and by genre conventions the characters have no control over their fate and never did, and then b) because it’s a commentary on Hamlet, which is a tragedy, in which the characters do have that moment of choice, and will always choose wrong. Either way, the genre dictates that no, there was no way this was going to go well, and no way it will go better on the next telling. The story will always end badly. There will always be a moment (or several moments) in which you could have said no, and you will always fail to recognize and act on them.
And all of this to say that this conversation between Martin and Jon was probably one of those moments, one of those key pivot points in the tragedy. One of those moments when they could have said “no” and gotten away.
