[ID 1: They were all to me – the suns of my beknighted soul – repose in my weariness – slumber in my sleepless woe. Ill, most ill, with disjointed words, bare and weak, have I expressed the feeling with which I clung to them. I would have wound myself like ivy inextricably round them, so that the same blow might destroy us.
ID 2: So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you – oh, God! Would YOU like to live with your soul in the grave?
ID 3: Georgie: John. If this really is a second chance, please try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. Archivist: (breath) Georgie, I don’t underst–
ID 4: Archivist: I – (sigh)(shaky inhale) Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t feel… inhuman, or… I want to say I’m the same. But I don’t – really know if that’s true. I know I’m different. I feel… more real, somehow.[Basira hms, unimpressed.] Basira: So what does that actually mean? [The archivist sighs.] Archivist: Probably nothing good. [Pause. He takes another, long shaky inhale.] End ID.]
anyway we’re thinking about how both jon and tim are killed in the distortion’s ritual and how jon is able to choose whether or not to come back from death but he wakes up in an episode literally titled zombie and both georgie and basira are suspicious of whether he’s properly alive or not and georgie in particular doesn’t trust his resurrection and doesn’t think he should either and he says he feels “different” and in seasons 4 and 5 he becomes in many ways something other than human, is able to access and return from domains beyond the mundane, and shows himself to be increasingly driven by revenge, which is to say ghost-like… jon and tim died together at the end of season three because that’s what lovers do and something came back out of the end’s domain in season 4 and it called itself jon but it was only a ghost!!!
“So the decomposition thing: some studies have shown that sudden traumatic deaths cause the body to decompose slower, possibly because of the sudden cessation of oxygen to the cells. the theory re medieval ghosts has to do w the body when not decomposing as it should due to trauma (we also see this w the bodies of martyr saints sorr of) that it aligns w this medical theory” - my friend who studies this stuff, they’re very smart and well researched just trust me on this one guys.
also they said that violent emotions like rage/revenge are popular motivators for medieval zombies but really its violent or intense emotions which could include love <3 anyway jon sims is a revenge ghost <3
THE BODY NOT DECOMPOSING AS IT SHOULD DUE TO TRAUMA.. ALSO this goes right back to our discussion of photography and other documentation techniques (e.g. TAPE RECORDING) as ghost machines… bodies not decomposing as they should due to trauma of being recorded or represented -> ghosts…. jon and tim are ghosts because they died traumatically but also they were ghosts from the second tim hit record on that tape at jon’s birthday party!!! it’s ghosts all the way down baby!!!
SO TRUE… literally the epiphany that georgie has when faced with the end, the one that causes her to lose her fear, is that they are all already ghosts!!! holy shit
[transcript: “The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one.” And in an instant I understood. There’s no… difference between the present and the future, no other me that will suffer the indignity of death while I live on. It’s all a single moment, and there’s… there’s no difference between that last moment that ushers us out into oblivion and the one we experience now. The promise of a cold and lonely eternity in the grave would have been a mercy; at least it would be eternal. But everything ends, even the universe, even time. And… that means it has always already ended. / end transcript]
[ID 1: They were all to me – the suns of my beknighted soul – repose in my weariness – slumber in my sleepless woe. Ill, most ill, with disjointed words, bare and weak, have I expressed the feeling with which I clung to them. I would have wound myself like ivy inextricably round them, so that the same blow might destroy us.
ID 2: So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you – oh, God! Would YOU like to live with your soul in the grave?
ID 3: Georgie: John. If this really is a second chance, please try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. Archivist: (breath) Georgie, I don’t underst–
ID 4: Archivist: I – (sigh)(shaky inhale) Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t feel… inhuman, or… I want to say I’m the same. But I don’t – really know if that’s true. I know I’m different. I feel… more real, somehow.[Basira hms, unimpressed.] Basira: So what does that actually mean? [The archivist sighs.] Archivist: Probably nothing good. [Pause. He takes another, long shaky inhale.] End ID.]
anyway we’re thinking about how both jon and tim are killed in the distortion’s ritual and how jon is able to choose whether or not to come back from death but he wakes up in an episode literally titled zombie and both georgie and basira are suspicious of whether he’s properly alive or not and georgie in particular doesn’t trust his resurrection and doesn’t think he should either and he says he feels “different” and in seasons 4 and 5 he becomes in many ways something other than human, is able to access and return from domains beyond the mundane, and shows himself to be increasingly driven by revenge, which is to say ghost-like… jon and tim died together at the end of season three because that’s what lovers do and something came back out of the end’s domain in season 4 and it called itself jon but it was only a ghost!!!
“So the decomposition thing: some studies have shown that sudden traumatic deaths cause the body to decompose slower, possibly because of the sudden cessation of oxygen to the cells. the theory re medieval ghosts has to do w the body when not decomposing as it should due to trauma (we also see this w the bodies of martyr saints sorr of) that it aligns w this medical theory” - my friend who studies this stuff, they’re very smart and well researched just trust me on this one guys.
also they said that violent emotions like rage/revenge are popular motivators for medieval zombies but really its violent or intense emotions which could include love <3 anyway jon sims is a revenge ghost <3
THE BODY NOT DECOMPOSING AS IT SHOULD DUE TO TRAUMA.. ALSO this goes right back to our discussion of photography and other documentation techniques (e.g. TAPE RECORDING) as ghost machines… bodies not decomposing as they should due to trauma of being recorded or represented -> ghosts…. jon and tim are ghosts because they died traumatically but also they were ghosts from the second tim hit record on that tape at jon’s birthday party!!! it’s ghosts all the way down baby!!!
[ID 1: They were all to me – the suns of my beknighted soul – repose in my weariness – slumber in my sleepless woe. Ill, most ill, with disjointed words, bare and weak, have I expressed the feeling with which I clung to them. I would have wound myself like ivy inextricably round them, so that the same blow might destroy us.
ID 2: So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you – oh, God! Would YOU like to live with your soul in the grave?
ID 3: Georgie: John. If this really is a second chance, please try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. Archivist: (breath) Georgie, I don’t underst–
ID 4: Archivist: I – (sigh)(shaky inhale) Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t feel… inhuman, or… I want to say I’m the same. But I don’t – really know if that’s true. I know I’m different. I feel… more real, somehow.[Basira hms, unimpressed.] Basira: So what does that actually mean? [The archivist sighs.] Archivist: Probably nothing good. [Pause. He takes another, long shaky inhale.] End ID.]
anyway we’re thinking about how both jon and tim are killed in the distortion’s ritual and how jon is able to choose whether or not to come back from death but he wakes up in an episode literally titled zombie and both georgie and basira are suspicious of whether he’s properly alive or not and georgie in particular doesn’t trust his resurrection and doesn’t think he should either and he says he feels “different” and in seasons 4 and 5 he becomes in many ways something other than human, is able to access and return from domains beyond the mundane, and shows himself to be increasingly driven by revenge, which is to say ghost-like… jon and tim died together at the end of season three because that’s what lovers do and something came back out of the end’s domain in season 4 and it called itself jon but it was only a ghost!!!
[ID 1: They were all to me – the suns of my beknighted soul – repose in my weariness – slumber in my sleepless woe. Ill, most ill, with disjointed words, bare and weak, have I expressed the feeling with which I clung to them. I would have wound myself like ivy inextricably round them, so that the same blow might destroy us.
ID 2: So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you – oh, God! Would YOU like to live with your soul in the grave?
ID 3: Georgie: John. If this really is a second chance, please try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. Archivist: (breath) Georgie, I don’t underst–
ID 4: Archivist: I – (sigh)(shaky inhale) Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t feel… inhuman, or… I want to say I’m the same. But I don’t – really know if that’s true. I know I’m different. I feel… more real, somehow.[Basira hms, unimpressed.] Basira: So what does that actually mean? [The archivist sighs.] Archivist: Probably nothing good. [Pause. He takes another, long shaky inhale.] End ID.]
anyway we’re thinking about how both jon and tim are killed in the distortion’s ritual and how jon is able to choose whether or not to come back from death but he wakes up in an episode literally titled zombie and both georgie and basira are suspicious of whether he’s properly alive or not and georgie in particular doesn’t trust his resurrection and doesn’t think he should either and he says he feels “different” and in seasons 4 and 5 he becomes in many ways something other than human, is able to access and return from domains beyond the mundane, and shows himself to be increasingly driven by revenge, which is to say ghost-like… jon and tim died together at the end of season three because that’s what lovers do and something came back out of the end’s domain in season 4 and it called itself jon but it was only a ghost!!!
[ID 1: So one of the things I ended up doing with the Winter Soldier was I spent literally ten days just on production with vocals because I wanted to get the sensation of a human trapped inside machinery. So I did a lot of vocal recordings and then processed the living hell out of them to get these tortured, time-stretched human cries of someone who has been so processed that it’s become mechanized at the same time but you can still hear the human in there” (CB).
ID 2: But the only two consistent details across all of them are a particular image of a heavily-pixelated screaming face, and the phrase “the angles cut me when I try to think.“ End ID]
NARRATIVELY SIGNIFICANT, IF THAT MATTERS IN THE FACE OF WHAT IT WAS… quite literally stories are what we tell ourselves to give meaning to the meaningless and tim’s story was a revenge tragedy in which he never succeeded in getting revenge, which leaves only tragedy… like. he wanted to get his brother back, and he never even found out what happened to him. he wanted to kill elias, and elias led him to his death. he wanted to avenge sasha, and the thing that ate her outlived him. WHAT DO YOU DO with someone who orients their whole life towards revenge and then doesn’t get any!!!!!! what do you DO with someone who goes out in a blaze of glory heroically ruining a ritual that you later learn was already ruined anyway!!!! when someone whose life revolves around revenge dies before they revenge themselves, what happens!!! when jon finally drives the knife into elias and says “this is for tim,” is there even anything left of tim to feel satisfied?? is there anything left to avenge???
I know this was probably not intentional in the writing, but it’s Retrospectively Neat that s2 Jon’s fledgling eye powers were warning him to be most suspicious of the only two people (Tim and Martin) who actually succeeded in killing him
I would happily listen to hours of Gertrude and Gerry beating up occultists and disrupting rituals around the world, I love the concept of this mismatched duo… I’m ready for Gertrude Spinoff whenever.
honestly the power of tma beginning with the story of an anglerfish when the horror story itself IS an anglerfish.. it draws the characters in with promises of solvable mysteries, answered questions, fulfilled revenge, power gained, justice served - whatever bait they need to take their places on the stage… but AS SOON as the tape recorder clicks on and the story starts to be told they are trapped in their roles even if they don’t know it yet, caught in the jaws of something that refuses to let them go; they are food waiting to be consumed, ghosts waiting to happen; the minute the story begins is the minute the trap shuts, the minute it becomes inevitable that eventually the characters will look around and realize there’s no way out!!!
