2022-12-04 21:40:28 ¶ ●

One thing that’s fascinating about Daisy as a character is that she’s so powerfully slow. Not in wit or intellect, but physically, as a hunter. She knows her power and she has no need to rush or flail, it’s easy to be calm when you have no difficulty asserting yourself.

This makes it all the more clear when the power slips from her grasp. She rushes, fumbles, makes mistakes. There’s very few times that she slips up, early on at least. Aside from a few select moments she maintains the gravitas and power of a wolf or a bear all the way from her introduction to the coffin, but after the coffin things change.

Basira has every reason to be upset at her change, because after that trauma Daisy becomes a different thing entirely. Her demeanour changes, she speeds up, she’s skittish, she loses her strength. She’s no longer slow and certain but weak and clingy.

It might feel wrong to want that slow and steady person back but relationships are like music and if the tempo changes the balance shifts and that can lead to terrible things, things that cause you to lose eachother.

Am I saying that perhaps if Daisy had somehow managed to avoid traumatisation, keep her tempo stable, that she wouldn’t have had to sacrifice herself?

Maybe.

Even in her early moments of irrationality there is a swift calculation to it, an understanding. If Daisy had been able to keep a grasp on her fierce intellect perhaps the violence of the hunt could have been suppressed!

But no, what use is there in thinking like that? After all, animals can never live as long as humans.

2022-12-07 0:56:53 ¶ ●

How great is the pain of loving someone who’s avoiding you? Too great, I would say. To know why is often little comfort, Jon knew that Martin was working with Peter Lukas but know why does not stop you needing to know why.

To know so much, to know information you shouldn’t, even to be able to know where Martin was, at times! It doesn’t help. It hinders. You could know every piece of factual information in the world but it will never reveal to you the intricacies of human emotion.

Jon’s very soul is embedded with that undying need to understand, to know! And to lose someone who’s always been so open, so understanding to that need, so willing to help, provide any information, conform to his needs… To lose that at such a terrible time in his life? What more could that do that deepen the maddening desire to know and understand WHY.

Martin always thought he understood why, whenever anyone left like that. Obviously it was him, who else would it be? He wasn’t good enough, he didn’t do enough, didn’t give enough. But when he left Jon what cause would he have to believe that he’d think that? Jon, always so sure of himself, so committed, so strong; he’d never be insecure. Martin would be able to leave him to protect him, and I’m sure he believed that Jon would barely miss him.

The pain of a thing like this often lies in the small details, the things you never really notice when they’re happening, but that stab you in the gut when you realise they’re gone. The morning cups of tea, the gentle insights into eachother’s projects, short conversations over hurried lunch breaks, subtly prolonged goodbyes at the end of a workday…

Stumbling into a cold, empty break room where you might once have had a nice chat (out of politeness of course, nothing more… ) to find yourself alone, the kettle still warm, freshly boiled.

The pain of loving someone who’s left is immense, and so much more so when you’ve only just admitted to yourself that that love is there.

2022-12-08 20:31:28 ¶ ●

“I thought you might be lost.” is one of the most delightfully romantic things Jon ever says to Martin.

It’s so devoid of blame, of derision. A truly neutral statement, soft, no touch of sarcasm, no hint of cruelty. A gentle hand reached out to pull him from the depths of the lonely.

Such an unusual phrase for Jon, especially at that time. There’s no definitives, it’s entirely open to correction, open to being wrong. ‘I thought’ not I knew. It comes from Jon’s perspective, he holds himself out to rejection, something that’s hard to do at the best of times.

'you might be lost’, not you were, not you are. He respects that this may well have been a conscious choice, that Martin really could have chosen to abandon him, preferring the lonely to the lack of certainty in their relationship. But it retains the softness and love, the worry and care. He was worried that Martin might not be able to find his way back, but not willing to drag him out of a place he might have chosen to be.

And that’s not even mentioning the softness with which he says it. In an intense moment of great urgency and importance he’s able to drop his fear, stress, and anger, in an attempt to reach the man he loves.

It’s such an elegant moment of love; in a second Jon is willing to let go of the gravity of the situation and put all of his being into connecting with Martin, and when it comes down to it, it works.

2022-12-27 22:04:43 ¶ ●

The things we leave behind are often thought of as irrelevant- it’s not what we leave behind, but who. I would argue, however, that what we leave can say much about how we lived, which leads me onto my point: what did Jon and Martin leave behind?

By the end neither of them really had many belongings. Martin might’ve had a flat during season 4 but the chances of him keeping it or anything in it when moving to the safe house are quite slim. At the point of moving there they each had all they’d be able to carry on a train to Scotland, not leaving much space for sentimentality.

But when the apocalypse started how much of this would survive? The cabin was the epicentre of the change, would anything there really last in a meaningful way, return to normal? But of course they did take some things with them.

Martin jokes about the bandages turning into snakes, so clearly they’ve had issues with some of their own belongings changing based on domains, so even what was valuable enough to bring with them could have been discarded.

Everything that survived the journey with them would have ended up in their makeshift home of the tunnels under the institute. No doubt it ended up spread out through their shared space, a homely mess, but as we all know there was no chance that it would ever last.

As the institute crumbled and Jon bled in Martin’s arms they were lost, evidence of their existence crushed and broken down to dust; but not all of it. Passed off to Basira, abandoned in a location that somehow survived.

One golden lighter with a spiderweb design, and one tape recorder loaded with the last conversation of Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood. Their remains.

2022-12-30 15:21:13 ¶ ●

I can never decide in my mind what Daisy looks like when she succumbs to the hunt, and i rather like it that way. Becoming animalistic, losing that grasp of humanity that even monsters get to hold into us a terrifying concept.

Everyone knows about werewolves- whether or not you pretended to be one as a child everyone knows that to be a werewolf is to be cursed. To be such a beast that you lose control over yourself; and in turn you curse your loved ones by allowing them to watch you turn into something beastial and other.

Those of you who grew up engaged in spirituality will also be aware of the bone aching horror of seeing the wrong spirit in a body. Watching that canine thing look at you with human eyes, say things to you that a creature of that calibre should never be able to articulate, yet it says these things to you nonetheless.

Equally, many know the fear of seeing a thing that may once have been a human and for all intents and purposes appears to be, but again is simply wrong. The soul is misshapen and all that you can see in the eyes of the one you once loved is an undying, uncontrollable hunger. Even the positive actions it takes are to feed the hunger, you can’t trust a person if you do not see a person when you look at them.

Whatever variation of these things daisy became after laying down her life to serve the hunt, it placed Jon, Martin, and most of all Basira in a place of nauseating terror.

To see something that’s wrong, beastly, warped, is enough to hold you where you stand, but to see someone you love devoid of all that really makes them themself? Agonising.