Happy December! Here’s what advent calendars I think the characters in TMA would have!
Jon: Socks, probably. Maybe ties? Something that would be advertised as “top advent calendar to get your grumpy husband 😜”. Martin bought it for him.
Martin: Teabags. I don’t think I need to elaborate.
Sasha: Something really elegant and cool like second hand books or handmade jewellery. She probably saw it on etsy and told Tim about it and he bought it for her.
Tim: One of the shitty aldi own brand ones…. Sasha bought it for him as a joke. (he was even happier with it than sasha was with what he got her.)
Melanie: Some kinda murder mystery one where you get a piece of evidence each day and you have to solve it before the 24th (if this isn’t already a thing it should be)
Basira: A coffee one with different flavours every day. Daisy got it for her.
Daisy: Same as Basira. They both got eachother the same one and they open it together each morning and discuss the flavours…
Elias: He has an original victorian paper one that he’s always used. He lets out a little chuckle every time he opens the pictures. Even though he knows exactly what each of them is.
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.
Recently I’ve been on several very long car journeys with my mum, so of course, I persuaded her to listen to TMA! As a result, here’s how she’s been picturing the characters:
Jon: Older guy, kind of thin, tall but not overly tall, grey hair. (I showed her the popular design for Jon and she literally said “No!! They made him look too cool!!!”)
Martin: younger, shorter, short brown hair, always smiling. (“obviously until things got super serious in the archives… ” ).
Sasha: Average height, midsize, short bobbed darkish hair dyed red. (she said she couldn’t picture sasha’s face, which is kinda poetic.)
Tim: very tall, lanky.
Melanie: very short blonde hair with dark roots, quite petite, quite pretty.
Micheal (distortion): short black hair, pale, haunted look. (I don’t know how she came to this conclusion, we listened to all of his episodes… The heart wants what the heart wants 😌 Although there is a chance that she’s mentally combined both Micheals.)
Gertrude: much older, very short curly grey hair but not in a boyish way, glasses, very short, a bit round.
Daisy: short dark hair, petite, formidable…(“you know, powerful like some smaller women are…”)
Elias: “I can’t picture him, he’s just like… A blob of evil with his evil voice…”
Recently it snowed all across London, so here’s how I think the characters from TMA would find it!
Jon: Goes on about how impractical it is, tells everyone that he’s been late to work because of train delays due to ice on the tracks. (He’s really late because he stopped to make a snowman.) he keeps going out to “get some air.” (everyone thinks he’s chainsmoking but really he just wants to look at the snow)
Martin: Absolutely LOVES the snow. He’s out initiating snowball fights, he’s writing poetry about how ‘the earth is covered with a duvet of icy hopes’ or something like that.
Tim: Having the time of his life! He’s building snow forts and joining Martin in snowball fights.
Sasha: Is also having the time of her life, and is the only reason they managed to build the snow Fort without it falling down.
Basira: Loves the snow, but from a practical point of view it makes doing things really annoying. I feel like she’s got a really cool pair of snow boots though.
Daisy: Doesn’t like it. Coats are bulky and slippery floors make the chase a pain in the arse to do without falling over.
Elias: Loves it… But always goes on about how “Back in the old days the river (Thames) used to freeze over and we’d go out skating on it!” The old days were the victorian era.
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.
Happy New Year’s Eve everyone! Here’s how I think the tma characters would celebrate:
Martin and Jon: Martin seems like the type of guy who’d want to celebrate with a small group of friends, but Jon does NOT. To even this out I think they’d have a very romantic night in with a nice bottle of wine and the fireworks on TV.
Daisy and Basira: Judging by how quick they were to go out for drinks when trapped at the institute I imagine they’d like to go out clubbing for NYE! And they’d totally kiss over dramtically at midnight.
Melanie and Georgie: They’d have a couple friends over and have a house party (approved by the admiral, of course!), and they’d probably write up bingo cards for the coming year.
Tim and Sasha: A nice big party with their mutual friends. Being social and all sorts of things like that!
Elias: He’d watch the fireworks in Central London. Like an insane person.