really resent the popular interpretation of joshua gillespie having beaten the fears, like, i don’t think so! he didn’t get eaten by the buried coffin but the whole bit about “fear can just become as routine as hunger” is saying something very specific, he was traumatised by the entire incident and then he comes to the institute to tell his story where his fear will be fed on by beholding, forever. like i refuse to believe statement givers who didn’t get fed on directly by the archivist didn’t also get nightmares for life, they probably just didn’t get personal dreamscape visits from the archivist. it would track with the amount of loathing the institute inspires. tma very clearly constructs a world where speaking out about your trauma does not help you come to terms with it and begin the process of recovery, it makes it worse. that’s what makes the archivist’s role particularly repulsive. you thought confiding in this person would be freeing, except now you’ll never forget what happened to you, and this will define you for the rest of your life.
I know you warned me not to cross this guy but I owe him money and I laughed in his face, and basically I have no one I care about enough to miss (you included) but you should help me anyway. Here’s a digression about the loneliness of the desert. If you have a shred of sympathy you will help me. Please. Please. Pl
I do wish we’d get Jonah’s statement, but I think it’s neat that nearly everything that we know about him we get from him*. the “statements” that he gave (like mag 40, 160) were actually his own words devoid of the Beholding’s influence, and the ones that he read out (92, 120) were his own intentional picks. even in Elias’s statement, Jonah is in control. this is a nice detail for a character so mindful of his image
* some notable exceptions are letters from his old pen pals, but even then, he allows Jon to read them, so I would still count that as him being in control
’mr spider wants more’ mr spider should shut the fuck up and mind his manners. heck, if someone gave me their literal SON i would sure as hell say think you. mr spider is an ungrateful bitch.
The narrator from MAG 54 is one of my favourite one-off statement givers. Guy who keeps an aggressively open mind because he’d want the same courtesy extended to his appearance and profession and who only appreciates his authority as a tax inspector because it’s the only way someone will listen to him explain tax policy. I love him.
martin would get severed, not because he’s into the idea, but because he super needs the job and will acquiesce to about anything at this point. jon wouldn’t intend to get severed, but he’d be working somewhere at lumon and get promoted to head a different department that requires severance and he’d think “yep :) I’m fine with this :) there’s definitely nothing wrong with this situation that I’m stuffing into my subconscious and it tooootally won’t show up in my behavior the second I’m set to factory reset.” melanie genuinely thinks to herself “being severed will probably be fine, it’s just kinda weird” then comes up the elevator one day with fewer eyes than she went down with. georgie hears the word “lumon” and begins hissing like a cat and chanting death curses.
