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candychronicles · 3 years

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best damn show // h. shinsou

A/N: my take on the bnharem villain/hero swap collab! this was supposed to be super super short but oops...

CHARACTER PAIRING: Shinsou Hitoshi x F!Reader

WORD COUNT: 3,918

WARNINGS: a half-assed sex scene, mentions of toxic coping mechanisms, bad mental health, alcohol and mentions of sex trafficking

SYNOPSIS: a dangerous villain is on the loose and Shinsou will find out who it is no matter what.

Click here to read more fateful encounters!

Shinsou turned off the TV with a resounding click, huffing in frustration. he had been there last night, seen the carnage, the chaos and pain that was caused by the villain. he didn’t know who they were, what they looked like, what their plan was, but he sure as hell didn’t want to wait to find out. The Hero Commission had instructed every hero to be on the lookout for suspicious activity but all it created was more chaos and distrust in a time when everyone needed to come together to figure out the issue at hand. being the type of hero that he was, one with a quirk that was not necessarily smiled upon, instantly created problems between himself and his team.

it became quite apparent that he needed to step down for a few days. while everyone claimed that it was for personal health issues, he left because he knew that he was being sussed out and couldn’t be trusted. despite trying his whole life to prove that he was a hero, nobody ever seemed to really see that he was one. even Aizawa thought it was best if he stepped away for the time being as tensions continued to rise between coworkers, friends and acquaintances alike.

to be frank, he was sick of being treated like a dog, someone who was there for entertainment and to do the dirty work of the heroes that wanted to keep their shiny crowns spotless. he was sick of being treated like less than scum on the pond, gum on a shoe or even trash littered on the side of the road. there were very few people in his life that truly believed in him and what he could do and while that was normally enough, it wasn’t today. there was someone truly dangerous on the rise, someone who could destroy entire cities if they wanted to, especially with the influence they had, and he wasn’t going to let them get away.

that’s how he ended up sneaking around the site of the initial attack. there was very little evidence there, everything cleared out from the cops, firemen and cleaning crews, but a little flyer about a bar stuck out like a sore thumb between two dull gray cement blocks. he plucked it out with his fingers and examined the barely held together paper, just managing to make out an address.

fuck it, might as well go. the worst that will happen is i get drunk and Kaminari will have to drag my ass back him, but honestly, he’s put me through worse.

with that thought in mind, he strolled to the bar near where the attack happened. the place was small and cozy and certainly not like anything he was expecting. a few people mingled around, chatting and laughing and nobody batted an eyelash when he walked in with his hood up and hands in his pocket. sliding into a chair, he signaled with one hand for the bartender to come and take his order. in what seemed like an instant, a neat whiskey, double, was placed in front of him with a kind nod.

before he had a chance to sip on his drink, another patron slipped in next to him. you were barely paying attention and apologized profusely when you realized you practically pushed him off his chair.

“i am so so sorry! i slid in here like a chicken with my head cut off. have you ever actually seen that happen before? it’s honestly quite terrifying,” you started, laughing at your own antics before continuing, “let me buy you a drink to make it up to you.”

“are you hitting on me?” was the first thing that came out of his mouth as he quirked an eyebrow at you, studying your flushed face and doey eyed expression.

“well, your hood is up so i can’t really see how cute you are. i’m honestly just half assed drunk and feeling extra nice tonight. no flirting here!”

he chuckled before flipping his hood down, cocking his head towards the bartender as he downed his drink in one gulp. you admired his face, the way it barely scrunched up despite the taste, his adam’s apple bouncing up and down.

“one more please! actually, make that two.”

you and Shinsou spent the whole night laughing about what seemed like the dumbest things: how many vertebrae giraffes had in their neck, how many ice cubes you could each fit in your mouth at one time, how crayons were made, and who could take a shot with a straight face. the latter led you two to being absolutely hammered as you stumbled out of the bar at a crisp three in the morning.

“s’nice meeting you S-shinsou! we should do this a-again sometime,” you stated matter-of-factly, laughing at the confused look on his face.

he spent a few seconds pondering the situation before agreeing to meet you here in a few days, sloppily exchanging numbers and hoping that they were right before he walked you back to your apartment, citing that it wouldn’t be fair as a hero for him to not escort you home to your safe spot.

the next morning resulted in a pounding headache as he sat up groggily from the couch, still dressed in all black from the night before. despite not learning anything about the villain that had caused the attack, he had to admit that his night was still nice.

the next few days before you two were supposed to meet up, Shinsou went full vigilante. he spent hours scouring any database he could for underground information about the villain. they were calling themselves “nightcrawler” and they were an internet sensation, spewing opinions about The Hero Commission, how villainous and cruel they were, how people and their quirks were being suppressed by this glamorized shit show. he snorted at the opinions, half agreeing with what they were saying but not so much on the way they were going about the situation.

every lead led him to a dead end. people knew of them but not who they were, what they looked like and certainly not where they were. he was able to gather some minor information from lackeys that claimed a man at an underground fighting ring might know something about nightcrawler but nothing was set in stone.

before he knew it, he was meeting you again at the bar, feeling guiltier than ever for acting like some righteous hero when he was a borderline vigilante at this point. you didn’t seem to care who he was, what kind of job he had or what his boring routine was like. you wanted to hit deep, spilling dark secrets to each other, like how depressed you felt sometimes living a boring life behind a desk, how he felt like he wasn’t really a hero, how you drank to cope with the pain sometimes, how he was doing exactly the same. eventually, he spilled to you how he was technically still a hero but doing some not so legal digging on the side as he got benched due to the distrust because of his quirk.

you frowned as you watched him confess how he felt, emotion after emotion rolling over him in waves, from sadness to anger to confusion to defeat. you sympathized with every word that came out of his mouth, not understanding what it was like to be a hero but hurting with every word nonetheless.

“well, what’s your next move?” you finally asked after a few moments, watching the gears turn in his head as he processed your words.

“i heard through the grapevine that a certain shady underground fighting ring might have some more information on the whereabouts of nightcrawler.”

you prodded him for all the details, grinning in delight when he mentioned the name of where he wanted to go. without saying another word, you yanked him off his feet, throwing cash down on the bar to pay for your drinks as you dragged him out of the place and down only a few blocks. he spent the whole time bewildered and confused but judging by your determined stance and wicked smile, he figured he knew where you were taking him.

the entrance wasn’t anything spectacular. in fact, it was quite dingy, a cellar amongst garbage. you kicked the trash bags out of the way and pulled the doors open, motioning for Shinsou to follow you, pulling the cellar shut tight behind you as you walked down the dimly lit path to another metal door.

knocking twice and then once more, a man eyed you and Shinsou up and down, asking for the password, which you gleefully cheered out. the man grunted then opened the door fully, telling you to enjoy your time. Shinsou jumped when the clang of metal sounded out but was instantly pulled in towards the scene in front of him. there were people all over the place shouting and cheering as two burly men fought in the ring in front of him. none of the people looked like they should’ve been there. people with bright green dyed hair, women in business suits, men lounging around in sweatpants and holey t-shirts, people of all races and ethnicities gathered together to watch.

it was like a scene out of a movie, the chaos and confusion almost being enough to stun a person where they stood, but Shinsou was trained to react to anxiety inducing situations and quickly began scanning around to find the man that might have known what was going on with nightcrawler.

murmuring a quick “stay here,” Shinsou delved into the crowd, spotting the man in charge quite easily, watching the way he cockily examined the fight and all its inhabitants like he owned them.

“hey, we need to have a little chat,” he stated, staring the man directly in the eyes.

“buddy, i don’t know-” the man was cut off as he became enraptured in Shinsou’s quirk.

it took only a few moments before the man was a blubbering mess, but he still wouldn’t crack on who nightcrawler was.

“listen man, she’ll kill me if she finds out i said anything,” he cried.

that was enough information for him to go off and with one final nod, he slipped back into the shadows to find you eagerly cheering on the fight, shoulder to shoulder with a pretty girl with red hair as you two chatted animatedly about what was happening.

“ready to go princess?” he questioned, watching you flush a bright pink underneath the harsh stage lights before you abruptly turned around to smash your lips against his own.

he stood there shocked for a few moments but before you could fully pull away, his lips were back on yours, this time fervent in worship.

the walk back to your apartment was excruciating, kisses being exchanged as Shinsou kept a watchful eye out for any seedy people, especially since you were so close to the latest villain attacks.

when you finally entered your apartment, it was all teeth gnashing together, clothes being practically torn off one another as you explored every inch of your bodies. his hands on your hips, trailing up to tweak your nipples, swallowing your moans with his mouth. your hands tangled in his messy hair, down to the back of his neck to pull him impossibly closer to you, not wanting to miss a moment of him. you didn’t know what he was going through or what possessed him to call you that nickname but you weren’t going to pretend that you weren’t absolutely infatuated with him.

to him, the nickname just slipped. you were so cheesy, so angelic and innocent and yet badass and strong at the same time. the things you went through in life, how you persevered despite it all, made his heart burst out of his chest. it was as if you almost understood him at an atomic level despite only knowing him for a few days. you shared the same morales, the same commonalities, what you wanted to do with your life, how you could change the world if you wanted to. he drank it all up with deep passion, whispering sweet nothings in your ear as he bottomed out inside of you, desperate to hear your moans and whines, to feel you melt underneath his touch.

after what felt like hours and seconds all at once, you collapsed on his chest, drunk off of sex, sweat clinging to your skin like a sheet. you absentmindedly traced your fingers up and down his chest, admiring the swirl of purple hair tufting from his pecs.

“Shinsou,” you started, waiting for his drowsy hum before continuing, “if you could really change the world for the better, would you do it? no holds barred?”

he contemplated you for a moment before responding, “i don’t think i’m cut out to change the world, especially if it means hurting people in the process.”

you hummed in thought before softly whispering, “i think out of any of the heroes, you’d be the one to really change the world. i mean, you’re the one who’s sitting here, kicked out all because the people who you’re supposed to trust with your life can’t even look you in the eye. you’ve suffered so much, struggled so much and yet here you are fighting to catch this villain.”

you paused to collect your thoughts before starting again, “i mean, i don’t know if i could do the whole killing thing. it seems like killing just leads to more killing, and then when will it end? but i don’t think causing a little chaos to get someone’s attention is so bad. property damage to the capitalistic animals that run this country, to the politicians who can look a depressed person in the eye and tell them they should just die, to the people who turn blind eyes to the injustices of this world. i mean, would that be so bad? would that ever really solve anything?”

Shinsou blinked once, twice, three times before shrugging his shoulders.

“i don’t really know if i can disagree with you on that one. i don’t know if i’d ever be able to go against something like The Hero Commission but if i could, i probably would. it doesn’t really matter now though. I’ll probably get kicked out after i find her anyways.”

“her?”

“nightcrawler. the man said she was a woman. it’s not much but it’s a start.”

you hummed in agreement, snuggling up into his side as you began to drift off into sleep, feeling safer than ever in his arms.

the next morning, Shinsou woke up to find out that the man he talked to the night before was dead. you were nowhere to be found and he began panicking before he heard the shower running and you humming to yourself, clearly happy and satisfied with the previous night's actions.

“hey, princess?” he questioned, knocking on the door and opening it to peek inside, watching the steam billow out.

“what’s up?” you asked, peering from around the curtain.

“i’ve got to check something out. i’ll swing by later, yeah?”

you pouted but nodded, blowing him a kiss before closing the curtain to continue your routine.

the walk to the underground club was much shorter than the night before now that his head was clear. there were police swarming the scene but one flash of his hero license and he was let on premises.

a few questions later and he was able to get all the information he needed. nightcrawler apparently found out the man slipped up and sent a lackey to dispose of him. turns out he was also in the sex trafficking business and used the shady underground fight club to hide the even shadier business of women and children. it turned his stomach to hear what was going on but couldn’t help but feel satisfied a sick man like him was no longer around to live.

he spent the rest of the day combing over clues as to who she may be. according to the police, she was there the night he was murdered. rumors spread that she had been planning her next attack as was using the man for intel. how they managed to get that much information but still didn’t know anything about her threw him off more than he could imagine.

before he had a chance to swing back to your apartment, he got a call from the head of his agency asking for a meeting. he swallowed thickly, wondering if they knew what he was doing behind the scenes. a quick ride and he was standing in front of the agencies shiny glass building trying not to throw up.

“Shinsou, good to see you! please, have a seat,” the corporate man stated, motioning for him to sit down across the desk.

he took two large strides and firmly planted himself down, staring the man in the eyes before nodding.

“now, Shinsou, we really appreciate everything you’ve done for this organization, but with the recent rampant villain attacks, we feel it best to place you on temporary leave until things blow over. that may be a few weeks or a few months but we can’t have our agency tarnished by representing someone who is so…”

“villainous?”

“sure, that word could work. i was going to say odd, but nonetheless. all we need you to do is sign right here saying you understand and we’ll make sure to get the checks sent out to you to cover your pay while you’re away.”

he stared at the paper for a few moments before delicately picking it up with his hands and proceeding to rip it in half. he wasn’t sure what caused him to do that but he didn’t care. at that point, he was done being treated like some villain when he was only trying to be the best hero he could be. with a small chuckle at the man’s stunned face, he muttered an “i quit” before walking out of the office with his head held high.

by the time he arrived at your apartment door late that night, he was absolutely panicking. how could he just quit his job as a hero so easily? he fought tooth and nail to be the best version of himself and it seemed to never be enough. he was in near tears when you opened the door, a confused look on your face before you motioned for him to come in and sit down on your couch, offering him a glass of water as you sat waiting for him to speak.

“Shinsou, what’s wrong?” you finally asked with a sigh, placing your hand on his knee to stop it from bouncing up and down.

“i-i quit my job, i just did it. i don’t know what came over me but they wanted to put me on leave and sign some dumb non-disclosure agreement and i just couldn’t do it. they fucked me over so bad and i just didn’t want to be their lackey anymore.”

you signed once more, flopping back into the couch before abruptly sitting up straight, looking him dead in the eye.

“Shinsou, i need to tell you something, okay? and i need you to listen to the whole story before you freak out on me.”

he nodded and that was the only confirmation you needed to continue.

“i’m nightcrawler. before, i was a hero and a damn good one at that. i was trained by The Hero Commission personally to be a faceless assassin. i did their bidding for the greater good, or so i told myself, but the killing became too much for me when they ordered me to kill children. i just couldn’t do it. and so they began framing me, creating me to be the bad guy that they always wanted. they’ve attempted to kill me before but they created a monster instead, someone who can fight and survive even when the odds are stacked against her. that attack that’s being blamed on me? it was them who attempted to frame me. they killed innocent people all to bring me down. the man at the nightclub? i didn’t kill him. i’ve stayed silent for awhile but i’ve been slowly building up my own army, trying to get people to join my side and my cause to fight against the injustices that are being forced upon us. Shinsou, i understand if you hate me for the rest of your life, but i also know you better than i think i should, and i know that you deep down would want to fight with me and for my cause, for the fall of The Hero Commission and the rise of something that would actually put everyone and their quirks first.”

Shinsou stared at you with a blank look in his eyes. you couldn’t tell what he was thinking or what was going on but you waited for him to respond. you would understand if he turned you in, understand if he killed you on the spot, but you secretly hoped that somewhere, deep down, he felt the same way that you did, fed up with being treated like a criminal, thrown to the streets like wild dogs, hunted and chased for sport.

after a few moments, you put your hands out, wrists up and pushed together as you waited for him to restrain you and take you away. he looked at you once again, this time eyes squinted together as if he was trying to figure out what you were doing.

“you can take me in. i wouldn’t be mad.”

“i’m not turning you in.”

you blinked owlishly at him, unsure of where this was going, but before you were able to speak again, he put one finger up to hush you.

“i get where you’re coming from and honestly, your ideas, your plans, they all make sense, but i don’t think i could ever be a part of that. i don’t think i’m the person that ever gets to make change. i’ll always be some outcast, and that’s okay with me.”

“Shinsou,” you started, not sure how to broach the topic, “you’re exactly what we need. a hero who fought so hard to be the best only to get shunned only when you were trying to help. i left the clue about the bar hoping someone would take notice, someone like you, that wanted to fight for a cause that meant something and now here you are. broken, confused, scarred but still strong enough to fight. we need you Shinsou. i need you.”

you held your hand out for him, waiting. you truly didn’t know if he was going to join, if he wanted to become something that he swore he never was, but they pushed him, treated him like scum and it was time for him to fight back. if he joined you, you would make sure he would never be treated that way again. instead, you would make sure he was someone who would always be included, someone who’s opinions and thoughts matter, someone who mattered.

he took a deep breath, fear and determination etched in his face before he clasped your hand in his own, squeezing firmly and looking you in the eye.

“if they want to paint us as villains, let's give them the best damn show we can.”

#shinsou hitoshi #shinso hitoshi #shinsou x reader #shinso x reader #bnharem collab #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #mha

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soveryanon · 3 years

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Reviewing time for MAG194! TwT

- Well, the episode very quickly answered my question about whether Jon&Martin would stay in Jonah’s room a bit or not. I love how the beginning of the episode mirrored Martin and Jon working their way to the top:

(MAG192) [FOOTSTEPS RING AND ECHO AS THEY CONTINUE CLIMBING THE MANY, MANY STAIRS] MARTIN: [LABOURED BREATHING] Okay, okay, hold… hold up, h–hold on, hold on, hold on. [THE ARCHIVIST’S QUICK FOOTSTEPS CONTINUE] Oi, Jon! ARCHIVIST: Uh…? [SOFTLY] Oh, right. MARTIN: Just wait a sec– … Christ, I just need a moment to… catch my breath…! […] What, you’re not tired? ARCHIVIST: Oh no, believe me, I am! It’s just, uh… It’s kind of… difficult not to keep climbing? MARTIN: What, like… you’re being called? ARCHIVIST: More like… pulled. Gently, but very definitely upwards, towards the top. MARTIN: That… could be a bad sign. ARCHIVIST: Probably…!

(MAG194) [FOOTSTEPS DESCENDING THE PANOPTICON STAIRS – THE ARCHIVIST DOING SO MORE RAPIDLY THAN MARTIN] MARTIN: [PANTS] Jon, wai– [BAG JOSTLING] Hey, just wait! [THE ARCHIVIST’S FOOTSTEPS PAUSE AS MARTIN CATCHES UP, AND THE SHUFFLING NOISES FROM BELOW ARE AUDIBLE] MARTIN: W… will you please talk to me? ARCHIVIST: I just, I–I need some air.

Jon rushing, Martin having trouble to keep up (TwT and he had previously mentioned that he was “never leading”, “always following”…), Jon respectively being drawn towards Beholding versus fleeing from it in discomfort.

Small thing, but I love how we could hear when Jon&Martin were going up, and now that they were going down? It was the distinctive sounds of people’s steps going down stairs. I don’t remember hearing the buzzing of the drones in MAG192 (while we could hear them muffled and distant in this scene), so I’m guessing that Martin&Jon were almost reaching ground level when the tape recorder turned on?

- ;; Jon had mentioned that there was “no better”, and that’s also true about safe places…

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: I just, I–I need some air. MARTIN: In the tunnels? ARCHIVIST: … Yes! N–no! I… I don’t know, just somewhere…! Anywhere without that… thing droning horrors, and Rosie staring at us like we’re going to bite her. I just… I need to think.

They don’t have many options, so the stuffy dark tunnels are still a place where it’s easier to breathe compared to the ones directly watched by Beholding…

I’m curious about Rosie’s behaviour – does she identify Jon as someone above Jonah, now, so having the power to hurt her? Or is like in MAG192, when Martin went off her script and she immediately reacted as if he was threatening her?

- Martin’s way of dealing with Jon’s behaviour when he doesn’t understand it still follows the same pattern of beginning with irritation, then heading for pragmatism, and quickly understanding when Jon is hiding something:

(MAG194) MARTIN: All right. All right, we’ll… we’ll go back to the tunnels and regroup. Figure out what our next move is. See… what other options there are. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah. Yeah. MARTIN: Jon? … [WARNING] Jon? ARCHIVIST: I just need a moment. To… to properly… consider things. MARTIN: “Consider” what, exactly?

He quickly picked up on the fact that Jon was shifty and a few steps ahead in the reasoning… and the fact he snapped so fast felt, to me, like he was indeed suspecting that Jon was genuinely considering to take Elias’s place?

* Between “one self-important, floating, hollowed-out terror zombie” and “his whole being just destroyed”, Jonah really is absolutely done for and dead in a way, uh.

* Jon’s phrasing regarding the “pupil” reminds me of the Coffin in relation to Daisy:

(MAG120) ELIAS: He knows the writing on the coffin has changed, though it is still carved deep into the splintered wood: [STATIC INCREASES] “I – Am – For – You.” [STATIC DECREASES] He knows it is not addressed to him, but he reaches down and pulls the chains off all the same.

… And Daisy had still been able to get out.

* It’s interesting, though, that Jon still hasn’t confirmed what his domain is, if it’s supposed to be the centre of The Eye or… something else, somewhere else.

* ;; Martin was blunt and snarky but also… knows his tropes and clichés. He presented Jon’s plan and the end he envisioned as the conclusion of a story, as if it were a script… (I don’t know if there is anything to make of it, but it’s quite interesting that he spitted this in the same episode Annabelle, the Story Spinner, finally made her move/offer.)

* … the “promise” Martin mentioned was likely the one from MAG191, when Martin asked Jon to not do things out of guilt and to actively try to find a solution that would allow him to survive. Given how they both alluded to Jonah… it’s clear that they’re aware that yes, replacing him wouldn’t count, Jonah’s current state doesn’t count as surviving/living. (Which is so ironic for Jonah, since he did everything because he was afraid of dying and wanted to ensure his immortality. But at what costs, etc.)

- “Jon, No”.

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: Would you just listen, please? … I think… I think that I–I could… control it, t–to a degree, I–I could, I could channel the energies, remake things, like I’ve been doing on our journey but, but on a grand scale. MARTIN: And how’s that going to help? You’ve always said you can’t make less fear in the world, you’d… you’d just be moving it around…! ARCHIVIST: But that might still help! I–I could… I could rebalance things, destroy the avatars, make it so that the people suffering most were the ones who–who deserve it…! MARTIN: [SCOFF] And what? Replace them with new avatars from the people who don’t want to? ARCHIVIST: I mean, that has to be better than those that chose it right? Sure, I can’t make it “go away”, but I could at least make it fairer…! MARTIN: [MIRTHLESS SCOFF] ARCHIVIST: The Eye doesn’t care, as long as it gets its fear, it’s happy either way…! MARTIN: [INCREDULOUS] Christ, can you hear yourself? “Make it fairer!” It’s not enough that you’re the “all-powerful Archivist”, you also have to appoint yourself the literal judge of everyone as well?

It’s true that Martin initially wanted Jon to use his powers here and there and change things for the better for people suffering in the domains (and also true, as Jon pointed out, that Martin had encouraged the Kill Bill spree)… but the journey has also demonstrated how all the possibilities relying on Beholding’s power didn’t work. Killing avatars didn’t free victims from the domains, and the domains kept going regardless. Changing a victim into an avatar was still horrible and traumatic and condemning them to another kind of hell. And they had resolved to let people suffer as they headed for the Panopticon because Martin was hoping that confronting Elias would mean a solution to change things on a bigger scale and save everyone, but they know now that that is impossible and there isn’t enough left of Elias to confront in the first place. I’m not really disappointed that Jon would try to grasp at something that feels Less Awful now, and I’m not disappointed that Martin was offended and disgusted about it – I’m just sad for both of them. It also came with a few implications:

* As mentioned above, with the way Jon&Martin described Elias – they agree that being the centre of Beholding is as good as being dead.

* Martin had pointed out, in MAG186, that he didn’t want to keep feeding on people’s misery, and if they didn’t find any solution, he would ask Jon to end him:

(MAG186) ALSO MARTIN: So. What are we thinking? MARTIN: [EXHALE] I’m thinking that I didn’t ask for this. It’s not my fault they’re here…! ALSO MARTIN: True. MARTIN: But I can’t keep existing like this at their expense! It’s not… it’s not right. Whatever happens with Elias, wi–, with the rest of the world… I can’t live on the misery of others. ALSO MARTIN: … They’ll suffer either way. MARTIN: I get it, okay? I, I can’t decide what happens to them, but… I just might be able to decide what happens to me, and… and if it comes down to it? ALSO MARTIN: [SIGH] MARTIN: … I’ll get Jon to destroy me like the others. ALSO MARTIN: You don’t really believe he’d do it? MARTIN: I don’t know. Maybe? ALSO MARTIN: … This took a dark turn. MARTIN: Yeah, but… this time it doesn’t feel like despair. [BAG JOSTLING] It feels like resolve. ALSO MARTIN: Well… hopefully it won’t come to that. MARTIN: Hopefully.

We haven’t heard Martin tell Jon anything about it, so Jon might not know… but it means that if they were to settle for Jon’s idea, then it’d be the scenario where Martin would ask Jon to kill him. So, I wasn’t surprised that Martin immediately opposed that idea on victims’ behalf – he knows very well how uncomfortable it is to feed on people’s misery, and it is something he was only temporarily accepting until he found a way to fix the world.

* I like how it works within the Fears As Oppressive Systems reading: changing who is on top wouldn’t change the system itself. The problem is still the system, and the solution would still be to dismantle/change it entirely.

* … And meta-wise, I’m not sure but I feel like this might be opening up the option and leading towards another Change for the end of the show…? Since Martin felt like a solution based on a “compromise” was horrible, it would be surprising, then, that the show would end with no grand-scale change at all, unless they’re prevented from reaching it at the last moment?

- Overall, their arguments reminded me a lot of MAG154: Jon and Martin were trying to convey something underneath what they were saying, that the other wasn’t fully grasping. In MAG154, what Martin should have heard was that Jon was worried about him, cared about him, wanted Martin safe above everything (it wasn’t “only” about cutting their eyes out and getting free from the Institute, it was mostly about the idea of leaving together). This time around… I’m not sure, but I feel like underneath, it was mostly about Jon and Martin’s respective fears of losing the other?

- That “visual” information when Jon and Martin had entered Elias’s room in MAG192…

(MAG192) MARTIN: What’s wrong with him? ARCHIVIST: Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s the pupil of The Eye…! MARTIN: Meaning? ARCHIVIST: He won.

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: Why won’t you believe me when I say that this isn’t something I want to do? MARTIN: Because I saw your face when we walked into that room! [DESPONDENT] That wasn’t fear! It, it wasn’t even anger. It was envy. And it scared me more than anything else I’ve seen…! [SILENCE SAVE FOR THE TOWER NOISES] ARCHIVIST: … Martin… MARTIN: We’re here to stop this, not… not take it over…! [SILENCE BUT FOR THE DISTANT DRONE NOISES] ARCHIVIST: What other choice do we have? MARTIN: I–I don’t know, all right! I d–, but there is one. Because there has to be.

I do like that Martin is keenly aware of Beholding’s power of attraction on Jon because… after all, is Jon’s reasoning that he might make things better as the pupil of The Eye truly his own, or is it slightly influenced by Beholding itself, trying to make it attractive for Jon? We’ve seen that Jon could get influenced by it – Jon had to fight against his impulses in order to be able to listen to Eric’s tape, and burning Gerry’s page had also been hard for him.

- Martin saying “No” was such an echo of the end of season 4…

(MAG158) PETER: Then do it. Kill him, and help me save the world…! [SILENCE] MARTIN: … No. […] PETER: Martin. What are you doing? MARTIN: I’m… saying no. I refuse! Game over. [KNIFE CLATTERING ON THE GROUND] PETER: Martin, this is not the time for petulance; there are bigger things at stake, here. […] But you do serve The Lonely. MARTIN: Oh, I’m getting there, but if this is the final test or something? Then bad luck. The answer’s still “no”.

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: We can’t just dismiss this. It might be our only option. [SILENCE SAVE FOR THE TOWER NOISES] MARTIN: … No. ARCHIVIST: No? MARTIN: No! I forbid it. [BAG JOSTLING] ARCHIVIST: [INCREDULOUS CHUCKLE] You “forbid it”?

With the situation being of course different: back then, a “no” was still playing the game and making someone the winner of the bet. Now, it’s just pure rejection. (And I love when Martin does that? Just refuses to accept what is offered? There is something very raw, very honest when he does, even though it’s not exactly constructive.)

- Oh Jon, oh Martin ;_;

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: [INCREDULOUS CHUCKLE] You “forbid it”? MARTIN: Don’t laugh at me. ARCHIVIST: Why not? You’re being ridiculous. MARTIN: I refuse to accept that this– ARCHIVIST: Tough! The world doesn’t care what you accept. It just is! It just is. [SILENCE SAVE FOR THE TOWER NOISES] … I’m going out. Ou–outside, I–I… I’ll see you back in the tunnels.

* I feel like Jon didn’t understand how casually harsh he was: pointing out that Martin was “being ridiculous” was an accidental reminder that… Jon can bend a lot of things to his will. Although he is not all-powerful, he has power in this world, can decide what happens to people (he can smite avatars, he can turn victims into avatars, he can “know” things). It isn’t the case for Martin, who can indeed travel safely through domains but can’t change anything by himself.

* ;; And additionally cruel: Martin might have known that the world “doesn’t care”. He had to take care of his mother since he was a child, with no support, to the point that he had to drop out of school, and it didn’t prevent his mother from hating him… and yet, he has also clung to the belief that people’s lives still have worth for what they are (MAG151: “I think our experience of the universe has value. Even if it disappears forever.”).

* It says a lot about Jon’s state of mind, too, that he would spit about it from his position: Jon has been prone to falling into quiet despair this season, over the idea that he couldn’t do anything on a grand scale (“There is not better”, the fact that even “saving” Jordan just put him in another hell and that he resented Jon for what he was able to do…). What Jon said weren’t words of triumph or boasting: those were sad words of anger and resignation over something he hates but feels that he can’t fight against.

* Martin’s silence… I feel like that silence and Jon calming down (still leaving, but clearly conscious that he had overstepped) “told” us so much about the kind of face Martin was making…

- When it comes to the recording: seems like the tape recorder was either on the ground or on Martin, this time around, since we heard Martin’s last words (while the sound of Jon’s footsteps was gradually disappearing).

(MAG194) [QUICK FOOTSTEPS AS THE ARCHIVIST SPEEDS OFF DOWN THE STAIRS] MARTIN: [SHAKY EXHALE] Stupid… Stupid, arrogant…! [SILENCE SAVE FOR THE TOWER NOISES] Jon? J– [SHUFFLING] … Shit!

* The end of the fragment was a bit reminiscent of the end of MAG185, when Martin entered his domain:

(MAG185) ARCHIVIST: Martin? [STATIC RISES] Martin, listen you need to get ready. [FADING] We’re about to enter– [STATIC REACHING A PEAK] MARTIN: Yeah, “my domain”, yes, right, I get it. Dream logic, and timing, heh, apparently! [STATIC FADES] [FAINT EERIE WIND SOUNDS] … Jon? Jon? [BAG JOSTLING] Oh… Shit.

* You would think that Martin had drained up his “shit” rights (especially since he screamed strings of it in MAG163 when running around the bullets, and in MAG179 to bandage Jon after he had been injured by Daisy), but no, he keeps adding new ones to the collection!

* So why that final “Shit”? Was it because Martin realised that it wasn’t a good idea to get separated? Was it because he spotted something or someone? The tape recorder, cobwebs around, Annabelle dangling from the ceiling?

- … Screaming a bit because Jon rushing out to get some air and leaving someone behind is, uh, reminiscent of something.

(MAG080) LEITNER: I have also heard it called Beholding. ARCHIVIST: And I… LEITNER: You belong to it too. ARCHIVIST: I… Uh… I… I think I need some air. [SOUND OF FUMBLING IN DRAWER] LEITNER: We don’t have time for you to have a breakdown, Archivist. [CHAIR SCRAPES ON THE FLOOR] ARCHIVIST: I’m going to have a cigarette. Don’t… [DOOR OPENS] Don’t. [DOOR CLOSES] […] [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER] […] ARCHIVIST: Sorry, I’ve been quit for five years now, but th– [STUNNED SILENCE]

And just like before, someone waltzed in to deprive Jon of the person he was interacting with. Jon didn’t mention smoking this time around but since he quickly calmed down once outside, and decided that Martin was indeed right as soon as he was out… where is your lighter, these days, Jon?

- Once outside, it was chilling how Jon indeed acted a bit all-powerful, right after Martin had accused him of getting a god-complex:

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: [HEAVY BREATHES] Get out of here. All of you. … [STATIC RISES] I said: leave me alone! [STATIC FADES] … [SCOFF] Of course. [SIGH] What do you want? No, I… I know what you want.

Out of anger, he still spilled out his powers to try to get the camera and drones to comply with what he wanted.

(And aaah, the contrast between the way he talks to Beholding things and the way he usually talks with Martin… It was very noticeable how his voice was dryer and snappier when he was alone with Helen, but I like how we can still hear that he has a special “voice” for Martin, even during arguments.)

- … Jon managed to cool down VERY quickly.

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: But maybe you’re right…! … No. No, that’s… [INHALE] Martin’s right. It’s not worth it. … Why am I even talking to you? You don’t even have a mind, not really. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Something to be your focus, your will. Keeping you fed, and placated and content! … You got something to say? [HUFF] Then say it. [CAMERA WHIRRING] Of course.

* He only needed a few seconds to admit that his plan wasn’t a good idea and that Martin had been right to oppose the concept of it.

* I love how Jon has been spitting his disgust and rage at the cameras, drones and Beholding itself since they entered London…

* I love how Jon was aware that his plan would basically mean that he would provide Beholding the satisfaction it wanted. Indeed, in any scenario, that just… can’t be good.

* And I love how his last words before the pre-statement were a bit ambiguous: was the “Of course” about the fact that anyway, the cameras/drones wouldn’t answer (because they couldn’t anyway)? Or was it in reaction to the camera whirring and the build-up of the statement – the idea that “of course”, drones and cameras would swarm around Jon since he was on the verge of giving a statement? Or was it because he felt that the surroundings would give their “answer” through the statement he was about to give?

- As for the statement: it reminds me a bit of MAG180, with how Malcolm wasn’t able to get rid of his abuser – I would have pegged MAG180 as a mix of End/Web/Beholding, this one felt more like Flesh/Web/Beholding, however! The body horror made me grin because Jonny has been playing Resident Evil lately, and the eye and face emerging from the shoulder really reminded me of that imagery. (While during the first few seconds, I thought about Albrecht, but it turned out that a whole body was emerging from Malcolm so… nop, not the same thing.)

I wonder what message Jon got from the statement, though:

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: [DEEP BREATH] Not exactly subtle. But then you never were, were you? Not really. Well. If that’s the most compelling argument you have… [AUDIBLE SMILE] I’m going to go and apologise to my boyfriend…! [CHUCKLE]

Did he interpret it as Beholding telling him it was within him, that Jon could never get rid of it, that it was even useless seeking “love” because Jon had Beholding in his life? Was it about the idea that no matter what, there would always be someone in the “seat” of Beholding’s power? Was it about Jon’s shame, Beholding threatening to reveal his inner thoughts (“I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them all the horrible thoughts you keep deep inside…!”)?

- I love how Jon has shown absolutely no hesitation when it comes to calling Martin his “boyfriend” ;w;

(MAG171) JARED: Oh! And who’s this? Your boyfriend? MARTIN: Hum– ARCHIVIST: Yes. Actually.

(MAG187) HELEN: Sure he can wave away the theoretical idea of people suffering… ARCHIVIST: But if he sees it up close, he might try to get his boyfriend to smite you? HELEN: … Something like that.

Plus the (many) “love” thrown around. Back when they got together at the end of season 4, I thought that Jon would have a bit of trouble putting words on his relationship with Martin, but nop, he’s been very casual and almost smug about it!

- Jon had mentioned that he had trouble in the tunnels, Melanie had reminded him that it was dark, but still, it was very funny to me that Jon began to apologise before understanding that he wasn’t actually talking to Martin:

(MAG194) [DOOR RATTLES AND OPENS] ARCHIVIST: M–Martin? [DOOR SHUTS] Martin I’m… I’m sorry. You… you’re right. [SOMETHING RATTLES] I– … Oh. [CLEARS THROAT] Sorry. Thought you were someone else. CELIA: It’s okay. I, I was actually looking for you.

The way Jon’s voice just changed once he realised.

- And then, it was SUCH whiplash.

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: Why? What’s… Sorry, uh, do you know where Martin– the, the man I–I was with, do you know where he is? CELIA: That’s what I wanted to check! I saw him a while ago, up near one of the trapdoors. I… I didn’t recognise the woman with him? So… ARCHIVIST: The– CELIA: I wanted to check if you were expecting anyone else before I woke the prophets. ARCHIVIST: [SUSPICIOUS] What, what woman? CELIA: I don’t know…! [FOOTSTEP] ARCHIVIST: What did she look like? CELIA: Uh… Youngish, Black, dressed… normal, I suppose? She had a thing on her head, like a… ARCHIVIST: [SHAKY BREATH] CELIA: I don’t known like a, a woolly hat? But… I–I don’t know, it looked a bit weird. ARCHIVIST: … A–Annabelle, hum… CELIA: I didn’t catch her name– ARCHIVIST: Shh-shh-shh! I– Please, I, I need to concentrate. [STATIC RISES] [VERY QUIETLY] Right, Martin, come on, come on… come on, don’t try and do this to me. Not now. [STATIC FADES] Argh! Oh god. Okay, hum…

* Not the first time we had the conditions to fear about Martin’s safety: there had been the Lonely house scare, the fear that Martin would just disappear when Jon was giving a statement and unaware of his surroundings (which… kind of happened here, although distantly), the fear of Martin and Jon not finding each other back right away after Martin’s domain… so it had to happen at some point, uh.

* Well, she had already been described wearing a hoodie in MAG123, but seems like Annabelle has really stopped looking “like a vintage clothing store exploded on her” x”)

* Jon’s gradually rising panic as he slowly understood what might have happened was heartbreaking ;;

* Confirming another difference between the tunnels and a perimeter under the camera’s protection: Jon can still try to use his powers here. When he had tried to compel Salesa, it had not worked at all – no static, no power.

- Jon’s voice, this season ;w; I love how he has such a wide range lately – almost god-like around the drones, tender about Martin, bashful when he apologised thinking Martin was in the room, slightly awkward when it turned out it was Celia, absolutely panicking when he realised that Martin had left with Annabelle and that he couldn’t know about them, aggressive when he snapped at Celia to wake up Melanie&Georgie, anxious wreck with Melanie. I like how he was quick to tell Melanie that it wasn’t the right moment for her to be sarcastic through her choices of words, and how Melanie indeed relented:

(MAG194) [DOOR OPENS AND FOOTSTEPS ENTER] MELANIE: Any luck? ARCHIVIST: [FRUSTRATED] Nothing. I–is Georgie back yet? MELANIE: Not yet. [INHALE] But then she actually needs to go places to look at them. She can’t just… pop up top and check the “big picture”. ARCHIVIST: Melanie, please. … Not now. MELANIE: … Sorry.

Melanie doesn’t like Jon, she said, but that doesn’t mean she revels in his misery and active discomfort, and I like that they have this complex relationship where they can still help each other out (Jon telling her how to quit at the end of season 4, Melanie reminding Georgie that they should help Jon&Martin, and Melanie guiding Jon through what they can deduce from Annabelle and Martin’s departure).

- That was such a nice parallel (and a contrast!) with when Jon had come to ask for Melanie’s help at the end of season 4:

(MAG157) ARCHIVIST: Melanie, I… MELANIE: Jon…? ARCHIVIST: Yeah, it’s… me. GEORGIE: It’s all right, Melanie. Jon, leave. [ADMIRAL STARTS PURRING] ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry, I just… It’s Martin. MELANIE: Jon… don’t… Please. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … No, you’re right, I’m sorry. A–are you all right? MELANIE: Yes! I’m, hum… actually doing okay…! […] It’s, it’s okay. He’s… welcome. As a friend. But that’s it. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Right. MELANIE: But you’re not after a friend, are you, Jon? ARCHIVIST: I need an ally. MELANIE: Then I can’t help you. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I suppose not… GEORGIE: Okay [ADMIRAL MEOWS IN PROTEST], you’re done. [PURRING CEASES] ARCHIVIST: Yeah. [INHALE] Yeah, I am. GEORGIE: Come on, Melanie, let’s get you back to bed. ARCHIVIST: Look after yourself. Both of you. MELANIE: You too. Good… luck, I guess. ARCHIVIST: … Thanks.

Martin just left with a powerful avatar, Jon doesn’t know their intentions, is worried for Martin, doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t have many people around, and goes to Melanie to ask for help. Except this time, Melanie&Georgie have decided that they would help – and indeed, Georgie went to take a look around, and Melanie is (awkwardly) reassuring Jon.

- Nothing new about what the camera does, it’s the same property that had been previously established:

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: I don’t know what’s next. MARTIN: What…? But, like, you, you can see “literally everything”, so– ARCHIVIST: I–I can, but i–it’s a blind spot! No idea why; I–I didn’t realise until we got closer, and I was looking at our route, but… I can’t see the area after the necropolis. None of it; it’s, it’s like the inside of the Panopticon, or, or wherever Georgie and Melanie are hiding. MARTIN: Or Annabelle. ARCHIVIST: … Or Annabelle. MARTIN: You think the others might be there? ARCHIVIST: [DELIGHTED] I have no idea! It’s a mystery! […] MARTIN: Get ready. ARCHIVIST: To do… what? MARTIN: What do you mean “what”? To smite them, if we need to. Wait, hang on, can you even smite people here? ARCHIVIST: I, I don’t think so.

(MAG181) SALESA: How’re you feeling? MARTIN: [BLOWING AIR] ARCHIVIST: Disorientated. It’s like, hum… li–like I’ve lost my sight o–or, uh… SALESA: Well, you have, haven’t you? [HE CHUCKLES. IT ISN’T THE FRIENDLIEST SOUND] Annabelle tells me you work for “The Eye”. […] Your powers won’t work here, Jonathan Sims, Head-Archivist-of-the-Magnus-Institute-London! The Eye can’t see this place…! […] an old broken camera. One that through some… quirk had the ability to hide you from the Powers…! It was in the possession of another scared old man, one who had long been running from his own supernatural debts. I believe it operates as a sort of, uh, battery, charging itself on all the quiet worries that come from living in hiding, and then when the sanctuary collapses, eh!, all that fear flows out at once. … No doubt if my oasis breaks before I die, The Eye will get quite the feast from me. […] I. Was. Right…! Both about the world, and about the camera: it hid me from The Eye, which, in the new order of reality, also protects where I am from the hellscape all around us. And when I realised that the power moves with the camera, well, hm!, let’s just say I loaded up a truckload of supplies and went on some journeys of my own, before I found… this place.

(MAG194) MELANIE: So, you… you didn’t see them at all with your, you know…? ARCHIVIST: Nothing. They’re hidden. A… Annabelle must have taken the camera. MELANIE: The camera? ARCHIVIST: Uh, from… Salesa’s.

If it is indeed the camera hiding her (since Jon can’t absolutely know about it, and Annabelle has known how to keep herself hidden in the past). Jon had highlighted it, but it’s very interesting that she apparently found a way to stay under the radar since season 4, even when she hadn’t joined Salesa (and the protection of the camera) yet:

(MAG148) ARCHIVIST: Did he say anything about Annabelle? BASIRA: Not really. Sounds like he’s not too worried, though. Says to just ignore it. ARCHIVIST: [SNORTING] Yeah, good luck with that! BASIRA: Any luck finding her? ARCHIVIST: I haven’t really been trying. Doing that sort of thing consciously, it… makes me hungry.

(MAG155) BASIRA: No sign of Annabelle either. ARCHIVIST: You’re still on that? BASIRA: You’re not? ARCHIVIST: … I–I mean, I don’t know how much she can predict or manipulate the future, but I think she’s proven she can at least avoid us finding her.

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: … I think it was Annabelle Cane. MARTIN: Hm. ARCHIVIST: That’s… weird, I, I know The Web was wrapped around that phone, but, but I can’t… see her. A–at all. At least with Georgie and Melanie, I have a vague sense they’re still alive, i–in London, and, or– Well, what was London. [STATIC DECREASES] But Annabelle…? Nothing. [STATIC FADES] Hm.

(MAG167) MARTIN: Do you know where she was calling from? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] No. She… No; she is still… hidden, somewhere, I–I could… see her voice coming down the phone line, but the closer it gets to her, the harder it is to see. … Hm, Christ, this all feels so… obtuse; it’s like I have the power to drink the whole ocean, but I… have to do it through a straw!

(MAG172) MARTIN: … And Annabelle? ARCHIVIST: Still can’t see her. If it wasn’t for the phone call, I’d have said she was probably already dead…! MARTIN: Yeah… [SIGH]

(MAG181) ARCHIVIST: Look. I–it’s no accident we finally meet face-to-face in the one place I–I can’t get any answers out of her. ANNABELLE: [SMUG] I’m sure I don’t know what you mean…!

To the point that even now, Jon conjectured that she was protected by the camera, but we can’t be sure if it’s indeed the case (due to the camera itself, and Annabelle’s credentials when it comes to hiding herself).

- ;_; It was kind of expected since Salesa had mentioned the likeliness of him dying, but still, aouch that he indeed died…

(MAG181) SALESA: I don’t know what you want me to say, it’s a big house and I don’t see her much. Can’t even say which corner she’s made her nest in! Whatever she’s doing… all I can do is hope it doesn’t wreck my little oasis. And if it does… then I hope that by keeping her in good graces, she’ll at least do me the courtesy of killing me first? MARTIN: Mm-mm… SALESA: … Anyway. Let us talk of happier things, or perhaps just take a moment to enjoy not being out there…! […] In the end… I find myself quite happy. I’ve supplies, for a good few years, and then I… plan to take my own life. I think perhaps that’s the greatest blessing the camera can bestow: I – can – die – here. Escape this place. Not yet, of course; and maybe the wine will do me in before I have to take matters into my own hands, but still… it remains a comfort.

(MAG194) MELANIE: The camera? ARCHIVIST: Uh, from… Salesa’s. MELANIE: O–oh. So does that mean he’s…? ARCHIVIST: … Dead. MELANIE: Right. ARCHIVIST: Yes, I… [INHALE] I checked. [EXHALE] I guess she liked him enough to do that for him before she stole it. MELANIE: Remind me not to get on her good side. ARCHIVIST: No, i–it’s what he wanted. What he… said he wanted, but… [FOOTSTEPS] i–it–it means there’s… there’s no way I can find them!

* He went far in the Battle Of The Recurring Michaels (Mike Crew, Michael the Distortion, Mike-as-Tim’s-VA), but still, this Mikaele too got killed off in the end.

* I love Melanie, I love how quickly she pointed out that it was messed up.

* I appreciate Jon’s nuance regarding Salesa’s wish, correcting it into “what he said he wanted”: the fact that he had thought about his own ending (either killed by Annabelle, either by the wine, either by his own hands) and found it a “comfort” that he was able to… was still fundamentally sad and horrible? It’s mostly that, with the world as it is since the Change, it was this or an eternity of torture, and he made his choice while weighting the two… but I like Jon’s precautions, here, with that “what he said he wanted”, and the contrast there is between this and “what he wanted”.

- I really wonder how the scene went and if Annabelle will describe it – Jon immediately assumed that it meant that Annabelle had killed him, but it’s also possible that she warned him that she would take the camera and that Salesa did it himself? (Would still be Annabelle pushing him to it in a way… unless she offered Salesa the option to come with her, protected by the camera, and he declined that.)

If we go with the idea that Annabelle liked him, and killed him as a favour before taking the camera… that’s, uh, a bad sign for the whole state of the world? It kind of implies that no, Annabelle’s plans aren’t to turn the world back or to cast the Fears away – if it had been the case, wouldn’t it have been better for Salesa to accept to suffer hell for a little while before Annabelle succeeded? Unless he didn’t believe that it was possible, unless Annabelle didn’t like him enough to protect him, etc., but hum… if we go with Jon’s assumption that Annabelle killed Salesa as a favour, that’s worrisome for what Annabelle is aiming for on a larger scale, if that death is still a “mercy”…?

- I love the ways Melanie awkwardly tried to reassure Jon, while being clearly uncomfortable with Jon spilling his guts, but that she still understood that Jon was worried sick for his partner and that this was still something she could relate to. And the fact that Jon was now also worried for Georgie!! The fact that she doesn’t feel Fear and that she’s mostly insulated from The Eye doesn’t mean that she’s invincible…

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: [FOOTSTEPS] I–it–it means there’s… there’s no way I can find them! MELANIE: Hey, hey! ARCHIVIST: And I– MELANIE: Hey! Keep it together. Okay? Georgie might have better luck. She’s actually looking in person, and from what you said… ARCHIVIST: Yeah, no, I, I mean– MELANIE: Yeah– ARCHIVIST: –that could work, but… but if she finds them alone…! Uh, I mean, if anything were to happen–! MELANIE: They can handle themselves…! Right? ARCHIVIST: You’re right. Uh, you’re… [INHALE] You’re right. MELANIE: [EXHALE] It’s, it’s fine. I’m worried too.

… I’m Worried about Melanie using “they can handle themselves” as a reason to not be too worried, though, because it sure puts to mind one of Annabelle and Martin’s only exchanges:

(MAG181) MARTIN: We could make her tell us. ARCHIVIST: No, we couldn’t. I don’t have my powers, if it came to a physical fight I really don’t rate our chances…! MARTIN: Hey, I can handle myself! ANNABELLE: But can you handle me? [SILENCE] MARTIN: … I don’t like you. ANNABELLE: I know.

MARTIN…

- It’s less funny for Melanie when she has to hear about Jon’s life when it comes from Jon rather than from Martin, uh.

(MAG190) MELANIE: Yourself? MARTIN: Oh, uh, I’m the antichrist’s plus one. MELANIE: [CHORTLES] Oh, that… that sounds like a rough gig! MARTIN: [SMILING] It has its perks. […] So how are you and Georgie doing? MELANIE: Hm! Honestly? Uh… well. These were not the early relationship hurdles I expected. MARTIN: God, tell me about it…! […] MELANIE: And what about Jon? MARTIN: Oh. You know Jon. He’s a complete mess, but, so am I, and… I think we’re making it work. Communication can be… difficult when you’re on an unholy pilgrimage, hm! MELANIE: Modern dating, eh? MARTIN: [CHUCKLE] Nightmare.

(MAG191) ARCHIVIST: … This is my fault. MELANIE: What? ARCHIVIST: We… We had an argument. MELANIE: Oh… ARCHIVIST: I–I said some things I shouldn’t have, if… if I hadn’t we would have come back here together, and I–I’d have been there to stop her taking him. MELANIE: You don’t know that’s what happened. ARCHIVIST: I mean, he wouldn’t have gone willingly! … Would he? MELANIE: You tell me. You said there was no sign of a struggle. ARCHIVIST: But if it happened in the tunnel, I can’t “know” that! MELANIE: But we’d have heard. Stuff echoes down here. ARCHIVIST: I suppose…! What, so you think he chose to leave with her? MELANIE: Does it matter right now? ARCHIVIST: I mean, if they left together willingly, they could already be miles away…!

(* Extra-dose of awkward for Melanie since she’s kind of reassuring her girlfriend’s ex over his own relationship.)

* Same thing as Jonah using Jon for his ritual: it superficially feels like it could have been avoided in a million of ways… but at the same time, it feels like the end result would have happened anyway, because Annabelle was searching for an opening. If it hadn’t been now, it would have been another time in the tunnels.

* I’m surprised that Melanie and Jon both considered that the absence of a struggle was hinting that Martin had gone willingly… given that it involved a Web agent. As Breekon had pointed out: “The Spider’s always an easy job – no fuss, no complication, everything planned and prepared. It knows too much to truly be a Stranger, but hides its knowing well enough to endure.” (MAG128) It feels like if Annabelle wanted to take Martin out without a fuss, she just could have done that?

- I like how Melanie took over Martin’s role to make Jon think of practical things when Jon is stuck on his own fears and worries. It’s just like in front of the Panopticon when Martin suggested how Beholding might work against Jonah too and had taken actions to enter the building: Melanie tried to evaluate what Jon could “know”, what had happened, what connection they had with Annabelle, what they could conjecture from Martin leaving with her.

- Every time Jon more or less summarises Annabelle as being One with The Web, I’m a bit more mmmm about the concept:

(MAG130) ARCHIVIST: And the question is now simply … how much I trust the Spider to have my… best interests at heart. … Hm. I suspect my assuming it has a heart might be a clue I’m looking at this the wrong way.

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: I–I want to know; can The Web control another avatar, one that serves a different power? HELEN: [HELEN LAUGHS AND LAUGHS, ECHOING] ARCHIVIST: Make them do things they don’t want to, make them… [BREATHING FASTER] find victims, feed?

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: I’m sure the flares will work fine. … I mean, un–unless it’s all some… elaborate… plot… to have us… burn this place down again. BASIRA: So what if it is? ARCHIVIST: I don’t follow…? BASIRA: I mean. Anything we do could be part of the “Grand Master Plan”. So – what, we do nothing? Just… sit on our hands, and hope that’s not what the spiders want? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] […] ARCHIVIST: So, she is… watching the Institute. Interfering with things. … [HUFF] Is that reassuring, or… really, really bad…? I can’t say I’m… [HUFF] I can’t say I’m sad to have another ally allegedly on our side, but I don’t like the idea of being important to The Web. … That’s a really bad place to be…

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: Melanie, could you… could you describe your therapist for me? MELANIE: [CHUCKLING] What? You think I wouldn’t notice if she had cobwebs down her face? ARCHIVIST: … No? […] O–kay. [SIGH] It’s just… The Web can be subtle, you understand? MELANIE: And? For all you know, its plan is to paralyse you with indecision…! ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] MELANIE: Leaving you… sitting here, terrified that… everything you do is somehow all part of its Grand Plan… And who do you think that fear is gonna feed? ARCHIVIST: Yes, well. [INHALE] You are… not the first, to make that point.

(MAG172) MARTIN: [LONG SIGH] Jon, what does The Web want? It’s… I mean, we know it’s got a plan, can’t you just… see what it is? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] “Knowing”, “seeing”… i–it’s not the same thing as… understanding. Every time I try to know what The Web’s plan is, if it can even be called a plan, I see… a hundred thousand events and causes and links, an impossibly intricate pattern of consequences and subtle nudges, but I–I can’t…! … I can’t hold them all in my head at the same time. There’s no way to see the “whole”, the, the point of it all. I can see all the details, but it doesn’t… provide… context or… intention. I suppose The Web doesn’t work in knowledge, not in the same way.

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: So… Annabelle, what are you playing at, what are you doing here? ANNABELLE: I really wouldn’t worry about that. I’m just helping out around the place a little bit. Making myself at home. You know how it is.

(MAG181) ARCHIVIST: [SHARPLY] I don’t intend to accept anything offered by Annabelle Cane. MARTIN: [SIGH] SALESA: Oh, you know Annabelle? [SILENCE BUT FOR CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] ARCHIVIST: … Sort of. You do know she’s part of The Web? SALESA: [SARCASTICALLY] No? I assumed the thread holding her head together was due to a childhood knitting accident! [CHUCKLES] MARTIN: Ha! SALESA: Of course I know she’s with The Web. ARCHIVIST: … And that doesn’t bother you? […] And perhaps you’re now just trying to humanise yourself so we underestimate your next move…! […] I don’t have my powers, if it came to a physical fight I really don’t rate our chances…! […] That’s the trouble with old houses, I suppose. Full of spiders.

(MAG194) MELANIE: So, what other reason might she want him? ARCHIVIST: To get to me? To… turn him a–against us, or–or make him an offer or… I don’t know, she serves The Web! So i–it’s probably some… bullshit domino… cause-and-effect… thing we can’t even begin to guess!

Jon has not been the only one to refer to The Web as the Fear that will always get its way, but every time Jon gets defensive and antagonistic towards it, ready to blame everything on it… I wonder if it’s not a projection of Jon’s own fears and trauma (the fact that he barely managed to escape Mr Spider’s clutch, and that it took his bully instead of him) rather than anything grounded in reality. Knowing that The Web is around is enough for him to get antagonistic, to go spiralling, to refuse to assume anything obvious… and there is such consistency in Jon’s perception of The Web that I have trouble taking it at face value? Is it really the nature of The Web to function on obfuscated plans, or does Jon present it as way more threatening thanit actually is because of his personal trauma…?

(And in return: not sure either that Martin has a full grasp of Jon’s fear of The Web. He has known since season 1 that Jon didn’t like spiders; he didn’t question that Jon would worry about Annabelle; he was aware that The Web could get in people’s head in MAG172 when he refused for Jon to take a look in his mind to see if he was influenced, and had been afraid of the fact that he had began to wander in the domain. But does Martin know that Jon was traumatised by The Web as a kid, that even Jonah thought that The Web had sent Jon towards him for his ritual? Does Martin know about Mr. Spider, did Jon ever tell him? Jon hadn’t told him about how his worst recent experience, the one that had made him feel the most “powerless”, had been at the hands of Daisy…)

- Best sound descriptor of the season:

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: [EXASPERATED] How am I supposed to know? I… I can’t see anything, down here! MELANIE: For god’s sake! Pull your head out of your arse, stop trying to use it as a bloody antenna, and actually try thinking! ARCHIVIST: Just listen, Melanie, I– argh! Ow! [THE ARCHIVIST IS STRUCK, NOT WITH A REVELATION BUT MELANIE’S CANE] MELANIE: Think! ARCHIVIST: Ow…! I don’t know!

MELANIE……………

(It was harsh, but she had a point that Jon was instinctively trying to rely on his powers rather than trying to think things through. Understandable given that he’s worried for Martin, but Jon kind of did the same thing at Upton House, when he tried to compel Salesa to get his story instead of asking it the non-spooky way. The way Jon will instinctively reach for his Beholding powers rather than making a conscious decision to use them every time is a bit worrisome…?)

- YAY FOR HILL TOP ROAD.

(MAG194) MELANIE: Think! ARCHIVIST: Ow…! I don’t know! Somewhere she’d be strong? A, a place of power, a, a Web domain… MELANIE: Yeah… I… ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] MELANIE: I… don’t think there’s anywhere like that in London… ARCHIVIST: No. I–it’s all Eye, one way or another. MELANIE: So, what about nearby? … Hmm? … Uh, Jon? ARCHIVIST: [REALISING] Oh god… MELANIE: Wh… what? ARCHIVIST: … They’re going to Hill Top Road.

* HTR as still being a place-of-power for The Web had been established for a while:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “The compromise we came to… was Hill Top Road. We knew it was a stronghold of The Web, full of other children Agnes’s age.”

(MAG146) HELEN: There is… something wrong, with Hill Top Road. You know it as well as I do. Some strange “scar in reality” at the centre of… whatever it is the Spider is spinning.

But it also means “Agnes”, and “the scar in reality” after her fight with Fielding…

* I’m surprised that Melanie didn’t think of Hill Top Road either, since she had been part of the expedition there in MAG147, had seen the cobwebs, had been there the previous episode when it had been established that they were going there to precisely find Annabelle, since Jon thought she might be, and was also there when it turned out that Annabelle had left a statement in the house. I mean! Where else could Annabelle have gone?

* I’m super excited that Martin is going first with Annabelle since… he hadn’t been part of that expedition in season 4, and I remember the interrogations about whether he wasn’t supposed to go (yet) but was meant to visit the place on his own at some point.

* Following Martin&Annabelle’s trail, for Jon, means directly going against one of Annabelle’s “orders”:

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “Or perhaps I am simply telling you what you need to hear, in order to behave exactly as the Mother wishes you to. [STATIC RISES, GRADUALLY] Perhaps… I have never even seen a beach. Don’t… go to Hill Top Road again.” [STATIC FADES] ARCHIVIST: … Statement ends…! [INHALE] That was, er… I d– … I–I didn’t like that. I couldn’t… [STUTTERING] [CLEARS THROAT]

And he did end up… not coming back, and there was static when she said it (plain old static, which usually indicates that something supernatural is going on). Was it a compulsion, a supernatural order…? Will he have to fight against this to be able to go and enter Hill Top Road again…? Why was he not meant to stay around the house even before the Change, what is hidden there, what was he not supposed to interact with…?

- Annabelle had dangled her “help” to Martin for a looong while this season – the question wasn’t really if but rather when she would finally make her move:

(MAG163) MARTIN: Uh… Jon? [OLD PHONE RINGING] Uh, Jo–Jon, the, uh, the payphone that’s… here, for some reason, it’s–it’s ringing? [OLD PHONE RINGING] Jon, is–is that… [ASKING AROUND] I–is anyone gonna get that? [OLD PHONE RINGING] … Unless it’s for me? [OLD PHONE RINGING] [SIGH] Yeah, it’s for me. Uh… nnno. [OLD PHONE RINGING] N–no, no, I don’t think so, actually! Hum, thanks, but that, that sounds like a really… terrible idea! [OLD PHONE RINGING] Hm, sorry! [SILENCE] … Huh. Wwwell, all right then! [BODIES WADING THROUGH LIQUID] ARCHIVIST: Martin, you need to keep up. It’s not safe. … Martin? You okay? MARTIN: Uh, I… Th–ther–there was a phone – that phone. ARCHIVIST: … Oh. MARTIN: It… Yeah, it was ringing? ARCHIVIST: Oh. Right… Did you answer it? MARTIN: No. ARCHIVIST: Hm. [INHALE] Probably for the best…! MARTIN: Yeeaahh.

(MAG164) MARTIN: Fair point~! Okay, okay, uh, what else, what else, hum… Oh! Hum, uh, who was, uh–uh, phone – hum, wh–who was calling me? [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: … I think it was Annabelle Cane. MARTIN: Hm. ARCHIVIST: That’s… weird, I, I know The Web was wrapped around that phone, but, but I can’t… see her. A–at all. At least with Georgie and Melanie, I have a vague sense they’re still alive, i–in London, and, or– Well, what was London. [STATIC DECREASES] But Annabelle…? Nothing. [STATIC FADES] Hm. MARTIN: W–well, I’ll… I’ll ask her, next time she calls. ARCHIVIST: Well, I know that’s a bad idea…!

(MAG166) MARTIN: For god’s sake…! [WIPING HIS HANDS] [NOKIA RINGTONE, CLEARER] [MUFFLED BUZZING] [BAG JOSTLING] [BEEP] MARTIN: Hello? ANNABELLE: Hello? Is that Martin? MARTIN: Don’t do that. ANNABELLE: What? No stomach for games? MARTIN: Well, your “games” aren’t exactly fun for everyone, are they? ANNABELLE: Very few games are…! MARTIN: [SIGH] Look, look, look, I’m talking to Annabelle Cane, right? ANNABELLE: You never gave me your name – so why should I offer mine? MARTIN: Just, what do you want? ANNABELLE: I want to help you, of course. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … No. Thank you.

(MAG167) [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: Help us with what? MARTIN: ‘xcuse me? ARCHIVIST: Annabelle, help us with “what”? Our–our, our journey, killing Elias, vanishing the Entities – what? [FOOTSTEPS STOP] MARTIN: Please don’t do that. […] She offered to help, but she didn’t say what with; she… asked us where we were going. I didn’t tell her, but… [SNORT] it was pretty obvious she had a good idea. ARCHIVIST: Did you… feel like she was… influencing your mind at all? MARTIN: I don’t think so, but I mean… who knows? ARCHIVIST: I could. MARTIN: But look. She didn’t control me into asking you not to look into my head, if that’s what you’re thinking. That’s all me.

(MAG181) ANNABELLE: Perhaps I just value my privacy. MARTIN: Fine, fine! Why did you call me before? ANNABELLE: Perhaps I thought you could use a friendly voice…! MARTIN: “Friendly”!? You told me Jon didn’t need me! ANNABELLE: Objectively true. MARTIN: [AGGRAVATED SIGH] ANNABELLE: And more importantly, perhaps I thought you might need a little bit of righteous indignation to help you power through the next steps. MARTIN: … I, I don’t like being manipulated. ANNABELLE: Then we probably aren’t going to be friends. […] Don’t worry, Martin. We’ll meet again. Hopefully when you’re feeling a little bit more… open-minded…! MARTIN: I wouldn’t count on it. ANNABELLE: I would. MARTIN: [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: That’s the trouble with old houses, I suppose. Full of spiders. ANNABELLE: You boys better take care of yourselves. I’m sure we’ll see each other again very soon. Here! Why don’t I show you out?

My questions are still: why Martin, and why didn’t she make her offer when Jon&Martin were at Upton House? Regarding the latter: Annabelle had implied that she was waiting for Martin to be in better dispositions (“open-minded”), which wasn’t the case at Upton House. During their previous exchanges, Martin was wary and antagonising towards her, but something kind of changed with this episode: Jon just insisted that they should consider the idea that Jon would sacrifice himself, which was the scenario Martin felt strongly against, and as Jon pointed out… there are now lacking other options.

(MAG186) MARTIN: So. This price. What do you think? Are we going to have to kill Jon? ALSO MARTIN: … I don’t know, because you don’t know. But… it seems like something we should at least consider. MARTIN: … I… have thought about it, and… I won’t. I, I don’t think I could…! ALSO MARTIN: Mmhmm. MARTIN: But anything else? Any other price? I’ll pay it. ALSO MARTIN: Even dying? MARTIN: Yeah! ALSO MARTIN: Jon’s as bad as we are. He wouldn’t let it happen. MARTIN: It’s not his decision. ALSO MARTIN: Fine. So flip that round, then. What are you going to do when he tries to sacrifice himself, because you know he’s going to try? MARTIN: I don’t know all right? [SIGH] I don’t know.

(MAG191) ARCHIVIST: Martin, when the time comes, I need you to promise me that you won’t try to stop me. MARTIN: … I promise. I love you, Jon. ARCHIVIST: [FOND HUFF] I love you too. MARTIN: But I’m not going to doom the world over it. ARCHIVIST: … Thank you. MARTIN: [INHALE] And you have to promise me that you’re going to do everything in your power to live. That you’re not going to… sacrifice yourself at the first opportunity, just because you feel guilty about what happened. ARCHIVIST: [BREATH] … I promise.

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: [QUIETLY] It… it might be our only option. MARTIN: [VEHEMENTLY] What are you talking about?! How, how is it an “option”? Okay, setting aside the fact that it’s a suicidal idea, it’s just completely stupid! What actual good would it do? Right now, as far as I can see, we’d just be… swapping one self-important, floating, hollowed-out terror zombie for another! ARCHIVIST: It’s not like that! MARTIN: Really? Then please, enlighten me. Go on, I’m all ears! ARCHIVIST: Look. Right, when I said that I would “replace” Jonah in there, that’s not… I m– … That place, the centre of The Eye, i–it’s… it wasn’t made for him. That’s why he’s like that, it’s too much, it’s overwhelmed him, his whole being just destroyed…! MARTIN: Oh yeah? But let me guess, it was made for you? ARCHIVIST: Yes! MARTIN: [PETULANTLY] Of course it is! Of course, it is! Because how could this journey possibly end with anything less than the final, supreme destiny of the Archivist, plugged into the great fear machine for all eternity and, and abandoning humanity. Breaking his promise…! […] ARCHIVIST: … Martin… MARTIN: We’re here to stop this, not… not take it over…! [SILENCE BUT FOR THE DISTANT DRONE NOISES] ARCHIVIST: What other choice do we have? MARTIN: I–I don’t know, all right! I d–, but there is one. Because there has to be. ARCHIVIST: But what if there isn’t? How long are we going to wander around hopelessly searching before we end up back here anyway? MARTIN: You were the one that wanted to take some time to think things over…! ARCHIVIST: We can’t just dismiss this. It might be our only option. [SILENCE SAVE FOR THE TOWER NOISES] MARTIN: … No. ARCHIVIST: No? MARTIN: No! I forbid it.

Martin’s initial declaration was precisely that he would refuse to kill Jon, which is not the exact same thing that he made Jon promise when they were resting in the tunnels – that Jon would actively try to find another way than sacrificing himself, and wouldn’t do it out of guilt. Martin also told Jon that he wouldn’t “doom the world” over his love for him, but… deciding this in quiet circumstances is yet again different from being directly confronted by the possibility. So, in any case: Jon&Martin had begun their journey with the intention of confronting Elias (MAG162: “Do you think it’ll do anything? Confronting Elias?” “I… Maybe?” “No, I’m serious. Do we… Is there a chance that we can undo this?” “Gertrude didn’t think so.” “… Right.” “But she’s dead. Let’s find out for ourselves.”), they did reach Elias but discovered that a “confrontation” was impossible anyway, that it might even have been Beholding trying to lure Jon here to take Elias’s place, they don’t have any more info, they’re lacking options and the only potential “solution” presented by Jon isn’t, as Martin pointed out, really one. That’s not utter desperation yet, but still dire enough to understand that Martin would finally be in ~better dispositions~ to hear Annabelle out, even if he’s probably planning to backstab like with Elias and Peter (while knowing that Annabelle knows that he knows that she knows that he knows that she knows… that he doesn’t trust her and will seek any opportunity to neutralise her).

But still, why Martin and not Jon…? Annabelle tried to contact him at the beginning of season 5, and once again addressed him when they left Upton House. Martin had also reacted strangely inside of The Web’s domain:

(MAG172) MARTIN: … Sorry. You were starting another and, I didn’t want to wait. We should get going. ARCHIVIST: Y–you were listening, I… I–I–I thought that you– MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, all right? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. ARCHIVIST: No, you–you shouldn’t have! […] MARTIN: Can we just go, please? ARCHIVIST: Of course, but… You were safe here. And after everything that’s already happened, I… I–I just don’t understand why you would– MARTIN: [SHAKEY] Me neither, okay! ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: I mean, that’s it, isn’t it?! I don’t know! I don’t know why I went exploring! ARCHIVIST: Are you saying you were… compelled? MARTIN: I’m saying I don’t know, do I? I thought I was just curious, it felt like curiosity, but… given where we are, and with The Web everywhere, and Annabelle Cane still out there playing mind games with payphones, I just… [SIGH] I mean, how do you even know if it’s your motivation, you know? Being here… [SIGH] I–it just makes me second-guess all of it, and I… I don’t like it, it… really scares me.

Why does Annabelle and/or The Web seek Martin first and foremost, and not Jon…? Is it only to use Martin as bait to get to Jon, as Jon mentioned, since direct contacts would be more likely to go very badly (he was aware that Annabelle had only decided to show herself when she had the guarantee that Jon wouldn’t be able to use his powers on her, in MAG181: “Look. I–it’s no accident we finally meet face-to-face in the one place I–I can’t get any answers out of her.” “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean…!”), or is it about something inherent to Martin…?

It’s very funny, in a horrible way, because alongside a long list of parallels with the end of season 4 (Jon panicking because a reccurring avatar linked to another Fear has taken Martin in a place that is still a mystery to Jon), we’re also back to the same questions we had back then – why did Peter need Martin specifically? It turned out that he needed him as a dual Lonely/Eye candidate to take control of the Panopticon, which would allow him to win his bet against Elias, Martin’s final decision of whether or not he would take Jonah’s place deciding of the outcome. Does Annabelle need him as a Lonely/Eye avatar? As someone who could also dip his toes in with The Web? As Jon’s anchor?

- There is the question of why Martin followed her, and whether he did so “willingly”… given that we know how The Web interacts with free will:

(MAG056, Trevor Herbert) “she locked eyes with me. The weirdest sensation began to flow through me; I wanted to leave. It wasn’t like with a vampire, where I would feel like I’d been spoken to. This was just a sudden awareness of my own desire. I’d been sober for three years at that point, but I felt like I desperately wanted to get high, and I knew that the best place to get some was out in the night. Looking back, I think it might have been my own mind rationalising the way I felt my will being tugged out of the room, but it was still very powerful. If I hadn’t had a lifetime’s experience of identifying and fighting off the effect of the vampire’s gaze, I probably would have done it, too.”

(MAG059, Ronald Sinclair) “There was something about living there, though, that… dulled the urge. My memories of a lot of my time there are, well… not exactly foggy, but feel almost like I’m watching someone else’s memories. I remember that it sometimes felt like I do things without actually deciding to do them, like it was just muscle memory moving me, or a string gently guiding me. It was never bad, or dangerous stuff, just… things I wouldn’t normally have done, like brushing my teeth. […] Then, without warning, I wasn’t waiting anymore. I had turned around, put down my suitcase, and started walking back towards Raymond Fielding’s house. I didn’t want to go back. I had no reason to go back, but I had apparently decided to anyway, because I knew that’s where I was going. After two and a half years, I was rather used to this feeling, but there was something else there, this time, something in the back of my mind – a frantic scuttling terror. It didn’t do any good, though. I was returning to Hill Top Road, no matter what I might feel about it. Choices didn’t even come into it. The door was unlocked when I returned, and the house was quiet. My eyes darted around looking for anyone who might be able to tell me what was going on, why the fine threads that pulled me through my life had dragged me back here, but I was alone.”

(MAG081) ARCHIVIST: “MR. SPIDER WANTS ANOTHER GUEST FOR DINNER” it reads, “IT IS POLITE TO KNOCK”. I feel my hand closing into a fist and reaching for the door, preparing to rap my knuckles on the grimy old wood. It was at that moment that a hand far bigger than my own slapped the book from my grip, before shoving me hard in the chest and sending me sprawling onto the floor. I was in the park a few roads away from my house. Had I taken the book there to read? Or did I somehow wander there while engrossed in it. To this day I don’t know, but I was in the park, and standing over me was… you know for the life of me I can’t remember his name. […] But as he did so, he flicked through it, and as his eyes passed over more and more of the page, the words tailed off, and he seemed to be reading it himself. His hands shook ever so slightly as he slowly made his way through it, and his legs began to move. It was jerky and unsteady, and he didn’t seem to notice that he was doing it.

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “According to Dexter, Kumo was an old tokusatsu movie which, he believed, had come out sometime in the mid-to-late sixties. It was about a Spider – just the one, despite the title – that grew to a colossal size and terrorised a small unnamed island off the coast of Kagoshima. What struck him about it, though, was the utter absence of anything resembling a hero or a protagonist. No one fought against the monster, and although there were vignettes in the lives of those under the Spider’s shadow, they all ended the exact same way – with the character in question marching slowly, and calmly, into its waiting jaws.”

(MAG123, Angie Santos) “She just mumbled something about custom requirements, and told Greg to drink his latte. Which he did, so he tells me, though… he can’t stand milk in his coffee. […] I haven’t given the name of this mystery client because to be honest, Greg’s never told me. I’ve asked him plenty of times, but whenever I do, he gives me this… surprised look, insists he’s told me before, and then immediately forgets and changes the subject.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “I was about to ask her to wait while I checked with him but as I started to speak, she turned her head, revealing a mass of white thread, criss-crossing all over the side of her temple, standing starkly against the dark brown of her skin. She told me to sit down. And I did. I heard the levers and pulleys move behind me and I could tell that Neil was being walked down the corridor towards this woman… but I couldn’t see. I couldn’t turn my head. […] He called her “Annabelle”, and she sent me to his screening room. She told me I was to watch his original cuts – “Just until we’re all done here,” she said. And as I walked away from Neil, the last time I saw him alive… he was dancing. The cables shifting, and moving him in a graceful, sweeping ballet. And he was crying with joy. I don’t know how long I was watching those films. They don’t… It was hard to keep track of time. According to my daughter, I was missing for five months. When Annabelle let me out, Neil was dead. […] She told me to take the films. His… “original cuts”. She told me to come here. She told me to give them to you. I resisted for some time, but I’m done now. She’s won. And I’d… very much like to go home.”

I’m ready to write off a lot of Annabelle’s statement as things she said to mess with Jon on purpose (it worked.), but we nonetheless got a few demonstrations of Web agents or items being able to make people do things they didn’t necessarily want or that were actively harmful to them, and Annabelle in particular does have those powers according to the statements, so… there are various hypotheses regarding Martin following her:

* No choice at all, just like the kids at Ray’s house – he might be aware of what he’s doing but can’t do anything about it.

* More subtle manipulation along the lines of: he thinks he’s choosing to go, but the Spider is inside his head anyway, so he’s not aware of his own lack of decision on the matter. (Annabelle highlighted that this conception of The Web was a bit of a rabbit hole, since how does one know that their actions are not influenced by anything or anyone, at which point do internal mechanisms stop being just “our” decision? But we got Trevor highlighting what had happened to him, that he could feel that something was pulling strings.)

* Ugly blackmail: there were survivors in the tunnels, Celia was even around (since she saw them), so could have been a case of threatening to harm them if Martin didn’t follow her?

* Nothing supernatural, just the mundane manipulation of Annabelle offering her “help” to Martin when he’s lacking options. As mentioned above, I feel like after the beginning of the episode, Martin would have enough reasons to cling to any new possibility, even if it’s coming from someone he loathes, in case it could lead to a better alternative than Jon’s current one? With Martin thinking/hoping that he could outsmart her in the end?

- Another question is then why Annabelle went to fetch Martin when Jon wasn’t around, and why Martin agreed to leave without Jon…

* It’s interesting that Martin’s departure was still seen by someone, Celia, who could report to Jon. It wasn’t as sneaky as it could have been – so it sounds a bit intentional as a message (making sure that Jon would know that Martin left, and with whom).

* Regarding Martin’s choice: as far as urgency goes, the fact that he left for what-used-to-be Oxford has the added benefit of ensuring that Jon won’t fall into Beholding’s embrace at the top of the tower, because Jon would obviously follow Martin.

* … Timing-wise, it’s extremely interesting that Annabelle apparently went to get Martin while Jon was giving a statement outside. The tunnels are mostly insulated from The Eye (hence Jon mentioning he had trouble seeing and knowing) but it’s not a perfect protection – Jon pointed out that his condition there wasn’t as bad as at Upton house, and we could still hear static when he tried to use his powers while there had been truly nothing at Upton House. Did Annabelle need to sneak in and out when something else was focusing on Jon and wouldn’t notice her? Is it about Beholding? Is it about the tape recorder while it was focusing on Jon?)

* Relatedly: interesting that no tape recorder caught Martin’s departure. We know they’re not affected by the camera, so… is it because they’re Web/Annabelle and didn’t need that information when doing something, is it that they can only focus on one thing at a time, is it because Martin’s privacy mattered in that moment…?

- Once again, What Does The Spider Want but some things I like to keep in mind: we tend to equate “Annabelle” to “The Web”, which is not necessarily true. Jon’s description of Beholding artefacts and their level of consciousness was quite interesting in that regard:

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: … Why am I even talking to you? You don’t even have a mind, not really. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Something to be your focus, your will. Keeping you fed, and placated and content!

The Fears, as themselves, are mostly drawn to being fed: is Annabelle really working to keep The Web fed, or are her intentions different? We’ve met various people who were actively hating their patron and going against it – Archival assistants, Gertrude, Jon, even Jonah postured as using Beholding for his own gains rather than truly worshipping it like other avatars. They were all Beholding folks, plus the ambiguous case of Agnes (who may have truly hoped that she would be able to carry out the cult’s ritual… or may have sabotaged the Lightless Flame by pretending that they had to wait for her and may have been actually fine with her daily life), who was bound to Gertrude and could also have been influenced by Beholding through that link (Agnes was described as staring a lot in the café, while Gertrude began to mostly use fire and explosives during her operations).

Is Annabelle absolutely in synch with her patron and working for its supremacy in yet another form (taking Beholding’s place at the top of the pyramid?), or could it turn out that she is in the same sort of situation as Jon, resentful towards the Fear that transformed her and made her rely on hurting others to thrive…?

We know that Annabelle hurt people, or was involved in things that ended up hurting people – the participants in the experiments leading to her creation have disappeared since then, the website Annabelle had commissioned led to a few people’s deaths (the Chelicerae’s website developer disappeared, we know that people had tried to contact him to apologise because they were suffering from the consequences, we know of at least one person who was turned into a spider husk, and Carlos Vittery died of spider and his name was in the website code), that Neil Lagorio died when she was in his home… but I still wonder. The whole Neil Lagorio statement had felt to me like, in the background, an older generation was passing down their knowledge to a younger one and/or that the younger one had come to grant their last wish (dancing). Was it a similar “mercy-kill” as what Salesa hoped for, or was it something else…? Was it even truly a mercy-kill in Salesa’s case? I can’t help but remember the differences between Salesa, who decided to stay in his safe protected bubble rather than actively helping, and Georgie&Melanie, who took the active decision to provide help, even in feeble measure… and who were there, sleeping and absolutely vulnerable. Annabelle had the capacity to be way more lethal than what she actually did, so I’m still at a loss about her intentions – on the one hand, it feels like she might have actively helped to get Jon marked, on the other hand… what she personally get from the apocalypse, how is it a mean to an end? Is it to strengthen The Web? Is it to destroy the Fears?

(- Another thing is that… it would have been easy for Annabelle to just kill off one of the survivors in the tunnels, if her intention was to take Martin with her and/or make Jon panic? We know that Helen had tried to grab Celia – the tunnels are not an absolute protection. But she didn’t.)

- Same thing with Hill Top Road as with Annabelle: we knew she would try to do something, the question was “when”, and in the same way, we knew Hill Top Road was coming – the season 4 Q&A had mentioned that we weren’t done with it, and MAG147 had felt like Annabelle was sending the signal that it was narratively too early for Jon to go there. Well, another question was also whether we would hear the whole story about it there, or through something left in the Panopticon/the Archives.

I still wonder if the Web domain near Helen’s hotel was Hill Top Road?

(MAG187) [STATIC INCREASES] HELEN: … Or you could just stand there glowering, that’s fine too. ARCHIVIST: I’m trying to know if there’s another route I can take. HELEN: And? [STATIC DECREASES] ARCHIVIST: Turns out there is, actually. But it is rather full of spiders.

Helen had lurked around HTR and tried to lure people inside to learn about it, so it would have been fitting for her to have taken roots nearby?

Regarding HTR: we’ve had many indications that time&space were wobbly concepts there even before the Change:

(MAG008, Ivo Lensik) “It must have been 8 or 9 in the evening, as it had been dark for a couple of hours. I was working on the ground floor wiring when I heard a knock at the front door. […] I opened the door to see an unassuming man in a tan coat. He was quite young, white, maybe mid-twenties, clean-shaven with shaggy, chestnut brown hair. His coat was quite an old cut; it seemed to me he looked like something out of an old Polaroid. He said his name was Raymond Fielding and that he owned the house. As he spoke, I felt my grip on the hammer tightening although I have no idea why. I asked him if he had any ID or documents and he handed over to me what seemed, as far as I could tell, to be the deed to the house, as well as the land beneath, and did indeed list a man named Raymond Fielding as the owner. So I let him in. […] After a minute or two, I became conscious of a sharp, unpleasant smell. I thought maybe I had wired something up wrong, but no, it smelled like burning human hair. I looked over to where Raymond had been standing but he was gone. Where he had been there was just a patch of scorched wooden floor, still apparently smouldering and giving off that dreadful stink. […] Even so, there were occasional moments when I would find myself the only one working in a room, or when silence fell across the building. And then I would smell it again, that whiff of burnt hair, or catch a glimpse of brown pigtails disappearing around a corner.” […] ARCHIVIST: Two families have lived in the house since this statement was originally made but no further manifestations have been reported on Hill Top Road.

(MAG114, Anya Villette) “Obviously it was my decision. I remember the little handle was warm. I don’t know if that’s just my memory playing tricks on me, but I do remember that. It opened to reveal stairs going down into a basement. Nobody had mentioned a basement. Not when they gave me the job, not on the floor plan they’d given me; I’d had absolutely no idea it was there. […] But now… everything’s wrong. I went to clean that house on April the 23rd 2009 which, according to all of you, is tomorrow. But it can’t be. That was two weeks ago.”

(MAG147) MELANIE: When did you say they finished rebuilding? ARCHIVIST: 2008? MELANIE: Hm! ARCHIVIST: Doesn’t look like anyone ever… moved in, though. BASIRA: So this is… ten years of cobwebs? DAISY: More than that. [FOOTSTEPS] MELANIE: [INHALE] No, I’m sure this is just the normal number of webs that grow up organically…! […] DAISY: Clear. [DOOR CLOSES] Looks like nothing downstairs. BASIRA: You wanna… take a moment, before we head up? ARCHIVIST: What about the basement? DAISY: Can’t see one. ARCHIVIST: Huh…

Ivo had seen Raymond Fielding and glimpses of kid!Agnes, there is the question of what happened with Anya, there is the question of whether or not the house had been occupied for the last few years, there is the question of whether or not there was actually a basement in the new house that was built there (and whether it’s the same basement Ray used to take the kids to become spiders eggs sacks once they were legally leaving his house). There is the overall question of what happened at Hill Top Road between Agnes and Raymond, leaving the place ~scarred~:

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “I was… not one of those assigned to watch our chosen one, so I can’t say much about exactly what happened within the walls of that house. But it seems the fight scarred the place in a way far deeper than simple fire. A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers. Regardless, the effect it had on Agnes was unanticipated. As far as we could tell, she had destroyed the place utterly. And yet, she remained bound to it, tied to it in some vital way.”

(MAG146) HELEN: There is… something wrong, with Hill Top Road. You know it as well as I do. Some strange “scar in reality” at the centre of… whatever it is the Spider is spinning. When young mister McKenzie passed, it seemed like a good opportunity for an experiment. To see what would happen if I… lured him inside. But it seems I just don’t have The Web’s gift for… manipulation, or persuasion.

*whispers* I know that the popular theory is that HTR leads to a parallel universe, usually citing Anya’s experience, but I’m really not convinced – her whole statement still sounds like textbook Spiral to me, confusing her sense of time and space…? (Down to her name, “Anya Villette”, which sounds like a distortion of “Anne/Annie/Anna Willett (/Kasuma)”, the nurse who had told the HTR story to Father Burroughs in season 1). At the same time, back in season 4 I was seeing the hints and clues regarding Elias potentially being Jonah Magnus body-hopping and I wasn’t really “feeling” it either, and look at what was revealed at the end of that season, so who knows.

- Anyway!! I love that yep, it feels like the Panostitute is partially “done” for now (we won’t hear more information from there) so the last big scene is at HTR, which had been relevant for a looong while (since MAG008, and historically, from Gertrude’s time), whether we go back to the Panostitute at the end or not.

HTR was already weird before the Change (there was constant static in the background when the group visited it in MAG147, it was spooky), I wonder how it will look now… and we might get the Agnes statement I’ve been hoping for, whether through Jon (like he did with Gertrude in MAG167), or from Annabelle, or from a tape, or from a ghost of her…? Or a statement from the house itself, in situ from Jon?

- I wonder whether Georgie and Melanie (or one of them) will go with Jon to Hill Top Road? The people they rescued might be a reason for them to stay behind: they’re partially protected in the tunnels, but we know that Helen had visited them and had tried to get Celia, and there are the old Archivists near the stairs. Melanie&Georgie still offer an additional protection. Melanie had also pointed out that their protection didn’t work for long for other people outside (MAG190: “And… that’s when we discovered that we can keep others hidden as well. Not completely, and, and, not for long, but… it’s enough to get them here to the tunnels.”), so it won’t be a case of the whole group (Jon, Melanie, Georgie, the seven survivors) striding off together to Hill Top Road. So I don’t know if one of them will leave with Jon, or both (despite what it would mean for the survivors), or if precisely, the fact they have to protect the others in the tunnels will be a reason for them to stay behind and not go with Jon…?

(The situation is already very reminiscent of the end of season 4 with some changes in that previous narrative: unlike MAG157, Georgie&Melanie are currently helping Jon. They don’t need to come along with him to get Martin back for us to already feel that they’re helping.)

- I wonder if Jon will have to knock to enter Hill Top Road again. Someone whisked away inside of it and, contrary to the incident from his childhood… Jon having to go through that door, too, this time (“MR. SPIDER WANTS ANOTHER GUEST FOR DINNER. IT IS POLITE TO KNOCK”).

(One of my favourite details of early seasons is how people who knew Jon and expected him to be in his office… never knocked on his door, as if they knew that it made him uneasy. And season 5 had begun, in the trailer, with a “Knock Knock” joke…)

- List of stuff that is still left hanging:

* Jon’s lighter, which was mentioned for the last time at the end of MAG162 (when Martin pointed out that Jon still had it). Funny thing: next episode is MAG195, 35th episode of the season… and Breekon&Hope had delivered the table and the package at the end of MAG035. Jon opened the package at the end of MAG036, interrogated Martin about it in MAG037. So MAG196/MAG197 for when the nature of the lighter will finally be revealed (what it might have done to Jon, what is its purpose, who sent it in Jon’s way, if someone owned it before him)?

(* Since Jon is likely to leave London quite fast too: it seems nothing ominous after all was to happen involving the gas main in the tunnels, which had been brought up by Leitner&Gertrude’s tape in MAG162? I’m still uneasy about its existence and the fact that it had been moved down there for maximum destruction.)

* What Are The Tape Recorders – is someone listening through them, is someone curating what we hear of this story, is someone/something making them appear, etc.

* Annabelle’s and/or The Web’s intentions.

* Relatedly: what the camera might be used for? It’s possible that Annabelle only needed it to not be perceived by Beholding, but it’s also possible that she mostly needed to put it in a certain place – how will it interact with Hill Top Road? Will it ban the Fears from the house, thus making it… absolutely normal, deprived of any influence?

* What the fuck happened in Hill Top Road and what is the place like nowadays.

* Basira’s whereabouts? She was on her way to London. Will she join up with Jon before he leaves the tunnels or on his way to Hill Top Road? Will they miss each other? Will Annabelle orientate her towards Hill Top Road or has she already snatched her up too before Martin…?

Only six episodes to go…

At this point in time in previous seasons: Dr. Elliott was giving his statement about the anatomy students and pointing out to Jon that they had a worm infestation going on in the building; Jon was wondering what Michael got from his victims, and had discovered that someone was living in the tunnels and sometimes going up in the Archives; Jon read Anya’s statement, still had no clue about Hill Top Road, and finally got to talk with Tim, allowing them to find common ground; Jon had fought against Beholding’s pull, managing to find Eric’s tape, learning how to quit the Archives, and had immediately rushed to Martin to offer him to gouge their eyes out together to flee the Institute. As I mentioned, MAG194 reaally reminded me of MAG154 in some aspects, mainly around Jon and Martin’s argument ;w;

MAG195’s title is just PLAIN RUDE. It puts the Martin&Jon and Agnes&Gertrude bonds into my mind, or more precisely, well, the concept that those bonds got ruptured. Could also refer to Basira-without-Daisy, though she seemed to be doing more or less fine…? I’m not sure we’ll get to Hill Top Road directly, this episode might be a “regular” domain before it is reached; the title could work well for a Lonely or Vast domain? And Jon’s current, uh, state of mind…?

#~now formated~#the magnus archives #tma season 5 #mag194 #tma liveblog #tma spoilers #long post/

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boke---hinata---boke · 3 years

Text

HP headcannon

TW: A shit load of reading. tears, and feels, lots of them. Also this was inspired by the sentence in bold which I was going to use in my standardized test writing section. And this makes no sense chronologically (im adhd af alright.)

Voting is important because if there was a vote then Sirius Black wouldn’t have spent 12 worthless years in Azkaban and harry wouldn’t have been raised in an abusive household rather with wolfstar dadfoot and mommy.

Harry would’ve known all about the marauders and by the time he enters Hogwarts he knows all the secret passages and where to find the map. He also knows where to hide from Filtch, prefects doing their rounds and teachers. Harry has long since been an animagus. He would’ve entered knowing all about his parents (siriusly all about them, good and the bad.) he would have entered being a pranking god and reusing some of his dads old tricks. Every time Harry pranks he gets a howler from Sirius about how proud he in which sirius proceeds to flirt w Dumbledore, gossip w Minnie, tell Draco to tell his dad that he’s a bitch, also tell Draco that if he doesn’t stay over for christmas he will have to listen to Sirius sending a howler everyday of him singing, and then Sirius going on to roast tf outta snivellus and properly cuss him out (he also adds in some hair flips and talks ab how supperior he is.) Harry 100% would call minerva Minnie and Minnie would be like a grandma who visited a l l t h e t I m e. He would be a flying god by the time he enters Hogwarts and is immediately on the team (Sirius likes to credit himself but we all know it was Minnies excellent coaching.) In first year when he has to get the sorcerers stone he roasts tf outta voldy “I thought a bitch who couldn’t kill a fucking baby said sum,” “no literally mate you coulda just thrown me out the window but noooo,” “don’t talk to me till you get a nose you fuckin wanker.” Harry would’ve flirted with Dumbledore to get out of detentions. Harry would’ve grown up hearing stories about Regulas and about Sirius’s family and how he was brought up. Instead of shutting down Malfoy he would’ve frickin adopted him and they would be bffs; as close as Sirius and James. Malfoy would 100% join in on pranks and plan some of them but he would never get caught. Harry hating Lockhart and cONSTANTLY pranking him (almost as much as he pranks snivey) Harry constantly reminding him of how his uncles repeatedly outranked him for the hottest wizard award. When Harry is sorted he would’ve been a MAJOR hat stall because the hat would really push for him to be in his true house *cough cough slytherin* but harry doesn’t want to leave Malfoy, he also doesn’t want to leave Minnie nor does he want to leave his parents house (and uncles) and most of all, he doesn’t want ANYTHING to do with Snape. Instead he meets Ron and Mione in the house and introduces them to Draco, at first Draco really doesn’t like them but once he starts to know them he questions his families teaching (silently of course) and decides he doesn’t want to be like them. Harry being bffs with Nott, Zabini and Pansy (they were all actually crucial in the taking down of the dark lord. When Harry hangs out with them it's just all sass and sarcasm and dark jokes (the number of people they have SCARRED). Draco and Mione being the only responsible ones and help them study all the time. Draco and Harry never sitting separately and if they do they always find some other way to communicate. Draco and Harry sitting at each others house tables ALL THE TIME and it really pisses Snape off (that may or may not be why they do it.) Draco hating Snape with a passion and yelling at him whenever he’s mean to Mione. All four of them having nicknames for each other. Draco and Mione came up w a playbook together with long elaborate shit like “initiate Page 387 paragraph 4 up section 3 clause 12.” Draco and Mione tying for first every year. God help everyone when they start to compare owls. TH E S L E E P O V E R S. All of them spending so much time in the kitchens. Draco is soooo nice to house elves because of that and actually co-founds S.P.E.W. Draco and his Slytherin friends sleeping in the Gryffindor common rooms because the password is too bigoted and they refuse to say it. The golden trio promptly begins to help, Mione looks for a spell to reverse it, Harry and Ron forcefully trying to remove the portrait meanwhile Neville brings snacks, blankets and says that they did a good job (Neville also being the one the Slytherins go to when they feel bad because of blood supremacy, Neville promptly reminding them that the fact that you feel bad and refuse it shows how good you truly are.) All of them are Neville defence squad and Neville supremacy 100%. They all repeatedly tell him how they would die for him. Draco hating Bellatrix for what he did to Neville. Draco and Harry immediately trade schedules to see what classes they share and swapping common room passwords. Draco is actually an heir of Slytherin but they all know its not him doing the attacks. Draco being with Harry in the chamber and trying his best to call off the basilisk while also telling Tom how he disgraces the Slytherin name. Draco being so nice to muggle-borns and creates a club where he helps them adjust to the Wizarding World (Sirius hears and promptly send sweets and howlers about how proud he is saying “I knew he was good oh you Lucius spawn you I’m so proud.”) Draco being really happy because Sirius knows that the Sacred 28 families look down upon affection so he doesn’t get told this by his parents. Sirius dotes on Draco always giving him affection because of this. The first time it happened Draco was like “what is this” and the golden trio’s heart broke, from then on they always display physical affection to him, hand holding, hugs forehead kisses, pet names you name it.) Draco also crying a lot because it’s the first time he’s had this since he was like 2 and doesn’t think he deserves it because of how his parents are. Draco threatening anyone who says shit about any of them and the four being as close as the marauders (so much so that all the teachers have flashbacks and ptsd from all the pranks.) Harry H A T I N G Snape for all the shit he did and calling him snivellus. Sirius hears and cries because he’s so fucking proud. Harry having to be held back from tackling Snape anytime he makes a lily reference. God have mercy for anyone who was unfortunate enough to be there when he saw snapes patronus because “it’s not love you nazi bitch! you fucking betrayed her and then got all but hurt you stalker esque bitch.” Remus literally keeping Sirius 100% in the loop when he is dada teacher man knows everything going on. Harry going to Hogsmade only to see Sirius “coincidentally” there. Sirius and Draco actually having a lot in common and Sirius completely loves the kid like wtf he’s Malfoy blood I have to hate him. When Voldey returns Draco beating up anyone who calls Harry a liar. Draco working as a spy for the order and doing little undetected acts of rebellion to help Harry. Instead of outright trying to be disowned Draco just uses everything to his advantage and is on the umbitch (Draco came up w the name) too spy yet again and healing anyone who had to use the fucking quill. In seventh year Draco and Neville begin to really work together and really like each other (platonically though) but god they are so FUCKING SARCASTIC WHEN THEY’RE TOGETHER. Draco teaching Occulmency and how to pretend like you're being Cruciod. Draco and Neville being actual besties. At the battle of Hogwarts Draco saving both Sirius and Remus and calls them both dad (they both teared up a LOT.) In the battle of Hogwarts Sirius shows up and fuckin runs over voldy w his motorcycle, Sirius also bringing a machine gun and going insane. Draco ends up killing nagini and his aunt. Draco also being known as a savior.

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ariesbilly · 6 years

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More fredsythe high school headcannons please!

:’)

i dont even know if this really counts as a headcanon but i was watching a lot of 500 days of summer when i was on the cruise cuz thats pretty much the only movie they played but anyway you know the scene where tom and summer are sitting at toms favorite spot in the city and he’s telling her about the skyline and how he wants to add to it and whatever and then draws on her arm? well... it got me to thinking about teenage fred and all his hopes and dreams of one day being mayor and he’s just hanging out with fp one day and telling him all the ideas he has for the town and fp says “show me.” but they dont have any paper around so fp offers up his arm. freds all focused drawing out his plans, explaining things to fp as he goes along and fp is half paying attention to the drawing, more so paying attention to the cute look of concentration on freds face. fp tells him “you know i’d be first in line to vote for you, right?” and fred just laughs and glances up at him and says “you better.”

fp lost his virginity to fred you absolutely will never change my mind about that. its not happening

speaking first times... theirs was junior year. (they didnt start “dating” til mid-late sophomore year). it was a whole ordeal. they had exchanged sloppy handjobs and blowjobs by that point but one of them would always chicken out before anything went further. until one day they decided they really wanted to go all the way. (i cant decide if it happened in fps bachelor pad trailer or if fred had a rare weekend at home by himself and he invited fp over) but heres what i do know: they were both real fucking nervous. fred had already slept with girls before but this was completely different. neither of them knew what the fuck they were doing. the whole thing was awkard and clumsy and fp definitely didnt last long (he was on top just fyi. took a long time for that boy to embrace his true bottom self. it was an emotional journey) but neither of them would change it for the world because at the end of it they felt more connected to each other than ever and they definitely spend the rest of the weekend practicing and honing their skills and god they were so fucking domestic with each other.... pretending like they were an actual real adult couple living on their own... and they were already handsy with each other before but now? they might as well have been literally attached at the hip.

another not-quite-headcanon but runaway train by soul asylum is playing right now and i just got this visual of fred and fp laying in bed with this song playing softly in the background and it makes me emo so... youre welcome

theyd always sneak out behind the gym for at least one song during every school dance. no matter who their dates were. no matter if they had gotten into a fight earlier that day/week. theyd always meet up at their spot.

fp was HELLA jealous of all the girls fred took out but instead of fighting about it they just... turned it into this little game. fp would come strolling up to fred at school saying that he heard he had a date that night and then he would give fred this look and ask if he was gonna stop by fps after. the answer was always yes. and when fred inevitably showed up smelling like his dates or god forbid had lipstick on his face he forgot to wipe off fp would get real possessive and fred was in for a n i g h t. fp didnt mind fred going out with half the town but the nights fred went out with either hermione or mary hit fp pretty hard and those were the nights fred had to be gentle with fp and remind him how much he loved him... if he even bothered showing up.

theres a tree in fox forest with their initials carved onto it. their initials are carved everywhere in that town

their secret symbols for each other were a sun (fred) and moon (fp). theyd sign notes and things like that so in case anyone ever found them they wouldnt know who it was from.

they also gave each other stick n poke tattoos. fred has a lil crescent moon on his inner thigh and fp has a sun on his pelvis.

fp pierced his nose himself senior year and fred thought it was the hottest goddamn thing he’d ever seen.... after he of course had to clean it up because fp is an irresponsible dumb mess and that thing was like 2 seconds away from getting infected if fred didnt step in

fred was a nervous wreck when fp joined the serpents and he tried to talk him out of it so many times and the night fp came crawling in through freds window covered in blood and scrapes and cuts and bruises fred almost had a fit (dont even get him started on the fucking snake bite ritual)

fred was just very weary of the serpents and everything they represented until one day fp asked him to come down to the wyrm so he could show fred what it was actually like and when fred got there he was shocked to see how comfortable fp was and how open he was being. he was actually holding freds hand in public and that was something that never happened. it was the first time fred actually got it. that the serpents were the accepting family fp never had. he still didnt agree with the whole criminal lifestyle and he didnt trust any of these people around his wallet but he understood the appeal fp saw a little more.

fred and fp swapped letterman jackets all the time :’) on purpose, on accident... it was not uncommon for someone to come up to one of them asking why the others name was on their jacket. (also please consider them going on dates where freds wearing his letterman jacket and fps wearing his serpent jacket. also imagine fp draping his serpent jacket over freds shoulders. fred fucking drowns in that thing its so big on him wow...)

jock boyfriends.... working out together all the time.... helping each other practice with baseball and football.... but they always end up getting distracted because they just end up messing around with each other and wrestling and kissing each other all over.... theyre so in love hal

#i have a lot of feelings and a lot thoughts #the high school fredsythe headcanons are truly endless #i could be here all day #fredsythe #briana answers things #Anonymous

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itsworn · 7 years

Text

Homemade, 50-Year-Old Fuel Motor Roars Back To Life

The Big Banger Theory

Fueler.

Improbable survival stories are standard equipment around here. HOT ROD Deluxe is known for telling resurrection tales that defy all odds and logic. Some of those story ideas surely would’ve been rejected outright by skeptical editors as borderline unbelievable, had photographic evidence not undeniably documented a journey from distant past to survivor. Forget “borderline”; this is one backyard project that’s been unreal from the very start, when a retired machinist began building his racing engine, literally—a gigantic four-banger that once again cackles with nitromethane—a half-century later.

If that already sounds unbelievable, prepare to suspend disbelief long enough to hear the rest of the story. The happy ending depicted by these current photos followed decades of neglect, disassembly, and even theft that could’ve, would’ve, and certainly should’ve written a far sadder story. The magical intervention of a young Springfield, Oregon, engine builder was the last link in a long chain of unlikely coincidences—or was it something else?

“I feel like Grandpa led me to him,” says Carol Stange, a since-retired meter reader for the Springfield Utility Board in Oregon whose monthly route included a joint named Tim’s Muscle Cars. She’d never met or even seen anyone on the grounds until the day she spied an old Lyndwood dragster chassis out front. As a lifelong gearhead from Long Beach, California, whose grandfather had exposed the whole family to nearby Lions Drag Strip, Carol couldn’t resist knocking on the office door. When nobody answered, she walked inside and to the back of the building, following male voices.

“A buddy and I were painting his GTO in my spray booth,” Tim Riel recalls. “We both had respirators on. I thought, ‘Wow, this lady has a lot of nerve, walking up to a couple of strangers wearing masks!’” Tim and Carol agree that their introductory conversation began something like this:

“Hi, I saw your dragster out front. My grandfather had one of those.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, in the mid-1960s. He built his own engine. Car Craft wrote about it.”

“Is your grandpa Byron Barnes?”

Imagine Carol’s shock, hearing a total stranger utter the name of her late grandfather. “I followed him up to the front office, where Tim had a big stack of magazines. He went right to the issue and pulled it out. I said, ‘Yeah, that’s the article.’ I couldn’t believe this was happening! Tim seemed intrigued that the chassis survived, was still in the family, and was here in Oregon.”

A magazine published seven years before Tim Riel was born just happened to be among several milk crates of “moldy, smelly, old paper” that he’d recently purchased from a swap-meet vendor. Tim and his machinist father, Rod Riel, had been going through the pile that very week. “We kept coming back to that Car Craft and that one article. We couldn’t get over how much work went into the engine. It still amazes me. This guy not only made his own engine parts; first, he had to design and build the tooling to make them. Everything had to be perfectly aligned for those pistons to go up and down. Even with today’s technology, not many people would—or even could—do what her grandpa did 50 years ago.”

So, as an engineering exercise, this project was pretty hard to beat; as a race car, not so much. In fact, it never got past the testing stage. When the late, great writer A.B. Shuman submitted his tech story around March 1967, Byron had run the rail twice. First time out, injected on nitro, netted “a quite respectable 120 mph in eleven seconds, shutting off at the halfway mark and coasting through the traps,” CC reported. Switching to dual Weber carbs and, presumably, gasoline for a second try, there was another half-pass of 129 mph but no e.t reported by Shuman. Gifford Barnes counts three trips to Lions Drag Strip with his dad, all plagued by bogging off the line: “He couldn’t get the fuel system right,” he explains. “After the car stumbled, it really charged, but Mickey [Okahara, the driver] couldn’t get away clean.” The wide variety of used parts visible in photos and recovered by Tim Riel point to additional experimentation, as does the only time slip left behind. On the back is scrawled, “50% nitro.” If, in fact, the indicated 8.74 and 164 were recorded by this car, it would’ve been one of the swiftest four-bangers of the era—but not competitive for the type of racing Byron initially envisioned.

Considering how many years one old guy, working alone, needed to bring this engine, particularly, plus a homebuilt chassis all the way from conception to completion—the crankshaft alone required 30 days, according to CC—it’s hardly surprising that classification rules would evolve. The article cites so-called “junior fuelers” for Byron’s inspiration. After Lions bowed out of the fuel ban in 1962, that unofficial term came to be loosely applied to single-engined, normally aspirated dragsters burning nitromethane and/or methanol, regardless of engine type or size. Those not quick enough to qualify for Top Fuel Eliminator might’ve run Top Gas or amongst themselves. Byron’s decision to make his sheetmetal cylinder block tall enough to displace either 353 or 392 ci hardly seems coincidental at a time when 354 and 392 Chryslers were fashionable. Some injected Chevys were poked ’n’ stroked to 358 and even 389 cubes.

By the time Byron was ready to go, Lions had banished fuel burners from Top Gas and created an official Junior Fuel category for unblown engines no larger than 310 cubes. Bigger motors moved into either C/Fuel Dragster (up to 350 ci) or B/FD (to 400 ci), both of which were dominated by small-inch, blown Hemis and Chevys. No wonder Byron lost interest in 1968 or ’69 and parked this car. Indeed, but for one old magazine article and however few firsthand witnesses remain, nearly nobody would know it ever existed.

Getting back to Tim’s Muscle Cars, the Springfield meter reader regularly returned to share leisurely lunch breaks and talk shop. “All I knew was that the bare chassis was hanging in her uncle’s barn,” Tim says. “Carol never got over there to take pictures. I told her that I’d be interested in buying whatever was left.”

“Oh, yeah, he bugged me for over a year,” Carol confirms, laughing. “He’d say, ‘Can I just go see it, please?’ I didn’t want to bug my uncle Giff just so someone could look up in his rafters. But my family always hoped to get Grandpa’s dragster running. My cousin Frank, Giff’s son, started on that about 20 years ago. He took the car apart, spread the parts out on the bench, but it never went back together. When I finally called to tell my uncle I’d met a young guy with his own engine shop who might want to buy the car, Giff said, ‘Nope, he can’t buy it. If you really think he’ll do something with it, tell him to come get it.'”

What Carol didn’t know at the time was that thieves had recently removed critical components from Giff’s unlocked boat barn and sold them for scrap. Luckily, her uncle and cousin noticed parts missing in time to track down the metals dealer before he got around to melting or reselling most, though the rare quick-change rearend was already gone. They went to court to recover what remained and prevailed, eventually.

“All I expected to get was a chassis, or part of one,” Tim says. “I planned to look for dragster parts at swap meets, maybe put in an early Hemi or small-block. Carol’s mom, uncle, aunt, cousin, brother, and sister were all there to say goodbye to Grandpa’s dragster. I walked into this big metal shed with a huge fishing boat on one side. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Byron’s short-block was sitting on a crate. Piles of parts were on the floor. Both M&H slicks were still mounted on Halibrands. The original parachute was hanging from the rafters. We found the complete clutch assembly and can, all the mag body panels, even a firesuit. After everything was laid out at home the next day, I was amazed by how complete the car was. I saw it as a giant erector set, minus the rearend and some small pieces that my dad and I could probably make. We were lucky to have the Car Craft for reference.

“I was worried that Byron’s two children wouldn’t be around long enough to see it get done,” he adds. “I’d made them a promise to try, but Giff’s health was not good. He and his sister, Carol’s mom, were in their eighties. This was important. I wanted that engine to run again, on nitro. I really got into it.”

He sure did, gradually assembling the erector set most nights and weekends for eight months, in between engine work for patient patrons of Tim’s Muscle Cars. When he proudly unveiled the sum of those parts, Byron’s descendants were there to witness the resurrection of a father and grandfather, along with an old dragster. “We were all in tears,” Tim admits.

“To me, it’s just amazing how things worked out,” says Carol Stange, the fearless meter reader whose knock on one door opened so many more. “It was fun, and I just felt like it was meant to be.”

The all-homemade engine was designed to displace either 353 or 392 ci, depending on crankshaft selection. To minimize weight, designer-builder Byron Barnes settled on four cylinders (versus eight), a sheetmetal crankcase (versus cast iron), and valves in the block (versus overhead). Note the 3-inch offset, to counteract torque.

Both the dragster and the former Romania Chevrolet store were operational in the 1960s. Despite its lengthy wheelbase of 152 inches and maze of suspension tubing, the car weighed just 710 pounds, wet.

Everything orange was powdercoated by McKenzie Chrome Plating (Springfield, Oregon). All four wheels and tires are original. After the original mag body was ruined by a careless sandblaster—and Tim Riel was quoted a price of $3,500 per magnesium sheet—buddy Les Schoonover (Springfield) replicated the cowl and side panels in aluminum.

Restorer-caretaker Tim Riel estimates that no fewer than 100 pieces of sheet steel were welded together to create the 116-pound bare block.

Byron Barnes obviously had his own ideas about weight transfer, probably influenced by his oval-track history. He formed the fuel tank by cutting and merging two military-surplus water kettles engraved with the words “U.S. Army.”

The aluminum cover contains the coolant sitting on top of four individual cylinder heads. Water enters through the open hole (which still lacks a pressure cap to replace the tiny original). Boiling water exits through the overflow tube. Mike Maher did the pinstriping and lettering. The rear-main seal is a small-block Chevy item.

The parachute, M&H 8.20-15 Racemasters, and magnesium Halibrand wheels are original. The Portland Swap Meet produced a virtual duplicate of the stolen rearend assembly, including Halibrand champ-car quick-change, that fit perfectly.

Rod Riel, Tim’s machinist dad, reproduced one of the Anglia-style spindles and some missing suspension pieces on his CNC machines. The shocks are Volkswagen. The aluminum fuel line is original.

The custom tri-drive system is a work of art. A spur gear on the crank runs the cam, which drives the Bendix Mini-Mag, Hilborn fuel pump, and a Ford six-cylinder oil pump at the bottom that fills a custom dry-sump pan. A piece of leather that seals the timing cover to the crankcase is the closet thing to a gasket in the entire engine. Byron even built his own injectors. The original velocity stacks and Hilborn barrel valve survived, but not the exhaust flange and headers, which Rod Riel replicated. Since our photo session, Tim has completed the complicated linkage and added a mini-starter to the front of the crank. Previously, he hand-operated the throttle with a long rod connecting the individual injectors and fired the engine on a stand, since none of the Riels can squeeze into the cockpit for push starting.

Since stumbling onto this photography location in Eugene, Oregon, we’ve learned that the former home of Lew Williams and, later, Joe Romania Chevrolet is infamous for 2000 and 2001 arson attacks by local “ecoterrorists” targeting gas guzzlers. In the first incident, three light trucks collectively valued at $28,000 were torched by activists who happened to be under surveillance by a terrorism task force that night. Nine months later, a different gang set fire to 35 new Suburbans and Tahoes worth $959,000. The Chevy store was sold shortly thereafter and ultimately closed in 2005 when the University of Oregon purchased the prime, four-and-a-half-acre property adjoining the campus for storage. The wooden panels were installed after rock-throwing vandals found the original glass irresistible.

Machinists’ Union

It took a father-son team of master machinists in Long Beach, California, to create this engine, and it took another to restore it to running condition, a half-century later and 900 miles north. The shared experience has tightly bonded the Barnes-Garwood and Riel families to this day.

Gifford Barnes, 86, machined the individual cylinder heads for his late dad’s engine. He inherited Byron’s last race car in 1981 and stored it for 34 years. The Barnes-Garwood family photo album produced a rare 1930s snapshot of father and son together.

Kay Barnes Garwood, 84, is Byron’s daughter. Nearly eight decades after posing with the family dog and midget at home in Long Beach, she lives with daughter Linda Garwood (left) in Port Orford, Oregon.

Tim and Jan Riel rescued and revived their rail with invaluable assistance from Rod Riel (left), a semiretired CNC machinist. Its new home is Tim’s Muscle Cars, a restoration and engine shop in Springfield, Oregon.

Social Media, Old School

For 400 years before digital devices connected us senders and receivers, magazines did that job. This one still does, albeit with a time delay measured in months or years, not nanoseconds. You know the drill: HOT ROD Deluxe publishes an article or column or photo caption that thrills/irritates you into sending love letters/hate mail. Correspondence deemed worthy of print shows up in stores and mailboxes two or three issues later to thrill/irritate fellow readers. See, just like Facebook posts, minus fake news.

Despite modern production technology, “slick” magazines still take forfriggin’ever to print, bind, and transport, as you’ve undoubtedly noticed. Our bimonthly infrequency automatically puts HRD another month behind the monthlies. If you’re reading this on the West Coast, add another week for trains and trucks to move the bundles all the way from the Midwest, where most of America’s ink gets spilled. Finally, your copy shows up in, say, Springfield, Oregon. Reading from front to back (as editors and the good Lord intended), you eventually get to a couple of 50-year-old, unpublished outtakes from a 1968 Car Craft story. The caption asks if any reader knows what happened to an obscure race car that vanished 15 years before you were born, a car that happens to be parked in your shop.

Reader Tim Riel responded almost as soon as his heart settled back into his chest. Editor Hardin couldn’t wait to print the letter and photos Tim sent of the restored rail. Meanwhile, though, another issue’s bimonthly production cycle came and went, delaying publication by one more edition. When the car reappeared in color in January 2016’s Scrapbook section, Mr. Ed. promised in print to send contributor Dave Wallace—who claimed a personal connection to its builder—to shoot a proper feature. In consideration of the Northwest’s notorious rainy season, we postponed that photo session until the late spring. Finally, the Byron Barnes rail returns to these pages, completing a print conversation started nearly two years ago—if not 50 years ago this December, when Petersen Publishing Company staffers Bob Swaim and A.B. Shuman visited the car both at home and at Lions Drag Strip.

Original Car Craft article, June 1968

From HRD’s “The Golden Age Of Drag Racing,” September 2015

From HRD’s letters section, January 2016

Shortly after Tim Riel’s letter and photos appeared in HRD, another stranger showed up at Tim’s Muscle Cars. He told Tim that, as a kid, he lived in Byron’s neighborhood and helped clean out the home shop after Mr. and Mrs. Barnes died weeks apart in 1981. He was given the blueprint as a souvenir. He thought it belonged with the race car. Sure enough, these cockpit measurements match. Byron evidently purchased a partial kit from little-known H&L Metals. Tim was so stunned by the gift that he never got a name. He’s hopeful that the generous mystery man will see this and identify himself to HRD—extending the series of old-school, ink-on-paper “posts” described above.

Lost And Found

On the snowy morning in January 2014 that Tim and Rod Riel dragged a trailer to the Oregon coast, a bare chassis was all they expected to find. Imagine their surprise!

For the first time, Tim Riel laid his hands—and eyes—on the remnants of a chassis he’d seen only in a Car Craft issue printed four years before he was born.

Carol Garwood Stange (right) is the retired Oregon meter reader who put Tim Riel (left) together with Grandpa’s slingshot. Her big sister, Linda Garwood, held up the nose while their uncle Giff supervised.

The rotating assembly stayed inside of Byron’s sheetmetal block since he last ran the car, circa 1968-69. Three types of steel were pressed together, then arc-welded with titanium-nickel rod, to form a hollow crankshaft with a 4.5-inch stroke.

Gifford Barnes machined the individual cylinder heads so precisely that they seal to the sheet-steel crankcase without gaskets. His dad used 40 capscrews made of aircraft-grade titanium, likely left over from one of Byron’s aerospace projects. All but a few of the original fasteners were located, cleaned up, and reinstalled by Tim Riel. Threaded tubes around the spark plugs prevent coolant from grounding out the plugs.

The camshaft is hollow. Byron fused individual lobes onto the tube, then had Iskenderian grind them to deliver 230 degrees of duration with 0.400-inch lift. “The cam wasn’t even in the engine, so I had no idea about where to degree it or set the lash,” Tim says. “The drive gear is slotted about 70 degrees where the bolt goes, for advance and retard. So I called and talked to Isky’s son, who remembered Ed playing cards with Byron. He said his dad would call after he got back from lunch. I thought, ‘Oh, sure, like Ed Iskenderian is gonna personally call some little engine builder in the middle of nowhere.’ That same afternoon, I answer the phone, and Mr. Isky says, ‘Old man Barnes still owes me 40 bucks from our weekly card game!’ He said he’d look around and let me know if he found anything. About two weeks later, I get a box with the original cam card with all of the specs, a new set of valvesprings, and a handwritten note: ‘Best wishes, Ed Iskenderian.'��

Jahns Pistons cast five of these aluminum, 5-inch-diameter monsters in the wooden mold. Byron finish-machined four to arrive at 10:1 compression. He also made five 4130 chrome-moly connecting rods, welding the ends to the tubular beams. This spare was never run.

The worn main bearings proved to be the most difficult replacement parts to find, plus the most expensive. Because all crank journals are identical, Tim had to spend $1,200 on five complete sets of obsolete aircraft bearings to get the five pieces. An old-timer at Federal-Mogul successfully cross-referenced the original part numbers by searching old paper catalogs. The valvetrain combines original, slipper-style lifters with Chrysler Hemi springs, retainers, and locks.

Everything here was formed from steel. First, though, Byron had to make wooden or cardboard templates for each piece, then construct a flame-cutting rig with a tracing stylus at one end and an oxy-acetylene cutting torch at the other. The intake and exhaust ports are two pieces of steel stampings, welded together. Also note the six water jackets per cylinder.

The original, giant 2-5/8-inch intake and exhaust valves are stainless heads on chrome-moly stems.

Half a century after this big banger first went together, it’s as good as new, plus much prettier. Of many missing parts reproduced by the Riels, the most difficult to design were the spur gears and shaft driving the magneto and fuel and oil pumps. In some old photos of the engine wearing Weber carbs, the two-hole bracket contained a different mag and a coil.

Who Was Byron Barnes?

This writer should know, having met him a few times in the mid-1970s. We even lived on the same Huntington Beach street for a while, yet I never really knew the man. Among my regrets is not spending more time in the large shop behind his house on Old Pirates Lane that held both the Hudson he’d customized and his fully assembled slingshot, covered in dusty plastic. I was introduced by my then-girlfriend as the editor of Drag News, but to him I was the longhair sleeping with his beloved granddaughter, Carol Garwood—now Carol Stange, the retired Oregon meter reader responsible for connecting his last race car to the young guy destined to rescue and restore it.

Byron’s family revealed that he was born in 1907 in Nebraska. In 1911, his parents moved to Long Beach. At age 16, Byron’s first homebuilt hot rod got him arrested and jailed. Since his dad was then running for city council, the folks shipped him offshore to herd goats on San Clemente Island until the election was over. He and a buddy later assembled an airplane that Byron flew before building and driving his first midget. When World War II halted auto racing, he worked for Douglas Aircraft Company as a mechanics’ instructor and design engineer developing tooling for the B-17 bomber. In the mid-1950s, Byron designed, built, and patented oil field equipment that enabled an early retirement. For the next 25 years, he indulged automotive passions ranging from the dragster and Hudson custom to off-road racing with local pals Bill Stroppe and Parnelli Jones.

Though Byron could likely afford any new car, I saw him driving Ford Pintos exclusively. Rather than bother changing fluids, he’d torture an engine until it rattled or smoked, swap motors in an afternoon, then perform an autopsy on the dead player. (The same boat shed that stored the dragster’s engine held another big surprise for Tim Riel: “There must’ve been 70 Pinto 2000- and 2300cc motors stacked up in there!”) Byron’s last daily driver was reportedly returning nearly 50 mpg when emphysema ended an incredible journey in April 1981, just shy of his 74th birthday.

Byron (right) was also a pilot. During the Depression, he earned money repairing and reselling crashed planes. Neither his son nor daughter recognized the other dapper dude.

The crowd at San Diego’s Balboa Stadium illustrates the huge popularity of midget racing before WWII and immediately after, until free competition from television kept people home on weekends. The fourth car back appears to be Byron’s.

This flathead is thought to be the first that Byron built from scratch, during the 1930s. It disappeared with a fast-talking salesman who promised to take it from track to track, nationwide, and write orders for production copies. Byron also constructed a DOHC prototype that might be the motor pictured in his wrecked racer. Historian Greg Sharp tells us that more than 100 different engine types powered midgets, all limited to 105 ci.

A page from Byron’s logbook documents eight events in five weeks at L.A.’s Gilmore and Atlantic Boulevard Stadium tracks during the summer of 1939.

Unlike most midgets of the era, Byron’s looked as good as they ran.

Gifford Barnes doesn’t know whether this could be his dad’s overhead cammer, but it’s the only DOHC engine shot in the family scrapbook.

Evidence that Byron’s hot rods attracted hot drivers includes this steamy shot of a guy recognized by historian Greg as Mel Hansen, “a big-name midget driver who qualified six times for the Indy 500, with a best finish of eighth.”

The forward-leaning positions of both drivers suggest this to be the moment of impact after Byron’s unknown shoe spun. We’re guessing that the background cars belonged to the two workers behind the wall.

The dragster’s finished block and crank are shown in the Long Beach shop where Byron handbuilt his last racing engine. The Barnes-Garwood family still owns the building on Signal Hill. Appropriately, it’s currently leased to a company making parts for Smart cars.

In the early 1970s, granddaughter Carol paid $100 for this Northern California barn find. It was original and complete except for a front seat. Once Carol got the engine running, her mom drove the 400-plus miles home to Long Beach sitting on a crate. Never content to follow a crowd, Grandpa Barnes hopped up the straight eight and built himself the only Hudson custom we’ve ever seen.

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