etherial.slut

It looks like COVID-19 cases are trending downward or even declining in places with active protests (and continued closures), and increasing in states with less protesting (and more “open for business”).

The key summary:

In major cities including New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington, DC, and Chicago, where numerous protests have taken place in recent weeks, numbers of new coronavirus cases are actually declining, despite widespread testing. Coronavirus cases are also trending downward in Minnesota, the state where Floyd was killed, and where the protests started.

Meanwhile, across many southern states where protests were not as prevalent — Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Oklahoma — coronavirus infection rates and hospitalizations are trending towards new all-time highs.

jon sure does talk about martin a lot, huh

(gonna be honest, when i started making this i wasn’t sure if the change in the way he says martin’s name would be that stark, but… guys. guys.

So, here’s a deep dive as to why I think Web!Martin has merits. (Scroll to the bottom of my essay for my TLDR). 

Introduction

First, to get some stuff out of the way:

Do I think Martin is a sleeper agent? Do I think that he has been manipulating Jon this entire time or even in just season 5 for the games of the Web? Do I think he’s a bunch of spiders in a Martin suit? Do I think he’s regards the Mother as his Mother and accepts that he is her Son? Is Martn actively Webby? 

No. Absolutely not. None of the above. The Martin we know is the Martin we began with, just with a bunch of trauma and has gained the ability to set his boundaries.

I find the idea of sleeper agent Martin or something similar to be very counterintuitive to the overall narrative. Not only is TMA about choices, and to have Martin be a sleeper agent would be to deny all of Martin’s choices this season in particular, but it doesn’t really lead to much. At best it’s a gotcha and a surprise at worst it’s making literally every interaction between Jon and Martin, with Martin himself, and so on mean nothing for the sake of one twist and make it sad. It’s not fun in long term, and so at the end of the day, I trust Jonny and Alex as writers more than that. (Plus we already did the “person is replaced” thing).

Does Martin being a manipulator actively mean that he is a Web avatar?

Short answer, no. 

Long answer, I made a post awhile back, and while it was for fandom things, I think it applies well here. What power you choose to align yourself with isn’t necessarily something you’d fully commit to. It is just, if you were an avatar and willing to hurt others for your own gain, what would you find yourself most aligned with.  What I mean by that, just because Martin lies and manipulates doesn’t mean that he is Web, however, manipulation is a tool does fit well with the Web, and if he were to choose to align himself to that, I think he could be Webby. However, he is not necessarily a Web avatar because he has no motivation to hurt people. 

That being said I do think Martin would be a good fit for the Web if he wanted to be, and I think there will be a point in the narrative that there is a potential that he could become one, even if he does not necessarily choose to be in the end. 

Let’s talk about it.

(as discussed with @soveryanon . thanks also to @sazandorable for their tma timeline that I love so much) 

Okay okay so. I’ve seen a couple posts going around in this post-167 haze about how ‘the Michael timeline is fucked up.’

This is not entirely true.

In fact, Michael’s timeline is probably doing just fine. It’s the Agnes Montague timeline we need to be worried about here, but here, let’s take a closer look:

March 31, 1816

Albrecht von Closen mentions in a letter to Jonah Magnus that he and his wife Clara are unable to have children, specifically noting that this is why they are so close to their nephew

April 1831

Jonathan Fanshawe, upon arriving at Albrecht von Closen’s estate, sees ‘a gnarled and ancient elm’ being burned to ‘death’ by a man with a torch, surrounded by a small crowd

The man specifically mentions that his “master wanted the tree dead”

Fanshawe also notes that Albrecht’s two sons are away at school

1891

Walter Fielding buys Hill Top House

1923

Alfred Fielding, Walter Fielding’s son, inherits Hill Top House

Around 1949

Gertrude Robinson is born

1957

Raymond Fielding, Alfred Fielding’s son, inherits Hill Top House

1960s

Hill Top House is used as a halfway home by R. Fielding

The spiderweb table contains both parts and is in use for Webby business

Ronald Sinclair, age 15, moves in

He immediately dislikes Raymond Fielding, who he describes as not much older than 30

Three years later, Agnes Montague moves in at age 10 or 11, and saves Ronald Sinclair’s life from Raymond Fielding and the Web

she is described with brown hair

At some point between the above and the below

Agnes Montague and Raymond Fielding have a fight that leaves a scar on reality

It ties her inexplicably to Hill Top House

1974

Hill Top House burns down; the locals all suspect Agnes Montague

Raymond Fielding’s skeleton, minus a right hand, is found in the remains

Ronald Sinclair has his first restful night since his near-death

Shortly after, Gertrude Robinson, aged around 25, finds locks of Agnes’ hair in the wreckage and constructs a binding ritual between the two of them with the help of the Web

Around this time

Agnes ‘reaches adulthood’ and stops aging

November 29, 2005

Ronald Sinclair, now over 60, gives his statement

He mentions there are no records of a halfway house at Hill Top Road

He mentions he’s started dreaming again now that developers are moving on Hill Top House

Mid-November 2006

Ivo Lensik is first contracted to work on Hill Top House

He meets Raymond Fielding, or at least someone claiming to be him. This man is notably young (20s), but his clothing is outdated. After he is let in, there is a burning, and Fielding has disappeared

Lensik then goes to hospital and meets nurse Anna Kasuma, who is in her fifties

She tells him about the history of Hill Top House

November 23, 2006

Ivo Lensik visits Hill Top House and cuts down the spider tree. He sees Father Burroughs there to exorcise the house, apparently at Anna Kasuma’s request

Agnes Montague and Jack Barnabas go on their last date

Agnes Montague, age 26, is found hanged in her apartment with what is likely Raymond Fielding’s right hand

Arthur Nolan reveals this was an intentional death suggested by Agnes herself and carried out by the Cult of the Lightless Flame

November 30, 2006

Eugene Vanderstock gives his statement

He brings news of Agnes Montague’s death, on Arthur Nolan’s behest

March 13th, 2007

Ivo Lensik gives his statement

March 18th, 2007

Jack Barnabas gives his statement

He describes Agnes as tall, with auburn hair

‘A couple of years before’ the incident with Hill Top House in 2009

Father Burroughs visits 89 Bullingdon, where Bethany O’Connors is staying, and finds a wall enscribed with the word ‘MENTIS.’ When he asks her about it, she seems confused

Followup to the statement indicated that no students were living at 89 Bullingdon, though Bethany claimed she was living there with six other students

The next day, Burroughs visits the John Radcliffe hospital (where Annie Willett works and where Bethany is hospitalized) for an exorcism for Bethany

He was called there on her behalf by Annie, who seems to be the same person as the Annie Kasuma Ivo Lensik met

Bethany dies in the process

Sometime in 2009

Father Burroughs goes to exorcise Hill Top House on Annie Willett/Kasuma’s request, is nearly burned alive but the Desolation is stopped by a voice that takes over his body and says he is already marked.

He meets Ivo Lensik upon his arrival at the house

The next day, Father Burroughs is terrified by a false version of Father Singh, flees to the Oratory where he has visions of a supernatural Mass. He is arrested at 89 Bullingdon Road for the murder and cannibalism of Christopher Bilham and James Mann

Details in the followup suggest there may have been a second person there that night

Details in Burrough’s vision mirror aspects of many of the entities, including most prominently, the Spiral, the Web, and the Eye.

February 2, 2009

Arthur Nolan comes to gives his statement about Agnes’ death since the Gertrude-Agnes binding circle has been broken

Mid-February 2009

Jason North accidentally disrupts Gertrude and Agnes’ binding circle

April 22, 2009

Anya Villette gives her statement

April 23, 2009

Anya Villette cleans Hill Top House

She notices the spider tree outside

She goes into the basement and gets sucked into a crack in the floor from which 8 legs extend, and wakes up in one of the chairs inside HTH

She says this took place two weeks before she gave her statement

She says her friends are off, don’t seem to know her. She can’t find her favorite coffeeshop. And she’s never heard of the Institute

The followup indicates that as far as records go, Anya Villette does not exist.

August 6, 2009

Jason North gives his statement

August 10, 2009

Jason North douses himself in petrol and sets himself on fire

Around October 4, 2009

Gabriel, The-Worker-of-Clay, sends a letter to Deborah Madaki, telling her he is working in a place called Sannikov Land and inviting her to join him

October 11, 2009

Deborah Madaki gives her statement

No earlier than October 4, 2009, no later than 2011

Gertrude takes Michael Shelley to Sannikov Land and sends him into the Distortion to stop the Great Twisting

Sarah Carpenter is liquified from the inside out by someone who is almost certainly Diego Molina, due to Emma Harvey’s machinations

If indeed this is the same circumstance as the event described by Basira in MAG 43 “Section 31,” then we can pin the date for all of these to have occurred in August 2011

Sometime after the above

Gertrude Robinson and Agnes Montague meet for the one and only time in their lives

Gertrude arranges for Emma Harvey to be burned to death, via Elias and Agnes

May 30, 2011

Father Burroughs gives his statement

–

It’s possible I missed some small thing or two, but here’s the stuff I find relevant. It’s not Michael’s timeline that’s strange, it’s Agnes’s, and Hill Top House’s, and the possible varying universes that collide there, at that rift in reality.

Let’s start with a timeline (does a timeline make sense, given that the place is now officially a “rip in reality”? Who knows??):

1891 - purchased by Walter Fielding (earliest records the team could find) (allllllso this is about a year after Millbank Prison was demolished, so presumably around the time when the Magnus Institute is looking at moving to its current location) 1923 - house inherited by Alfred Fielding (I’m not gonna put money on whether Walter died or just changed his name because he got too old to be believable any more) 1957 - house inherited by Raymond Fielding (just a couple of years before this: Mary Keay has recently acquired the skin book; Wallace Turner recently gave his statement about the Risen War) “early sixties” (no firm date given: forty-odd years ago from 2005, at age fifteen having been born in the forties) - Ronald Sinclair moves into the halfway house run by Raymond Fielding; Fielding appears to be about thirty, which is 100% meaningless. Every Sunday they go to church (sure they do) and then have dinner in the basement around a table covered in twisting lines two and a half to three years later, mid-winter: Agnes arrives at the house, age ten or eleven eight to ten years later, early seventies: Raymond Fielding disappears

(1972, Rosa Meyer makes her statement about being watched. 1973, James Wright takes over as Head of the Institute.)

1974: five-year-old Henry White goes missing; the house burns with no signs of life. Only remains found were Raymond Fielding, a badly charred skeleton missing its right hand circa 1990: Something Happened to disrupt the ritual that the Lightless Flame blames on Gertrude (almost twenty years before Gertrude disrupts the Last Feast, which sure sounded like the first time she’d done it on purpose) 1991: Agnes Montague starts frequenting the Canyon Cafe

(1994, Jurgen Leitner’s library attacked and destroyed)

1996: Ivo Lensik’s father dies of the Spiral after spending years obsessed with fractals

(’96 is also the year Elias Bouchard becomes Head of the Institute)

2001: Adelard Dekker traps the not!Them in the table of twisting lines 2005: Graham Folger has the table of twisting lines in his flat, says he bought it at a secondhand shop in Oxford “during his student days” (he’s been attending colleges here and there since late 2001); it’s missing the box in the center

(January 2006, Adelard Dekker finds evidence of the Extinction in the experience of a researcher in Garland Hillier’s flat)

autumn 2006: Jack Barnabas dates Agnes Montague mid-November 2006: Ivo Lensik is called in to assist on the construction of a new house at Hill Top Road; meets a young Raymond Fielding on the third night on the job, Fielding disappears with a smell of burning and a scorch mark on the floor November 23, 2006: Father Edwin Burroughs visits the house to do a blessing (attacked by fire, tells it “I am not for you. I am marked,” (presumably by the Spiral) but it doesn’t stop until); Ivo Lensik pulls down a tree in the yard: “very large and very dead” with “old, black scorch marks…curling up from the base of the tree.” When he attacks it with a crowbar it bleeds; when he pulls it down he finds underneath a six inch square box belonging to the table of twisting lines; inside is a fresh green apple which explodes into spiders. Lensik smashes the box. Agnes goes on a date with Jack Barnabas. Just after dark she staggers in pain, makes an emergency phone call. “She said something about a tree falling, and that they had to finish something. Then she hung up. She leaned on my arm as we walked back to her flat. I’d never been there before, but it was clear she couldn’t make it unassisted.” Agnes Montague found hanged in her flat in Sheffield, with Fielding’s hand tied to her waist, tissue decay indicating it died the same time she did. Since Lensik’s statement was made [as of season one, late 2015], two families have lived in the house November 30, 2006: Eugene Vanderstock makes his statement (139)

(January 2007, Mikaele Salesa gives a statement as recompense for an accident with a Slaughter artifact he sold the Institute, though he thinks the employees should have known better) 

(sometime between July 2008 and early 2009, Mary Keay succeeds at her ritual with the skin book)

April 23, 2009: Anya Villette is hired for a cleaning job at a newly-constructed house at Hill Top Road. She sees a tree in the garden, “still bare from the winter” with eight branches that looked like they were reaching for her. She has a vision of standing under the tree and it grabbing for her. When she’s finished with the rest of the house she goes into a basement that wasn’t on the floor plans. In it she sees a foot-wide gap, and in it “those eight spindly arms reaching up to pull me in,” and then she wakes up sitting in a chair in the house. When she gives her statement on April 22, 2009, she says that this was two weeks ago and she’s never heard of the Magnus Institute before. 

(June 2009, Jason North runs afoul of the Desolation in Loch Glass, recognizes Gertrude from her picture there)

(October 2009, the Worker-in-Clay departs for Sannikov Land)

late spring 2016: Breekon & Hope deliver the table of twisting lines to the Magnus Institute (along with the web lighter) - Jon recognizes it from the statements, asks if there was a box with it February 16, 2017: Jon takes an axe to the table of twisting lines, releasing the not!Them