#breaking ground

"When I was a little girl there was a shed at the bottom of the garden that I was always told never to go inside. There were tools and sharp and deadly things that were not right, too dangerous for a little girl. But then one year we lost the gardener to another house and the new one brought everything they needed in the van so the shed was locked up tight and sealed against any nosy children who would think that something in there might be rusty toys for playing without the fear they needed..."

I still don't have the words for how thrilling Episode 21: Breaking Ground was. I think I've listened to Gwen's monologue at least fifteen times by now. The fact that the Eye is an active, hunting threat is so exciting.

I'm sure the figure looks more human in actuality, but I've been playing a lot of Baldur's Gate and I suppose got inspired by the mindflayers.

Anyhoot, here's my interpretation of Gwen getting compelled.

Barbara Palvin Sprouse and Dylan Sprouse in Breaking Ground (Episode 3 - The Town)

In episode 21 of TMP, Leonardo Kennings, co-treasurer of the Magnus Institute, debates the Institute’s plan to participate in the London Millennium Exhibition.  

The calculations provided by Dr Welling and his team presuppose that any outputs from the site will be broadly balanced; that as a symbol of the future it captures both optimism and despair – the belief in a better world and the terror that a new millennium will bring nothing except new ways to suffer. It is my belief, however, that the actual balance of energies involved will be profoundly skewed towards the fearful and despairing[…]

This modern social and political order, following the fall of the USSR, has taken root in the popular imagination as a natural and final state of society with an emergent and inherent stability. The turning of the millennium is therefore felt as an “end of history” to borrow a term, and in this context the Dome may be seen as a monument to this order. A full stop. 

I’ve been hearing a lot about The End of History lately and wanted to share some information for those who are unfamiliar. Note that this is based on secondary sources like Philosophy Tube and the podcast If Books Could Kill, because I’m not about to read 400+ pages of a neoconservative being deeply wrong about everything.

In 1992, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History and The Last Man. In it, he makes a pretty bold claim: Western liberal democracy is the final stage of society. After the recent collapse of the Soviet Union, people worldwide would accept capitalism and American-style democracy as the objectively superior way of life. 

Once every country adopted liberal democracy, there would be no real need for major social change. Small events would continue to happen, but the overall shape of history is an arc that ends with liberal democracy. Everything else would just be minor adjustments. That’s it, guys, we won. History is canceled!

Admittedly the word end can be a bit deceptive. On one level, Fukuyama was describing liberal democracy as the final destination of society. But he was also using end in the sense of a goal, borrowing from the works of Hegel. 

I don’t need to tell you that Fukuyama was full of shit. Every major event since 9/11 has been a massive callout post for him specifically. To be fair, he wasn’t alone in his bullshit. Plenty of Western political scientists assumed the fall of the Soviet Union would lead to mass adoption of liberal democracy. 

There was a lot of misplaced optimism at the end of the Millennium. Take, for instance, the Millennium Dome in London.

A massive undertaking, this 48-acre building would cost £789 million and be the ninth largest building in the world. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister at the time, declared confidently that it would be "a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity." Critics called it a Museum of Toxic Waste, based on the site’s history as a gasworks. 

The Dome contained 14 zones aiming to depict modern British life. There was a concert by Peter Gabriel. There were daily acrobatic shows, and a special Blackadder film.

In the statement, Kenning asks the foreman how long the Dome will last. He went quiet for a moment, then told me he wasn’t sure. “Could be there forever!” he said, with an odd manic edge to his voice. “Or it could be gone in a year. You just… never know. Do you? You never know what’s coming.” 

Organizers predicted the Dome would bring in 12 million visitors per year. They got just over half that. It was closed after a year, and even then, it cost over £1 million per month to maintain. The government couldn’t even sell the damn thing, because who needs the world’s ninth largest building? It ruined a fair number of careers. To quote the Sunday Times: 

At worst it is a millennial metaphor for the twentieth century. An age in which all things, like the Dome itself, became disposable. A century in which forest and cities, marriages, animal species, races, religions and even the Earth itself, became ephemeral. What more cynical monument can there be for this totalitarian cocksure fragile age than a vast temporary plastic bowl, erected from the aggregate contribution of the poor through the National Lottery. Despite the spin, it remains a massive pantheon to the human ego, the Ozymandias of its time.

Kennings describes the Dome as “almost uniquely dangerous to our work as a place of power, adding, “It is my firm belief that not only is this site already on its own journey to become a decidedly hostile locus, but that the future it represents, and that we are being pushed to incorporate into our grand ritual, is unfit being so profoundly and irrevocably poisoned.”

So the dome could become a metaphorical "fly in the ointment", to this Formula to transform of the world into a world of perpetual advancement. The Future, fear and excitement.

But the Dome being a Locus to another group of powers meant that whatever they where doing there would taint whatever the Institute was trying to achieve with this world transmuting ritual by using The Dome as their Locus/Focus/Place of Power.

Using the powers like

Formulas?

Recipes?

Soup ingredients?

Cocktails?

Personaly like that one.

Sure it's all, alcohol! in the end. Everyone has specific mix they like. But the wrong mix of alcohols and there ends the nights. Some, myself included, believe different alcohol produce different kinds of drunkenness.

It's like The Magnus Institute, O.I.A.R, Starkwall, and whatever new groups appear next are all factions. Using specific aspects of these powers as formulas to transmute the world in their collective vision.

Other than that.

Sam is going to chase that string

Celia is down for the ride cuz she has her own strings to chase.

Alice continues to know WAY more than she let's on and it seems is trying to keep people safe.

Lena continues to show she actually cares about her employees regardless of how expendable to have to be.

Whispers is Possibly Fredy?

But,

Who are we listening for?