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panelshowsource · 9 months

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HEY NOW...

aw thanks anon!! i did post my gif resources a while ago but i can post an updated one of these soon and include some psds! my gifs really aren't that good tho anon — if i'm being honest, i don't really spend that much time on colouring like i could — so if you can find someone PROPERLY good (usually a film/tv blog, as you can imagine) they may have really expert tips 🤔

as someone who has been at the ugliest end of reddit & discord tv/britcom fans' trolldom (too nice a word, really), and lived through the fucking unending years-long era of that one incel's rule over the panel show subreddit, i understand the reticence to participate in those spaces — even though, these days, they're mostly pleasant enough and subs that supply downloads (tv_bunny is life) are more or less transactional. that said, the purpose of this blog has always been to service the people who can't or don't torrent — who a lot of reddit & discord tv/britcom fans don't have the patience for, but i digress — so it doesn't bother me that a lot of my followers don't know reddit as well as i do. no worries!

omg! recently i watched after life (i love kerry godliman!!!!!!!), dara ó briain's new special, and i've also been doing my biannual re-listen of the entire horne section podcast because it is so fucking impeccable chef's kiss! i was catching up on guessable but it's really, deeply, truly mid, so i kinda gave up for a while and switched over to breeders (martin freeman agenda continues). otherwise non-panel show things, some films like close, return to dust, un beau matin, etc. — but that's for my main hehe i'm someone who wishes i could watch 10000 things in one day T_T

hahaha i do get asked this a lot!!! like you there's just so. many. and i often chicken out of substantially answering this because if i forget anyone i'll kick myself SO hard later

but

back in the day i answered a similar question about some non-comedians i want to see on taskmaster AND I SAID AMELIA DIMOLDENBERG AND IT CAME TRUE

MY BRAIN 🧠🧠🧠🧠🧠🧠

SO MAYBE I CAN MANIFEST THINGS LET'S TRY 🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮

this is personal to me, of course, and i'm considering people i really love + who i think would be really fun specifically on taskmaster, so in a somewhat priority order...

robert webb

stephen mangan

robert irwin

martin freeman

catherine tate

jessica hynes

miles jupp

simon amstell (preferably on the same season as jessica hynes because about 15 years ago (literally) i used to watch this clip religiously, and i'm sure that has something very specific to say about why i am the way i am but we don't have time to psychoanalyse me rn)

larry dean

ed byrne

holly walsh

diane morgan

daniel radcliffe

charlie brooker

hugh laurie

susie dent (omg i was CACKLING at susie, who is never on panel shows(!!!), being on the same episode of guessable as nick helm — and now i kinda wanna see her on the same series of tm as nick helm muhahaha)

kayvan novak

limmy

paul foot

bill bailey

lawrence chaney (i also love the vivienne of course! but i think lawrence may be more fit for tm while the vivenne is more fit for something like celeb juice; btw just watched her on guessable with ivo graham, and ivo calling her "viv"...omg...it did something to me...it really did...again, we're not talking about why i am the way i am)

vic reeves

the sexted boys

some other randoms people i'd certainly be happy to see, even if they don't make the priority manifesting roster — ahir shah, adam buxton, danny dyer, jimmy carr, graham norton, matt berry, glenn moore, maggie aderin-pocock, gary delaney, hal cruttenden, rhys james, huge davies, josie long, alasdair beckett-king, gino d'acampo, julian barrett, and tonsss of actors but we'd be here all day

i don't think there are many people i vehemently do not want to see on the show. while there are of course a few comedians i just don't like, and if taskmaster puts another tory politician on the panel again i'll fucking write in with my upset, the disappointment i typically feel if and when i see a new lineup is more along the lines of "meh they're fine but they took the place of someone i'd much rather see". but tm is also so good at introducing us to people we may not have seen much of before — and then we love them, so i trust the producers and alex a lot!

🔮 MANIFESTING MANIFESTING MANIFESTING MANIFESTING MANIFESTING MANIFESTING MANIFESTING 🔮

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WATCH LINKS MASTERPOST / FAQ / TAGS / ASK

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 year

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Okay, I was too busy yesterday to watch this episode, and today I have shit to do this evening, so I unfortunately can’t spend ages on the Taskmaster episode like I normally do. I normally do giant posts where I screenshot like half the episode, but that makes watching it take several hours, and unfortunately I do have a modicum of a life at this point. So I’ll still write down thoughts as I watch, but there will be fewer of them, and I won’t accompany them with screenshots, which should save a lot of time.

Anyway, I’m really excited for this episode either way. Thoughts on Taskmaster s15e04, written as I watch it:

- Excellent start. Alex’s horsefly pun got a proper laugh out of me, the Italy anecdote was exactly the sort Alex Horne-style “just drop this bit of talking into the air and pretend like it makes sense” that I enjoy, and then there was Hitchhiker’s Guide reference. And a fun prize category, with lots of room for different interpretations. Well done all around.

- That was way too short an exchange about Mae’s prize. Please tell me more about why they have a blowup doll of themself and think that would be fun to put on your head. I will be disappointed if we don’t get that in an outtake.

- Look, Frankie’s prize is not in a frame! It also has absolutely nothing to do with the remit, probably one of the most egregious examples ever of a constant just bringing in some shit they wanted to bring in even if it has nothing to do with the category. I wouldn’t have expected Frankie to play this any other way.

- More references to classic Britcom from my childhood, with Ivo Graham not messing around, bringing in something that perfectly fits the remit, a turkey. An item famous – famous worldwide, if we are to believe James Acaster’s Cold Lasagne claims about everyone in the whole world being into Mr. Bean – for being funny when it’s worn on a head even though you’re not supposed to wear it on your head. I didn’t know Friends did it too, though.

I mean, if I wanted to be pedantic, I could point out that a turkey on the head is funny to everyone else, but isn’t exactly a fun thing for the person wearing it. But I enjoy the joke enough to let that go.

- I swear I wrote the above point before I saw Frankie Boyle say “I don’t want to be too pedantic here, but…”, and then made pretty much that exact point. Not sure he has enough high ground for pedantry with his prize, but he’s got a point, as Ivo instantly admitted.

- Obsessed with the level of thought Jenny put into her pitch for her prize task, and the enthusiasm with which she delivered it. Also, I assume she didn’t make that herself, so did a member of production have to knit that? Was it the same person who made Jamali’s sweater?

- Absolutely wild over-scoring of Frankie Boyle there, what are you doing, Greg?

- I immediately love the instructions on that first task. That is so much fun. Like the season 8 bouncy ball task, but updated for a bigger budget. Too bad Frankie couldn’t find this thing during the “recreate musical instruments” task.

- Haven’t seen much of it yet, but my first thought is to take the drums and cymbals off their stands and put them all on the ground next to each other.

- Sort of like what I just watched Kiell do, but I feel like you could take it farther than that.

- Jenny, I would never call you a silly cow. I am really enjoying her energy.

- “You counted to seven but you only hit five” is somehow a problem Kiell has already had on this show, with the barge task. Why is Kiell not able to count to five?

- Okay, I’ve been calling the team of two “Franko”, but Alex got in his No More Jockeys reference by calling them “a big IF”, and I think I’m going to need to re-name the team to that from now on. Team Big IF.

- There, that thing Frankie’s doing, that’s what I’d do.

- Delightful to watch how much Frankie’s enjoying this. Ivo might be overthinking. I mean it’s amusing to include the Greg statue, and I do think overall Taskmaster has been underusing that thing, but it doesn’t really help.

- Honestly, I could watch Frankie Boyle drop a ball down a row of drums and then giggle all day.

- Ivo’s last idea would definitely be cheating, as it said one throw of a ball and of multiple balls at once, but it didn’t work anyway so it doesn’t really matter.

- Again, Drum March/April/Mae – solid pun. Alex is on form this episode.

- Love that Mae is not even pretending to not have watched all previous seasons and be using that for ideas. No messing around by trying lesser strategies and then coming up with this new one, just going straight for the Lou Sanders approach.

- Hang on. Hang on. What the hell are they arguing about in the studio? This precedent has been set. Okay, here are the wording of two different tasks:

Season 8 task: Bounce one of these balls so that it lands in that bin. After propelling the ball, you may not touch or strike it on its way to that bin. You must use the ball you touch first.

Season 15 task: Strike the most drum skins and cymbals with a single throw of a bouncy ball.

In season 8, Lou Sanders had her attempt count when she tied it to string and bounced it over and over. Yeah, “propel” and “throw” are different words, but they’re close enough. They both involve releasing the ball and then not touching it again, which neither contestant did. That precedent is already on the books, this should definitely be a win for Mae.

- There, according to Alex, the definition for “throw” says “to propel”. Meaning “throw” and “propel” are the same thing, those tasks should be considered equivalent, the precedent should be considered relevant, therefore Mae wins.

- Okay, Kiell’s argument was bullshit, you can absolutely drop something and throw it at the same time, that’s just throwing it downward. Ivo’s masturbation joke was quite funny but irrelevant. Frankie… might sort of have a point with the “casting” thing, about whether the moment they jerked it backwards, the first throw was over. That could be up for debate, if this were five years ago. But it isn’t. Season 8 has aired, the precedent has been set. You have to honour the precedent!

- You are not letting them get away with anything, Greg, you let Lou Sanders get away with it already and if you didn’t allow this we’d have anarchy! But that was enormous fun, that whole exchange. I did say I wouldn’t screenshot the whole episode again, but Greg’s right, Kiell’s face is pretty good.

- Bridges for potatoes and boats for eggs. Ordering things with restrictions based on letters of the alphabet. I like that some of the tasks in this season feel like classic Taskmaster.

- What the fuck are you going to do with a golf ball, Kiell?

- Power of suggestion’s pretty strong here, isn’t it? They all hear the word “boat” and then three of the five choose B as their letter.

- Title drop from Kiell, and it’s a good one. He does seem to be bad at both basic counting and working out whether things are heavier than water/air, given the time he through he could move a golf ball by blowing on it.

- Look on Ivo’s face when he broke the egg was some solid comedy.

- Ivo’s studio banter has been strong all episode.

- Okay, I haven’t seen them all go yet but having seen them made, I think Mae had it the best. Frankie making it out of paper seems like a bad idea, what with water tending to compromise paper’s structural integrity. No idea what Jenny made, and I think she just wanted to be able to say “bra” a lot, which to be fair, was funny. Kiell’s balloon was a good idea, Ivo’s multiple balloons were better.

- Well, I was definitely wrong about Mae’s boat. But that was actually really good, I think that worked better than I expected. Nice little editing with the music over Mae’s boat at the end. That was an enjoyable watch. And my apologies to Frankie Boyle, I underestimated the power of a little plastic to protect the paper.

- Oh no! Oh no! I am glad my roommate’s still out of town because when they showed the egg fall, I may have involuntarily called out “Oh no, Frankie!” before realizing I was saying it out loud. Oh no, Frankie! It is possible that you do, after all, need more structural integrity than paper with a little plastic coating.

- Ah, well done. Greg pretending to let Frankie go just to fuck with Kiell. This is fun.

- I’m really enjoying how genuinely nervous Mae seems. Which might be a weird thing to say, it’s just a sign of their extreme competitiveness that they look constantly on edge, expecting some surprise, trying to look for any loopholes. Funny, also highly relatable. I mean, I realize I’m biased by Mae Martin being one of the most attractive people I have ever seen on a screen, but I think they’d be one of my favourites even if they weren’t that.

- Love that they put the task where Kiell has to drag a bin full of water right after the egg boat task. How heavy is the water now, Kiell?

- Kiell is not wearing shoes, guys.

- I’m absolutely fine. I mean, I just thought the words “Damn, Mae scrambling to do math in their head is hot”, and then wondered if I should write those words down, and decided I will. But I’m doing fine.

- The obvious thing to do with bubble wrap is to rip off one bubble, put it to the side, and then crush the rest all at once with a book or something, right?

- Oh my God they took twenty minutes on the bubble wrap. Meticulous Mae. I love them.

- I’m not sure the banana sign is the same as a banana, is it?

- Could have been just editing that made it look this way, but I love that it appears that Frankie instantly knocked the bin over to spill the water on the ground, after Kiell had tried to carefully empty it into the bath.

- And then Frankie forgets that he can open the gates instead of trying to throw a large bin over them. Nice.

- Jenny shouting in all four rooms of the house had some strong “essence of Taskmaster” energy.

- The John part is pretty funny, seeing how long it takes them to work out that they have to call someone and John isn’t just in the house.

- Oh, it took me a moment to realize Frankie was burning the bubble wrap to complete the tasks. I thought he’d already popped all the bubble wrap so his task was completed, and he was so annoyed about what he’d had to do that he gathered up all the tasks, put them in a bucket, and burned them for no reason.

- Glad Frankie Boyle got to set some shit on fire, though. I always say people don’t realize there’s a strong intelligent and well read and thoughtful and politically informed side to Frankie, he’s not just what you see on Mock the Week compilations! But, you know, if you’re going to get Frankie Boyle on Taskmaster, you want to have a bit of bringing in pornography and setting shit on fire. I hope all five of them set some shit on fire this season.

- Okay, one screenshot and that is it for the whole episode. I just… I just need to take that picture of Mae Martin being petty about the definition of “throw”, and then coyly acknowledging the hypocrisy. For personal reasons, I need to show people that image.

- Really enjoyed Greg and Frankie yelling at each other about the definition of a banana. And I want Frankie and Jenny to be right, I really do. But a sign that says “banana” is not, in fact, a banana.

- Well, that whole sequence with Ivo was brilliant. He seemed to figure out that you’re allowed to pass on a task that’ll take too long, which could have been a smart strategy, if it weren’t for the fact that he had a complete breakdown and did every singe thing wrong. Mistaking the caravan for the shed is classic. Also forgot that the gate opens. I’m remembering what Nish Kumar said on the podcast before this season, that he thinks it’ll be fun to watch because he knows that Ivo Graham falls to pieces as soon as anyone puts the slightest bit of pressure on him. That was very funny all around.

- Really enjoyed the live task, too. Kiell trying fancy things, Frankie seeming to genuinely get into the art therapy side of it, Mae playing it too safe and meticulous, the look on Jenny’s face when she broke the stream for a second. And Ivo just had a solid strategy. Well done.

- Well, obviously I wrote that before I saw the ending. Good stuff. Classic Taskmaster. I do love it when they stick to the rules to the point of making it a ludicrous result. Also really enjoyed Frankie’s petty comment about the episode being a journey through language and meaning – he’s had a few of those throughout this episode, seeming to be fine with outcomes but then bringing it back later to complain. Which I also enjoy. I love some pettiness in a Taskmaster contestant.

- Aw, Jenny Eclair won an episode! A good one for her to win, too, as she seems like the one who’d have the most fun putting things on her head.

- Good stuff, I really really enjoyed that, and this is by far the fastest I’ve ever done one of these Taskmaster liveblog posts. Great episode, great season, I would watch Frankie Boyle narrate literally anything, did I mention how hot Mae Martin is enough times? Okay I have to go do actual things now, but that was a really good one, best episode of the season so far, I think.

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ieatmypizzawithaforkandknife · 3 years

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MAG 019 - Confession (part 1)

Summary: Jonathan reads the first half of the statement of Father Edwin Burroughs, regarding “his claimed demonic possession.”

Our first two-parter! Not that I realized that when I listened to the episode the first time, despite it being right there in the title, because I have the observational skills of a blind muskrat...but I’m excited because I know there will be more multi-parters in the future. I like the episodic format right now, but I know that as Things Begin To Happen, I’ll appreciate the increased breadth and depth of longer stories.

89 Bullingdon Rd is the third street address featured in the series so far, the other two being 93 Lancaster Rd in episode 5 and 105 Hill Top Rd in episode 8. Unlike the first two, however, this one actually exists - kind of. According to google maps, the house numbers on Lancaster Rd in Walthamstow run from about 1 to 85, and the numbers on Hill Top Rd in Cowley run from about 1 to 75. But 89 is right in the middle of the range of house numbers on Bullingdon Rd in Cowley, and while google maps says there’s an 89A but not an 89...it’s close enough. On one hand it’s super cool that these locations are relatively real (the towns are real, the streets are real, it’s just the exact buildings that aren’t). On the other hand 89A is a little too close to 89, and I wish Jonny had picked a number completely outside the range of addresses like he did with the first two, just to avoid crazy fans descending on real people’s houses.

It is definitely worth noting the proximity of 89 Bullingdon Rd to 105 Hill Top Rd. They’re only about half a mile (or about a kilometer, since this is in the UK after all) away from each other as the crow flies. And for both of them, the location itself seems to be tied to the paranormal happenings of the episode(s) they’re featured in. In episode 8, Ivo Lensik feels that unnatural burning start when he’s alone inside 105 Hill Top Rd, which stops as soon as Father Burroughs arrives. In this episode, Father Burroughs feels that same unnatural burning start when he’s alone inside 105 Hill Top Rd, and it only stops when Ivo uproots the tree. And in this episode, Bethany claims her problems are being caused by the Bullingdon Rd house itself, though she doesn’t explain what made her think that. But it’s very concerning that she can’t seem to see the only creepy thing about the house that we’re aware of: the old Latin word written in faded blue paint on the exposed wall.

The word “mentis” is Latin alright, but Father Burroughs translates it as “mind” which...isn’t quite right. “Mentis” doesn’t strictly mean “mind”, it means “of the mind”. The endings of Latin nouns change based on how they’re used in a sentence, so if you’re talking about the word “mind” as the subject of a sentence (or as the word in general) it is “mens”. “Mentis” is specifically the possessive form of the word. I don’t know whether this was deliberate or accidental on Jonny’s part, since if you look it up the dictionary entry shows “mens, mentis”. (It’s standard practice to include both the “subject” form and the “possessive” form in the dictionary since they’re different.) It makes me wonder if this word was part of a phrase and if there were other words hidden under the wallpaper. (Also, small shout-out to anyone reading this who is also a Latin geek, and I hope I explained it well enough that the non-Latin-geeks also understand that explanation.)

On the subject of language, this isn’t the first time Latin has appeared in connection with the paranormal. Ex Altiora, the Leitner found in episode 4, was written entirely in Latin (including the title), and the Lord’s Prayer was written in Latin on that long strip of singed paper found in the second trash bag in episode 5. It’s interesting that the same constellation of details from the trash bag incident are also in this episode: Latin, Christianity, and burning.

Latin isn’t even the only dead language to make an appearance this episode. When describing his experiences performing exorcisms at the beginning of the episode, Father Burroughs recounts: “I was once cursed at in Sumerian by a young man who was illiterate.” In episode 12, the phrase muttered by the hospitalized man that seemed to summon the “lightless flame” contained the word ��Asag”, which is the name of a Sumerian demon that could boil fish alive in their rivers. Father Burroughs doesn’t appear in episode 12, but if he had been at that hospital, I think he would have pegged that guy as possessed and wanted to have an exorcism performed. So is there a connection between Sumerian and possession and burning? And how do all the different dead languages that have appeared so far (Latin, Sumerian, and Sanskrit) fit together?

I am also very interested in that nurse, Anna/Annie/Anne Kasuma/Willett. (Seriously, how many names does one person need?) For my purposes, I’m going to call her “Annie” because she seems to go by that. In this episode’s statement (made in 2011), Father Burroughs gives her surname as Willett, and in Jonathan’s wrap-up at the end of episode 8 (which he recorded in late 2015 or early 2016), Jonathan gives her surname as Kasuma. As an older, fairly conservative Catholic (she was a member of the congregation at Father Burroughs’ church, fully believed in demonic possession, etc.), it is highly unlikely that she changed her name for any reason other than marriage or divorce. Ivo Lensik described her as “Malaysian”, and Kasuma is an Indonesian name, whereas Willett is found overwhelmingly in predominantly white countries (the U.S., England, Australia, and Canada are at the top of the list of countries where the name is found). So it would make the most sense to me if Kasuma were her maiden name and Willett a married name. BUT when Jonathan mentions her in the wrap-up to episode 8, he calls her “Mrs. Kasuma”. Since everything else fits with the idea that Kasuma is her maiden name and Willett her married name, I’m thinking Jonathan just messed up the honorific, since he also referred to “Miss Popham” at the end of episode 15 when “Popham” was very clearly Laura’s married name. (This overly detailed surname analysis brought to you in part by my ongoing obsession with genealogy. If anyone reading this has anything resembling a passing interest in the subject, feel free to hit me up about it. I will gush.) All of that nitty-gritty was not without purpose: I think she’s important somehow. I could be reading too much into things, but why would Jonny give her a name change if it weren’t somehow important? Even I realized the nurse from episode 8 and the nurse from episode 19 were the same person on my first listen-through, when I missed or forgot 90% of the details in any given episode, so I don’t think he was trying to trip us up. And she has a direct connection to 105 Hill Top Rd: she grew up on that street, and had a lot of information on the property’s history dating back to before she was born, possibly indicating her family lived on that street even longer. But we haven’t met anyone else with either surname, so for now that’s where it stands: possibly a lead, muddled with a probable mistake.

I was so glad when Father Burroughs made the differentiation in this episode between perception and will: “Bethany told me that her will was still her own, but she could no longer trust her senses, and had found herself doing much that she did not understand.” She tried to eat a small slab of slate, and she apparently couldn’t perceive the word “Mentis” that was literally written on a wall. This might be the first time that the author of the statement calls attention to the recurring theme I’ve been calling “altered reality”. This “altered reality” is a heavy presence in the second part of this two-parter, but I’ll wait to talk about that in that episode’s post. Coupled with this “altered reality” is the “eating of something you really shouldn’t be eating”. In this episode, it’s Bethany trying to eat a slab of slate before being abruptly pulled back to reality by Father Burroughs, only then realizing what it was. Hinted at in this episode, and shown in more detail in the next one (minor spoiler, I guess?), is Father Burroughs eating human flesh and only realizing what it was when the police arrived. The only other time I remember these two themes working in tandem is in episode 3 when Graham Folger ate a notebook. No one stopped him or made him realize what he was doing, so we don’t know for sure that his reality was altered, but it makes the most sense to me that he, like Bethany and Father Burroughs, truly didn’t realize what he was doing. I’m not convinced that the events of this episode (and the next one) are actually related to the notebook incident in episode 3, but it’s an interesting parallel.

On a completely unrelated note, I’d like to talk a bit about Father Burroughs’ “possession” itself. First off, I get that Bethany saying “I’m so sorry...it wants your faith” was supposed to be an ominous line, but why is that the only thing she said throughout the entire attempted exorcism at the hospital? She couldn’t even say, “Hey, man, this isn’t working”? All she could do was look at him with pity and say that? I’d be OK with those being her only words if whatever was “possessing” her also affected her speech the way it did to Father Burroughs later...but she specifically established that she was free to speak and act as she wished, it was only at certain times that her perception of reality was altered. So I’m a little annoyed at her for not giving Father Burroughs (or us) any kind of useful warning or helpful information during the failed exorcism.

I was really confused by the apparent theft of the sacramental wine, too. What was the significance of that? Was it just an example of something weird Father Burroughs noticed that keyed him in to the fact that All Was Not Well, or was there something more to it? (This is only a semi-rhetorical question - if the answer to this was said outright or implied in this episode and it isn’t a post-S1 spoiler, please do fill me in. I sometimes miss stuff that’s super obvious to other people.)

I also find it interesting that he can say “God” towards the end of this episode. He stumbled over it, but by contrast he was completely unable to say “Lord” and “Jesus” at the very beginning. Not sure if this is significant, since there’s no real difference between the words “Lord” and “God” in my estimation. Jesus is specifically Christian, and while “Lord” tends to be associated with Christianity, it’s not exclusive. “God” is the most general of the three terms, yes, but in context he is very obviously referring to the Christian “God”, so his difficulty with getting certain words out isn’t based solely on their contextual meaning. Jonny could have written it without him getting out the word “God” at the end and I think most people listening would have understood that’s the word he was going for. It’s either some kind of clue, or Jonny just got sick of stuttering.

Father Burroughs’ call for protection is the point at which he knows something is Very, Very Wrong, as he feels his lips move even though he himself isn’t moving them. But, as with so many of these stories, Things Were Bad Long Before You Realized It. Bethany told him “it wants your faith” years before the Hill Top Rd incident. He himself admits that his pride led to his downfall, since he initiated an exorcism/blessing on Hill Top Rd when he wasn’t supposed to be doing them at all. But it wasn’t just his pride - it was something taking advantage of his pride. I think that, as much as any person can be, Father Burroughs was a victim of whatever possessed him. He made mistakes in his life - his sins, if you’re looking at it religiously, as he did - but he never wanted to be evil or commit crimes like cannibalism. Like the characters in so many of these stories, I don’t think he deserved what he got, and I mostly just feel bad for him.

His call for protection, he says, was answered by something that was not God, and when Jonathan reads the words that Father Burroughs’ lips were forming (“I am not for you. I am marked.”) we once again hear that creepy static or interference. And I still can’t decide if this is supposed to be some kind of clue or if it’s just to make things creepier. It feels like a clue, but I can’t figure out what exactly it’s supposed to mean. Most of the times I’ve noted it appearing (probably not a complete list - I’m working on it) it appears during a specific quoted phrase or instance of someone speaking: “Can I have a cigarette?” in episode 1. “Isn’t it funny, Amy, how you can live so near and never notice. I’ll need to return the visit someday” from not-Graham in episode 3. “Some hungers are too strong to be denied” from Angela in episode 14. Laura’s sister Elena asking her “how lost I was, in a low, grating voice” in episode 15. If the examples were limited to things like this, then I’d say that it occurs whenever some as-yet-undetermined otherworldly monster is given a human voice to speak through. But it also occurs the first time Ex Altiora is said in episode 4 and the first time The Boneturner’s Tale is said in episode 17, as well as two different moments during the recounting of the story inside TBT. So how is it connected to the Leitners? It didn’t occur when Jonathan read the title Key of Solomon in episode 4, which is implied to be a Leitner. And there’ve been a few other occurrences where something obviously supernatural is happening but that doesn’t involve speech or quoted words at all: When Laura describes the light changing from appearing like an approaching candle to sunlight (which it still wasn’t...) in episode 15, and when Jonathan reads the description of the bleeding books in episode 17 (”red dripped and pulsed from the cart”).

I don’t know what to make of the creepy static yet. But my specific concern with the most recent instance, when Father Burroughs “said” “I am not for you. I am marked” is: Who are the “I” and the “you” referring to? Is the “I” supposed to be Father Burroughs, or the thing “possessing” him? And who on earth is the “you”?

This post is part of a series where I write my thoughts about each episode and obsessively connect dots in an effort to figure out The Big Mysteries of the series. All posts in this series are tagged “is this liveblogging?” Comments and messages are welcome but I have only listened to season 1, so I ask that you not spoil me for anything beyond episode 40. In the words of Jonny Sims…thanks for listening!

#personal #liveblogging #is this liveblogging?#The Magnus Archives #guys this took me so long to write because I CANNOT BE SUCCINCT #nor can I leave anything out because IT'S ALL SO INTERESTING #I am so sorry

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blookmallow · 4 years

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im starting to realize there’s a bunch of connections going on between tma episodes.. i dont know what it Means yet and dont tell me!!!!! ill get there!! but. hmmm. im going through the transcripts after i listen to them to make sure i didnt miss things/checking the details and i just. Keep Finding More Shit, it’s all connected, i feel like there’s something huge going on behind all these and i Do Not Know what it is yet

this is. very long and disjointed i went through all the transcripts for every episode ive listened to so far and kept noticing more things

like Don’t Tell Me if im right or wrong ill find out im just gathering thoughts. setting up my little conspiracy board. red strings everywhere

- firstly theres an obvious running thread going about the cursed jurgen leitner books, gerard keay, the. worms. and jane prentiss

- carlos vittery in Arachnophobia mentions offhand that his complex had an infestation of “small, silvery worms” which passed right over my head the first time but looking at it again thATS THE FUCKIGN WORMS!!!! and martin found. Probably Jane in the basement of that same complex. so. well, (that also means like Who Knows how many people in that building might have gotten infected) (i also wonder whether the spiders might actually be Good, if the worms are hideous parasites maybe the spiders are showing up to eat them/get rid of them, martin says he likes spiders, the spiders almost definitely killed vittery but he was violently trying to wipe them out so maybe it was a greater good kind of thing) (or they’re just spiders and dont have that level of comprehension and like the nasty silver worms. either way)

- there’s also a lot of Foretelling Of Death but i dont want to go through and list all of those rn

- in Anglerfish, there was some kind of. shadowy hand thing beckoning people into the darkness. Amy Patel in Across The Street describes seeing a similar shadowy hand thing reaching into Graham’s apartment before his. replacement. both of these are described as “folding” in on themselves/moving in a really unnatural way. smoking was also mentioned in both but i havent really been following that as a symbol very closely. possible link with Fire? i dont know

- Repetition. Graham was obsessively filling hundreds of notebooks with the words “Keep Watching,” mary keay’s skin was completely covered in unreadable script tattoos, the paper found by the garbage men was the Lord’s prayer written in latin over and over again, ivo lensik’s father became completely obsessed with fractals and couldn’t stop drawing them. the unnamed burned man in First Aid repeats an unclear phrase over and over again. gerard keay is also covered in tattoos of eyes in First Aid, which was not mentioned before (though probably wouldn’t have been visible before)

- Graham was convinced he was being watched/followed by Something, harriet was concerned about being followed after she was attacked by prentiss (which. matches with martin’s experience too, though he was much more fortunate), vittery was followed by The Spider, lensik’s father also believed Something was coming for him (and “all the bones are in his hands” sounds very. leitner), and there was. whatever approaching darkness was coming after robert montauk, as well

- Graham has a weirdly hypnotic table, the first Leitner book found by dominic swain had oddly vertigo-inducing woodcuttings, gerard keay’s eye painting is similarly hypnotic, lensik finds a box in the old tree with the same hypnotic carvings on it

- not sure if the Spider Apple has any relation to the Arachnophobia episode, but, there’s that, also

- swain’s book had an image of the sky, which he described felt like you would “fall into it” if you looked at it for too long, and robert kelly sort of “fell into the sky” in Freefall. laura popham describes a sense of being swallowed up by the earth in Lost Johns’ Cave, as well

- same theme of becoming “lost” in Lost Johns’ Cave and in Alone, similar concepts of being consumed by the earth

- i dont think its necessarily related to anything else as far as i know but just wanted to mention also i didn’t process the... extra audio recording in Lost Johns’ Cave correctly, i thought she was saying “help me, help me, please help me” which was unnerving, but didn’t really seem all that critical to add, until looking at the transcripts i realized it was “take her, not me” which was a HUGE punch to the gut when i discovered it lmao. dont ask how i managed to mishear that badly but i am very very bad at auditory processing which is why im reading all these scripts to make sure i didnt process them wrong

- Graham mentions he’s gay, and the man who had the dream about gertrude mentions having broken up with his boyfriend, Graham. jon doesn’t comment on this and it’s not necessarily the same graham, and im not sure what the significance is if it is, but it seems like an odd coincidence if it isn’t. “antonio” doesn’t go into detail about why they broke up, but mentions they had been living together

- the name Joshua Gillespie stands out to me for some reason, like I’ve heard “gillespie” somewhere before, but I haven’t noticed it coming up again in any of the transcripts unless I just missed it. could just be that my brain decided to Remember that name for no reason though. he’s the guy with the coffin

- jon mentions this, but Breekon and Hope deliveries were responsible both for the weird coffin and the yellow stole from the incident with father burroughs

- there’s a major ongoing theme of Fire and Burning, both just in general, and a more specific Fire With No Apparent Source thing continuously happening. the prayer paper in the trash had been burned, timothy hodge burned his apartment after the Worms Incident (and martin mentions noticing one of the worms looked slightly burnt - maybe it survived the fire and returned to jane?), sgt. berry was “distinctively marked” by an incident with a flamethrower, the vampires are supposedly very very vulnerable to fire, raymond fielding’s house burned down and his. ghost? disappears with a burning smell and a burnt spot on the floor, lensik experiences an intense, unbearable heat with no clear cause soon after the encounter with raymond, which father burroughs also experiences in his account. the mysterious coffin in Do Not Open had an unnatural heat to it. gerard keay burns the leitner book and picks up the still-smoldering ashes but isn’t concerned with the heat, and then appears again as one of the burned men in First Aid, having apparently experienced second-degree burns on every inch of his skin, but had completely undamaged clothes. the nurse describes feeling a burning sensation when the chanting starts, but dismisses it as a nervous reaction, then experiences the. boiling drink bottles and the burning hot door handles. she says she could feel a burning heat from gerard’s hand. the burned man’s body immediately self-cremates when gerard kills him. lee rentoul also gives specifically a lighter to angela for her Piecemeal curse, though that might be coincidental. he does burn the first box after he discovers it, though

- the garbage man describes the last Weird Trash as “tied off with a dark green ribbon, arranged in a bow like an old-fashioned Christmas present” - which contained a copper heart, possibly symbolizing alan’s real heart, with the rest of his body never being found. this matches both with robert montauk’s killings and the cursed boxes from angela’s curse- “brown paper and string, like an old-fashioned Christmas present.” there was also the weird thing with raymond’s hand, but im not sure that’s related

the vampires’ victims bodies also seemed to disappear, not sure that’s related either

- jon confirms that the pendant julia describes (the one belonging to her mother and also her father’s last victim) is a symbol of the People’s Church of the Divine Host cult. wondering if this is related to what father burroughs experienced. gerard keay is searching for a lost pendant in First Aid, but its design is unclear, and he describes it as brass. unsure if related. the fact that gerard’s tattoos/etc were of eyes, and the other pendant is of a closed eye, while one is made of brass and the other of silver seems like there might be some connection though even if it isn’t the same one. there didn’t seem to be any burning involved with the montauk case, anyway

then there’s. this entire thing im just gonna paste it here, from sebastian adekoya in the Boneturner’s Tale:

“Books are amazing, aren’t they? I mean, when you think about what they really are. People don’t give the actuality of language the weight it deserves, I feel. Words are a way of taking your thoughts, the very make-up of yourself, and giving them to another. Putting your thoughts in the mind of someone else. They are not a perfect method, of course, as there’s plenty of scope for mutation and corruption between your mind and that of the listener, but that doesn’t change the essence of what language is.

Spoken aloud, though, the thought dies quickly if not picked up. Simple vibrations that vanish almost as soon as they are created, though if they find a host, then they can lodge there, proliferate, and maybe spread further. Still, it is not a reliable method in terms of a thought’s endurance, as humans are fragile creatures, and rarely last a century.”

this definitely seems relevant to jurgen leitner (and this is. one of the episodes about a leitner book, so) it definitely seems likely that he’s spreading some kind of.... Belief or Self or Power or Something through his books, possibly even his own consciousness is within them somehow, or at least the consciousness of Something or Someone. the man with all the bones in his hands. taking bones and warping them. bones appearing in the pages but Wrong. might be related to the bag of teeth, too, hundreds of All The Same Tooth

definitely something to the... immortalization of thoughts/memories/Consciousness through written word, especially when we consider the words literally tattooed into mary keay’s skin/the book possibly bound in her skin. i cant put a coherent thought together on this but its definitely... important, i think

sebastian also for some reason specifically mentions he was holding a copy of Stephen King’s Misery in the confrontation with Jared’s mother, which is a story about an author being forced to write something against his will/words that aren’t really his own, to appease someone else, which. seems like it might be relevant somehow too, maybe. the fact that it was named specifically when it wasn’t apparently relevant to the story seems interesting

#lucy liveblogs tma

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backofthebookshelf · 5 years

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105 Hill Top Road

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

Supplemental details: Jon is very skeptical of Lensik's statement in 008 but acknowledges that there are some corroborating details (unusual for early S1 Jon) Martin discovered the statement of Anya Villette (114) and Jon says that Hill Top Road is "a thread that's been nagging at me for a while." They can find no evidence that Anya Villette exists. The house has no current owner [as of late season 3, July 2017]. Jon also says: "I've half a mind to just go down and have a look at it myself, but... I don't know. Ever since it first came up I've felt like it would be... just a very bad idea." Probably! They've been trying to identify an owner for the place for over a year and have made no progress.

#the magnus archives #tma spoilers #i know there are complete timelines out there #but there's SO MUCH happening i find it easier to put together individual ones #gonna use this as a reference when i start dumping theories #hill top road

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pubtheatres1 · 4 years

Photo

Image: Sophie Treadwell GARRY by Sophie Treadwell White Bear Theatre, Kennington, 4th – 22nd June 2019 Interview with director GRAHAM WATTS Graham Watts is directing and producing the world premiere of Sophie Treadwell’s play GARRY. Sophie Treadwell wrote more plays than Shakespeare. Her play Machinal is looked upon as one of the great plays of the 20th century. “Everybody’s done it, from Broadway to the Almeida”, says Watts, “her other plays are there, they’re just ignored.” Like a man on a mission, Watts is determined to raise the profile of brilliant female writers’ who have been overlooked. Last year he premiered THE UNNATURAL TRAGEDY at The White Bear, 350 years after it was written by Margaret Cavendish. It received five-star reviews and an OFFIE nomination for Best Direction. Yet when he tried to get THE UNNATURAL TRAGEDY published, nobody would do it. It’s a clever restoration comedy, with 14 characters. Watts points out that it’s ideal for “universities, amateur groups could do it, students could study it, so many things you could do with it, but they just won’t publish”. It’s a problem which appears to be endemic. Timberlake Wertenbaker wrote 41 plus, operas, radio plays and screenplay. “You’ll see OUR COUNTRY’S GOOD And if you’re lucky you might see THREE BIRDS, ALIGHTING ON A FIELD”, says Watts. “If you’re telling me that’s not gender discrimination, it’s a bit suspicious, particularly when you’re comparing with productions for male writers.” “We need to enrich the repertoire. If we don’t produce plays written by women then we reduce it by 51% It’s not about a condescending concern for the “Little Ladies.” These are fantastic plays that have been neglected for years. Nobody does them. If I do them it will encourage other people to put them on, otherwise no one knows they exist. They’ll just keep doing the same productions like TOP GIRLS. If someone told you Carol Churchill only wrote TOP GIRLS you’re going to believe it.” Naturally, taking a play which has never been produced before does have challenges of its own. GARRY is a hard-hitting modern play. “It’s very 21st century, it’s the Weisberg situation except with a twist.” Set in 50s New York. Garry, an unemployed man is lured from a bar to a hotel room with the promise of a job. Watts explains: “It’s that prominent rich guy situation. When Garry comes back to the hotel room in the Waldorf, he’s sexually assaulted by the guy with repercussions for him and his new wife Wilma in particular – a reporter turns up looking for a scoop and events build to a shattering conclusion. She’s a small town girl from Oklahoma, believing in the American dream but life’s a bit more complex than that. The big thing she learns is that people are all a little bit different.” “It’s not showing graphic subject matter” says Watts, “it’s not gross, we’re talking 1954 in certain parts of America where homosexuality isn’t accepted, now there’s an attempted rape, and the changing role of women - It’s anti the American dream. The character’s feel chocked, they can’t breathe, they can’t express themselves”. The play is actually about Wilma, she’s on stage from the very first gong, and never leaves the stage for two hours. All four character’s in the play are aged 18 – 22, so Watts’ cast is very young. Two of them have worked with him before. “It has to be a stepping stone for people to move on. They won’t do something like this for the rest of their careers. An American giant of a playwright in a pub in south London … you can never take that away from them.” Phebe Alys is playing the role of Wilma. Phebe was last seen at the White Bear in The Unnatural Tragedy as Amor. She is currently filming Harlots for Sky TV. Also, in The Unnatural Tragedy was Alice Welby. In this production she takes on the part of Peggy, a tough New York prostitute and Garry’s sister. She was also Juliet in Graham Watts’ Romeo & Juliet. “Why not give them a break?” says Watts. “Particularly for Phebe - Wilma is a hell of a challenge, she’s carrying the play. These actors leave drama school with high expectations and then nothing … if people have done a good job before, I stay loyal to them”. Watts doesn’t believe in imposing a style on the play, the script is a gift. “It just comes because it’s the right thing to say, if you listen to the other actor, the response is already in your head” Watts’ explains. “Rather than grammatical sentences she splits it up into thoughts and of course New Yorkers are quick thinkers, quick speakers.” The fact that the play has never had an audience does raise a few difficulties and is disconcerting for Watts’. “I’m never sure whether it’s going to be safe. For example, will an audience understand it? Will they be offended, confused? We might know the play well but there’s no Ouija board in rehearsals for Sophie Treadwell to help us through.” At the same time Watts concedes that “the script always gets the story and language across, so she’s there holding my hand in rehearsals.” Although the Treadwell estate allows no changes to be made to the script, it is possible to slightly rearrange, and cut material, so there are some choices to make. However, Watts is always keen to honour the authors intensions. “I hate productions when you see the director on stage. Ivo Van Hove is like that his work is full of gimmicks, for me its gimmickry. With UNNATURAL TRAGEDY I used a recognised modern Shakespeare approach, keeping it fluid, not out of keeping with the RSC. GARRY is a psychological play, it’s 50s method acting, that’s what I’m driving for, that intensity that Marlon Brando had.” Watts describes himself as one of the ‘one in ten directors’ who are from a working class background’. “To be honest with you, I was ignored, that’s why I went to work abroad. I worked a lot in America. They see me for who I am and what I’ve achieved and here they don’t do that. The White Bear is different, they are so supportive, one hundred percent behind the project.” Artistic Director of White Bear, Michael Kingsbury welcomed the play. “He cares about the plays that are put on and all the new writing he’s putting on” says Watts. Watts also praises the pub, and its atmosphere. “It’s nice to sit here. Really friendly. You don’t have to try and get served, and it’s not a tenner for a drink and a fiver for a programme”. Sophie Treadwell “GARRY deserves to be seen. I want audiences to have a new respect for Sophie Treadwell, she’s not a one act wonder. She’s another female author who wrote great plays being ignored. We can’t let it go on, we’ve got to change the system”. Graham Watts in rehearsal He also praises Sophie Treadwell’s humanitarianism. “She wasn’t religious but she left the Rights to her plays with the Roman Catholic Church (Diocese of Tucson, Arizona) with specific instructions. Her estate was to be used to care for migrant children from Mexico and Latin America who come across the Border, where they are split up from their parents”. After negotiating with the church and Sophie Treadwell’s estate, Royalty payments are based on a percentage of gross box office. “Any rights and any future rights of this particular production will go to helping their kids” says Watts. Whilst Treadwell was sixty-eight when she wrote the play, Watts believes “she knows what she’s doing, at a certain age people suddenly think writers don’t know what you’re doing, the opposite is true. She’s an experienced author, let her speak.” As a director Watts has certain methods which are anecdotal but its not really about making jokes, its sharing and only if relevant to the play. “It sounds like it’s just faffing about and wasting time, it’s not, it relaxes the atmosphere. You’re not saying ‘I want it now’. Trevor Nunn is like that, I’ve worked with Trevor and that’s what he does. He’ll take about football and they’d do the best hour of rehearsal you’ve ever seen. He’s so on the money.” Watts best advice to actors is to forget about the money and think about the play. “If you want to do that play don’t let your agent stop you from doing it. So often actors go away from their passion play to work on … ‘Father Brown’. Too often with young actor’s agents will actively stop them from doing theatre, Hold on, what have you being doing for the last year? Nothing! You could have been here working.” Watts concedes that the route into directing has changed. “When I started from university, I became ASM, watched other directors work, watched lunch-time shows, then did some fringe. That was the pathway, people are denied that now.” His advice would be to “run box office, lighting, costume, don’t get a degree from Cambridge, do basic stage craft. Get your hands dirty.” It’s all about believing in the work you are doing. “GARRY deserves to be seen” says Watts. He’s looking forward to sharing it with an audience. “I want them to have a new respect for Sophie Treadwell, she’s not a one act wonder. She’s another female author who wrote great plays being ignored. We can’t let it go on, we’ve got to change the system”. THIS SHOW HAS ENDED GARRY White Bear Theatre, Kennington 4th – 22nd June 2019 1954. New York. An unemployed man is lured from a bar to the hotel room of a “prominent citizen” with the promise of a job. A sexual assault is attempted which has devastating consequences for newlyweds Wilma and Garry. When a reporter turns up looking for a scoop, events build to a shattering conclusion.

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newyorktheater · 5 years

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Adam Driver, from trooper to trouper

On Veterans Day, a reminder from Adam Driver, Broadway veteran and military veteran, and the founder of Arts in the Armed Forces, a nonprofit that brings theater to the military: “The birth of theater was from a military environment. The Greeks — Aeschylus, Euripides, all these elected generals — wrote plays for a culture that was at war.”

Other non-profit groups that help veterans pursue the arts either as a vocation or an avocation:

United States Veterans’ Artists Alliance (USVAA)

Veteran Artist Program (VAP)

Society of Artistic Veterans (SocArtVets)

Also:

TDF’s Veterans Theatergoing Program

TDF partners with veteran groups in the city to provide free tickets to veterans to Broadway shows on select days. Next up: Tootsie on November 12, Come From Away on November 13, Beetlejuice on November 19.

The Week in New York Theater Reviews

Broadbend, Arkansas

“Broadbend, Arkansas” is billed as a musical about three generations of an African-American family in the South grappling with injustice. While technically accurate, that’s a misleading description of a show that falls so short of what it could be, that I prefer to view it as a work in progress.

The Black History Museum

“Whoo, that was some heavy shit,” our guide says after leading us through 400 years of African-American history. It was hard to disagree. Every inch of HERE Arts Center has been transformed into an immersive “theatrical museum” – part theater, part museum — an impressively ambitious collaborative effort by a veritable army of African-American artists. “The Black History Museum, According to the United States of America” is illuminating, depressing, enraging, amusing, inspiring. It is overwhelming, in both good ways and bad.

The 2020 Book Report

David Lawson made a personal sacrifice as a public service: He read 10 campaign books, all but one by current candidates for President of the United States. From his reading, he has fashioned an hour-long show that should get wider exposure than the one-shot performance last night as part of the 2019 Gotham Storytelling Festival at the Kraine Theater

The Michaels

If Richard Nelson, the writer and director of “The Michaels,” were hired to direct the next Marvel movie, would Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk sit around the kitchen table in Rhinebeck, New York for two hours talking in barely audible voices about art, death, politics, and their old fights with Loki, while Spider-man bakes a loaf of bread, and the Black Panther takes Wolverine for a walk? That’s been the formula for Nelson’s four Apple Family plays and then his three plays in The Gabrielsseries, and it’s back once again with “The Michaels,” subtitled “Conversations During Difficult Times,” a play about a family of dancers gathering around a kitchen table in Rhinebeck, New York, which I’m hoping will be a one-off, rather than the first of yet another series.

Cyrano

Peter Dinklage’s singing voice would not normally qualify him for a role in a musical, unless in a Disney animated movie as a singing rhinoceros. But Rex Harrison couldn’t really sing either, and he was just right for My Fair Lady. In several ways, the star of Game of Thrones is an inspired hire for a musical adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac…Dinklage wears no fake nose. He doesn’t need to. He also proves once again to be a terrific actor… But ‘Cyrano’ is missing…panache.

Bella Bella

Bella Abzug spoke at my junior high school graduation, until Donna Florio’s mother told her to shut up. “This is my daughter’s graduation, not a political rally.” Abzug paused, apologized….and kept on talking for ten more minutes, caught up in the vehemence of her argument against the latest political outrage.

That’s my most vivid memory of this fiery member of Congress, anti-war activist, influential feminist, and fearless advocate that Harry Fierstein is portraying Off-Broadway at MTC in his new solo play about her life. Fierstein’s affection for his subject is abundantly evident in Bella Bella – so much so that he seems to have turned her into himself.

Dr. Ride’s American Beach House

The two ladies hanging out on the roof are lesbians; they just don’t know it yet. The title of Liza Birkenmeier’s play, which marks her Off-Broadway playwriting debut, may seem to promise something rollicking, but what unfolds is actually small, slow and seemingly random, existing almost entirely as subtext. “Dr. Ride’s American Beach House” is largely about repressed desire.

The Week in New York Theater News

Bob Martin

Luke Kirby plays a movie star trying on “Hamlet” and Rachel McAdams a young member of the company in the first season of “Slings & Arrows.”

The first and biggest (and ok, only) scoop I’ve had on NewYorkTheater.me was when Bob Martin told me on Twitter that he and his two co-creators were contemplating a fourth season for “Slings and Arrows,” the cult Canadian TV series about a fictional theater suspiciously similar to the Stratford Festival. The show is so wildly beloved that his Twitter remarks became international news, which I milked in a couple of subsequent posts, here and here.

That was seven years ago! Now, the TV critic of the L.A.Times casually mentions in an interview with Martin’s two co-creators Susan Coyne and Mark McKinney the Slings and Arros “prequel they are currently shopping,”:

“Now you’ve written a prequel, “Amateurs.”

Mark McKinney: Yes. I’ve always loved that word, because of the Latin root, “to love.” There was kind of a lot of “Could you do a Season 4?” and we noodled around…We were driving down [to Stratford] and started talking about Cyril and Frank [gay, older members of the New Burbage company, played by Graham Harley and Michael Polley], because you were explaining to me how nice it was to drive down in the spring, and we thought, “Oh, my God, Cyril and Frank, what would it have been like in 1953 if they had been part of the original festival, not knowing that they were about to walk into the first society that would embrace who they were?”

The interview explains just what’s so terrific about the original three seasons of “Slings and Arrows

The Minutes will open at the Cort Theater on March 15, 2020 with Tracy Letts himself in the cast, along with Ian Barford (currently in Letts’ “Linda Vista”), Blair Brown, Cliff Chamberlain, K. Todd Freeman, Armie Hammer, Danny Mccarthy, Jessie Mueller, Sally Murphy, Austin Pendleton, Jeff Still

Ivo Van Hove’s West Side Story, which begins previews in December but doesn’t open until February, will be just one act (no intermission) — “I want to make a juggernaut,” Van Hove tells Adam Green in Vogue. To that end, he’s omitting the song “I Feel Pretty” and the Somewhere ballet — and adding videos!

Broadway’s Dirty Secret :Ivo Van Hove’s success shows how much American commercial theater relies on European state funding, as Helen Lewis details in The Atlantic.

The Trojan Women Project Festival at La MaMa ETC will feature a newly re-imagined version of La MaMa’s groundbreaking 1973 “The Trojan Women,” directed by Andrei Serban, with some original members of the cast and artists from Guatemala, Cambodia and Kosovo. The two-week festival includes workshops, panel discussions, and performances. December 6-15th.

Jagged Musical’s lottery at JaggedLottery.com and rush at the Broadhurst box office are both $40.

Whoa. Performances of Death of a Salesman in London starring @WendellPierce had to be stopped when the ceiling fell in. Five theatergoers hospitalized with minor injuries.https://t.co/snGAEaCi0U pic.twitter.com/k5EYUsYKxq

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) November 9, 2019

She Persisted, the musical adaptation of Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger’s illustrated feminist picture book, “She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World, will play at Atlantic Theater in 2020.

Composer Marc Shaiman (Hairspray, Catch Me If You can, Smash, etc.) will write original music for the revival of Plaza Suite, starring Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, directed by John Benjamin Hickey, which opens on Broadway’s Hudson Theater on April 13, 2020.

Yes, you CAN make a living as a playwright: Playwright Lauren Yee has won over $400,000 in literary prizes in 2019

Critics Corner

Michael Billington is retiring as theater critic for The Guardian after 48 years. He will be succeeded by Arifa Akbar. Billington began at the British newspaper in 1971 and has written roughly 10,000 reviews,.“I shall shortly be 80 and, with the years, the stress of writing to a deadline doesn’t get any easier”

The Power of the Critic: A Discussion

with Manohla Dargis (co-chief film critic for The New York Times), Antwaun Sargent (independent writer and critic and author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion), Jillian Steinhauer (art critic for The New York Times), and Daniel Mendelsohn (editor-at-large of The New York Review), moderated by Lucas Zwirner (head of content of David Zwirner).

On “thumbs up” criticism:

Manohla Dargis: Do you ever feel like a seller? Because there was an editor who used to always ask me to make sure I put a little word in the first sentence so everyone knew if I liked the movie or didn’t. But I just wanted them to read me. Maybe they’ll figure it out from my enthusiasm around writing, but I want them to know in my own sweet time.

Daniel Mendelsohn: What always gets eroded is any possibility of complexity. Thumbs up, thumbs down, five stars, one star—this is idiotic, right? Because most things are mixed. Don’t tell them everything in the first paragraph—because you liked certain things but not others, and that’s how most things are. If the whole discourse becomes “like/not like,” that’s not conducive to anything interesting.

Rest In Peace

Laurel Griggs, 13, Broadway veteran of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Once.

Veterans and Theater. Slings and Arrows returns for real!? Van Hove’s West Side Story Not Feeling Pretty. #Stageworthy News of the Week On Veterans Day, a reminder from Adam Driver, Broadway veteran and military veteran, and the founder of…

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funface2 · 5 years

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The 50 best jokes from Edinburgh Fringe 2019's shows – and how to watch them all live – iNews

Culture

As the festival enters its final days, we round up the funniest gags on offer this year

Friday, 23rd August 2019, 09:28 am

Updated Friday, 6th September 2019, 16:32 pm

John Luke Roberts: I remember what my grandmother said to me on her deathbed. She said: ‘I wish I’d bought a normal bed.’ (Photo: Natasha Pszenicki)

I remember what my grandmother said to me on her deathbed. She said: ‘I wish I’d bought a normal bed.’ John Luke Roberts, Assembly Studio Two, 5.30pm

I went for my driving test the other day and the instructor said, ‘you’re in the wrong gear’. I said, ‘Why? What’s wrong with this tuxedo?’Nick Helm Pleasance Dome, 5.40pm; read i’s review of the show here

The best thing about being disabled is nobody ever wants you to babysit. In case you drop them. And recruit them. Rosie Jones, Pleasance Courtyard, 7pm

Do you reckon the band Chic ever found any takers for that free cow they were always trying to get rid of?Joz Norris, Heroes at the Hive, 4.40pm

The i newsletter cut through the noise

What do I want played at my funeral? Rugby.Goodbear, Pleasance Dome, 9.40pm

True crime documentaries are the only time the entertainment industry will take a chance on an unknown female lead. Jena Friedman, Assembly George Square Studios, 9.20pm

My teacher told me to make a vacuum – I thought, no pressure then.Leo Kearse Gilded Balloon, 9.15pm

Rosie Jones: ‘The best thing about being disabled is nobody ever wants you to babysit. In case you drop them. And recruit them’

In his job my dad’s never lost a case. That makes him Gatwick’s top baggage handler.Glenn Moore, Pleasance Courtyard, 4pm

I find it hard to believe Melania Trump had a body double for public appearances. It would definitely be for the private stuff. Laura Lexx, Gilded Balloon, 5.15pm

My mate came second in a Winston Churchill lookalike competition. He was close, but no cigar. Goose, Assembly George Square, 5.20pm

My mother doesn’t like the word vagina, so she calls it a ‘Lulu’ which was very confusing when I met my cousin Lulu, who coincidentally is a c***.Janine Harouni, Pleasance Courtyard, 5.45pm; read i’s review of the show here

Do I enjoy randomly appointing people to judicial positions? I’ll let you be the judge of that.Ivo Graham, Pleasance Courtyard, 7pm; read i’s review of the show here

I didn’t have sex at university for religious reasons. God hates me.Phil Wang Pleasance Courtyard, 8pm; read i’s review of the show here

Tiff Stevenson: ‘Jeremy Hunt has said he would lower abortion limit to 12 weeks. That’s funny because I’d raise it to whatever age Jeremy Hunt is’ (Photo: Steve Ullathorne)

My grandad died on April Fool’s Day. Every year for 10 years. Rhys James, Pleasance Courtyard, 6.30pm

I’m pleased to be getting a beer belly, I’ve always wanted a father figureCam Spence, Pleasance Courtyard, 4:30pm

I love Lorraine Kelly. I’m a big fan of her earlier work – the stuff she does before quarter to nine.Martha McBrier, Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, 7.15pm

Jeremy Hunt has said he would lower abortion limit to 12 weeks. That’s funny because I’d raise it to whatever age Jeremy Hunt is.Tiffany Stevenson, Monkey Barrel, 9.15pm

A cowboy asked me if I could help him round up 18 cows. I said, ‘Yes, of course, that’s 20 cows’.Jake Lambert, Pleasance Courtyard, 8.15pm

My new boyfriend told me he’s got my face as his wallpaper, which I thought was cute until I saw his lounge.Steff Todd, Just the Tonic @ The Caves, 2pm

As a Russian, I admire Jeremy Corbyn – he’s tough. The KGB could interrogate him for a week and still not find out what his position on Brexit is.Konstantin Kisin, Gilded Ballon, 7pm

Ivo Graham’s sixth show at the Edinburgh Fringe is about becoming a dad

I fully support the school strikers on climate change. I’m just annoyed that they didn’t call it the minors’ strike.Matt Winning, Pleasance Courtyard, 4.25pm

When applying for a job as an estate agent, the interviewer worried that my CV was a bit small. I said ‘actually it’s really cosy’ and I was immediately hired.Alex Kealy, Just the Tonic at the Caves, 6.40pm

Did you know the word ‘Ikea’ is actually made up of two Swedish words? “Ika”, meaning “Sunday”, and “Keya”, meaning “f***ing ruined.”The Scummy Mummies, Assembly Rooms, 7.50pm

I won Jewish comedian of the year, my mum was judging, then again, she always does.Joe Bor, Laughing Horse @ The Lockup, Cowgate, 3.45pm

Some people think being working class is a negative thing but I think there’s loads of benefits. I’ve claimed them all.Kelly Convey, Pleasance Courtyard, 7.15pm

I got invited to a gender reveal party – when you invite all your friends over to find out the gender of your child and release pink balloons if it’s a girl or blue balloons if it’s going to earn more.Robin Morgan, The Pear Tree, 4.05pm

They say some people ‘inhale books’. I know someone who injects books right into his veins. Particularly ones with female protagonists. He’s a heroine addict.Izzy Mant, Underbelly Bristo Square, 2.50pm

Adam Hess: ‘It must be annoying for clocks that from their perspective their hands are moving anti-clockwise’ (Photo: Matt Crockett)

I know that Banksy’s my dad, because I never see him.Flo & Joan, Assembly George Square Gardens, 6pm

I tell my friends I’m here for them 24/7 because it sounds better than saying I’m only here for them on the 24th of July.Andy Field, Just the Tonic, 2.10pm

It must be annoying for clocks that from their perspective their hands are moving anti-clockwise.Adam Hess, Pleasance Courtyard, 7.15pm

With enough revs and determination any restaurant is a drive-thru. Tom Taylor, Pleasance Courtyard, 6pm

My name is Sukh, which is short for Sukhjeet, which is Sanskrit for you’re never going to find it on a fucking keyring in a gift shop.Sukh Ojla, Gilded Balloon, 5:15pm

I haven’t looked up the definition of hyperbole in, like, forever.Caitlin Cook, Just the Tonic at the Grassmarket Centre, 5.50pm

British people are like coconuts. Hard on the outside but sweet once you crack us. Also often found full of alcohol and holding an umbrella.Milo McCabe, Underbelly, 5.30pm

Catherine Bohart: ‘I suppose lesbian sex is a bit like cricket, in that it goes on forever and there’s a lot of men watching it at home, alone, on the internet’

I’m making a TV series about the different parts of my gas cooker – I’ve already filmed the pilot.Olaf Falafel, Laughing Horse @ The Pear Tree, 2.50pm

I’m pretty sure Jesus is Gay because every time I go to God’s house he’s got pictures of him on the wall with 12 hot guys having brunch.James Barr, Underbelly, 5.20pm

I suppose lesbian sex is a bit like cricket, in that it goes on forever and there’s a lot of men watching it at home, alone, on the internet. Catherine Bohart, Pleasance Courtyard, 6pm

I look the wrong way when crossing the road, so people think I just got back from Paris.Joe Sutherland, Banshee Labyrinth, 10:10pm

My dad is like a black James Bond: it’d be great to see him, but he’s unlikely to make an appearance.Alexander Fox, Pleasance Courtyard, 6pm

In Poirot you meet six really posh people, and you know one of them is going to be murdered. In real life, you rarely get such good odds.Alasdair Beckett-King, Pleasance Dome, 6.50pm

In my show we won’t be using things like a Ouija Board. Or if you don’t speak French – a Yesja board.SÉAYONCÉ, Assembly George Square, 10.20pm

Ahir Shah: ‘The Arab Spring was 8 years ago. I thought “How long can a crisis conceivably last?”, and then I looked at my own personal life and was like “Yeah, that makes sense”’

My girlfriend and I are saving up for a mortgage, but it isn’t going very well – because sadly, all of our grandparents are still alive. Matt Richardson, Just the Tonic at The Tron, 9pm

Devon, the county of the UK where you put the cream on the scone before voting Leave.Ivo Graham, Pleasance Courtyard, 7pm

I was living in my office for a while, until it failed its MOT.Jim Campbell, Just the Tonic at the Caves, 5.20pm

Scotland heckled Boris Johnson so badly he had to leave by the back door, like one of his mistresses.Grace Campbell, Gilded Balloon, 3.15pm; read i’s review here

I like to watch Love Your Garden when I have my tea and then True Crime before bed. I feel really confident about being able to bury a body and know what to plant on top of it.Lucy Beaumont, Pleasance Courtyard, 4.45pm

Me and my partner were going to go on holiday to Norway this year but we costed it up and in the end we couldn’t af-fjord it. Tom Parry, Pleasance Courtyard, 6pm

The Arab Spring was 8 years ago. I thought “How long can a crisis conceivably last?”, and then I looked at my own personal life and was like “Yeah, that makes sense.”Ahir Shah, Monkey Barrel, 1.45pm

Behind every successful man is me, trying to get his attention.Lou Sanders, Monkey Barrel, 3.15pm; read i’s review of the show here

I find it quite ironic that erectile dysfunction is on the rise.Rob Auton, Assembly George Square, 2.50pm

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 year

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Yeeeeeah, sorry about that team ask! If it helps at all I really enjoyed your analysis of the different potential team-ups :) Here's hoping you manage to avoid seeing the actual teams a bit longer! And excellent timing at stopping btw, because while you can actually get one of the hints for the teams in the 20 seconds you saw it goes by in such a flash that I definitely didn't catch it the first time (had to read about it in the comments), but the real clear shot of two of the team of three members comes in at 23 seconds. So well done! Hope you have a great day!

Oh, don't apologize for that! That trailer's everywhere, I wasn't going to resist watching it either way. And I didn't. I just watched it in full, will put the rest of this behind a link in case anyone else is trying to avoid spoilers.

I like it. We do get to compare Charlotte Ritchie's husbands directly, I was hoping for that. And I really like the idea of Mae Martin and Jenny Eclair together. I'm expecting - based on not much so I could be wrong here, but I'm expecting - competitive chaotic energy from Mae and general chaotic energy from Jenny. Like, I picture the season overall featuring Mae Martin doing wild things because they're trying so hard to win and Jenny Eclair doing wild things because she doesn't give a shit (Jo Brand levels of giving a shit but with Rob Beckett levels of energy, is what I'm picturing), and putting those two things together is very funny.

Frankie Boyle and Ivo Graham, especially as the team of two so there's no one around to dilute their dynamic, is one of the funniest pairings possible. If I didn't know they were on the same Taskmaster season, and you just asked me, in general, how I think it would go if Ivo Graham met Frankie Boyle, I would say, "You know how I reacted when I saw a snake in the forest behind my grandparents' place a couple of years ago?" It is relevant to know that I have a severe phobia of snakes. And in case it needs to be clarified, in this comparison, Frankie Boyle is the small black snake, and Ivo Graham is the person stumbling and scrambling so much from sheer terror that they're barely able to run away. Nish Kumar said on the podcast recently that Ivo Graham crumbles under the slightest amount of pressure. I'm pretty sure just being in the presence of Frankie Boyle, if you're anyone but especially if you're a person who's based your career on mocking yourself for being an incredibly posh privately educated Englishman, counts as quite a lot of pressure. I'm thinking of how scared John Kearns was of Dara O'Briain - clearly a combination of Dara's towering success in their industry, imposing physical presence, and intensely competitive approach - and I'm multiplying it by a factor of 1,000.

Anyway, the trailer in general looked like huge fun, I'm incredibly excited for the new season.

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ieatmypizzawithaforkandknife · 3 years

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TMA: Episode 10, “Vampire Killer”

Summary: Jonathan reads the statement of Trevor Herbert, regarding “his life as a self-proclaimed vampire hunter.”

Those poor kids. (Trevor and his brother Nigel.) Sometimes you just get dealt a really shitty hand, huh? Abusive, boozy dad who kills mom and then drinks himself to death. At least they had each other I guess? Until a “vampire” killed Nigel, of course.

I’ve always loved vampires. As much as I don’t like serial killers, that’s how much I love vampires. So I was really excited to see how vampires were going to fit into the emerging mythos of TMA. Turns out that, so far, this isn’t anything more than a MotW episode. I’m not disappointed - it was still a great story - but I will be ecstatic if any elements of this story return in future episodes.

Probably the closest connection I saw between this statement and the others was the old/rotten food that “Sylvia McDonald” gave Trevor. He described the food as “several weeks old and in various stages of rotting”, and he could only stomach a small amount of it. Bad/spoiled food was also seen in episode 4, when Mary Key gave Dominic Swain tea that tasted like dust and smoke, and in episode 8, with the rotten apple inside the box Ivo Lensik discovered at the base of the uprooted tree. I don’t entirely know what to make of this yet, but three times does a pattern make.

The “communication without speaking” the vampires do reminded me of the anglerfish creature from episode 1. I don’t think the anglerfish creature was the same as one of these “vampires” at all - their physical descriptions and methods of luring their prey to their death are different enough - but that makes it even more interesting to me, since two apparently distinct supernatural creatures are shown to communicate without using their own voice AND they both use this communication to lure in their prey. I don’t necessarily think it’s part of any larger pattern, I just think they’re both creepy and cool and I like them.

It is interesting that this non-verbal communication the vampires do goes so thoroughly unnoticed. It’s as if it alters people’s perception somehow. Again, it’s not exactly like other things we’ve seen, but it does remind me in a very general sense of other reality-altering or perception-altering things we’ve seen so far.

I can’t decide whether I think Trevor is very intelligent or very, very dumb. Probably, like with most people, it’s a combination of both. On one hand, he himself points out the big unanswered question of what the heck the vampires are doing with all the bloodless bodies they leave behind. Does this mean they have accomplices or that someone cleans up after them and disposes of the bodies for them? He points out that they must seldom feed and must be few in number, or the number of missing people (or found bodies) would raise suspicions. (I’m not convinced of this myself, given the circumstances around Graham Folger’s replacement and Julia Montauk’s mother’s disappearance. I have little faith in people in the TMA-verse to notice things. Could these vampires’ ability to mask the oddness of their lack of speech extend beyond that into helping cover up their victims’ disappearances?)

On the other hand...Trevor killed a human. Possibly two. He’s not really sure, somehow. I can, unfortunately, see him initially mistaking someone who wasn’t speaking for a “vampire”, maybe even going so far as to kill them, but he lists significant physiological differences between humans and “vampires” that would be blatantly obvious after killing them (the difference in the chest/abdomen, the difference in general flammability) that I just don’t understand how he could stab someone to death, burn their body, and not be sure even after that. I’m chalking it up to fallible human nature and the general state of paranoia that would probably accompany his living conditions. But it still annoys me.

The last big mystery is the statement itself. Jonathan says that it’s a photocopy of a photocopy and that the bag of teeth originally left with it is missing. Knowing how unorganized the Archive is, my first instinct was to say the bag of teeth could have been shoved into a dark corner somewhere, not to be found for another 20 years. But where is the original statement and why was it photocopied twice? Copies of it could have been disseminated to “the Institute’s government and law enforcement contracts” that Jonathan says were interested in it, but what about the original? That should have been kept in the Archive. And the fact that it’s missing means that maybe this isn’t the MotW episode I first took it to be.

#personal #liveblogging #is this liveblogging?#The Magnus Archives

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panelshowsource · 5 years

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i love ur journey w your mom!!! wish i had that lol tmi sarah tmi... i to this day cannot believe how many people don’t like joe wilkinson. it wasn’t until i was introduced to the reddit comments section that i came to realise how much he divides people. but some nice ol’ mom would certainly be able detect what a big fucking puppy dog sweetheart joe is despite being neck-full of lager and spam :)

i sometimes watch it when i’m going to sleep because, without an audience or laugh track, it’s peaceful af!!! there seem to be more and more ivo graham stans coming out of the wild :’) i like him, but i don’t think i could look past the cynical character he plays to actually see “adorable”... maybe i’ll have to watch it and get back to you hehe~

vent away! i don’t want people to feel uncomfortable on the blog or with panel shows in general, but there is always something happening in comedy that is subversive or problematic — and deserves re-evaluation, to put it nicely. sorry for the dumb question, but what are you implying he confirmed? this is the last thing from him i thought was explicit enough to be a not-a-confirmation-but-essentially-a-confirmation. it’s disappointing he keeps the character up when his audiences are over it, comedy audiences and britain’s got talent audiences alike. i don’t want to be a hypocrite; there was definitely a time when i thought the overarching jimmy and david romance was funny and cute, and i would probably still laugh at a good joke in that context because their friendship is fun. i’d be interested to hear what others think, but i assume we’re all in agreement...

give me another week, i just got premiere on my work comp so i’ll at least make a 1-min compilation ;)

i think so many people relate to this! i live in nyc so there’s tons of non-new yorkers and foreigners here and i hear this alllllllll the time. but don’t worry — you don’t need to apologise for americanisms as long as they lean on the “gosh darnit!” or “howdy!” side of things ;)

sorry anon, the only show of his i have seen is the darkness of robins! does someone else wanna pipe up with a rec?

my answer is subject to change at any time so please feel free to ask me again, like, tomorrow, but for now let’s go with...

wilty was so fun!!! why is she so fucking funny and charismatic and quick and witty and cool!!! here’s all the feelings i had, not necessarily in this order:

🔥💘🤗🤗🍯😍🌟🥀😋🤠😚😚😚💞

hey there! i don’t have enough time to really dedicate to podcasts which is one of the great tragedies of my millennial life atm... that said, that is so cute!!! that would be so fun! i often wonder why d&v don’t work more together. i know david’s been on a bunch of heresy but in general can you believe how long we had to wait to see victoria on wilty again? radio work is probably pretty easy and convenient to do together without too much “look at us we’re married” fanfare that i assume they want to avoid. they talk about each other all the time, and i was so happy to see victoria even open up about barbara recently. so i just wish they would show up on more programmes together!! fingers crossed for shagged married annoyed and....taskmaster 0:-) #agirlcandream

same!!! i remember reading her birth announcement on victoria’s twitter! i totally respect their privacy but i hope we get a first day of school pic or something one day. she must be too sweet :’)

thanks :)

both of my 200gb drives are full so i need to move some stuff around and do some general housekeeping, which i can take care of this week. in the meantime, they’re always available in the subreddit! be sure to check out my faq so you know how to source things whilst i’m being slow or inactive :)

taskmaster can make you develop feelings about anyone, trust ✋ you don’t even want to see the thirst i have of david fucking baddiel in my inbox. smh. you people will thirst after anyone!!!

see?

* jk this one actually is valid

jk THIS one is actually valid

we’re gonna get you the help you need

you wouldn’t believe the kinds of miscommunications beyond chips and biscuits lmao. but it’s true in general not having a pretty serious working knowledge of popular british chains, foods, geography, etc. can make half of what gets said on a show like 8 out of 10 cats totally nonsensical. that said, i’m always impressed by how much the british panelists know about american politics 🤷‍♀️

taskmaster made me love her 20x more and i already loved her A LOT. do we need a jo taskmaster moments gifset?

sure, i would! that said, they’re all repostable, as i explain on those posts, so you can use them wherever you like, on twitter or otherwise!

hello~ i wrote a little bit here

f.a.q. // tags

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backofthebookshelf · 5 years

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105 Hill Top Road: What the Fuck

(Relevant episodes: 008, 019, 043, 055, 056, 059, 067, 078, 089, 114, 130, 134, 139)

I mean, I think it's pretty obvious at this point that Anya Villette came from another reality, right? The timeline's different but the Powers are the same. At least one of them, with that spidery tree. She goes into the house in one reality and wakes up in another one, where all her friends tell her, "oh yeah, when shit like that happens to you, you go to the Magnus Institute," and she says, "the what now?" And there's this building in Chelsea that wasn't there before and they take her statement and then she...what? Does she disappear? Do the spiders get her? Or does she just not have a legal identity in this reality so that's why they can't find her?

(Did Gertrude actually read this statement? She's probably busy as hell in 2009, she's been working on rituals, Mary Keay has just turned herself into a book, Leitner's running around in the tunnels. And she was skeptical of Dekker's theories; would she be as skeptical of something like this? Presumably she read Vanderstock's statement, she would have wanted to know, and he mentioned the "scar in reality" but would she have believed it? Would she have considered it worth following up on, even without the spiders doubtless doing all they can to keep people from paying attention?)

Vanderstock mentions "other Powers" at work at Hill Top Road, but the only one I can identify besides the Web and the Desolation is the Spiral, and that only vaguely: Ivo Lensik and Father Burroughs were both Spiral-adjacent. And I wonder about that table, too; everything about it seems Spiral-like, except for the fact that it is used to trap a Stranger creature. Granted I can make a case for hypnosis being related to spiders, but still.

Still no idea what actually happened there, of course. Agnes would have been fully grown (26, per her death certificate) by around 1980, assuming she ages normally, which is kind of a big assumption. (139 makes it sound like it took her twenty years to be eleven years old, but that might be me misinterpreting.) Vanderstock makes a reference to Gertrude doing something that delayed their ritual preparations just after Jude Perry joined; not sure whether that's when she first met them in '89 or when she "completed her transformation" in '91, but let's average the difference and call it sometime around 1990. But the house at Hill Top Road burned in 1974, so whatever was happening there happened well before they'd given up on their ritual.

(Besides, it really sounded like the Last Feast was the first ritual Gertrude had successfully and intentionally disrupted. So either she did this accidentally or it was something else. But why assume it was her, otherwise? In 2008 Mary makes a snide comment about Gertrude not getting out and doing much herself, which is hilarious because she disrupted at least two rituals in 2008, but it does indicate that she's at least not seen as someone who gets involved. But that's almost twenty years later; maybe she used to get out more? Maybe the Eye had a particular interest in something? We've got a few statements from the 90s but mostly 1996 and later; we've got exactly one statement from the 80s and it's Tucked In. Anyway. This is (probably) a distraction.) (Interestingly Jon only comments on Agnes's death, not on whatever happened in the early 90s, which makes me wonder if it wasn't Gertrude at all but the spiders themselves. But Vanderstock is so sure it was her.)

I can't find anything in other statements that tells us much of anything aside from one thing: the Institute got a new Head in 1973, a year before the house burned. It might be nothing, but if the Web and the Eye are as closely aligned as we keep speculating they are, it might be something. (This was Elias's predecessor, James Wright, about whom we know nothing at all.) There is a really annoying lack of statements from the 80s and early 90s; we have virtually no idea what was going on in the supernatural ecosystem at that time. Would those be the statements on tape that were found with Gertrude's body, perhaps? What did happen to all of those? Two or three boxes of tapes is a lot of statements.

But back to the point, what was happening at Hill Top Road? It was owned by the Fieldings from the 1800s, which makes me think it's been a Web stronghold that long. (I'd love to know if Walter Fielding knew Smirke or Magnus or anyone else in their circle.) By the sixties Raymond Fielding was using it to harvest...victims? Hosts? What did happen to the kids Ronald Sinclair saw in the basement, who had been turned into spider egg sacs? Were they just there to feed the baby spiders, or were they turning into spider-Jaegers like the one Trevor Herbert met in 2009? (Daisy told Basira her first sectioned case was something to do with spider husks but we never got any other details. That would've been the latter half of 2002. We got no other details but I'd be interested to know where it was. HEY JON TALK TO YOUR COWORKERS.)

So okay, 105 Hill Top Road is a spider factory, cool. Then Agnes shows up. Two-three months later she saves a guy from getting et by Raymond Fielding for no apparent reason, that's nice of her. (Agnes likes cute boys confirmed.) And it seems like she stops him from taking in more kids, because they say the number of kids at the house dwindles until it's just Agnes left, and then Raymond disappears. It's "years" that Agnes lives in the house alone and mostly never leaves, though pets go missing from the neighborhood, before, in 1974, a five-year-old goes missing. A week later the house burns down and in it they find only Raymond Fielding's skeleton, sans right hand. So that sounds like Fielding was feeding on the kids, and catching smaller prey after he didn't have them any more, and when he worked back up to kids again Agnes caught him and stopped him. But it had to be more than that, because this is the fight Vanderstock describes as creating "a scar in reality," and which tied Agnes to the location. The fact that she kept Fielding's hand worried Arthur Nolan, which yeah, that would worry me too, but I'm not an avatar of destruction created by an evil cult, so I have to assume it was for some reason other than "eew."

(I also have to wonder exactly what their ritual required, other than Agnes herself, because there's a long time between 1974 and 1990. But.)

Then, in 2006, the house is being rebuilt and Ivo Lensik is working on it evenings and weekends, and who shows up at the door but Raymond Fielding, in an old-fashioned coat and looking "like something out of an old Polaroid," showing off the deed to the house and poking around. This show doesn't really go in for ghosts, and besides he was an avatar or something, so I'm gonna go with "alternate universe Ray Fielding," I guess. Who then...gets burned to a crisp after being inside the (new) house for two minutes? There's a smell of burning and a scorch mark on the floor. This freaks out Lensik so bad he falls and hits his head and also worries that he's getting schizophrenia (which his father apparently had, except schizophrenia doesn't work like that, that was definitely Michael) and he goes to the hospital, where a local nurse apparently likes suggesting exorcisms to people.

(There's no indication that anyone from the Lightless Flame noticed AU!Ray, so I'm assuming for now he was destroyed/banished/yeeted back to his own reality by whatever latent Desolation power is attached to the place.)

So one night the exorcist shows up and while he's waiting outside Ivo Lensik just. Snaps. He cannot handle that tree. That tree is looking at him and he doesn't like it. He takes a crowbar to it and it bleeds; he chains it to his truck and pulls it down. At this point Agnes, who's out with Jack Barnabas being blessedly normal for a change, spasms like something hurt her and makes a panicked phone call, and then Arthur and Diego and everybody show up at her flat with an unlit lantern, a bag of candles, and a jar of tiny spiders, and then she asks them to kill her. Vanderstock puts it down to Jack Barnabas, but in Barnabas's own statement it's very clear that the tree comes down, she calls in a panic, they meet her at her flat, and then she kisses him and he's in the hospital for three days. (I'm not saying her attachment to him didn't ruin the ritual, that's probably why she made whatever decision she did, but the tree was an inciting incident.)

(At the same time the tree is coming down, too, Father Burroughs is inside the house feeling like he's burning alive, and the Spiral is speaking through him insisting that he's already been claimed and the Desolation just doesn't care. It doesn't stop until the tree comes down outside. There's also no indication that any Desolation avatars noticed this.)

Under the tree is a six-inch-square box covered in twisting lines and there's a whole OTHER thing, because that box belongs in the center of the table that trapped the not!Them, and how did it get from here to there? How did it escape the fire that burned down the original house? (Graham had it in 2005. Dekker had it in 2001. No clue where it went between 2005 and when it shows up at the Institute in 2015.) And what was the purpose of it when Fielding used it, had the kids sit around it every Sunday dinner? Did he bury the box, with an apple inside, to protect himself from Agnes? Is that why pulling down the tree hurt her? (In Anya Villette's statement the tree is heavily spider-identified, to the point where she refers to it interchangeably as "branches" and "arms," of which it has eight, but in Ivo Lensik's statement he notices that it was heavily burned at the base. Was it attacked by the Desolation? In which case why did pulling it down hurt Agnes? Was she, in fact, tied to the tree itself? In which case, given the importance of the tree in the alternate reality, is there an alternate Agnes out there? Maybe one where she got to go on dates with cute boys instead of having to either die or burn down the world?)

AND. As more than one of us have pointed out by now, in 114, Jon says:

I’ve half a mind to just go down and have a look at it myself, but… I don’t know. Ever since it first came up I’ve felt like it would be… just a very bad idea.

And then Tim walks in and he and we forget all about it, but doesn't that sound like spidery manipulation to you? It does to me. So whatever Agnes and the Desolation did at Hill Top Road, it had a lasting effect (both in terms of leaving some remnant of the Desolation there and in the side effect of the...apparent dimensional portal?...) but the spiders do still seem to hold a lot of sway there as well.

What this has to do with anything I wish I knew, but I will say that 114 was the first thing I thought of after Garland Hillier's "la porte est la porte," which also sounds a lot like "all the doors are open now" from The Bifrost Incident (which is probably an entirely different continuity and has nothing to do with this other than ~themes~ but you know), but now that we've been talking a lot about the Powers as places I'm not so sure that means anything other than poor Hillier managed to walk into the domain of the Extinction and found his way out again for a while. But if the Powers are places, does that imply that Anya Villette came from one of them, or that there are other mostly-normal universes that haven't been taken over by the Powers? And if they exist...well. What does that imply about saving our universe from them, or losing it to them? (By "our" I mean "Jon and Martin's universe," obviously, "our" universe is another one entirely. I hope.)

tl;dr (TOO LATE): I have absolutely no idea what was or is happening at Hill Top Road but I’m pretty sure the spiders don’t want anyone poking around and also someone should go poke around there immediately, unless that's what Martin is doing right now, Martin stop, go back and get your boyfriend, he's freaking out

#the magnus archives #tma spoilers #it's a meta party #you bet i just spent three and a half hours writing that #i'm so interested in hill top road #(road trip to oxford????)#very long i'm so sorry so much has happened and none of it makes sense

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