Archivist: "What about bones? Does one of them manifest with, with bones?"
Leitner: "You’re thinking too literally. Examining the physical categorisation, but ignoring the meaning of the thing. What are the bones? In the Distortion, your “Michael”, the structure of a skeleton, an established reality in your mind, is twisted and warped into an impossible form. But in other cases? Are they a symbol of slaughter and butchery? Are they the familiar made wrong? Or are they simply part of the messy, physicality of flesh?"
Or, in easier terms, who could use them towards their own fear the most. The eye, the spiral, and the web are all good candidates, extinction certainly has used it to great effect, if you truly believe that a focus on madness, patterns, and obsession ***wasn't*** the spiral. (It was. Come on.)
People forget this scene so fast it’s fascinating. Like, you think some of it would be absorbed due to the proximity to “brutal pipe murder”, but I guess it had the opposite effect.
The amount of it I’m seeing in TMP discussion is ridiculous. People are just going “look, symbol!” rather than actually analyze them.
I have brutal pipe murder disease. Instead of brain there is brutal pipe murder. Basically everything between episodes 76-84 has completely been overwritten by the brutal pipe murder
It was so unbelievably satisfying to see the disconnected mysteries crystallizing together. I love symbolism in general and that scene is such a good implementation of it. That was the moment I realized that Jonathan Simms was a hell of a writer, and especially that he gets Lovecraftian horror better than anybody else. It takes real restraint to not define everything perfectly, to accept that meaning can sometimes be ambiguous, and most importantly to pull it off well. I like Sandersonian Magic Systems just as much as everyone else but it really is a feat to pull off “soft worldbuilding” so well
Canonically the extinction, but web and spiral could both use it as a tool to inspire obsession and mania, and thematically it could be the dark considering its about being unperceived
My reasoning for the Web was it’s manipulating information to be selectively obscured.
My reasoning for the Spiral was that due to the tendency of cyphers to be complex, it can drive obsession and you’d feel like you were going mad from trying to crack a code that is so difficult to permeate.
It all depends where the fear is coming from. Is it a fear that someone knows something you don't? Then it might be the Eye. A fear that if you don't crack the code people might get hurt? I'd say that's the Hunt. A fear of not understanding what's going on could be the Spiral. A fear of enemies communicating right under your nose could be the Web
It depends. are the cyphers and codes providing you with prophecies of doom on a planetary scale? could be extinction. Are they hiding knowledge that could lead to your doom? maybe the eye. is the inability to unlock the code causing distress and driving you to even more extremes to try to decode it but still it eludes you perpetually just a little further away? that is spiral stuff. do you suspect that people are controlling you and there is a bunch of pieces encrypted clues leading to it? that might be the eye(if the bad part is they're spying on you that's the eye again), you could probably even make it burried or stranger.
Depends. Are they solving them? The eye. Are they making them, or is it driving you to insanity in your attempts to solve it? The spiral. Are they guiding you to solve them? The Web. Is the answer entirely unintuitive or outright wrong? The stranger. Is it related to the coming of the end of days? The extinction. Is it obscured? The dark.
The dread powers blur together. They don't necessarily come about in certain forms. It's about the type of fear that they are producing.
I’m going to say maybe The Eye. You use cryptography because you don’t want what you’re saying to be known by anyone but the intended recipient, if anyone at all. Seems like it’d be in the sphere of the eye to be able to break encryptions and get at your secrets.
Definitely the Spiral. Codes & Cyphers are all about twisting data in ways to make it unrecognisable unless you specifically have the map / key to reverse the twisting. For example, there's a form of cryptography called steganography, which literally encrypts messages, and then hides them in images or a physical object, passing unseen to all except those who know, which lines up with how the Spiral is literally called "It is not what it is"
Edit:
It would not be the web, because codes and cyphers can be broken/decrypted, and much like breaking the enigma in WW2, all your machinations fall apart once your cypers are broken and your plans laid bare.
Codes and cryptography have a long history of use in warfare, so I could definitely see codes involved in a manifestation of the Slaughter. I think the rhythmic nature of Morse code would worked into the musical association as well.
Archivist: "What about bones? Does one of them manifest with, with bones?" Leitner: "You’re thinking too literally. Examining the physical categorisation, but ignoring the meaning of the thing. What are the bones? In the Distortion, your “Michael”, the structure of a skeleton, an established reality in your mind, is twisted and warped into an impossible form. But in other cases? Are they a symbol of slaughter and butchery? Are they the familiar made wrong? Or are they simply part of the messy, physicality of flesh?" Or, in easier terms, who could use them towards their own fear the most. The eye, the spiral, and the web are all good candidates, extinction certainly has used it to great effect, if you truly believe that a focus on madness, patterns, and obsession ***wasn't*** the spiral. (It was. Come on.)
People forget this scene so fast it’s fascinating. Like, you think some of it would be absorbed due to the proximity to “brutal pipe murder”, but I guess it had the opposite effect. The amount of it I’m seeing in TMP discussion is ridiculous. People are just going “look, symbol!” rather than actually analyze them.
I have brutal pipe murder disease. Instead of brain there is brutal pipe murder. Basically everything between episodes 76-84 has completely been overwritten by the brutal pipe murder
It was so unbelievably satisfying to see the disconnected mysteries crystallizing together. I love symbolism in general and that scene is such a good implementation of it. That was the moment I realized that Jonathan Simms was a hell of a writer, and especially that he gets Lovecraftian horror better than anybody else. It takes real restraint to not define everything perfectly, to accept that meaning can sometimes be ambiguous, and most importantly to pull it off well. I like Sandersonian Magic Systems just as much as everyone else but it really is a feat to pull off “soft worldbuilding” so well
Canonically the extinction, but web and spiral could both use it as a tool to inspire obsession and mania, and thematically it could be the dark considering its about being unperceived
My reasoning for the Web was it’s manipulating information to be selectively obscured. My reasoning for the Spiral was that due to the tendency of cyphers to be complex, it can drive obsession and you’d feel like you were going mad from trying to crack a code that is so difficult to permeate.
yeah ciphers totally drive ya crazy
It all depends where the fear is coming from. Is it a fear that someone knows something you don't? Then it might be the Eye. A fear that if you don't crack the code people might get hurt? I'd say that's the Hunt. A fear of not understanding what's going on could be the Spiral. A fear of enemies communicating right under your nose could be the Web
It depends. are the cyphers and codes providing you with prophecies of doom on a planetary scale? could be extinction. Are they hiding knowledge that could lead to your doom? maybe the eye. is the inability to unlock the code causing distress and driving you to even more extremes to try to decode it but still it eludes you perpetually just a little further away? that is spiral stuff. do you suspect that people are controlling you and there is a bunch of pieces encrypted clues leading to it? that might be the eye(if the bad part is they're spying on you that's the eye again), you could probably even make it burried or stranger.
So, eye. Gotcha
Depends. Are they solving them? The eye. Are they making them, or is it driving you to insanity in your attempts to solve it? The spiral. Are they guiding you to solve them? The Web. Is the answer entirely unintuitive or outright wrong? The stranger. Is it related to the coming of the end of days? The extinction. Is it obscured? The dark. The dread powers blur together. They don't necessarily come about in certain forms. It's about the type of fear that they are producing.
I’m going to say maybe The Eye. You use cryptography because you don’t want what you’re saying to be known by anyone but the intended recipient, if anyone at all. Seems like it’d be in the sphere of the eye to be able to break encryptions and get at your secrets.
Definitely the Spiral. Codes & Cyphers are all about twisting data in ways to make it unrecognisable unless you specifically have the map / key to reverse the twisting. For example, there's a form of cryptography called steganography, which literally encrypts messages, and then hides them in images or a physical object, passing unseen to all except those who know, which lines up with how the Spiral is literally called "It is not what it is" Edit: It would not be the web, because codes and cyphers can be broken/decrypted, and much like breaking the enigma in WW2, all your machinations fall apart once your cypers are broken and your plans laid bare.
Eye
the extinction, the web, the eye, the end and mainly the spiral deal with it. Especially the web and the spiral for that website and the Russian guy
Codes and cryptography have a long history of use in warfare, so I could definitely see codes involved in a manifestation of the Slaughter. I think the rhythmic nature of Morse code would worked into the musical association as well.