The most funny thing is that when the eldritch monster wakes up in this bewildered amnesiacs head he’s all sweet and gentle and patient and uses compliments for the desired effect. Because like yeah, he needs this random guy to do his bidding because if he doesn’t he’ll be powerless and also die. Yes John’s being manipulative here, it’s a matter of survival, but he could have tried to control Arthur using fear. Instead he uses gentleness, he understands it’s the path of least resistance. This is before they even know eachother, before they’ve been through hell together, before John even truly learns the value of kindness his first instinct when faced with the uncertainty of mortality is to be kind. As a result the two are able to immediatley get to solving the mystery and work to remedy their mutual situation as a team. John is impressed by Arthur’s resourcefulness and wit. He witnessed Arthur’s openess and capacity for empathy, even for monsters. They become friends even if it was only a manipulation at the start.
Meanwhile, when Yellow calls Arthur friend, Arthur is like fuck no. He finds that threatening for some reason. Arthur, when he wants to control new amnesiac John? His best friend who he’s been through everything with? He insults him. He tells him about how he’s a super evil piece of shit demon. He threatens him with death and banishment and torture and is just doing his best to be the biggest meanest bossiest dick he can possibly be.
Part of this is because Arthur is far far too genuine and emotionally impulsive to play dumb and manipulate with kindness but c'mon. He can’t chill out long enough to have some empathy for his confused friend like a real human being? The first thing he does is use Yellow as an emotional punching bag for his own sense of loss. Yellow is in this state because Arthur put him there, totally by choice. This is so ruthless. He tries to make Yellow afraid of him. Of course Yellow goes on the defensive, and then Arthur calls him pathetic and monstrous for doing so. (But Yellow pretending he knows what John is talking about regarding the King because he doesn’t want to seem ignorant omfg). Arthur talks about how he’s changed John into something more human while not realizing he himself has been changing and the person he has become is a total selfish emotionally constipated asshole who uses power and fear as a tool.
Arthur tells Yellow about how he’s such a smart cool investigator that he defeated a god. Then he proceeds to get attacked by wolves, insult a bar full of violent men, vomit all over some guy, and pass out in a dangerous location.
Yellow gets to see Arthur is not only an ass but also a hapless idiot.
Really making a great impression on your new headmate.
I don’t know if this is adding anything to the current discussions in the fandom or if I’m about to repeat a lot of well-known/discredited things that have already circulated since the podcast’s inception. Anyways, here goes. Spoilers up to episode 12, naturally.
1. John’s “Humanity”
John is part of the King in Yellow, but before this reveal he remembered quite a few things about Earth and humanity. He thought he was someone who lived there, died, and after seeming aeons of existence in a purgatory outside of conventional time was summoned back without knowledge of who he used to be. We also saw “Adam Fry”, who spoke with John’s voice after getting Amanda (Sarah) Cummings’s name out of Arthur and who both our protagonists recognized as the King in Yellow after reading her letter, kill Amanda by driving his fingers into her flesh and “absorbing her”, again according to John.
It is possible that John’s supposedly human memories come from someone the King absorbed in this way, since we have no idea what absorbing someone means for that person or for the King. It’s also possible that this all happened before, with John becoming “entangled” in someone else’s soul, either John taking over or not before the body was killed, and some of that humanity staying buried deep down inside John when he resurfaced in a new host. Whatever the case, I think there is more to John’s identity and past to be revealed, and that Arthur isn’t the first brush with humanity he’s had.
As far as who this other person might have been, it’s obviously someone mentioned so far who disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances, like:
-Rowland Cummings: Arthur asked John if he was alright in Amanda Cummings’s room, indicating that John seemed upset -Elijah Strong’s partner who “passed away during a case rather horrifically” and from whom Arthur and Parker inherited some missing persons cases -Someone related to Emily McFarland: as early as Episode 1, John angrily asks Arthur if he even tried to help with the case after the police recovered Emily’s body -Someone involved with the summoning of Shub-Niggurath: Henry who sacrificed himself to keep it from being pulled through the portal or even perhaps Antoine, since Amanda’s letter indicated that he was now dead -Parker?? Long shot, but John did choose to kill him and we have no idea what the body looked like afterwards besides “not bloody”. Maybe John is able to do what his other half did to Amanda, and maybe that gave him some of Parker’s memories. Who knows!
2. The Wraith’s Daughter
The wraith had a child named Anna. I propose Anna Stansik is the Anna to whom Amanda’s letter was written, not just because this is a narrative and that would neatly tie the mansion in with the rest of the story but because the typewriter indicates that at least one person in the house had ties with the worship of Shub-Niggurath.
Either way, Amanda seemed to think Anna was still alive only a few weeks before her own death. Arthur will likely encounter her in some fashion once he (hopefully) returns from the Dreamlands.
3. The Dark Young
The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young hasn’t entered the world, but given the animal noises Arthur heard following him in the wraith’s mansion and in the surrounding woods, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of her Dark Young are roaming the area around Arkham. It’s also possible one of them was the source of the voice that spoke after Arthur passed into his month-long coma at the end of “The Voices”: the one that said “This too shall pass.”
EDIT: I’m 99% sure that the vanguard inside Kellen’s sister’s head is what said “This too shall pass”, actually.
4. The Island
There are indications that the dead in the devil’s graveyard don’t like to stay still: the lighthouse keeper’s testimony, the noises Arthur heard before finding the bones in the lighthouse, the movement of the graveyard soil he saw when traversing the mist, the more obvious clues of the empty coffins in the cave below and the presence of the widow in those same caverns. Even Antoine’s extended lifespan and unchanged visage could be tied to the graveyard in some way. Either way, I would not be surprised if the widow or other cult members resurfaced in some way later, though I fully expect the Black Goat cult to take a backseat to the King in Yellow followers in future seasons.
Speaking of which, Shub-Niggurath is described in the librarian’s book as being a mist from which maws and tendrils and writhing goat-hooved legs emerge. It seems unlikely that the mist surrounding the island is a piece of her given how catastrophic her summoning was supposed to be, but the connection is still there.
Also, the lighthouse keeper may have had more ties to Antoine than just being his successor within the cult, but I’m basing that entirely on the fact that he sounded French and Antoine is a French name.
5. Antagonism between Cults? Maybe?
I’m not sold on this one, but there may be animosity between the worshippers of the King in Yellow and the worshippers of Shub-Niggurath. I say this for two reasons: one, the way the hotel cult seemed to use mirrors both for concealing the way to the underground city and in the ritual to give Arthur’s body to the King indicates that they may have some significance to the god himself, and we see broken mirrors outside the wraith house where someone who worshipped Shub-Niggurath seems to have resided at one point. Two, John was sealed away in a book dedicated to Shub-Niggurath.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the cults are antagonistic towards each other; the cult summoning the Black Goat may have just panicked at the King’s opportunism and done whatever they could think of to distance themselves from a god they did not worship, but it’s still interesting.
EDIT: on relistening, Amanda’s letter hints that she and Anna sealed he-who-would-become-John into the Shub-Niggurah book. This most likely has nothing to do with the aims of the cult proper. And if Anna was the daughter mentioned in the wraith house, it’s likely she was responsible for smashing the mirrors assuming they do have a significant connection to the King in Yellow.
6. The Hound
The Hound creature from the hospital was probably based on (or straight-up was) a Hound of Tindalos. In the original literature, these creatures were drawn to people who had traveled through time. It is likely that the King in Yellow sent it after Arthur in the same way that he sent Kellen and the others who have attacked him, but it’s also possible that it was drawn by Arthur/John’s vision of Amanda’s death– something in the past they should not have been able to witness.
EDIT: Forgot to add this originally, but the roar of the Hound is also the noise you hear before and after Arthur touches a dead body.
7. Lost Parts
Short one, but given the use of Call of Cthulhu mechanics in parts of this story, I think Arthur lost his hand and his foot when he hit certain sanity point thresholds behind the scenes.
When I reached That Part in part 12 I just. I knew what I needed to do. Literally could not start working on other art until I had the lines for this one done.
