Day 7 of Marchives: Infected

Trying to keep all my pieces season 5!

Keith and krolia reunion but it’s that one scene from Kung Fu Panda 3

red-scribbler:

my thesis supervisor encouraged me to mess around with a poster making website for practice and instead of doing anything useful, I graphic-designed up a fan theory I’ve been thinking about for a while

enjoy! (click to full view)

*busts on your dash like its a courtroom in ace attorney and i have surprise evidence* WAIT I CAN BACK THIS UP FURTHER

to get meta about it, the theory of the panopticon, like the real-life architectural idea that was put forward by Jeremy Bentham and metaphor/theory expanded on by Michel Foucault has a critical component to it that reinforces this theory even more

To quote Foucault:

“It is at once, too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so.”

There doesn’t have to be anyone looking out of the central tower for the panopticon to function. The prisoner will self-regulate their behaviour because they don’t know who is looking or when they are so they have to always be on guard.

There’s no escaping observation in the changed world that Jon and Martin walk through, but Jonah doesn’t need to be in the panopticon for that constant observing to happen 

there is no watcher in the watchtower

apocalypsokane:

red-scribbler:

my thesis supervisor encouraged me to mess around with a poster making website for practice and instead of doing anything useful, I graphic-designed up a fan theory I’ve been thinking about for a while

enjoy! (click to full view)

OP I apologize in advance, but I have essayitis and it’s incurable

This is honestly one of the best what-Jonah-is-up-to theories I’ve seen. Not just because it’s, ‘Yay! The fucker’s dead!’ but because, wow, wouldn’t that just be a massive shortcut to the big tragic un-reveal that there is no magic undo button for the Change. No Big Boss Villain to defeat. No fix-it switch.

I just reread the transcript for “The Sick Village,” and I realized I was misremembering a line. I heard Jon say, “I can feel him moving in there.” But that wasn’t it. The script goes:

MARTIN: “How is [Jonah/Elias]?”

Jon: “Hard to say. The, The way this works, this - new sight, the knowledge is, is… (sigh) somehow wrapped up in the Panopticon? An eye can’t - see inside itself. But I can feel him in there.”

Not moving, just there. And isn’t it so funny and convenient that the Eye can’t* let Jon magically Know what’s going on in there?

*If I didn’t know better, I’d almost assume it was pulling the same selective-enlightenment gimmick it did to him pre-s5, going out of its way to dissuade him from learning anything that might hinder his Archivist evolution and/or let him escape the Institute. But I’m sure the Eye wouldn’t do that now.**

**It’s not like it’s been purposefully drawing Jon to the Panopticon like a pin to a magnet, using the lure of Confronting-Jonah-Will-Help-Things!-No-Really!-Honest!-Jonah-Who-Is-Definitely-Alive-And-For-Sure-Sent-Those-Tapes-To-The-Cabin-Which-You-Couldn’t-Actually-Tell-The-Origins-Of!

So yeah, I can buy Jonah being dead. Maybe the Change didn’t give him all the bells and whistles he was expecting and he tried to make a demand too many of a patron Fear that had long since grown bored of him. Maybe he’s trapped in the Panopticon, fused into its stonework, omniscient at last, but immobile and useless.

Or maybe he was planning to do what others have theorized–an attempt at doing a body snatcher job on Jon to steal his status and the Eye, player-of-favorites that it is, reacted very, very poorly to someone thinking of doing harm to its Archivist. What did Jon say in “Revolutions” again?

JON: “God forbid you actually catch us. Doesn’t bear thinking about.”

I’ve been wondering about that bit ever since it dropped. The way he phrases it, it sounds less like ‘I, the Archivist, will zap you,’ and more like ‘Touch me and the Eye will zap you.’ As if the Ceaseless Watcher is content to smite Jon’s targets when asked, but will act on its own if the domains/avatars take a real swing at him. If so, it makes sense that the avatars with actual brain cells to rub together–hi, Oliver and Annabelle–have given him plenty of space.

Which would also tie in neatly to Jonah not only being dead, but dying by hubris. He got what he wanted. His plot worked, the Change came, and he was a king of a ruined world. He could’ve been satisfied with that. But he was still not the most powerful player; not the Eye’s dear demigod Archivist, the favorite avatar, the Harbinger. And so he planned to take Jon’s spot with another eye swap.

A plan the Eye Knew the moment it occurred to him.

Meaning, if both these theories hold, that would mean Jonah was smote by his own god for taking aim at the one and only person in the world that was off-limits. RIPieces.

# IN WHICH I DERAIL AND MONOLOGUE AD INFINITUM

please feel free to keep derailing oh my god

im sitting here with my head in my hands thinking about this but also grinning like a lunatic bc it makes so much sense

I never even thought that the eye might keep info from jon if it didn’t want him to know like it did before! he thinks he is omniscient but how would he know if he wasnt if the eye didn’t want him to know!!

something big is going to happen to jon as soon as they get to “his” domain and the idea terrifies me

i had heard the jonah body-snatching jon theory floating around and didn’t pay it much mind but in conjuction with what you’ve proposed it makes perfect sense and ties it all together

also the karmic retribution is delicious

honestly 10/10 addition, chef’s kiss