In the lettercol to 2.05 someone wrote in asking about the hippie and mentioning his suspicion that they were one in the same.
Grant's response:
"Hmm. Kinda. But I hope you guessed his name..."
HINDLE:
One word from me. One word.
(The Kinda holding the master detonator raises his hand.)
TODD:
Tell me about The City.
HINDLE:
Oh, do you like it?
Never built a city before.
TODD:
It's very good.
What's that?
HINDLE:
Oh, that's my secret den.
I'm The Government as well, you know.
(As Hindle goes back to his cardboard box, the Doctor picks up the wire from the master detonator and starts to try and unfasten it.)
HINDLE:
Doctor.
(The Doctor has to drop the wire and join him.)
DOCTOR:
And the security arrangements?
HINDLE:
Security effectiveness one hundred percent.
One thousand percent.
One billion trillion trillion percent.
Or more, perhaps.
SANDERS:
Boom.
HINDLE:
Do you want me to prove it?
DOCTOR:
No. No, no.
I'd rather know how you control the Kinda.
HINDLE:
Oh, that's very simple.
With this.
(He gets the hexagonal mirror from the table.)
HINDLE:
They're very primitive, you know.
They think I've captured their souls.
DOCTOR:
Mirrors.
Yes, very clever.
TEGAN:
How will you deal with the Mara?
DOCTOR:
I don't know yet.
ADRIC:
How did Hindle control his hostages?
DOCTOR:
What? Oh, The Mirror.
They thought he'd captured their - Ah.
TEGAN:
What?
DOCTOR:
I don't suppose you've come across any large mirrors in your wanderings about The Dome?
Silly question really.
ADRIC:
Mirrors?
DOCTOR:
Well, reflective surfaces of any kind.
Come on, quickly, think.
ADRIC:
Solar generator panels.
DOCTOR:
Where?
ADRIC:
In the storeroom.
DOCTOR:
Show me.
TEGAN:
Doctor.
DOCTOR:
What is the one thing evil cannot face?
Not ever.
TEGAN:
What?
DOCTOR:
Itself.
ADRIC:
But you said the Kinda would react to the mirror.
They aren't evil.
DOCTOR:
Ah, Hindle captured their innocence.
The Mara will rebel.
They cannot face themselves, don't you see?
TEGAN:
No.
[Clearing]
(A Kinda watches Aris limping through the forest, and communicates telepathically with Karuna.)
KARUNA: He's coming.
DOCTOR: Good. Adric, Tegan, he's coming.
(The Kinda are setting up the solar panels.)
TODD: Will it work?
DOCTOR:
Well, according to the legends.
TODD:
Mirrors?
DOCTOR:
No Mara can bear the sight of its own reflection.
It must recoil from itself.
Understandably, don't you think, given it's nature.
TODD:
Yes.
DOCTOR:
Very well then.
Trapped in a circle of mirrors,
each mirror reflecting not only the Mara itself but also —
TODD:
The reflection of all the other mirrors!
DOCTOR:
In an endless series.
TODD:
So it's surrounded not only by its own reflection,
but reflection of reflection.
DOCTOR:
Exactly.
TODD:
What happens then?
DOCTOR:
It retreats back to where it came from.
TODD:
The Dark Places of The Inside.
DOCTOR:
Or Where Ever.
But not Here,
that's the main thing.
It's all quite logical.
Speculation:
o Paul Melancon: In the lettercol to 2.05 someone wrote in asking about the hippie and mentioning his suspicion that they were one in the same.
Grant's response: "Hmm. Kinda. But I hope you guessed his name..." Which would seem to say that the hippie is certainly the devil, but not necessarily The Man with The apples.
Which really doesn't help at all.
Although it does dovetail nicely with the speech by Quimper at the end of the 1.25 where he says that it doesn't matter which side is Right or Wrong, Good or Evil, only that THEY are winning.
And judging from the hippie's rant turning out to be nearly completely True, it would seem that The Devil is on the side of The Invisibles.
Check out Some Thoughts Regarding the Harlequinade for a brilliant theory regarding the identity of the Nameless Guy/Stranger/St. Germaine/Satan.
o Carl Roth: With respect to Mason directing the team. Come on kids, play with me here.
Does anyone else remember the electronic device in Robin's head that stopped a bullet from spliting her skull!?
Mason does not have the technology to decipher the Time Suit, let alone a device that enhances latent psychic abilties.
Someone, somewhere, ( perhaps 'Cell 23'[?] ) has encouraged Mason to play some games. Where did he find a video tape of the 'entity' at Roswell? Someone explain that. Who does Mason have contact with? I feel we have two wild cards in Mason and St. Germane.
o Dave Komlos: Note that even this early in 1.23, Jack refers to the King of All Tears and the demonic visions visited upon him as "shitty special effects" - more reference to the events as part of a film, and possible reference to Mason's hoax.
The image of the perfect soul as a red globe above the lotus may be a metaphor - that the red light is the "stop" for our universe.
from Zenkidu:
Despite holding out for a while, I now concede that The Stranger encountered by Rags and Mary Shelley and Colonel Black is The Devil.
Or at least, a Devil.
He is acting more like the Gnostic Devil than that repressed little spoilt-boy, the Christian Devil.
Our Devil ("I hope you guessed his name...") is acting as a force of change and evolution.
The Gnostic interpretation of the Garden of Eden scenario sees the offering of the fruit of the tree of knowledge to Eve as a necessary transgression against God.
For the Gnostic God of the World is not a foo-foo Father of Love and Light.
He is rather a Tyrant, whose goal is to keep humanity incarcerated in the prison of the material world. As long as the Tyrant-as-global-Prison-Warden succeeds, he will keep that part of humanity which is connected to the real, trans-material Realm of Light under his CONTROL.
(The story of how humanity came to be receptacles of Light trapped in the Darkness of materiality is a bit convoluted. Check out the Gnostic Library is you want the original texts: http://www.webcom.com/gnosis/)
But the Lord of Light sends his son (aka, Lucifer in some texts, the Cosmic Jesus in others) to remind humanity of their spiritual potential, their essential FREEDOM. The Son of Light (the Morningstar) accomplishes his task by offering Eve that Apple. Thus, in the eternal battle between FREEDOM and CONTROL, the Gnostic Devil is very much on the side of FREEDOM. This Gnostic myth parallels the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods in order to kick start the evolution of humanity towards FREEDOM from the CONTROL of Olympus. Maybe the Stranger's conversation with Mary Shelley is thus that much more poignant. Perhaps he was -- in a Promethean sense -- responsible for giving humanity 'fire' (the fire of knowledge, the passion of the new, the knowledge of their divine souls), and was punished as a result. Jay suggests that this Stranger/Guy is responsible for punishing those who strive for FREEDOM.
On the contrary, perhaps he is personally cognisant of the consequences of FREEDOM, and is offering Mary Shelly, and hence Percy Shelley, some well-meaning advice. Perhaps.
Perhaps this is all shite, and I'm reading too much into everything. Anyway, not to give up now, the Erisian connection is also obvious (to me): he is introducing chaos into order, as a means of moving everything to the next higher level of order. "For the Prettiest One," indeed. Let us not forget that Lucifer was always the most beautiful of God's angels... I think that this theory fits well with the theory that the Stranger is also the Harlequin, who was the medieval sublimiation of the Devil figure: legitimated transgressor, prankster, trickster. Trickster: that's what our Stranger is (wow, sudden flash of inspiration!).
Like Coyote, Prometheus, the Gnostic Devil, the Harlequin and Eris, the Stranger (even if he is actually none of the above) is acting to mix things up -- just like every Trickster figure in world mythology.
Whether the Trickster is acting according to a plan of arcane convolutedness or whether he has no plan beyond creating a lot of fucking chaos his essential role is, and has always been, just this: throw a spanner in the works, see how they react. It'll be a gas. from Josiah Bancroft Given Grant's insistance (despite his habit of borrowing from other sources) on not being directly predictable, or even sometimes comprehensible, I'm leaning away from the Stranger/Lucifer theory.
It's too commonplace for Grant to try at this point; mainstream writing, yes, but on his baby?
He's gone so far as to place the existence of good and evil in a relativistic light, and put the existence of Manichaen influences on our plane down to the influence of the home dimension and victimization of the 'magic matter', that I'd be willing to lay money on his veering FAR away from taking the Stranger in so straightforward of a direction as to be a commonplace historical/mystical figure as Lucifer, or for that matter, the Comte De Saint-Germaine.
"They talk in emotional aggregates."
This is mentioned by Mason, regarding the homeopathic Grail experience, and by the Harliquinade.... Has anyone questioned as to whether the 'homeopathic drink' was not, in fact, 'magic matter'?
Much of the entire second act of the Invisibles has been centered around blatantly obvious themes, this among them.... If Mason has, in fact, ingested what he is incapable of utilizing, what has it done to him?
Most who have encountered the 'magic matter' have been practitioners of some belief system (read: Fanny, Jim Crow, King Mob), and those who haven't and have encountered it (Brodie, for instance) have had a disjointed recollection/recognition of it for what it was. from
E. Lloyd Olson: The pornographic tape the doomed boyfriend is watching in Kill Your Boyfriend when he is killed may be one of Quimper's productions... I recall a mention of tentacles. Note the emphasis in KYB on mutability of identity -- is this connected with _Invisibles_? From Picosecond Mirror: It was some kind of porno fantasy/D&D thing, and there were no tentacles mentioned, but there was some line like "Oh baby squeeze my tits with your claws". Another thing about KYB is that the pair of rebellious young killers turn out to be brother & sister in the end. That's very reminiscent of Gideon Stargrave & his sister's incestuous relationship, though the kids in KYB were unaware of it. I wonder if there's a relation between these two bro/sis characters, or if Grant was just trying to be outrageous or kinky & reused an earlier idea. From Mr. White: In the last two issues (2.16&17) Mason's presumed involvement in the overall conspiracy is perhaps significant. He is trying to hint at this often, without actually giving anything away. His comparison between life and movies has been constant, and his telling of the death of Diana significant as the first death by media. In issue 1.05, the start of "Arcadia," was Grant foreshadowing Mason's involvement with the shadow puppet guy that KM saw, the Dalang? If so, how much else is foreshadowed in Arcadia? It's obviously an extremely signifcant story arc. Quimper is working for Mason, right? In 1:25, Quimper tells those '70s detectives, he makes films for rich clientele. And Mason is pretty fucking rich, so he's the likely suspect. Mason has more significance than is recognized.
o Josiah Bancroft: The latest extension of the idea regarding both the Stranger and the Harlequinade is this: The dual universe theory, which Mad Tom (in Dane's training) and King Mob have both explained, may well apply to the Stranger/Harlequinade. Neither the Stranger nor the Harlequinade are generally recognized as being human; perhaps they're emmisaries (Manichaen influences) of the dual universes. To further confuse things in the intrest of illumination: The 'sick' universe and 'our' universe overlap, and this point is our reality? The Outer Church and Saloman's House exist on the periphery of our reality, where it contacts the exterior influence, or universe. Much as these interspatial systems (for lack of a better phrase) have cojoined in conflict to create our world, they may have collaberated at lower levels. "As above, so below." To wit: It has been mentioned/alluded to there being several Manichaen 'messiahs', emmisaries of a higher power, most recently with Dane. It's possible the dual universes contact one another at 'soft places' (to steal from Gaiman) through a human, animal, or plantlike (Lovecraft?) medium to create agitators for their cause. (As if any of this helps to explain where I'm going.) The Stranger and Harlequinade may not merely be the same person, but polar influences acting through the same medium. They're the SAME EXACT thing, capable of being in multiple places and times at once (all times are one) but follow certain parallel courses that betray their similar intent. The Stranger is Harlequin is the Dalang. (Arcadia part one.) The Dalang is a very clever man. He makes us think there is a great war between opposing forces (demonstrated through a shadow-play) but there is only the Dalang. He is the principal motivator for both sides. So what's the goal? (Note: The most recent issue, there are two versions of the Stranger present.... Am I onto something here, or am I just rambling?)
o Paul Melancon: Well, I'm trying to take in the debate as a whole. And the conclusion I seem to come to right now is this: I'd have to agree with Josiah Bancroft (annot for 2.17) and take it a step further. The Hippie and the Stranger and the Harlequin are separate entities, but are all connected. They are a physical manifestation of the 2 universes (the hippie and the Stranger) and their intersection (the Harlequin). And the Harlequin, like the Dalang, is merely performing a shadow-play with the rest of us, a chess game where he plays both colors. And when the final issue rolls around and the true conspiracy is revealed, it will bear no resemblance to anything we have been shown so far.
