The Thing About Knitting Is It’s Much Harder To Fear The Existential Futility Of All Your Actions While

praying on my life no one else has done this

don’t ask me why but I feel like she/hers should only move any number of squares along a rank, file or diagonal and he/hims should only move one square in any direction

a nice day

Having a gender non conforming (GNC) character who is a masculine woman or feminine man, will always be far more valuable and important than having a GNC character that is “nonbinary”. It shows viewers that there are many ways to be a woman or man, not that stepping outside of traditional gender roles renders you not actually a woman or man at all. It fights against gender roles, instead of just creating new ones.

You will never see me assuming that a GNC woman isn’t a woman, or that a GNC man isn’t a man, because that assumption is sexist and regressive, as it implies that there is only a certain degree that a woman can be GNC before she’s no longer a woman, and that there is only a certain degree that a man can be GNC before he’s no longer a man. It’s a strict enforcing of gender roles, and that doesn’t change just because you slap they/them pronouns on it.

Jon was a better pick for head archivist (the profession not the godhood) than Sasha according to me, a Jon apologist/Sasha stan with a masters degree in information science

1) a disaster pit of an archive like Gertrude's requires a work horse like s1 Jon, not someone easily lost in the weeds like Sasha. For a body of information that huge, with subject matter that broad (even just 15 fear subjects is broad when you consider the overlap and highly subjective, contrasting nature of the statements), you want to create as little work for yourself as possible until you've built a foundation. Ergo, in this early stage you want a project manager who has the ability to burn through busy work, resists distractions, and remains open to his team's input for future endeavors while keeping them on track.

I also have a hc that a disorganized archive bolstered the Eye's hold rather than undermined it because that meant that only Eye-aligned people had the ability to navigate it. So in a normal case, I'd assume they could just call up one of their sister archives and borrow their database or taxonomy, because why reinvent the wheel, but here I suspect that messy records were an industry standard designed to lure in people with a craving for tidy answers. It's possible that no-one at any location had successfully organized their statements, or at least not before getting indoctrinated with some mark or another and abandoning the task.

2) Referring to statements by their dates isn't a bad idea when first tackling a project this unclear. When you create a spreadsheet map of your body of information (literally just a giant inventory list), I was taught to also provide an ID column to designate each collection item with a uniformed shorthand for easy, clear communication and notes. Think dewey decimal. It can be something simple as sequential numbers or dates. Why use dates and not statement giver names? Confidentiality is likely a behind the scenes factor in statement acquisition. Some of the statements are anonymous. Some names double. And the series demonstrates that statement givers rarely visit twice in one day, much less twice a week or month, and even if there are, they can tack a .1 on the end or something. This shorthand ID key will likely change no matter what once they familiarize themselves with the content enough to build a more thoughtful catalogue. So since that makes this a placeholder anyway, dates as a good-enough-lets-keep-moving ID would be my pick, too, ESPECIALLY because of point #3

3) the catalogue is nonexistent in s1, so the most pressing task is to create a taxonomy. Remember, a catalogue is a giant inventory list, a taxonomy is a predetermined, uniformed list of words to be used as metadata, which is like tags. We need taxonomies because a computer will think that The Eye =/= Beholding, so we build catalogues that only allow people to utilize one synonym to avoid inconsistencies. Building a taxonomy would be atypically difficult in the magnus archives, considering how unrelated or overlapping or contradicting all the statements are to someone not in the Know. Trying to pin down a vocabulary on day one will only create more work because it'll almost definitely need massive revisions. That's why it makes sense for someone to closely read several random statements with post-follow-up clarification in order to analyze the subject matter and slowly define a work-in-progress metadata. If they have a chance to kill two birds with one stone by making a recording? Go for it. I would not commit this task to EVERY STATEMENT EVER, but rather to a handful at first to help chisle out that high priority taxonomy, which is what one statement per week amounts to. Which leads me to point 4:

4) Jon's attitude toward s1 Martin was uncalled for and unprofessional, but Jon's frustration makes sense. Martin's existence on that team was likely justified to Jon by his fake masters in parascience, which makes Martin the technical subject matter expert. He's presumed the only one qualified to determine that critically important taxonomy because it'll have to be consistent with vocabulary and classification systems already established in Martin's field of study so that visiting experts can easily navigate it. Martin 🙃 is none of these things 🙃. So from Jon's pov, his technical subject matter expert is either A) being deliberately obtuse by offering tea and conversations about jigsaw puzzles with old ladies instead of results, which adds work to his already enormously laborious project For Funsies I Guess??? or B) Martin did not retain his masters program/doesn't know how to apply his skills practically and therefore isn't actually qualified to help with the task at hand. Or? C) Martin got a bullshit degree, landed a job where he can't get fired (supernatural contracts aside, libraries are famous for job security) and is now half-assing assignments that Jon is on the hook for since he knows he can get away with it, because tbqh some coworkers are genuinely Like That. All of which means that Jon now has to cover their collective asses by overworking to compensate for Martin's percieved fallthrough and record/analyze the statements himself to protect his team and to avoid admitting he couldn't succeed with Elias' hand picked resources.

This is maybe the most frequent citation against Jon's management skills, but the only reason Sasha may have avoided the same trap is because she invaded Martin's privacy and learned about his lie. Which... doesn't really improve the situation, just creates new problems. And also takes us to #5:

5) Sasha, light of my life, did not have people skills that made her excel at managment just because she's charming and confident. The main reason: she's habitually invasive as a coworker and employee. Imagine the conflict that behavior would have shifted into if the power dynamics tilted, if she was in charge of the people she wanted information from (it's an excellent, rich source of conflict, tho, don't get me wrong.)

Jon stalked Tim for a few weeks, maybe a month or two, because he was scared for his life and this became the catalyst for their relationship deterioration. Comparatively, Sasha stalked Jon and Martin presumably their entire working relationship, or at least enough to at least learn Jon's real age/multiple password changes and Martin's fake CV secret, all for fun. Moving past s1, Jon accidentally compelled mundane secrets out of Melanie and Basira which resulted in swift retribution. How long do you think those two would have humored Sasha's active, remorseless boredom?

Also? If the only issue is people skills, then tbh if I was coordinating this employee transfer, I would say to myself "I've heard that Jon's occasionally difficult to work with, but his work style is suited for the task. I'll just let him pick his team to make sure he gets along with everyone. We need a subject matter expert tho, so I'll include that one guy in the library who's a cuddly people pleaser, that will help smooth over any clashing personalities."

6) oh? Jon deniers say this is a public facing job and he needs to be more lovely? Bitch, the public treats jobs like this as basically free, walk in therapy. I've had public facing jobs similar to Jon's. If you don't go in with firm, predetermined boundaries, you'll burn out immediately and become a doormat. If anything, s1 Jon is the perfect combination of "my job is to offer One Service, and if that is not the service you need then move along, I'm not being paid to suffer fools." mixed with "I've decided my One Service includes a willingness to listen in full and let you define your experiences for yourself in a time when the world is likely trying to dismiss your fear and tell you what you saw."

7) insofar as formal training goes, information science is the type of field where sometimes people are just absurdly suited for it because they already interact with the world with those skills. I have a coworker who basically gave a work training on Info Sci fundamentals for fun and when I tagged up with her after, she had no idea that was even a field. Jon and Sasha imo are among those types that click naturally with information science, so I personally do not fault them for not having a specialized degree. If anything, Jon might have recognized his natural inclination and applied for the job for that reason a la "might as well, the worst that can happen is I'm told no." Did they all still need some kind of formal training to properly manage an archive? Yes. Was their need for guidance JUST info sci related or did they much more desperatly need real answers on malevolent eldritch forces delibrately obfuscated from them to, specifically, prevent them from safely doing their jobs? Probably a combination, but leaning much more heavily toward the later. So imo, they weren't unqualified because they didn't have a grasp on info sci, they were unqualified because there was a 200yo contrived plan to keep them ignorant.