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ooh writing that is related to time loops but not conventional time loop narrative is interesting. the idea I have now is a bit of a different direction in terms of the underlying concept though

TW/CW: death (mentioned in the 2nd person, implied ending) (also a slight warning: the following is fiction written in the second person and is about being disoriented in spacetime, and about the existential dread from that; also I don't know how much other people get out of this without some rather specific physics knowledge)

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The rest of your life is ahead of you.

You get ready to end the day by waking up into the comforting embrace of sleep. This is the end of the day, right? Mind already— or still?— groggy, you are not sure. Faint recollections of today make themselves known in your mind. Recollections of one of the two ends of your life. Just whether it is the celebrated or grieved one you are not sure right now. At least you are headed away from it, right?

Thinking about that, you realize that you might be moving away from the moment you will(?) end he day by waking up. You are awake enough to notice that the phrasing of that sounds… off, somehow. The sun is still a bit away from setting— or is it rising right now? By definition the night ends with the sun rising and starts with it setting, so that is no help in figuring out which way is future and which way is past.

You remember somewhat how today went goes. And you remember a bit less clearly how tomorrow yesterday the closest day one night from now goes. That is a sign that the future is that way, right? That we know little enough about that temporal direction to think we have free will there.

But you know better than to think you truly have free will, don't you? You know that when you learn about it you are shocked. And you know that at some other point in time you are not shocked about it, at that point in time you accept that the universe is deterministic.¹

But will that be in the future, or has that been in the past? You hope that that is your future, because you remember enough to know that one direction is much longer than the other. Something goes went will go goes wrong today.

You realize that you should not have such clear memories of both past and future. Maybe that is why today has been— will be?— so confusing. You do know that it does make sense for it to be possible though: the direction of time is surprisingly ambiguous unless entropy is involved, so those memories do little to help.

Entropy! You remember: you can find out what direction is generally regarded as the future quite easily. You grab an ice cube. As you hold it you remember that you have(?) let it go right as your hand hurts slightly from the cold. It slides across the floor towards/away from you. Your hand is wet and cold from it. You know enough about entropy to know that the cube melted from holding it.

Which means that today is still mostly ahead of you. And then… nothing. Not the faintest recollection.

You feel cold panic. You are clinging on to the irrational, desperate hope that somehow you can change this. But you know that you can't. Shattered, disjointed recollections of today are burnt into you memory so much deeper than anything else.

Has some attempt to go back just reinforced fate instead? But that isn't how causality works. It shouldn't be. You hope you are not doomed already. You know you are.

Maybe— maybe your colleagues can help you. They've been working on this kind of thing for some distance time (but it's a lot less in time than what that length would be in space, isn't it?). Your research group is working with small controlled systems to better understand what time is. Most that you remember coming of that research so far only has potential for some parlor tricks, but that can change, even on such a short notice, right? (Hah! 'Short' notice, as if we all already know that time and space are not that different.)

There it is again, that irrational thought that somehow the universe doesn't work as you know it does. That things you know cannot be changed, things you know you cannot change, could be changed.

You stand at the bus stop. Why would you have to wait there if you know the bus has arrived early at its destination will be late at the bus stop?

You are on the bus. You just look out of the window disinterestedly, watching the world go by, letting distance pass like time. Is the bus driving forwards or backwards? Are you headed towards your end or away from it? In any case, part of what has you so disinterested in the bus ride is that you know it is uneventful. You have already ridden here from one of the stops you got on/off the bus at and remember that part of the drive. You also remember the other part from/to the other stop you will get on/off the bus at.

You arrive at the laboratory. "Good morning!" you respond. "Morning!" is the answer you receive from the only other person currently at the lab. You can't shake the feeling you should've responded with 'bye'.

You look at the current setup: two almost identical experiments that can run simultaneously — except one of them has opposite charges and is mirrored. And most important of all, one of them starts as the other ends — one of them is backwards. And you truly do not know which one that is anymore. (Anymore? Or will you just come to learn it later?)

It looks different from the other times you see it. "Hey, could you check my calculations? Something's not adding up, I've found a configuration where I don't know where some of the energy comes from" your colleague asks. "It's just, trying to figure it out has kept me up all night. I'd really appreciate a second pair of eyes on this."

You consider what she says: 'all night', not 'all day'. That clears up how she perceives time. It does not fix how you do though.

You remember what is written on the piece of paper she hands you as you first read it. And she is right, it should all add up, it just somehow doesn't. It is as if the Formulas just 'know' that something will be there to fix things. And if not, who knows what would happen. You would rather not know. With a sigh you say "Whatever is wrong with that calculation, I can't spot it either."

"It's alright, I already modified our setup to test this. Want to give it a try?" she responds. Not waiting for your answer in her eagerness to learn she fiddles with the controls of the experiment.

You run between her and the experimental setup. You suddenly know where the extra energy is: with you, somehow. The setup is currently powering up/down. You have to do something or you really will risk finding out how the universe deals with mathematical inconsistencies.

She calls your name, voice full of worry. You are in the experiment room. The setup is powered. You know what fate lurks here. You want to leave this room so badly.

It is too late. Your path through spacetime is not exactly subject to causality — it kind of is causality. Your path through spacetime is not something you have carved out. It just is. And here it leads you. And one of its ends is here.

You want just one more day.

The last, or perhaps the first thing you know is just how wrong you still were about how time works.

_____ ¹ I'm too much of a nerd to completely gloss over quantum randomness possibly not being deterministic, but for the purposes of this story it can be ignored.

I love time loop stories. Really, I do.

But I'd love to see a story about what happens after you emerge from the time loop.

When, after months or years of repetition, you have to learn how to live with a choice you can't redo tomorrow.

When you meet someone new for the first time and have to figure out how to navigate this brand new conversation.

When you reach for the same day's clothes and realize that you can't wear them because they got dirty. Your laundry, your dishes, your body, your teeth, all the tasks that reset with the loop are suddenly stacking up and you need to set aside time to do them.

When you reach that first weekend and your schedule radically shifts and you don't know what to do with yourself, which is terrifying but also exhilarating in ways you can't explain.

When you casually drop facts learned from those books you spent a dozen loops reading, and you realize you retained something worth keeping.

How your memory gets weirdly good all of a sudden, despite not having all that repetition to fall back on, because suddenly every experience is fresh and new.

And when the seasons change, and your hair grows long enough that you want to cut it, and when you realize it's shocking because you didn't think you'd ever see something as incredible as the passage of time.

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heh :]

i know things that you don't yet :]

I’m only a few episodes in but he’s kind of a mood

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only one of those lighters is from tma, and it isn't tim's. but tim having a lighter collection is a cool headcanon

Been thinkin' about them a lot

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screenshots of despair

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canon ace spec archivist and his very supportive boyfriend

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about names

I'm trans, and I chose a name for myself because the name my parents picked for me did not fit. but there's something interesting about my case. my parents didn't exactly pick wrong, they were off by only a little.

I was named after an actress originally (I think more precisely after a computer that was named after her?). that isn't the most interesting way to aquire a name but it does coincide with the fact that being neurodivergent the school system had me learning to put up an act of being neurotypical. I am trying to unlearn that now.

but as I was realizing that I am trans I started looking for a name that isn't for a gender that I am not. I looked at names, and then I stopped, and then I realized I stopped because I had found one (or it had found me)

so, as I started uni I started using that name. I am studying physics. I did not intend for my name to be an energy pun but it is a wonderful coincidence. (it also led to the name of my blåhaj being named after an energy unit)

and now I find out that my chosen name is sometimes used as a nickname for my dedadname‽‽‽

I didn't exactly pick a new name, and my parents didn't get it wrong by much. I just made the slight adjustment that made it fit

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Not just art

…can be made with art supplies/programs …can be beautiful I made something that is not (just) art recently, and I'm very pround of it, despite of how messy it is internally (one would think that, while 'complex' definetely can, 'messy' should not apply to mathematics, but approximation can be not just a solution but also a cause for that)

I'm studying physics, and this semester I have somewhat rediscovered just how passionate I can be about physics and how beautiful it can be. the way a swordfight is mostly a play and dance of just so few variables because swords are quite rigid. the way electroynamics and light only work because of the geometry of spacetime that makes the concept of 'rigid' fundamentally mean nothing in the face of lightspeed. the shapes and not-rotations-but-kind-of that are the reason lightspeed is more fundamental than just a speed. it is the speed and not quite a speed at all. the incrediby weird fact that time can sort of be measured in lightyears even though that is a length unit.

it is beautiful, and its shape are not words (maybe unless one argues that mathematics is a conlang). it can be numbers, but it is also how the numbers relate to one another. and it is not just numbers, but the structures they are in. and the way they describe the shape of the world. the way I can deeply understand it not with words, but with my spatial reasoning. the way I can grasp the shape of that math in my head.

earlier this semester I would've told you that all my thinking happens by way of words in my head, but there has been a perfect storm of circumstances for me to understand how my thinking works better, some of which was set in motion when I first learned about the derivatives in 3d space that are so important to electrodynamics.

even then, it was probably in semester two, I did not understand those derivatives through words but through shapes; but only this semester, when I finally undertook the project of making the shapes in my head into something more externally 'real', 'tangible', by building a geometrynodes setup in blender: a 3d file representing 3d thoughts; when I was examining how my thinking works as I was once again considering the fact that some people do not have an inner monologue, but that their thinking can take different shapes than mine (there has been a truly fascinating diversity in answers when I asked some of my friends if they have an inner monologue/how their thinking works), it was only as both of those came together that I realized just how important my spatial reasoning is to how I understand things and think about some things. how it can help my intuition for things so much. and that it was this intuition for spatial derivatives that was easier to put into shapes than words that was something I wanted to share.

I've finished several renders now, made with an art program but not necessarily art. communication, but not predominantly in the form of words, but surprisingly like it. (even down to the "repeat a word so many times it loses its meaning effect I think) though the end result is a visual one, that two-dimensional result is a step removed from the actual shape of my thoughs; they are not visual ones but spatial. and so, as much as what I was making in three dimensions resembling my thoughs made it easier to work on (and, in turn, improved my understanding too), having to then figure out how to turn it into more directly a visual medium (as opposed to vision being just how I preceived its 3d shape) was harder, because it was getting further removed again from how I think about it.

with in that uni lecture we are now working with 4-vectors, due to how special relativity is relevant to electrodynamics, and while that makes it harder to imagine or visualize I'm still noticing how in my head it is distinctly shapes, not just words or numbers. and it is oh so elegant, these 4-vectors are just the right shape to be the right tool.

I don't know if the thing i made in blender, that feels surprisingly like speaking with not language but geometry, is art, but the understanding it represents is beautiful to me. and I am so very proud of it.

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Walking through the woods,

I saw a light,

And decided to pursue it.

When I reached the light,

I ran away,

Because something beat me to it…

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I somehow get the impression that those would be the cleanest clothes hes worn in quite a while

Little Brain: Jon goes out and gets some normal clothes once he gets to Georgie’s in Season 3 Big Brain: Jon spends season 3 running around in head-to-toe ‘What The Ghost’ merch  Galaxy Brain: Jon spends season 3 running around in his own college stuff

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Shark Peter Lukas (Shlukas) and fish Elias Bouchard (I don’t have a good name for that one)

[ID: two drawings of animals meant to represent characters from the Magnus archives. The first is a greyscale depiction of a shark in a sailor hat and trench coat and a whistle around their neck, meant to resemble Peter Lukas. There are grey clouds trailing near his feet. The second image is of a green fish with green eyes flopping around on the floor in a small puddle of water. It’s meant to resemble Elias Bouchard. \End ID]

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:,D thank you

also its a written infodump. which is great because I have trouble writing stuff but tumblr is chill and so those psychological barriers just arent as big and I can get more confident in my writing

rb this with ur opinion on this shade of pink:

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creature!!! I love creatures who are just very creature!

thinking about creatures.

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also sitting in like a gap between sofa cushions or something can also be super nice. like if I'm being squeezed sitting like l̇r' (drawing with only unicode characters is hard I hope I got across what I mean. just imagine the bottom of it being connected. the dot is the head, the little line after the r is the feet)

I have a headcanon

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oh so that's why tims vacation later on does not go so well and has him returning to the institute instead XD

Had this idea at 1am and couldn't sleep until it was drawn

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[ID: A Magnus Archives drawing of Tim Stoker and Sasha James seated at a table that's cut off on it's left, beyond where Sasha is. Sasha is a black woman with black dreadlocks bleached a golden yellow at the ends, nearly to shoulder length, tied up with a bow. She's wearing yellow lenses cat-ear glasses and a yellow cardigan over a dark beige shirt, and a star necklace. Sitting on her right is Tim, a Puerto Rican man with short brown hair bleached at the bangs, and a brown moustache that's obscured by the grey mug he's holding. He's wearing a red shirt sleeve shirt. Sasha's hands are frozen above a laptop keyboard as she looks at her companion and asks him, "Do you ever think about how the letters of your name can be rearranged to match the abbreviation of this institute?" To which, Tim responds with a grimace into his mug, "Sasha, I don't think about anything before 12 pm tea." The word "anything" is underlined. Sasha's speech bubble is filled in with red, and Tim's is filled in with orange. \End ID]

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@vampni the post it self doesn't have any spoilers! (my guess is that the zine will contain spoilers though)

Applications are open!!!

Are you a fan of The Magnus Archives podcast? Does a TMA fanzine of stories and drawings of all the wholesome happenings we missed in between tapes interest you? Would you like to be a part of making said zine? We are looking for writers and artists of all skill level to help bring this project to life! Apply with the link below and don’t forget to share it!!!

Artists and Writers Apply Here