#M. Keay

[recorded-anew]

Michael Keay Joins the blog!

(Two versions so it's easier to see)

Here is everyone's favorite book burner turned book! Michael is the son of Jurgen Keay, and he started burning books in an attempt to keep his dad safe from the Lietners he was trying to collect. (thanks to @thecatchat for the great idea!) As you can see from the tattoo on his neck, Michael does have various tattoos all over his body to repentant the 14 fears, from his fathers insistence. Jurgen seemed to believe that if *every* fear wanted to claim you, none of them could. Michael didn't believe that, but he got the tattoos for his father. Now, Michael is a ghost in the skin book. He wants to believe things will get better, he *has* to. If no one can try, he will. Even in death, he tries to do what he can, even if the hunters he's with are... Frustrating.

[recorded-anew]

That's so funny. 10/10.

I would also wear this shirt

depression is over it’s done it is obliterated look at this fucking shirt i found at the thrift near my house

[peach-coloured-glasses]

i should be sleeping but instead im thinking about my favourite angry goth

[theokusgallery]

Ok Gerry with an undercut and then I'm going to sleep

[showdown-of-the-undead]

Undead Character Showdown Redo: Round One Matchup Six

Who is your favorite undead character?

Propaganda:

No propaganda is submitted for either character! If any is submitted through the ask box or comments on reblogs, they will be added next round!

[winterstarfall]

NO GERRY SOUNDS SO HAPPY PLEASE DONT HURT HIM

[venleaf]

I have this modern tma au where Michael, Mike, Gerry and Annabelle and Helen will form a band

Lots of silly stuff

Lots of drama

Yes Michael x mike is a huge focus probs idk how big yet though

Also I just thought about this au and asked myself

How can I give Helen a gun and should I

Anyways what would be interested in such an au, besides me lol

[composereggwrites]

(art by @snekberry)

A Vivisection of Me (Done by God for all to See)

Chapter 8 - Eat Your Greens

The assistants research, Gerry has to deal with bureaucracy, and a book is burned.

Read This Chapter on Ao3!

Rating: M

Warning: Choose Not To Warn

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Characters: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Basira Hussain, Gerard Keay

Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker, Gerard Keay & Jonathan Sims

Additional Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Eyes, Eye Trauma, Jon is: Monstrous, Traumatized, Possessive, and Protective, Aromantic Sasha James, Queerplatonic Sasha James/Tim Stoker, Queerplatonic Gerard Keay/Jonathan Sims, Cannibalism - Eyes Specifically

Summary:

It starts, as many things have, with Daisy.

In the apocalyptic world, Jon takes an eye from her when she dies. As the Pupil, he takes more.

And then. He rewinds the threads.

Jonathan Sims starts again, back to his first day on the job. This time, it will be different.

Ao3: Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Chapter 8

[keaytomyheart]

...just as long as you didn't listen to any of the true crime podcasts about me. If I could kill whoever invented that crap I would.

I need a new band...

[ao3feed-jonmartin]

There Is No Winning (Is There?)

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/vGfzePp by LappelduVide83 "The Eye did not like its favorite Archive trying to cut himself off. Tim stumbled to his feet the moment he heard a scream echo through the archives. In the corner of his eye, he could also see Sasha startle and Martin drop the mug he was holding. The scream continued to reverberate from the Archivist's office. “What–” Tim is sprinting to the door that separates them from Jon before he could process what the hell is going on."   aka another classic Time Travel Fix-It because there is so much angst potential here Words: 1223, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English Fandoms: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood, Sasha James, Gerard Keay, Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Basira Hussain, Georgie Barker Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Gerard Keay & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Additional Tags: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Hatred, Angst with a Happy Ending, Big Brother Tim Stoker, Guys please how is that not a tag let them heal read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/vGfzePp

[fipindustries]

also im taking a peak at mage the ascention 20th anniversary, particularly with an eye to compare it to the otherverse because in many ways they seems to be trying to do the exact same thing.

what if magic was real, what if all magic, all folklore, all mythical creatures, were real. and we are not talking about some specific particular magical system like in mistborn or harry potter, we are talking about Magic with a capital M

both worlds seem to be based on this key idea that reality is fundamentally fluid, that there is no objective consensus on what IS, that what happens on any given moment is hammered in more by thought and feeling than by observation of fact.

but there seems to be a key difference here. MtA is internal, Otherverse is external.

in MtA you can bend reality and conjure up spells and wonders by internal will alone. by the power of your own inner belief. is just a matter of understanding that your perspective can change the outside world. that by sheer virtue of thinking hard enough you can access the underliying cogs and wires of the universe and pull them to your whims

in Otherverse it is all about external gestures, is about persuation, is about arguing your case to Others, is about defending your perspective of how the world ought to be with gestures and rituals and incantations. is all about getting the spirits of the world to reach a consensus with you, and this involves action, negotiation, appeasement.

is a very keay difference that underlies the fundamental conflict of each world.

in MtA the conflict is more internal than anything else. yes you have the technocracy and the rival traditions and the nephandi and all the other spookums. but fundamentally is about your own internal conflict with your own sanity. is all about your internal struggle of trying to reach the ascention, of surviving the paradox, of not going completly fucking bonkers and erasing yourself from the continuum

in the Otherverse the conflict is very much with the Other, is about learning to coexist and cohabitate in a world of hunger and greed where everyone is scrabbling over everyone else to survive and get ahead, about resolving conflict with creatures that have values that are fundamentally inhuman.

is all very interesting

[recorded-anew]

… I bet Gertrude was PISSED at not having realized how the rituals worked sooner cause Michael was literally just RIGHT THERE marked by EVERY SINGLE FEAR and she didn’t even try to use him to get off a ritual-

pov your special lil marked boy died of cancer before you realized, so now you have to start all over

[gerrydelano]

Seventh Installment of the Pharos By Right series

Title: CROSSROADS Rating: M Chapters: 7 / 7 Words: 12k Characters: Gerry Keay, Jon Sims, Martin Blackwood, Tim Stoker, Sasha James, Melanie King, Danny Stoker, The Contortionist (OC), Jonah Magnus, Georgie Barker (mentioned), Mikaele Salesa (mentioned), Annabelle Cane (mentioned)

Relationships: Gerry/Tim, Martin/Danny, Sasha/Melanie/Georgie, Jon & The Distortion, Danny/The Contortionist

Additional Tags: Archivist!Gerry, Canon Divergence, Mostly Morbid Humor, Angst, Tragedy, DID/EDS/POTS Gerry, HoH Tim, Cane User/Monocular Vision/Autistic Jon, Autistic/BPD Martin, End!Tim, Stranger!Danny, The Eye, The Spiral, The Stranger, Non-Canonical Character Undeath, Canon-Typical Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Smiting, Graphic Violence, Murder, Suicide, Just a whole lot of death in this one lads, But there's hope too

Chapter Summary:

There’s a dying part of him that wants to smirk back at her, naught but a frail bud of flame in a chipped lantern. If it’s just Gerry, he can’t tell. Pharos can’t feel him anymore. Any of them, really. They must have taken him rather seriously when he first told them to stay inside. This is for him to see through to the End. “Let’s get moving,” he says. “It’s a long way up.”

Or: The end of all things, for beginning's sake.

[peach-coloured-glasses]

all this magnificent art of de-goth-ified happy Protocol Gerry is gonna send me to an early fucking grav e

[fog-and-isolation]

“Statement”

Date of event: XX XX 2018

The tape recorder on Jonathan Sims's desk clicked on suddenly, and he tensed. Someone he couldn’t see was in his archive. He raised his voice. “I know you're in here. Show yourself.”

A sudden sense of grief washed over the archivist as a short, thin young woman appeared in the far corner of the room. “You're Salome Lukas,” he announced.

“...Sah-low-mey…” The woman murmured, as if the name was unfamiliar to her. She tilted her head in a way that reminded Jon of how the distorted Michael used to. The right half of her hair was a stark, ghostly white, a sharp contrast to the dark brown on the left. Her voice was soft and she spoke slowly and almost confused as she seemed disconnected from the world around her. “The new… archivist…”

“Are you here to kill me?” Jon sighed wearily. It would be his luck that the niece of Peter Lukas would be here to kill him now.

Salome shook her head vaguely. “Nnno,” she murmured, “I don’t think so…”

“Oh,” Jon breathed. “It’s just that you tried to kill Gertrude, so I thought you might try to kill me, too.”

Salome tilted her head the other way. “...Did you… want me to kill you…?”

“No,” Jonathan said quickly, raising his hands palm-forward. “No, that's fine. Thank you. So, if– Why are you here?”

Salome angled her head down. She was definitely somewhere else, even as she responded to the archivist’s question. “...It's quiet down here… when Viscera's not attacking…”

“No, I mean”—Jonathan sighed—“Why are you here, at the Institute?”

“Oh.” Salome braided a lock of her hair absent-mindedly. Jon's eyes caught sight of a series of pale white scars littering her wrist. He looked away when they began to twist into spiralling patterns. He didn’t know if it was his eyes playing tricks on him. “...My uncle is… acting head of this place… so…” She shrugged. Jon glanced at her wrist to see that her scars were uniform lines again.

“Right. Would you like to make a statement?” The question was rushed, on the archivist's tongue and out of his mouth before he could stop himself. Salome Lukas stared at him in silence. “It’s just– you've featured in some of our other statements, and you knew Michael and Gerry Keay, and—”

Jonathan took a step back into the shelves of boxes containing files and paper statements as Salome walked through his desk, her body now suddenly very wrong – the entire right half of her body was made of the fog that she breathed, flesh shifting seamlessly into swirling mist right down the middle. Where her flesh body should have been impeded by the desk, it broke apart into that same cold, white fog. It was clear to Jon now that this woman was not human.

His back hit the shelves behind him when Salome stopped, only a few feet away from him. She had passed clean through his desk and now stood behind it across from him. From here, he saw how pale she was, the dark circles and dried tear streaks under her cold gray eyes that finally seemed to see him, the hollowness of her cheeks, the ashen tone to her skin. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Jonathan knew that the transition to becoming an avatar required the avatar in question to die or otherwise change in some awful, fundamental way. Had this woman starved to death? Something he’d said had seemed to bring her back to herself somewhat, but he wasn’t sure if that boded well for his chances.

“Why do you know those names?” she inquired. Her voice was still soft and almost weak, but she was putting her words together a bit more easily now. She still felt distinctly non-present to Jon, though, as if where she stood was instead a void where someone was meant to be. If he closed his eyes, all he would have only sensed that emptiness. It felt not dissimilar to aching, longing grief.

“I met them,” Jon said. Salome was several inches shorter than him, but there was still an odd sense of danger to her. “Michael, a few times, actually. They both mentioned you by name.”

“You met Michael and Gerard…” The gray of Salome’s eyes swirled like the fog that comprised her body. “And you said you wanted my statement.” She sighed. “Captain Lukas would be disappointed in me if I did that.”

She laughed, just once, softly and coldly, the sudden force of air causing her emaciated, intangible form to burst apart for a moment before pulling itself back together into something that was almost human. “I don't see why not,” she shrugged. “I don't care about what he thinks anymore.” She finally looked into the archivist's eyes. It was unsettling. “So… How do we do this?”

“Well, you sit there–” Jon glanced and gestured pointedly at the chair on the other side of the desk. “And I record your statement.”

Salome glanced back at the chair behind her. “Is that all…?”

Jon nodded. “Yes. Uh, please– Please go sit down now.”

The entity shrugged again and walked around Jonathan’s desk, dragging her fingers along the top of his desk in loose waving, spiraling patterns. She sat down in the chair opposite the archivist’s desk.

Jon sat in his chair. “Right.” He pulled the running tape recorder to the middle of the desk, between himself and Salome. The archivist cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice was dry and detached. “Statement of Salome Lukas, regarding her becoming. Statement taken direct from subject, 4th April, 2018. Whenever you're ready, Miss Lukas.”

Salome chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment before she felt her story be pulled out of her. “I didn't know about the Powers until I was almost twenty, but I think I'm getting ahead of myself.”

“It started when I was six years old. I had been in foster care for the previous two years after my parents were taken by the Twisting Deceit when I was four. I watched it happen. It’s my earliest clear memory of them. Some neighbors must have heard me crying and called the police, but the time between Mum and Dad going through a door that shouldn’t have been there and my going into the foster system is a blur. The families did their best, I think, but I was… a special case. How do you take care of a traumatized toddler with newly-discovered abandonment issues and an irrational fear of unfamiliar doors? You don’t. …It took two years for my uncle to come for me.”

“Your uncle being Peter Lukas,” Jon said for clarification.

“Yes. Two years… I don’t know if it took him that long to find out about me, or if he just didn’t bother for all that time. Either way, he showed up, told me he was my mum’s older brother, signed a few papers, and then I was his daughter with a room of my own on the Tundra.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon said, “he adopted you?”

“I guess he must have,” Salome responded, “but he never actually used the word ‘daughter.’ Whatever the law said, I was his niece, at most.”

She took a breath and continued. “He brought in a rotating cast of nannies and tutors whose names I never learned and whose faces I don't remember. I saw the Spiral’s door out of the corner of my eye once or twice before my tenth birthday. I never went near it. I didn't know what it was, but I knew I was afraid of it. It must have known I'd never open its door, as much as the Powers can know anything. I think it was mocking me.”

“When I was ten,” she continued, “I found a Leitner. I didn't know what it was, of course. It was this plain spiral-bound notebook that I wouldn't know until years later was tied to the Eye. I used it as a diary for three years.”

“Good lord,” Jon exclaimed.

“Mm. I didn't have any dark, horrible secrets for it to feed on; I was ten. But I did have trauma, thoughts, and desires that I didn't want anyone to know, and that was enough for it to work on me. It made me paranoid. I lost the book when I was thirteen, but I didn't miss it.”

Unable to help himself, the archivist asked, “What did you want?”

“My uncle's affection, or even just his attention. I got it in my head that in order to get that, I had to do what he wanted me to do. And before you ask, Archivist, because I know you're going to: he never said it, but what he wanted me to do was isolate myself, keep my thoughts and feelings pushed deep, deep down. Serve Forsaken. I didn't learn that until it was already too late and things went… wrong. Or right, depending on your perspective. You mentioned Gerard? We met when we were twelve. He was a couple of months older than me. His mum and my uncle introduced us.”

“Why?”

“Why else? To ‘unite the Lukas and von Closen lines’.”

Jonathan frowned with furrowed brows. “Good lord. But nothing ever came of it?”

With a shake of the head, Salome replied, “No. We went on one date to appease them when we were fifteen and then never spoke of it again. We were close, though, or as close as we could be when we rarely saw each other. He tried to show me what Peter was doing, but I didn't want to see it. I always said, ‘He just doesn't know how to raise me. He's doing his best.’ Even then, I didn't know about the Powers. Gerard could have told me, but I think he thought he was protecting me from them by keeping me in the dark about it all.”

Another breath. “...Things started to change when I started going to the Magnus Institute.”

“You worked here?” the archivist asked in surprise.

“...Sort of,” Salome said slowly. “I wasn’t on the payroll. I took over my uncle's quarterly financial meetings with Elias when they finally got sick of each other. I didn't want to. I didn't like this place or Elias—probably because of my ‘diary’—but I thought it would make Peter happy, so I went along with it. That's how I met Michael Shelley.”

The archivist sat forward in his seat, remembering the stuttering voice of the man from statement #9522002 who would die to the Spiral and the machinations of Gertrude Robinson and become something inhuman, like the young woman sat before him. He knew she had known the distorted being calling itself Michael, but learning that she had known Michael Shelley was news to him.

“He was covering for Elias's assistant the morning of my first meeting with him. I approached the desk, and Michael smiled when he saw me. He smiled. That stuck with me until the next time I saw him. I'll spare you the details, but Michael and I met a few more times over the next year and I learned that he was… so unlike anyone else I'd ever met before. He was open, kind, sweet, and… and so utterly human.”

The sudden faraway look in Salome's gray eyes said what her words didn't. “You loved him,” the archivist guessed.

“Yeah,” Salome confirmed. “He saw me, Archivist. In ways no one else, not even Gerry, did.”

Gerry, Jonathan noted silently. He was under no delusion that the woman Salome used to be was being miracuously revived by her talking about Michael Shelley; that wasn't how this worked, and that seemed especially the case for the incredibly lonely young woman sitting before him. Her voice was starting to crack as her statement went on, and he wasn't surprised when the Eye informed him that this was the most she had spoken in a very, very long time.

“I invoked the Lonely’s power for the first time in a cafe, a little over a year after I met Michael Shelley. Gerry and I had met for coffee one day, and after some time of… I must have zoned out, because I don't remember most of it. At some point, Gerry asked about the meetings, which got me started talking about Michael. Lucky me, Michael came into the cafe at that exact moment. He sat behind me but he was listening to some music or other and didn’t notice me. Gerry tried to get me to talk to him, which is when things went wrong. I told him to be quiet, and…”

“Invoked the Lonely,” the archivist completed.

“Yes. I was able to put things back, but… I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew it was my fault. Michael was fine; everyone was fine. Nobody noticed what I’d done,” Salome said, “but it still scared me. I didn’t like it. So, I ran.” She looked at the archivist for a moment, her gray eyes unfocused. “Do you know… what my uncle said to me when I got back to the Tundra?”

“What?” The archivist was on the edge of his seat now, the Eye compelling him to catch and digest every one of Salome Lukas’s words.

“He said, ‘I’m so proud of you.’”

“And that was what you wanted, wasn’t it?” the archivist asked, recalling an earlier part of Salome’s statement.

“Mmhm. Peter knew exactly what to say and when to say it to keep me obedient. And it worked. After that, I learned about the Powers, and here we are.”

The office was silent for a long while. “Tell me about Michael Shelley,” the archivist said. “You mentioned loving him, so he must have been important to you.”

“He was,” Salome confirmed. “We actually started going out not long after the cafe incident. He was…” The avatar gestured vaguely. “He kept me tied to what was left of my humanity. He anchored me to myself. He loved me, and I loved him.”

“But you didn’t tell him about the Fears?”

“I thought I was keeping him safe,” Salome said. “But maybe I was just afraid he’d leave me if he knew what I was. You know what happened next, don’t you?”

“That’s why you attacked the archives,” the archivist realized. “Because Gertrude sacrificed Michael Shelley.”

“Losing him was… hard,” Salome whispered. “I was grieving… I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. All I did was cry until my grief eventually killed me a few weeks later.”

“And that was when you attacked the Institute.”

“Yes. I sent a few of the braver souls into the Lonely when they wouldn't get out of my way. I was so close to killing her.”

“What stopped you?”

“...Michael.” Salome’s voice broke, though Jon wasn't sure if it was remnants of the grief that had changed her so fundamentally or if it was just because she wasn't used to talking so much. “The Distortion had become Michael… My Michael… If I hadn't already had my emotions ripped out of me, I don't know what I'd have felt. An extension of the thing that had taken my parents, my boyfriend, and sent my life into a downward spiral took the form of my Michael… speaking the way he did… holding me the way he used to… saying my name…”

Jon shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Salome seemed to have lost hold of herself again, and heavier fog spilled out of her mouth. “Miss Lukas? Are you alright?”

“This must be your first time meeting the All-Alone,” came a third, far-too-cheery voice from behind the archivist. Jonathan sighed and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses, and Salome barely seemed to take notice of Helen’s presence at all. The Distortion rounded the desk and stopped behind Salome, curling its fingers over the Lonely avatar’s shoulders and resting her chin on her head. “You know, Archivist, Sal is very rude. I just want to be her friend; is that so bad?”

One look at Salome was enough to know that she was trapped inside her own mind once again. Jon frowned. Salome Lukas was an inhuman monster, like the Distortion, there was no doubt about that. But even so, she seemed so deeply sad all the time. She was only a child when Peter Lukas took advantage of her losing her parents and had her raised in almost complete isolation until she was so desperate for his approval that she played right into his hands; Michael Shelley had almost saved her, but between the Spiral and Gertrude Robinson, that was never going to last. The loss of Salome’s parents and, even more catastrophically for her, Michael Shelley had destroyed her, turned her into this grieving, hollowed-out thing that now sat before the archivist: the All-Alone, as Helen had called her. A fitting title. It wasn’t fair.

“...You…” Salome murmured, hollow and lethargic, “...aren’t him…”

“I wasn’t him when I was Michael, either,” the Distortion replied cheerfully. Mockingly.

“No, that’s enough. Helen, get out,” the archivist commanded, but Salome was already gone. Without its unwilling perch, the Distortion scoffed and crossed its arms.

“See?” Helen gestured at the empty air where the All-Alone sat a moment before. “What did I tell you? So rude.”

The archivist sighed. “Statement ends.”

Click.

---

Mini Fics (Salome, Michael, Peter, etc.)

Mini Fics (Camille, Elias, Jonah, Eleanor, etc.)

[tma-ficrec]

hi!!! I know you haven’t been very active recently but I was hoping to get some help finding my favorite fic if you happen to see and get around to this. no worries if not!!

it’s a jonmartin fic that takes place in an alternate universe where jon works as a librarian and martin works in a sandwich shop. jon has a daughter named philomena, or phil for short, and they meet when she runs off and hangs out at the sandwich place with martin for a bit. there aren’t any dread powers, but there are leitners, and the story kicks off when jon receives a collection of them from sasha that used to belong to the keays.

I’ve looked for it so extensively that I’m worried it might’ve been deleted, but I’m holding out hope that I just missed it!! if you or anyone else seeing this can help, I’d really appreciate it, thank you in advance

*crawls from the pits of hell* I KNOW EXACTLY WHICH FIC YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT AND NOT ONLY IT ISN'T DELETED BUT IT'SA MASTERPIECE. From all @organchordsandlightning's fics, this one has a SPECIAL PLACE IN MY HEART

Knowledge is Power (but Love won't Hurt) by SupposedToBeWriting. 156k. Complete. Rated M. Single Parent AU. AU - No fears, only Leitners

Jonathan Sims is a single father and the sole librarian of the most disorganized library in existence. Martin Blackwood's life has entered a new chapter but he can't seem to find the plot. Jon's daughter causes a chance encounter that throws them inexorably into one another's lives. As Jon receives a strange shipment of rare, peculiar books, he realizes that his life is only about to grow more complicated - and more dangerous.