#My tma analysis

[abessive-art]

*Archives your Magnus*

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

I loved the ambiguous ending of the Magnus Archives, but I think if they were going to take that ambiguity, this was the BEST way to do it.

We aren’t simply getting Jon and Martin back — no.

This is a situation where we don’t just get them back, alive and well, rather we are forced to watch — because we can only ever watch — as characters we’ve come to understand so deeply, are stripped away of any semblance are form, in a state between death and life, and an agonising state at that. The buildup in this case to the pure existential dread of these semi-aware people, assuming the case was about the JMJ trio, has genuinely made it one of my favourite cases.

They’re still ambiguous, just not in the same way, and it’s so chilling.

And Jon has certainly not lost the tragedy of dying a mystery, because that’s what he is now: a mystery to be investigated by our new cast. If anything it’s worse that he’s being investigated now, because that’s the exact thing he wanted to avoid in episode 39 of TMA.

[cirrus-grey]

Wait wait wait I'm putting pieces together

From TMA 198, Precipice:

MARTIN Hey, what happened here? Are you both okay? Where is everybody? GEORGIE [Upset] They came for them. Took them away. Like before. ARCHIVIST Oh, god. MARTIN Who’s ‘they’? GEORGIE The… things from the city. You know, the, the ones that serve that big eye.

Georgie and Melanie’s cult (including Celia) were attacked and taken away by the former Archivists who were guarding the Panopticon.

From TMAGP 30, Dead End Job:

ARCHIVIST AT LAST, IT IS MINE!

CELIA …and then the fearless one reached in and grasped me, tore me out, leaving my story to fall away like autumn leaves…

THE ARCHIVIST IS FROM THE TMA WORLD TOO

It came over to this world with Celia when it was kidnapping her from the tunnels. It was locked in the tunnels under the Manchester Institute because it came from the tunnels under the London Institute. It's been trying to find her this whole time because its job was to drag her back to the Fear domains and it failed. It needed her, and the rift, to complete its duty.

That's why the rift was more balanced after it went through with Sam. The Archivist was part of what was unbalancing it! And now the poor thing is lost in a world that no longer has the Eye to guide it, with the wrong victim, and not even a Panopticon to go home to. Poor thing is probably hundreds of years old and just wants to do its job. I hope Georgie and Melanie find it and give it a nice cup of tea.

[thermodynamic-comedian]

i wanna talk about tma characters and the concept of a facade. because i have a lot of thoughts.

so most people understand how ironic it is to characterize martin blackwood as a soft boy that can do no wrong, because one of the most interesting parts of his character is how much of a subversion of that trope he is. he's manipulating people by acting like that. this is addressed in the canon. he wants everyone to like him, and he knows he'll almost always get what he wants if he puts up this facade.

something people talk about a bit less, but is still equally canon, is that gertrude robinson was doing basically the same thing. pretending to be just a boring old woman, when she's actually extremely clever and ruthless. she plays into everyone's pre-existing biases and assumptions masterfully to hide just how competent she really is. she knows exactly what she's doing, and she's willing to sacrifice anything and anyone for the sake of her self-appointed mission. characterizing her as a grandmother figure is the funniest form of irony to me.

but do you know who isn't putting up a facade? do you know who isn't changing their behavior to affect your idea of them?

the older avatars.

peter lukas isn't pretending to be passive-aggressive and overly cheery, he just kind of...is. why would he ever bother putting up a facade? he doesn't want people to like him. his authentic self is this talkative yet asocial man, who specifically aims to be awkward and unlikeable.

people say that simon fairchild's polite and carefree demeanor is an act, but i really don't think that's true either. i guess i might see it differently because i personally resonate the most with the vast out of all the fears, but i really think that a lot of that behavior makes perfect sense for his character. he doesn't think that anything in life matters. his personality reflects the lightness and carefree nature of that mindset. he just doesn't care. he does everything for fun. he's not pretending to be anything he isn't.

this could be me reaching, but honestly, i don't think even jonah magnus is putting up that much of a facade. he's lying, sure. he's manipulating people, obviously. but he's not changing his behavior in order to do that. even in mag 160, there's no big, henry mildmay-esque "dropping of the act" when he has his monologue. if you look at his behavior as elias bouchard, it's exactly the same as the little bits of him that we get to see in s5. the elias whose last words are "good luck" is the exact same elias as the one who always greeted basira with "hello, detective".

humans put up an act. monsters don't bother to.

[cult-of-the-eye]

Jonathan Sims vs Samama Khalid: A Comparison of Horror Protagonists

I want to talk about the differences between these two and for me, the most interesting one was the idea of agency. At first, it seems as though Jon had chosen to work at the Institute, chosen to take the job as the Head Archivist, chosen to record himself speaking the statements. Obviously we later find out that he lacked agency his entire life but we start off believing that he is in complete control of his actions. Sam, on the other hand, is suggested to have been driven by his past experiences, something outside of his control. He's taken this job because he needs it, who would willingly work a night shift with their ex? And most importantly, he's being recording without knowing. What does that mean for the rest of tmagp? It's not a long shot to suggest that tmagp will be an antithesis of tma, i'm guessing it will follow along in a sort of mirror image. Equal and opposite etc etc. So as Jon slowly loses his agency, which is the main focus of the tragedy, Sam could gain agency, gain knowledge, gain power within this universe but inversely, use it for all the wrong reasons. Jon's corruption arc was rife with moral questioning and what he could possibly do to avert his ending but maybe Sam's tragedy will be complete knowledge of what will happen and the inevitability of tragedy, coupled with an innate need to catalyse it.

[its-your-mind]

*deep breath in*

the fears 👏 have always 👏 been (in one way or another) 👏 parallel 👏 to 👏 desire 👏

let me explain.

so many of the statements given by actual avatars center around some sort of need that was met by their entity. Lots of them even had a positive relationship with the fear that drove them.

Jane Prentiss is an excellent example - the Corruption has always been about a form of toxic and possessive love, but she personally has a deep desire to be “fully consumed by what loves her,” and finds a perverse joy and relief at allowing herself to be a home

Jude Perry is another - she fucking loved watching people’s lives be utterly destroyed. The Desolation only offered her a power of destruction on a grander scale, and then gave her a more intense rush of joy as she did its work. When she tells Jon that he needs to feed the Eye before it feeds on him, it’s almost as an afterthought; she was happily feeding the Desolation long before it burned her into a new existence.

Simon Fairchild. Every time that old loose bag of bones wanders into the picture, he is having a fucking EXCELLENT time playing with the Vast. He loves showing people their own insignificance, and he loves luring them into situations where he can throw them into the void as he smiles and waves.

Peter Lukas (hell, the whole Lukas family (except Evan. RIP Evan.)) hated. people. all he wanted was for them all to go away, to leave him alone. The Lonely only fulfilled that desire.

Daisy, Trevor, and Julia, all devoted to hunting those things they deemed monstrous.

Melanie, holding tight to that bullet in her leg because on some level, she wanted it. It felt good, it felt right, it felt like it fit right alongside the anger and spite that drove her to success.

Annabelle Cane first encountered the Web when she was a child, running away from home in order to tug on her parents’ heartstrings in just the right way to have them wrapped around her little finger. Later on she volunteered to be the subject of an ESP study. Hell, she’s the one who dangled the “Is it really You that wants this?” question over Jon’s head in S4.

And that brings us to Jon, beloved Jarchivist, the Voice that Opened the Door. Ever since he was a child targeted by the Web, he was looking for answers. He joined the Magnus Institute’s Research Department looking for them, he stalked his coworkers in search for them, he broke into Gertrude’s flat and laptop out of desperation for them. And when he realized that all he had to do was Ask to get truthful answers to his questions? It was only natural for him to jump at that opportunity.

Elias told S3 Jon that he did want this, that he chose it, that at every crossroads he kept pushing onwards, and the inner turmoil that caused was one of the focal points for Jon’s character through the rest of the podcast.

There’s a certain line of thinking in many circles about the power of the Devil: he’s not able to create anything new. All he’s able to do is twist and warp that which was already present, making it something ugly and profane while still maintaining the facade of something desirable.

Jon didn’t choose the Eye. But he did wander into its realm of power, exhibiting exactly the qualities it was most capable of hijacking and warping to its own ends. Jon didn’t choose the Apocalypse. But Jonah picked at him little by little, pointing him towards each Fear individually. Jon didn’t want to release the Fears. But the Web tugged on his strings just so and laid a pretty trail for him to follow until he reached its desired conclusion.

Jon didn’t choose ultimate power, or omniscience, or even his own role as Head Archivist. But he said “yes” to the right (wrong?) orders and kept on pushing for the right (wrong?) answers. He wanted to succeed at the work he had been assigned. He wanted to protect his friends. He wanted to rescue them when they were lost. He wanted to prevent the apocalypse, to save the world. He wanted to know why he was still alive, when so many had died right in front of him.

The Great Wheel of Evil Color that is the Entities might not fit as neatly into categories in this universe - maybe there was no Robert Smirke trying to impose strict categories on emotional experiences, or maybe the ways they manifest in the world has turned on its head (goodness knows many of them have been showcased and blended in some very fun and new and horrifying ways so far) - but their fundamental foundations seem to be the same. Hell, in episode one we learned that there had been enough individual incidents to create a distinction between “dolls, watching” and “dolls, human skin.”

Smirke’s Fourteen isn’t going to be relevant as common parlance, RQ said that already, but I don’t think that means the Fears themselves (and their Dream Logic-based rules) are different - I think it means that the levels of understanding, language used, and personal connections among people “in the know” are going to be entirely unfamiliar

[shadow-the-crow]

Michael never really fit in anywhere. Maybe that's part of why i like him so much. Or maybe i'm just projecting lol – but hear me out.

Michael Shelley maybe really didn't have a purpose in life. Maybe doing research on his trauma was all he had. He was too good, too pure for his human life - a life that probably just wasn't great in general.

Now other people without other purpose in life than supernatural trauma reasearch become happy fulfilled avatars, like Mike Crew. But Mike Crew chose to serve his entity. Michael, on the other hand, was sacrificed to an entity that didn't fit him, that was the opposite of him. He was naive and kind and would never lie to anyone, and the Spiral is the incarnation of gaslighting and lies. Which means the Spiral wasn't good for him, but he also couldn't become a good Spiral avatar vessel. Helen seems to be able to coordinate humanity and inhumanity. Michael wasn't, because Michael Shelley wasn't made for becoming this.

In general - i'm still thinking about how Gertrude stopped the ritual by making Michael the Distortion. Maybe it was just because it disturbed the ritual and it needed to get used to its new identity. Or maybe it was because Michael just wasn't a good distortion. He wasn't strong or talented or spirally enough to complete the ritual. God, i made him tragic.

I gotta say: This seems to contradict what i’ve said before, but i’m only talking about Michael and Michael Shelley as one person to simplify this. What i really mean is the Distortion could never be good at being itself while having Michael’s mind.

Can you imagine? Not only being tied to the embodiment of your failure, but still being your failure. Thinking with a mind that represents the opposite of what you are, that contradicts your very essence. That stops you from living up to your full potential, that stops you from being good at being you.

[anyatomy]

everyones having fun with calling him gerry robinson but we cannot forget our roots. we cannot forget eric delano. i doubt protocol would entirely change his family structure- if gerry and gertrude were actually related, its more likely she'd be his mom given the period eric worked at the archive. even still, i don't think they're actually related. in TMA, they used the grandmother-grandson lie; i think that's just how they explain their relationship to each other. i think how happy gerry is is wonderful but we cannot assume that's because of gertrude, the brief glitching noise we hear at around 21:04 when gertrude is prompting a response from gerry is enough to keep me VERY wary of her intentions. we cannot forget how gertrude continuously lied and used gerry throughout them knowing each other.

i don't really think that's changed all that much in protocol.

[irojewne]

i think tme people need to examine how some of us only seem to hc men as transfem. no girl character is transfem, only men who you can hyperfocus on being a selfhating egg. how its used as an excuse to escape the misogyny in fandom discussions (i.e. "ik the show has all men but [] is a girl to me so"). but other than that; trans women disappear. if pressured, then the transfem hc will be found in a fandom (with great hmming and hawing from tme people) ; the big muscular woman who is constantly made fun of for being too loud, or the quiet stuttering type who gets 400 "not a girl just a [transmisogynistic trope]" threads and discussions a day.

a widely held transfem headcanon appears in fandom, and give it a week before there are people strongly and loudly saying "well, i actually see them as transmasc so i dont see how u could see them like that at all :/", fighting tooth and nail that any time you see a girl, it could never be true and is bad media analysis.

transmisogynistic jokes and tropes and media are supported because they are euphoric to some tma people. because laughing at the man in a dress taught them they could be a man in a dress and be fine, so why would it mean anything else? not all trans media needs to be so sanitized, you clearly just dont get it

[bigmilkagenda]

Of the many, many plates of pancakes* that were offered to the listener in magp 1-07, this one may be my favourite

[ID: A screenshot of an unofficial transcript to The Magnus Protocol. CELIA is saying "Yeah. I mean, it's an old system, but it could have been worse. It's not like we're wrestling with tape recorders and manila folders." /end ID]

When we meet TMA-Celia for the second time, she's lost her name. She was Lynne Hammond, and now she's not. She doesn't seem to remember Martin, either, but it's not clear how much of herself and her life from before the change she does remember. She's freaked out by the tape recorders that start showing up, and there's no indication that she associates them with the Institute specifically.

If Celia Ripley is, as we are clearly intended to believe or consider, the same Celia as in TMA, why is she making knowing comments about manila folders and tape recorders? Tape recorders in particular are hardly standard equipment at what seems to be mostly a text data-entry and cataloguing job. She could have said typewriters, or carbon paper. Fax machines, if we're dunking on Freddy specifically.

She says "tape recorders and manila folders." Celia Ripley is referencing The Magnus Institute, particularly the outdated technologies in use in the Archives.

Maybe she learned more from Melanie about what the recorders were and did at the Institute, sometime after MAG 190. Maybe she has those specific memories of giving her statement in MAG 100, and little else. Maybe Martin grew an apocalypse beard and she remembers everything, but just didn't recognise him out of context and in a tunnel and during A Pretty Weird Time Overall.

Maybe she stuck around with Melanie-Georgie-Basira for a while after things returned, and that's how she learned about the particular significance of tape recorders.

Maybe she found some tapes and listened to a couple hundred of them.

Or maybe she's simply an AU Celia, with a knack for oddly specific and kind of clunky comparisons, drawn into this through the powers of metafiction and string theory.

Or maybe someone filled her with spiders and sent her to finish the job of spreading Fear to this particular world.

And the reason this particular plate of textual pancakes** (short stack, butter and nightmare syrup) is one of my favourites from "Give and Take" is because I genuinely have no idea! None of these are theories because there isn't enough evidence to point me in any particular direction. It's a mystery!, Jon voice, etcetera.

If you cornered me and paid me to have an opinion about it I could say which options I thought were more likely, I guess. But the odds are high that I'd be wrong, and I think the boat for me getting paid to interpret texts probably sailed fifteen years ago, besides. I'm in this for the love of the game.***

November is the true spooky season in the northern hemisphere.**** Yeah, October ends with Halloween, but you know what month starts with Halloween? Mmhmm. By November of 2019 TMA had been on my list for a few years, and someone I was getting to know and really liked recommended it to me specifically in the days after 159 aired. The conditions were correct for me to get into something new, is what I'm saying. I still remember listening to "Anglerfish" for the first time, walking home from my office job in the blustery November dark. I got home starry-eyed and red-cheeked and thrilled by the story I'd just heard.

It took a couple of months for me to catch up, and though I loved having so much to listen to there were times when I wished I'd started earlier, to have the experience of seeing things unfold.

And now we're back at a beginning, and get to experience the horrible joys of finding out.

[ID: A screenshot of an unofficial transcript to The Magnus Protocol. LENA is saying "Of a sort. I hope you're as ready for it as you think you are. Consider yourself "in." /end ID]

*Sabrina pancake meme

** the best kind, especially if it's a contest between textual and fluffy pancakes. Keep those spongy bastards away from me, I'll take the kind with a typeface instead

***Being a huge nerd

**** For more of my opinions on November, see https://www.tumblr.com/almostmolly/188799234276

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

Jon’s subtle Becoming in season two is possibly one of my favourite aspects of the earlier show in hindsight, and I think it links really nicely with why ends up aligning with the Eye, whereas Gertrude rejected it.

There’s a consistent theme with avatars and finding a sense of protection or comfort in the entity they serve, and being an avatar is never really about what you fear, as much as it is about how you cope with what you fear.

Throughout season two, Jon is actively faced by one of the entities directly — Not!Sasha — and pairing that with Gertrude’s unknown killer, he spirals into distrust and paranoia, always feeling as though he’s being watched or that people are plotting against him. His manner of coping with this worsening state of constant fear and paranoia is by both becoming a causer of it, as well as desperately seeking answers and investigating.

He has to know, and he has to be sure of what he knows. The unknown variables bother him.

He always feels as though he’s being watched, and so, he becomes the watcher. He stalks Not!Sasha, Tim, and Martin, and then digs up as much info on them as he can, alongside Elias. He makes note of their every move, every detail, every slip up, until it becomes obvious to all of t he m.

Note that it’s a stark contrast to his original coping mechanism of ignorance, because that proved it could only work so far. After Jane’s attack, he can’t afford to let his guard down anymore. He can’t afford to trust anyone except himself and what he knows.

He finds a comfort in the Eye before he even knows about it, in a sense, and while this is likely a simplification of season two Jon, I just wanted to gush a little about it, because it’s really clever set up.

He’s the Ceaseless Watcher’s special little boy for a reason!

[cirrus-grey]

Maybe he wasn't. But-

maybe

Jon

was.

[miyuskye]

Things Jon does in the last episodes of TMA S4:

1. Finds Elias, and he's distantly aware of having being pulled to him. He still asks him and Elias answers, because it's apparently their kink to do this Q&A session even if they're both all-knowledgeable beings.

2. In this push-and-pull game, Jon tries to ask what the Panopticon is, and Elias doesn't answer, so Jon Knows the answer. The audience wonders why they can't get a room like everyone else. Elias asks if he likes it and Jon says yes. Everything's okay.

3. Jon remembers he has a friend in need of saving, that's the reason he's here. He tries to get Elias' approval for going to save Martin, which Elias doesn't give him immediately. They can't be normal for a moment, so Jon has to earn it.

4. Jon finally obtains Elias' approval which is something also Elias craves because in his pet project he needs the pet's agency to be his own. Again, normalcy doesn't suit the two freaks. Also they get off other people's fear but when there aren't other people they have to do with their own fears. Weirdos (lovingly)

5. Jon compels Peter to tell his story. That's good, he needs to eat after entering the Lonely domain. And where does he lose it? When Peter doesn't tell him why he's Elias' prize. Okay, so the man he's been kind of admiring for years (even when he finds out that he's a murderer) has been waging him as a prize. Cool, he manages to stay calm, I wouldn't have honestly.

6. He offs Peter because he won't tell him anything more about Elias. Fair game, he should know by now how his little kinky game with his boss-slash-Eldritch mentor goes.

7. I want to make clear that Jon finishes Peter because he's not answering Jon's question about him being Elias' prize, and if this post is very shipping-based this fact is undoubtedly canon. He doesn't end Peter because he said something bad about his friends, or Martin, he does it because he won't tell him why he's Elias' prize. Be it because he's thirsty for knowledge due to the Beholding or for any other reason, those are facts. He probably would have done it anyway, though seeing how he behaves in S5 I'm not so sure. Anyhow, he's sulking when he doesn't get his answers, fair, and suddenly remembers he's here to save someone.

This has a parallel to another person being trapped and dying in the Lonely domain.

Jonah also had a friend he cared for trapped in the Lonely and did not save him, because he had to Know. Jon saves Martin at the end, but the parallel between them, the indissoluble connection between them strengthening even more.

HOW DO I STOP THINKING ABOUT THEM EVERY WAKING MOMENT??? AAAAA

[thermodynamic-comedian]

i think the lonely feeds on exclusion, not absence. i think it feeds not on the fact that no one can help you, but rather that no one cares to even try. if you know someone out there is trying to help you, you won't feel lonely, no matter how far away or unable to actually help that person is.

that's one thing that the statement of barnabas bennett can teach us about how the lonely functions, and how jonah magnus feeds it. he could have helped, but he watched. the indifferent watcher. an amoral gaze that only seeks to know. what's lonelier than being seen, but not helped?

i think the spiral feeds on doubt, not insanity. i think it feeds on your fear of betrayal, your fear of unreality, of being lied to. you belong to the spiral once you don't know what to trust anymore, once everything feels fake.

that's one thing that the statement of michael can teach us about the spiral's existence, and how gertrude robinson feeds it. the facade she puts up around almost everyone hides a ruthless woman, who doesn't care what or who she has to sacrifice to achieve her goals. this is the facade that had michael shelley fooled, and eventually, literally fed to the spiral. that moment of betrayal, of the mask slipping off, of realizing that it was all fake. do you think that that's when he realized that nothing was real?

eye avatars really, really have this tendency to feed other fears.

with that in mind, which one do you think jonathan "on good terms with oliver banks" "goes around ending avatars' existences" "dies at the end" sims has been feeding?

[cult-of-the-eye]

Goodbye, My Danish Sweetheart by Mitski as a jmart song:

"there's nobody better than you/it just took me a while til I knew"

Fuck it's so Jon talking to Martin. He sees Martin as a better person than him, both morally and literally in terms of humanity and it fits his whole S1 ew martin to S4 oh martin arc so well

"but you knew from the start it was us, didn't you/it just took me a while til I knew"

Yep yep yep that's Martin. He loved Jon from the start. Of course Jon's admitting that. And of course he's doing it in such a self deprecating way.

Read more cause this is long

"now I lay as I study a blank wall/would you spare me your voice if I call?"

Ok so we're in Martin's Peter Lukas era right now, Jon is fully pining he's completely checked out and dissociating and he needs Martin to ground him, to be his anchor and he's reaching out in a way that puts the focus on Martin's next move as opposed to him calling which is SO HIM

"Cause you waited and watered my heart 'til it grew/you just grew a little smarter, too"

Fuck he's like you treated me so well, you waited so long for me to like you back but then you realised it was futile and stopped, but obviously you would do that because you're an angel and blameless

"So, I don't blame you/If you want to bury me in your memory/I'm not the girl I ought to be, but/Maybe when you tell your friends/You can tell them what you saw in me/And not how I turned out to be"

Jon's love is just so self deprecating I feel like, he's so acts of service, he's like it's ok that you don't want me, I get it, I'm not loveable but at least I seemed loveable for you to have crushed on me for that long

And and cause Martin's separated from jon, the only thing he has left is his memory of him, the one that lives in his head

"There's some kind of burning inside me/It's kept me from falling apart"

Oh yeah this is so them like Jon's had this drive within him, this incessant need to keep going, to keep finding things out, to keep burrowing deeper into the problem and it's kept him alive cause it's kept him ambitious and it's kept him from being stagnant but it's also been destroying him from the inside cause he can't stop

"And I'm sure that you've seen what it's done to my heart/But it's kept me from falling apart"

But Martin sees this, Martin knows who Jon is and it's almost a plea to try and accept that what's driving him isn't a good thing

"Now here I lay as I wonder about you/would you just tell me what I'm meant to do?"

Jon's like how do I get Martin to come back, how do I get him to be near me, ive tried everything, just tell me and I'll do it

"Cause I've waited and watered my heart 'til it grew/you can see how it's blossomed for you"

Its like a look, you waited for me, now I'll wait for you, I'll take care of myself in your absence to show you how much I care about what you've done for me, I do love you, finally, thank you for waiting all this time

"And I don't mean to make your heart blue/But could we be what we're meant to be?/I'm just about to beg you, please"

God I'm so feral for this last bit

Jon's like I know me begging you to come back is hurting you but I'm finally giving into what you want, you need to come back so we can be together like we're meant to, he's at the end of his tether, he's pleading while threatening to plead

"And then, when you tell your friends/You can tell them what you saw in me/And not the way I used to be"

I'll be better for you, I promise vibes.

[shadow-the-crow]

Tma au but it's 2010's ya dystopian. Everyone is sorted by fear alignment, like factions.