#My tma theory

[daredevil-vagabond]

THE FAMILY BOUCHARD

[transrevolutions]

okay hear me out. what if 'trevor herbert' is jonah magnus. what then.

all the tmagp-versions of tma characters we've seen can honestly, in my opinion, be feasible variations of their tma selves. yes, even gerry. he seems very different, but iirc in a qna it was stated that gerry's the sort of person who genuinely does believe in goodness and the like, it just got stamped out of him by growing up with mary and the fears. so in a universe where that wasn't the case, I can totally see him being cheerful and friendly.

trevor, on the other hand, feels fundamentally wrong. especially given his profession. all the tmagp-tma crossover characters (that we've met! I'm not counting the maybe-jon and maybe-martin because we don't even know if they're the same people!) have jobs that align with their tma selves. basira goes from being a cop to being a school administrator- both positions of authority/control. helen is still a swanky tory real estate agent. gerry is an artist, and it's mentioned he painted in tma as well. georgie does a podcast. gertrude has a mysterious past, and it's implied she was connected to the institute at some point.

but trevor goes from being a homeless monster hunter to.... a member of parliment who drives a bentley? there's no connection there. and he doesn't act like tma trevor in any way either! there's no dedication to hunting about him, even in the metaphorical sense. if anything, he "prefers a hands-off approach" as of episode 30. trevor herbert in tma was the polar opposite of that, one of the most 'hands on' characters in the series. but who else has a penchant for watching without interfering until something actually threatens his vision?

would it be too much of a stretch to posit that jonah, weakened from his institute's destruction, ends up posessing the first body he can get his hands on, steering this new alter ego towards a government position of authority, then to monitoring the OIAR, so similar yet so different from the institute he failed to preserve? what if, when he says gwendolyn bouchard has "quality", he's not just talking about her heritage? what if he's starting to look for his next mark?

anyways, I found an interesting little detail while rereading some transcripts. in the magnus protocol, the first mention of both (presumably) jonah magnus and trevor herbert, MP is in episode 27: driven. before that, they were not named, and trevor was referred to just as "the minister".

now that's a fun little coincidence as it is, but if we return to tma, we notice that trevor's first statement is in episode 10: vampire killer. and elias/jonah's first actual appearance (outside of jon referencing that he's his boss) is in episode 17: the boneturner's tale. 10 + 17 = 27.

WHICH COULD MEAN NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mechanical-v1scera]

the dots… i’m connecting them

[ganemouchie]

Im in the timeline mood don't mind me. The Archivist through the seasons sketches!! plus uh,, the finale.

(click for good quality i beg of thee)

[witchinatree]

what if jon and martin don't know the other one is there. what if they have no idea that they're together, after everything in mag200. what if martin thinks he's alone again. what if jon thinks he abandoned martin. what if

[ceaseless-watchers-special-girl]

hmmmm…..

yo i think arun was onto something

[jouxlskaard]

Strap in, fuckers. This is a long one.

I've seen a lot of discourse and discussion recently about why TMAGP isn't resonating with listeners as much as TMA did, with a lot of people pointing towards the infrequent structure of each episode and the lack of subtlety that TMA had once excelled in. And while both of these are true, I think the main culprit that has caused these problems for listeners is one thing: the pacing.

TMAGP is only going to be 60 (Edit: 90) episodes long, compared with TMA's absolute behemoth of 200. When I'd found out about this, I'd assumed that it meant TMAGP would have a much smaller story - not having to establish as much information as TMA did, and allowing the story to have lower stakes as a result. This certainly wasn't a bad thing, as many sequels that have tried to one-up their predecessors have gone disastrously wrong, but I knew that the structure would be different to TMA as a result.

However, from the 12 episodes that we've seen so far, it appears that TMAGP is going to have similar levels of stakes to TMA - not the same stakes, of course, but they'll likely be on close to equal footing. This means that TMAGP has to establish the same amount of information to listeners with significantly less time to do it in, and the pacing has to speed up to adhere to that. In the first 12 episodes of TMA, we had established one possible recurring statement character (Gerry), a disturbing worm woman (Prentiss), and the fact that Jon doesn't like his assistant and refuses to believe any of the statements. In the first 12 episodes of TMAGP, we've established every important protagonist and what they sound like, two recurring statement characters (Bonzo and Ink5oul) with one that has already physically appeared, much of Sam's backstory and his ties to the Magnus Institute and the fact that something is deeply wrong with their workplace. That is a big difference.

This difference in pacing is what I believe is turning listeners away from what they'd originally enjoyed about TMA, because there's no longer that warm, comforting atmosphere when you listen to it. Its sound isn't designed to come from a tape recorder and a tape recorder only anymore; it's no longer a sit-down and listen to the Archivist tell you spooky stories for 20 minutes anymore; and, like I mentioned earlier, the structure is no longer the same throughout each episode. The horror anthology aspect, whilst still being there, has now taken a back-burner to the metanarrative because so much has to be established in so little time. To many, that's a bad thing. They listened to the original because they liked the statements, and the little things connecting them hinted to a much larger story at play. When this story was revealed, we got to see Jonny Sims and his brilliant prose at its best, because there was no longer anything to hide and the statements were in their purest forms - no longer having to establish information to the audience, and simply basking in the fear.

I'm sure we'll get to see the same thing in TMAGP once the narrative reaches that point, but the current pacing has uprooted a lot of listeners' expectations for the show. I'm going to listen to the entire thing, personally; yeah, it's different, and it doesn't deliver the same vibes and comfort as TMA did, and I probably won't be able to fall asleep whilst relistening to the more obscure episodes like I could before, but in a frankly disturbing way, I'm still fascinated with what Jonny, Alex and the other writers have created. This type of horror is the only kind that I genuinely enjoy, and I'm excited to see what direction Protocol goes in.

Edit: I feel like I should clarify that I don't see this comparison as something that takes away from TMAGP. Alex has said that it's going to be different from the get-go, and I do think that comparing it to TMA is an exercise in futility to an extent. I just wanted to talk about the shows together because I feel like they complement one another, and the narrative beats that I've talked about are less to do with TMA on its own and more to do with general narrative structure. We have buildup, payoff and pacing no matter what show it is, because that's what makes a story. I think TMAGP could be taken a little bit like Deltarune in terms of its relation to the original source material: separate entities with some overlap in character and themes. At the end of the day, it's still early days for the show and this entire spiel could just end up gathering dust - I just think it's a cool thing to think about, and it gives me an excuse to infodump about how pacing can affect a narrative and the audience's response to it.

I wrote this while my cat was laying on me. Have a picture as a reward for reading this whole thing.

[floorbeastie]

honestly if Sam doesn't merge with the Archivist i'm going to be hella surprised, like all that stuff about transmutation, balance, and ESPECIALLY DUA PRIMA?? and also that goddamn tape recorder following HIM SPECIFICALLY in the epilogue... he's cooked i fear

[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.

[theworkerofkeay]

The Archivist

[Monster Jon save me,,, monster Jon,, save me monster Jon,, ]

[cool-person-yey]

45% of my brain is like " the puter voices are jmart and jonah magnus!!11!1!1!!;" and 45% are " they know we were going to try make TMA and tmagp have some sort of direct relation and they're using it to trick us" and the other 10% are " these motherfuckers are planning something totally different and completely unexpected"

[i-do-not-know-what-it-is]

tmagp episode 10 theory::

what if, and hear me out, what if the heavy breathing paired with the tape recorder at the end of the episode is the OG sasha??? like, the last we saw of her wasn't necessarily in the archives per say but it was in artifact storage with a tape recorder in hand as well. not to mention that throughout the rest of tma they never actually confirm that she's /dead/ necessarily, just that she's "gone"... what if the NotThem doesn't actually kill its victims...?

just some food for thought...

[swordsonnet]

two things about lena kelley:

1. she says "i'm afraid i won't be able to join you at the [pub]". what if she literally can't leave the OIAR building?

2. she says gwen doesn't "have what it takes" to do lena's job. that could just be a jibe at gwen's work ethic, sure, but what if there's a deeper meaning to it? what if there's another, less mundane requirement to be a manager at the OIAR?

[methcheese]

no see guys the reason sam cant find anything on them is because theyre both trans and celia doesnt know their deadnames

[witchinatree]

i know the whole "do you think jon ever used his powers to Know what his parents looked like" thing is far more devastating than this but what if he tried using his powers to remember original sasha? jon and sasha always seemed closer than the rest, he picked her (and tim) to work with him and tolerated a lot more nonsense from her than anyone else (using his password to access his computer [161], debating his pronunciation of calliope [25], etc)

and ofc jon and martin became significantly closer as the podcast went on, but in the beginning he was cruel to martin when he gave a statement but accepting of sasha? idk i think their friendship was a lot deeper than we realized (ESPECIALLY since his first murder in season 5 was because NotThem provoked him about sasha) and i think jon wouldve used his powers to Know the original sasha, not sure if it wouldve worked though

so so sorry to distract from the post but can yall read the tags for me because i suffered immensely for this post

[arsbones-kw]

Stayed up at night good decision drew this