#also from tma verse

[fallenfromtheskies]

okay so ERROR has to be an old archivist like the one in alexandria the tape recorders and the compelling

[witchinatree]

vaguely mentioned this in my recap but those things are long and just me live-blogging

celia is the ONLY tea drinker in the OIAR, everyone else drinks coffee

i think this goes on the list of evidence for why she's from the TMA universe

the magnus institute was tea centered, it was martin's whole thing and all of them drank tea

actually, elias drank coffee didn't he? sorry vaguely off topic but he had coffee when melanie poisoned him. i wonder if that's also symbolic of him not belonging either, he was out of place because his ass was not elias. that's DEFINITELY a reach but it's interesting

the OIAR is coffee centered, but celia drinks tea, because she does not belong there, she's from Somewhere Else

very interesting to use the drinks as symbolism, unless i'm reaching

[scholar-of-yemdresh]

Bare with me now but I think certain portions of fandoms reactions to a piece of explicitly aromantic media is telling in a way.

So I think TSV's lack of romance from the get go probably weeded out most of the types of people who aren't capable of interacting with media beyond shipping or romance. But even still I see the occasional er take or reaction to the SV's handling of & lack of romance.

I love how the most impactful plot and story relevant relationships are non romantic. I love how almost romantic relationships/attractions are exes,in the past, made the F up (Hayward the F we're you yapping about man?)or not on screen... All but one which brings me to the reason for my post.

But the strong reactions to episode 36 are tickling me.

A lot of people are upset about the ending specifically how they think the tragedy is excessive and depressing for no reason. Personally I belive Sebastian and Devereux did make it out at the end and that last bit was a ptsd flashback to the incident and I do agree that it'll be a bit much for the NPCs we've been following for a whole 1 hour+ episode will meet a grisly end for horror reasons I guess.

BUT the reactions by people who's interpretation of the ending as being more tragic I feel is interesting. I do not believe people would be as upset if it wasn't a romantic relationship that was centered. If Seb & Dev had been unambiguously "just" friends getting sucked into some nightmare Scooby Doo plot, if it was centered primarily on Dev & his sister, if it was only about those non romantic relationships and an unambiguous Bad End, I Don't believe certain portions of the fandom would've cared as much.

I feel people were waiting for a romantic narrative, wanted their cute assumed white yaoi boys to ship as a reward for "sitting through" all the aromantic relationship stuff. Were hoping for a cute soft fluffy romance that they could ship, the right kind of queer representation.

The aro/ace older woman, the Achillean trans man, the sapphic trans woman, all the myriad NB/agender main/major characters is fine...but where's the cis (white) yaoi boys?(nevermind that both of Seb & Dev's VAs are POC)

Idk I guess this is a fundamentally uncharitable assumption to make about people but I notice things and maybe I'm projecting too much

[radiofreeilium]

Also also what was up with Lena saying that there are "benevolent" forces at work???? Are we getting chaotic good entities and forces this time???? It would be wild to transition from tma where the eldritch beings are literally fears and they're all categorically evil to tmagp with like, possibly kinda ok eldritch beings??

[deermouth]

:)

[reinstatedperi]

I think I have good taste UwU

[lobotomy-maybe-bestie]

finding a new podcast to listen to is so fucking hard when you have specific ass taste and are scared of things that might disappoint you

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Fantastic chapter like always and absolutely adorable.

I love how you expand so much on the characters even the dead ones in this fic in a way that makes them so present in the narrative. The way this makes Frank just completely absorbed by his family constantly while still building them as real people independent to him is great. Just the little details about Maria this chapter and how they relate to Matt is absolutely fantastic

The situation between Peter and Frank needed to blow up spectacularly before getting resolved I should have known that something would actually blow up.

The way you showed the Spidey sense in action through Franks pov was really good it's my favorite Spidey power and really fun to see in action.

Poor Peter though. I hope that once the situation gets resolved he can have a good cry about everything ever.

Also I really want Tony to get punched in the face. Just a small punch! Just once! But Jesus Christ the way he handled this situation has been so bad for Peter I am so angry at him. I know he's dealing with something behind the scenes bit still he needs to think about the impact this all has on Peter it's so bleak and isolating

i simply love explosions and add them in to everything i can. they're the spice of life. do not have the police investigate me i am so so normal about fire

Maria Castle is alive in my head and I love her. the version that lives in my head simply loves Matt. He's the dumbass little brother she's always wanted. He enchants her with his poor decision making and emotional unavailability. When he comes over she insists on throwing herself in his arms and he twirls her around because it annoys frank and they're inherently both assholes. The Maria in my head will never be showcased unless i end up pushing my Castle Family Agenda in earnest, but I will reference her as she exists in my head in works where she's still dead. I love her your honor.

The reaction to tony in kintsugi continues to be hilarious to me because kintsugi partially exists because I didn't see this reaction post-CW. Like the reaction I saw was mostly hardcore Iron Dad and i just didn't really see or hear a lot of commentary about how he handled the time between CW and Homecoming. And in kintsugi I changed literally nothing about how Tony treated Peter in that time and people are soooo mad at him. It's kind of funny

[tcelujhita]

I’ve been rotating Michael Magnusarchives and the Wolf Neverafter in my head recently because they share such an engaging character concept. They’re both kind of ambiguous weird blends of one human and one person whose identity is more wonky. Both characters present a single trait that originates from their component parts, except the reason is different for each part. 

With Michael, he’s made up of Michael Shelley and the Distortion, right. Shelley’s gentle and trusting personality got him worse-than-killed (sorry man for following your nature), and his identity got placed onto the hand of the Spiral like a sockpuppet. Michael hates what and who he is because he's Michael (which as a Person Identity, is antithetical to the Distortion, a location that just lives to be confusing and undefinable), and because he's a manifestation of the Spiral (which Shelley got killed by). He's bitter about being sacrificed by Gertrude, and he's bitter about being forced into being a somewhat-definable person. Dude got blended and he’s so spiteful about it. Even though he should be contradictions within contradictions, the human and the manifestation agree to hate Michael and the Archivist. His bitterness originates from both and I really like that.

So the Wolf, I’m thinking specifically of the scene in the forest limbo with Ylfa. The Wolf switches to being her Grandmother, except it’s ambiguous as to who this actually is. I mean obviously it’s the Wolf but she’s simultaneously Ylfa’s Grandmother, despite the wrong personality. That’s how Ylfa treats her at least. And even if there’s no aspect of Ylfa’s real grandma there, then the Wolf is not just wearing her appearance, but also her behavior & role, and so what’s the difference really. This person offers Ylfa genuine kindness and she accepts it. The bit of the scene before this shows Ylfa grappling with the idea of ‘comfort in the certainty of death’ despite her efforts to protect people’s lives. This is presented by Death itself (who I believe later when talking to Pib, says he thinks of himself as more of a concept than a character/person), then Ylfa is simply emotionally comforted by the archetypal nice Grandmother figure. The traits originate from both. I just think, Death and the Grandmother could both be pictured as saying, “Come here into my arms and it’ll all be over soon.” 

[taniushka12]

Catastrophic "is thinking abt his ocs and vibrating at the speed of light" event at 3:30 am, there are no survivors 😔😔😔

[irradiatedsnakes]

also i don't want to focus too much on recurring characters from tma in tmagp but i think it would be really really fun. if we get a cameo from tmagp-verse jon. not chester, just alt-verse jon. and he's just some random dude. not involved in this shit at all. just some random dude living a very normal life and we see like 5 seconds of him and he's never relevant again

[boombox-fuckboy]

any podcast recommendations for guys Going Through It. im a sucker for whump and i’ve already listened to TMA and Malevolent sooo

Fiction Podcasts: Characters Going Through It / Experiencing the Horrors

Gore warning for most, here's 15 to get you started:

I am in Eskew: (Horror) David Ward is arguably the Guy Going Through It. Stories from a man living in something that very much wants to be a city, and a private investigator who was, in her words, "hired to kill a ghost". Calmly recounted stories set to Eskew's own gentle, persistent rain. The audio quality's a bit naff but the writing is spectacular. If you like the writing, also check out The Silt Verses, which is a brilliant show by the same creators.

VAST Horizon: (Sci-Fi, Horror, Thriller/Suspense Elements) And Dr. Nolira Ek is arguably the Gal Going Through it. An agronomist wakes from cryo to discover the ship she's on is dead in the water, far from their destination, and seemingly empty, barring the ship's malfunctioning AI, and an unclear reading on the monitors. I think you'll like this one. Great sound design, amazing acting, neat worldbuilding, and plenty of awful situations.

Dining in the Void: (Horror, Sci-Fi) So, the initial pacing on this one is a little weird, but stick with it. A collection of notable people are invited to a dinner aboard a space station, and find not only are they trapped there, but they're on a timer until total station destruction: unless they can figure out who's responsible. And there's someone else aboard to run a few games, just to make things more interesting. The games are frequently torturous. If that wasn't clear.

The White Vault: (Horror) By the same creators as VAST Horizon, this one follows a group sent to a remote arctic research base to diagnose and repair a problem. Trapped inside by persistant snow and wind, they discover something very interesting below their feet. Really well made show. The going through it is more spread out but there's a lot of it happening.

Archive 81: (Horror, Weird Fiction, Mystery and Urban Fantasy Elements) A young archivist is commissioned to digitize a series of tapes containing strange housing records from the 1990s. He has an increasingly bad time. Each season is connected but a bit different, so if S1 (relatively short) doesn't catch your ear, hang in for S2. You've got isolation, degredation of relationships, dehumanisation, and a fair amount of gore. And body horror on a sympathetic character is so underdone.

The Harrowing of Minerva Damson: (Fantasy, Horror) In an alternate version of our own world with supernatural monsters and basic magic, an order of women knights dedicated to managing such problems has survived all the way to the world wars, and one of them is doing her best with what she's got in the middle of it all.

SAYER: (Horror, Sci-Fi) How would you like to be the guy going through it? A series of sophisticated AI guide you soothingly through an array of mundane and horrible tasks.

WOE.BEGONE: (Sci-Fi) I don't keep up with this one any more, but I think Mike Walters goes through enough to qualify it. Even if it's frequently his own fault. A guy gets immediately in over his head when he begins to play an augmented reality game of entirely different sort. Or, the time-travel murder game.

Janus Descending: (Sci-Fi, Horror, Tragedy) A xenobiologist and a xenoanthropologist visit a dead city on a distant world, and find something awful. You hear her logs first-to-last, and his last-to-first, which is interesting framing but also makes the whole thing more painful. The audio equivalent of having your heart pulled out and ditched at the nearest wall. Listen to the supercut.

The Blood Crow Stories: (Horror) A different story every season. S1 is aboard a doomed cruise ship set during WWII, S2 is a horror western, S3 is cyberpunk with demons, and S4 is golden age cinema with a ghostly influence.

Mabel: (Supernatural, Horror, Fantasy Elements) The caretaker of a dying woman attempts to contact her granddaughter, leaving a series of increasingly unhinged voicemails. Supernatural history transitioning to poetic fae lesbian body horror.

Jar of Rebuke: (Supernatural) An amnesiac researcher with difficulties staying dead investigates strange creatures, eats tasty food, and even makes a few friends while exploring the town they live in. A character who doesn't stay dead creates a lot of scenarios for dying in interesting ways

The Waystation: (Sci-Fi, Horror) A space station picks up an odd piece of space junk which begins to have a bizzare effect on some of the crew. The rest of it? Doesn't react so well to this spreading strangeness. Some great nailgun-related noises.

Station Blue: (Psychological Horror) A drifting man takes a job as a repair technician and maintenance guy for an antarctic research base, ahead of the staff's arrival. He recounts how he got there, as his time in the base and some bizzare details about it begin to get to him. People tend to either quite like this one or don't really get the point of it, but I found it a fascinating listen.

The Hotel: (Horror) Stories from a "Hotel" which kills people, and the strange entities that make it happen. It's better than I'm making it sound, well-made with creative deaths, great sound work, and a strange staff which suffer as much as the guests. Worth checking out.

[agnesmontague]

tmp - tma connection theory

i do not claim full credit for this as @anthonyampersand and i were bigbraining it (and screaming) in chat together but our current theory for how Archives and Protocol connect are as follows :

tl;dr : TMP and TMA are a setup for each other's premise respectively, feeding into each other like an ouroboros. we know that TMP is on some level a "sequel" to TMA (i.e. celia may possibly "remember" events from TMA that we know to have "already happened", such as the eyepocalypse) but it's entirely possible that events in TMP will influence those in TMA in turn, without much concern for actual temporality.

more specifically : it appears, at least so far in the canon, that fears in the TMP universe haven't really split themselves into categories the way they do in TMA. we've seen a case that sounds an awful lot like a Slaughter statement (the bloodthirsty violin), with others that overlap across several Smirke Fears (the very first one read by norris is a healthy mix of Stranger and Lonely, it appears to me), and others that don't strike me as being any particular fear (a malicious, hungering liminal space...? Spiral, Lonely, Extinction...?).

this is ironic because, well, the protagonists' very job is to do that kind of categorization. Dolls comma Watching, or Dolls comma Skin? it's the very type of job that smirke himself seems to have tried to undertake in TMA-verse (and ultimately succeeded). which means....

maybe there ISN'T any fear-categorization in this world prior to the OIAR. maybe, in the end, the way to "defeat" whatever Fear(s) stalk this world is to split it up into little parts that antagonize each other, and then send them away. in short, the OIAR crew are who will send the Fears into the TMA-verse in the form we see them in TMA.

there are some other indications that time may be a flat circle here. why did lynne hammond suddenly change her name to celia in s5 of TMA? why would it suddenly "feel right" to her out of the blue, unless it was the name she vaguely remembered using Elsewhere? of course, since TMA was written before TMP was even conceptualized, it's not extremely likely that it was some kind of deliberate foreshadowing back then ; it is however possible that they took this little detail to build TMP to fit "retroactively" with it. the archives of the magnus institute in TMP-verse being pristine and free of papers could indicate a sending-away or timeline-wide interference as well. and to say nothing of hilltop road, of course...

the tagline for TMP is "Fear takes many forms". sure, it's a pun (fear receives a lot of paperwork). but perhaps it's also a warning for what's to come. fear takes on many forms, in TMP--perhaps even as many as fifteen?

[brainlicking]

Roman - Avatar of the Stranger

The Stranger manifests as objects pretending to be humans, like mannequins, wax models and taxidermy, and is often connected to skin, faces, clowns, and identity.

My first illustration for the Sides as TMA Fear avatars!

Finally! After what feels like forever I've finished this piece and wow did this become much grander than I initially anticipated, though I suppose that's to be expected with Roman 🎭

The text in the background is a verse from "I've got no strings" because the Pinocchio reference was too juicy in this context. That's also while Roman's emblem has a whale now, it's Monstro!

Image ID under the cut

[ID: An illustration of Roman Sanders from the waist-up as a life-sized, stringless marionette with a ventriloquist dummy’s mouth. His prince outfit is painted onto his body and his lips are painted red. He is posed with his arms held to his left, his left hand at eye-level and his right hand at chest level. Roman’s eyes are wide with pitch-black pupils, staring directly at you. His teeth are distinctly human and not made of wood.

Behind Roman is a large, modified design of his emblem, the shield now depicting a golden tragedy-comedy mask on the top half and the bottom half depicting a sperm-whale among red waves. On either side of the emblem are dark-red, drawn back theater curtains. At the very back is a wall of golden text on a black background. The text is repeating the following verse from the song “I’ve got no strings” from Disney’s, Pinocchio.

“I've got no strings To hold me down To make me fret, or make me frown I had strings But now I'm free There are no strings on me”

End ID]

[broodingheroine]

tmagp7 thoughts

WRESTLING WITH TAPE RECORDERS AND MANILA FOLDERS??? immediately with the references wtf

celia don't be curious abt the computers

CELIA STOP BEING WEIRD

she def knows who's in the computers

SHES LISTING THE FEARS WHAT THE FUCK

"you won't need to know about tma to enjoy tmagp" yeah okay what the fuck is this then

HILLTOP?

is derek chambers a name I should remember. check this later.

can't remember his name 👀

shouting human face? wtf

also lol bumbling new volunteer who has nothing on his resume but is punctual and hardworking. not martin coded at all.

another name they can't remember

lowkey giving the anatomy students episode of tma

BEARSKIN RUG??? SKIN????

the items are definitely cursed right

more forgotten names and lost paperwork 🤨

it's REALLY giving anatomy students

taxidermy. hm.

also kind of breekon and hope taking over breekon and hope vibes

so hoarding

GUNSHOTS????

fire..... hilltop....... hmmmm.........

security organization.......

THE VOICE THREW YOU

CELIAAAAA YOU KNOWWWW

THOUGHT YOU RECOGNIZED IT AAAAA

SHES TOTALLY FROM THE EYEPOCALYPSE

colin :)

JON???? FUCKING JON????????? WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK

the real stuff???? what the fuck colin

colin ur paranoia is showing

COLIN WHAT THE FUCK

go gwen! blackmail ur boss!

SHE SHOT HIM?

oh he's not dead? ohhhhhh

SHE GOT PAID TO KILL A GUY?

GWEN WHAT SOURCE WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT

bouchards old money confirmation?

REAL WORK?

EXTERNALS LIASON? WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK

NOW I HAVE TO WAIT A WEEK??????????

god okay so

is the oiar secretly the security team that burned the hilltop place down? that's obviously what the external liason will be right. but then what would the response department end up being?

colin is devolving extremely quickly and im deeply upset about it. no "outside" electronics. as opposed to...?

once again: EMAIL FROM JON???? what did it say. what was it about.

"you don't need to know anything about tma to listen to tmagp" yeah BULLSHIT like I'm sure you don't NEED it but it certainly HELPS

gwen going to lena is giving the archival crew confronting elias abt murdering leitner except gwen has dubious morals and is unapologetically in it for her own gain

which I do appreciate. a protagonist who's willing to admit she's in it for herself and nothing else? love.

I do question whether the oiar office work is done purely as a front for whatever lena is bringing gwen into or if it does actually serve a purpose.

like I said up there somewhere, celia is definitely a transplant from the tma verse. there's no way she's not.

okay I think I'm done? that was a lot..... like a lot a lot

so I think I'm gonna go lay down and die now

[spooksier]

i did not watch ofmd but your criticisms of s2 are exactly how i feel about the magnus protocol, which you speak very highly of. im curious what you see as different between their approaches to canonizing fandom or if you even agree with that analysis at all

yeah sure! so i personally wouldn’t say protocol is doing what ofmd did in terms of ~canonizing fandom~ because all the references to past events or the reappearance of archives-verse characters are in service to the building theme of doppelgangers/people who are almost you (also the writing is way tighter lol) and importantly, the main characters arent the same characters from archives so it’s not like theyre completely re-writing previous characters’ personalities to work better in fandom context

honestly what i see happening is rly interesting where i will listen to an episode of protocol saying one thing and come on here in the tag to see people completely reinterpreting said thing to fit better into the idea of a ~magnus archives…2!~ they personally have. which was bound to happen bc tma is so loved and projected on that for a lot of people the show they love is completely different to the show that aired but i do wonder how it’s affecting how people are understanding protocol now when there’s such a disconnect for some people between what’s happening and what it’s being interpreted as

but that just my humble onion :p