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theanxiousghostartist · 5 months ago

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TMAGP 24 Spoilers (theories & reactions)

Pre - Case (Gwen and Lena chat):

So Gwen wants her position back and is swallowing her pride to do it? Ok, I understand she is traumatized, but I don't think that she would go as far as to be super respectful to Lena AND go back to the position that traumatized her... she has a plan. Even if being on the "inside" offers more protections than just quitting, we know Gwem hated the Externals and wants to fight back against them, so why would she go after the job?

I think she is going to act more like Lena in regards to working up to her former position and working in her former position - she needs to be blank, with little emotions, and calm. She is going to be safer on the inside - earning the trust of Lena, her higher-ups, the Externals, ect, then she's going to bring it crashing down. She (with the help of Alice and probably Sam, Celia, and Colin, perhaps Lena as well) is going to go what-Martin-encourged-Jon-to-do-in-season-5 and Gertrude-Robinson style and start trying to get rid of the Externals and stop whatever plan the higher-ups have.

There was static when Lena asked Gwen, "What has changed?" after she said that "[she] will require [Gwen] to be honest." Lena, are you compelling Gwen? Perhaps an Elias-type compulsion (like how he pulled out Daisy's story of her scar) or maybe an Annabelle-type compulsion (placing an idea in her head that ghe truth would be better). Either way, it's interesting!

Gwen was so calm when saying "Thank you, Lena" it was almost frightening. Also the audio glitch when she said it? I love the sarcasm Gwen!/gen

Lena was wary??? (referencing transcript here). Hmmm...

Maybe she's recognizing something in Gwen that she saw either in her younger self or in a former OIAR worker, or perhaps even Klaus?

Case:

(Norris Case)

Patricia Spaulding recently had her son Rupert, of which she does not remember much of the pregnancy or giving birth, who has a lot of similar features to vampires/avatars of the Flesh in TMA (black eyes, long, thin and curly tounge, sharp teeth). Rupert eats from her (literally) every 4 hours (and more), as advised by the "health visitor," causing Patricia to (literally) lose herself in taking care of him. Patricia also attends a mum support group with several other mums, including one named Celia. Patricia starts having hallucinations (auditory and visual) and is eventually consumed by Rupert.

Rupert definitely feels like an Avatar of the Flesh, but the case is also very reminiscent of the Spiral, especially with this "health visitor" and them normalizing Rupert's abnormal behavior and Patricia's abnormal responses. They were also "helping out" with Rupert every day by the time Patricia was consumed.

Theory: This "mum support group" is full of mum's that were chosen to raise Avatars of the Fears that were created in a similar way to Agnes, as "embodiments" of their Fears. Patricia had Rupert, an Avatar of the Flesh, and Celia, who I'm predicting is our Celia, had Jack, an Avatar of the Desolation (who was either created in some way by Agnes, or was created from Agnes (aka the Lightless Flame) to be her successor). The reason why Rupert was "so good" for Celia is because either she is protected by Agnes or Jack in some way due to her connection with Jack or because her "scent" is different (as described by Lady Mowbray), since she is from TMA- verse (or a combination of the two).

Post - Case (Alice, Celia, Sam chat):

Sam is nervous - that makes sense, given that Basira could be a dead end, like TMAGP- verse Teaholding (I'm so sad about that 😭), and like Gertrude appeared to be.

Alice is trying to tell Sam and Celia about Gwen and the externals! Yay communication!!!

Sam, listen to her, please 😭😭

Yay! Celia, thank you for believing her! (Although we know the reason why lol)

"Is it really so hard to believe that something is hunting us back?" - Celia

"Hunting us back" is a really interesting choice of words. So is this Celia admitting to her knowledge of Sam looking for Externals, or Gwen and Lena looking for and attempting to control and utilize Externals, or Celia herself hunting Externals? I'm more inclined to believe that she's acknowledging that she and Sam are "hunting" Externals by looking into the Institute. But the implications...

(obligatory Starkid joke below)

They are definitely something to watch out for in the future.

Sam, PLEASE BELIEVE ALICE!

I feel like this seen is showing Sam's manipulative - side. It's very interesting to see this more front and center, rather than just through petty actions and small comments...

Thank you Celia, for getting these two to come to an agreement!

Post - Case (Basira!!!):

Basira is a deputy headmistress at St. Luke's? Not an officer?

I was really shocked at first, but this does make sense. We know that she is Eye- aligned and values logic (she was so close to becoming an Avatar during the Unknowing when she was using logic to get out of the unlogic). She also has always been more of an academic, being a teacher would make sense. Her boss, Mr. Donaldson, is the headmaster. I wonder if he will be important later on. She's been in her current role for almost 5 years, and this is her 4th educational position, as well as her 2nd position as deputy headmistress (however, there was an audio glitch here, so she could be embellishing her accomplishments here). She formerly held a position at Edgecroft Avademy, which she was nominated for an Pearson Award for. TMAGP!Basira seems to value her work in the same way as TMA!Basira.

She was caught off-guard by Sam's mention of the Institute, and then denied knowing anything about it. Perhaps she didn't have any involvement with it, but maybe a friend or family member did? (Please, I just need to hear Daisy again 😭😭😭)

Of course Celia would ask if Basira had any involvement with the police! She knew her as a police officer in the TMA-verse.

I really like today's episode. I absolutely hate horror involving childen, so I was terrified during the case (which is good! The episodes that really scare me are some of my favorites). It had really interesting implications for Celia and Gwen, and overall, the connections between the TMA and TMAGP universe.

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp spoilers #the magnus protocol spoilers #tma #celia ripley #sam khalid #samama khalid #basira hussain #tmagp 24 #tmagp 24 spoilers #alice dyer #lena kelley #gwendolyn bouchard #gwen bouchard #tmagp theory #tmagp speculation #tmagp basira #basira tmagp

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douglysium · 7 months ago

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In Defense of Smirke's 14

This is an exerbt from a larger article discussing episode 13 of TMAGP. So if you want to understand the full context you can do so here- https://docs.google.com/document/d/12_bKOpD_Ffic1yTDNEJGb2UlN2oUnSQn5lLKKnDCtMU/edit#heading=h.uwedvf2nuk5c

Why Smirke’s 14?

I’ve seen more and more people asking why people such as myself have been deferring to, or even adamant about, Smirke’s 14 still being applicable, and to be honest I don’t think I’ve done the best job actually sitting down and explaining all the logic in a cohesive way. Considering Lena mentioned balance and opposing forces in episode 13, and how that rings similar to Smirke’s original philosophy of balance among the Entities, I figured now was a good time to mention it.

A mistake that I think a lot of fans make is that they assume the Entities sort of invented fear or are the reason fear exists when this doesn’t seem to be the case. For example, The Extinction and The Flesh are not the reason the fear of global warming / advancing technology and being butchered / consumed / disfigured exist. They merely feed on, and sometimes exacerbate in specific target people, already existing fears and concerns. In MAG 200 we get “Then came minds that knew it differently. They grew slowly, over the millennia; inch by inch they found new things to dread. The fear of their own end, of the things that lived in the darkness, became a fear of the darkness itself. And as they grew to know what it is that they saw, to give it names, and struggle at learning, so too did they learn to fear that their eyes might deceive them, or show them too much. And as they learned to know their friends and kin, so too did they learn to fear the unknown figure, the coming of the stranger, and the silence when they were alone. And when they found fire, that bright ignition of home and hope and progress, the thing that was fear gorged itself on a newfound terror once again.” This fits in line with what we know about the Entities. Generally speaking, what usually happens is once a fear of something becomes great or common enough on a mass scale an Entity will emerge to feed on it. As I’ve mentioned before, these Entities are all parts of a bigger whole but it helps to think of them as specialists. Each Entity specializes in tracking down and consuming specific types of fear, sort of like how different parts of our body have different purposes and can be made out of different tissues and materials for different reasons. Saying the Entities are the only reason various fears exist would be like saying the only reason animals have meat is for carnivores to eat them. In reality, animals started developing various tissues and meats before certain creatures evolved to take advantage of the resource.

The closest we get to the idea that one or more Entities created a fear from scratch is “Once upon a time there was fear. Old fear. Primal fear. A fear of blood and pounding feet, a fear of that sudden burst of pain and then nothing. And that fear was nothing. Went nowhere. Knew not what it was. Then it became. Or perhaps it always was and simply entered. But fear was here and true and was itself, and it hungered. It wished to know more. It wished to feel more. It wished to be more. And to those things that hurried through the grass, that shivered through the night in their burrows and their caves, because they knew the dark held flashing talons and shining eyes, they fed the fear. It was blunt and it was simple, but still it was solid enough to satisfy. And the thing that was fear was sated and content.” However, while some parts of this are ambiguous, such as whether or not the fears were born attached to the TMA universe, the way it’s phrased makes it sound like what most likely happened is the fear of being hunted caused the first ever Entity (The Hunt) to come into existence. This line says that the primal fear “went nowhere.” It would have gone nowhere because nothing was feeding on it but “Then it became. Or perhaps it always was and simply entered. But fear was here and true and was itself, and it hungered.” Suddenly an Entity manifests from or because of that fear and begins to hunger it. Once again, even in the beginning, the cause and effects are existing fears birthing new Entities.

It’s also important to mention that the Entities couldn’t always manifest in the physical world. It is stated “And as the things that were fear hovered at the edge of the world, the flowing horror of these minds nourished them, swelling some and withering others, pushing and pulling the shattered, swirling mass of terror into ever newer and undiscovered forms. And something else began to happen. Some minds did not simply recoil from them and feed them. Some seemed almost to call them, to court them, to hunger for them in return. Minds that saw the faces of the things that were fear, and were compelled as much as they were repulsed. Whether or not they knew what it was they did, they called out. And they were answered. Time is different for fear, and it cannot be said exactly who was the first to open themselves and be filled with the power of terror. A hermit, huddled in a pitch black cave through winter, who emerged and brought the depth of night with him wherever he trod. A pestilent chieftain who found her breath sloughed from her body and rotted whatever it touched. A warrior driven from their village, who found their face as smooth and shifting as the sands of their home. Which came first does not matter, the unseen gap was bridged, and the thin veil between the world that was and the things that were fear had been torn, ever so slightly. And with this tear, they grew stronger, bolder, pouring themselves into the world and creating monsters. Long things that wore you like a suit, smiling things that stripped you from your bones, unseen things that watched and watched and watched and never left you. And with each new creation, each new servant, the Fears reached further and fed the things that made them. And with this newfound power came greed. The hunger for more, the unformed, unfocused, but impossibly huge desire to exist. To join the minds that gave them shape and purpose, and finally drink their fill ‘til they were one and the same. They had no concept of how, or when, or even why, but they needed it. They needed it.”

The Protocol universe seems quite similar to the TMA universe in that it closely parallels ours in many ways. Many of the cultures that exist in our universe exist there, such as the UK and various countries to name a few, and many of the common fears seem like our own. Even if the Entities are recent additions to the Protocol universe a lot of the fears that gave birth to, and sustained, them would presumably still exist. The fear of being butchered for The Flesh, knowledge and being watched for The Eye, the unknown for The Stranger, violence for the Slaughter. etc.. These aren’t completely alien and distinct cultures or worlds here but places that closely mirror or resemble our own. So a lot of the fears would be the same which would mean basically all of the sustenance for the existing Entities would still be there.

While this does address the various categories this does not address Smirke’s 14 specifically, so let’s talk about that. I’ve seen a lot of people under the impression that Smirke somehow caused the Entities to organize themselves into the various categories we see characters throughout the series using but I think this gets the cause and effect of the Entities backwards once again. Smirke is only one guy and not only is he just one person but a majority of the people didn’t know the Entities existed, much less anything about Smirke’s categories. There weren’t a lot of statements were a victim got jumped by say a creeping figure in the dark and surmised “ah this must be related to the ghost that attacked Jan last week as a manifestation of The Dark.” To most people most supernatural events would be brushed off as delusions and the ones that weren’t wouldn’t usually be immediately assumed to be related without due cause. Even in the Post-Change world there were plenty of victims who seemed unaware of the full scope of the Entities and Smirke’s categories. At best Smirke’s categories would affect the manifestations directed at people who were aware of them but most people are not fully aware of these categories. So overall Smirke’s categories would have been but a drop in the metaphorical ocean that is collective fear.

Smirke made the categories based on patterns and behaviors he had noticed in the Entities and their manifestations. Some manifestations seem attracted to the same kind of emotions, or others clash because sometimes they are fighting in an attempt to bring out two often contradictory emotions. The weird spider people are more likely to work together with other weird spider people but they are more likely to fight the weird destructive burning people. So on and so forth.

For a clearer example of what I mean I would point to the various artifact books. The so-called leitners. The leitners didn’t just start popping into existence so that Jurgen Leitner could collect them. Rather, they already existed which prompted Jurgen to look for them and store them in his library before it was subsequently attacked and destroyed. The Entities did not change their entire general behavior on a global scale because one person found a book, Leitner just wrote his name in existing books. Likewise, what Smirke was at least trying to do was note already existing behaviors and manifestations and find commonalities between them. It wouldn’t be super different in concept than any other of the numerous pattern based categories humans make. For example, we divide animals into things like fish, mammals, birds, reptiles, etc.. These categories are usually based on shared traits between these animals but even they are not perfect categories or little boxes. Every mammal gives live birth… until it’s a platypus. How we divide up animals are just made up human concepts to note various patterns and differences. You could also use colors as an example like Gerard does, we assign names and categories to various colors, we even have things like primary, secondary, and complimentary colors, but in reality all colors are just all pieces of a wider spectrum of electromagnetic waves.

Smirke also mentions weird dreams in MAG 138 (The Architecture of Fear) when he says “Did I ever tell you about the dreams? I’m sure I must have. I would dream about them, you see, as a young man, long before I devised my taxonomy. I would find myself in nightmares of strange, far-off places: a field of graves, a grasping tunnel, an abattoir knee-deep in pig’s blood. I believed then, as I still believe now, that these places I saw were the Powers themselves, expressed in their truest form, far more entirely than any “secret” book can claim. And if, as I came to believe, the Dread Powers were themselves places of some sort, then surely with the right space, the right architecture, they could be contained. Channeled. Harnessed. So yes, hubris. Not simply in that, I suppose, but in believing that those I brought into my confidence shared my lofty goals.” Which might imply one or more Powers were trying to communicate with him directly.

Jon does make a point that Smirke’s system is not flawless and it is often subjective as he notes in MAG 183 (Monument) in response to Martin saying he shouldn’t have a domain because he’s not an Avatar “It’s just a word. A word used by… fools like Smirke to try and sort everything into neat little boxes, to reduce the messy spray of human fear into a checklist: Human, avatar, monster, victim. Only now, now there’s a binary. There’s finally a clear dividing line and, well, I’m sorry you’re not happy with which side you’ve ended up on.” Jon also mentions that the domain that appears in the episode is “Dead? Yes. Very much so. This place is… an homage, shall we say. A monument. To him and those like him, who tried to… categorise the world with themselves at the centre. In so doing, constructed the architecture of its suffering.”

However in the next episode, MAG 184 (Like Ants) Jon says “The whole place would collapse and then, without The Corruption’s influence, I think The Buried would flow in to fill the gap.” to which Martin retorts “I thought you said Smirke’s Fourteen was a load of bull?” before Jon explains “I said it was limited, and draws artificial borders, but it does have its use when it comes to conceptualising these things. Regardless, I’m pretty sure we’d be left somewhat… entombed.” This fits in with what Gerard says about the Entities in MAG 111 (Family Business) “And like colours, some of these powers, they feed into or balance each other. Some really clash, and you just can’t put them together. I mean, you could see them all as just one thing, I guess, but it would be pretty much meaningless, y’know, like… like trying to describe a… shirt by talking about the concept of colour.” Using the color example again, technically all colors we see are just varying wavelengths of light but responding to someone asking “does this look red to you?” with “red, blue, purple… what’s the difference? They’re all the same” isn’t that helpful. If I were to put it another way, imagine trying to go through your life without using any units of measurement. Someone asks how far away a country is and you have to explain it to them without any standardized unit of measurement. It’s certainly possible for some but most people would find it even more obtuse, arbitrary, and unwieldy than even the equally made up standardized units of measurement like kilometers and miles.

However, these categories are not clean, they can be nebulous, and people may organize them differently. In MAG 167 (Curiosity) it is noted that a previous Archivist, Angus Stacey, tried to come up with his own categories: “Angus had been too keen to learn, too ambitious in his academic legacy. He had had grand plans to revise Smirke’s Fourteen, and, in doing so, burned through his resources, his luck, and ultimately all but one of his assistants.”

At the end of the day I think what Jon and TMA are saying is that yes the Entities are kind of incomprehensible and that very incomprehensibility means that the only way many people can process what they are and why they act in certain ways is by dividing them into categories. Jon also points out to Gerard that fears can vary depending on the culture and person and Gerard responds with “A lot of them, yeah, but others are deeper than that. And when our fears change, so do these things. But it’s not quick. Gertrude reckons they’ve basically been the same since the Industrial Revolution. She and my mum both liked to follow Smirke’s list of fourteen.” Which makes sense, most people don’t want to die or be stabbed. Gerard’s comment also makes it sound like other people might categorize the Entities differently but he also says “I always think it helps to imagine them like colours. The edges bleed together, and you can talk about little differences: “oh, that’s indigo, that’s more lilac”, but they’re both purple. I mean, I guess there are technically infinite colours, but you group them together into a few big ones. A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, why are navy blue and sky blue both called blue, when pink’s an entirely different colour from red? Y’know? I don’t know, that’s just how it works.” The Smirke’s 14 aren’t as specific as some people make them out to be and can actually be quite broad and sweeping categories.

So with that in mind, I think Smirke’s fears are a lot more helpful and generally applicable than people give them credit for. And I mean, Smirke was onto something since he does seem to be one of the people that came up with the Entities’ rituals in the first place. Upon hearing about an attempted ritual for The Dark he realized every Entity probably has a similar ritual. As he says in the statement of MAG 138 “So many have abandoned us, casting about for rituals that I helped design. In my excited discussions with Mr. Rayner, I perhaps extrapolated too much from his talk of a grand ritual of darkness. The Dark, I thought, was simply one of the powers, so it stands to reason that each of them should have its own ritual. Perhaps they already did, even before I put pen to paper.” Once again implying that ideas about The Dark and rituals for the Entities to react to possibly existed before Smirke and he was simply collecting / noting various patterns and similarities. He may simply have been the most recent or well known person to put these thoughts together but not necessarily the first. Even then, Smirke wasn’t completely right because while his theory about balance was technically right in the sense that you need a ritual to summon every Entity into the universe for one to work he seems to have tied each ritual too closely to a single Entity (which luckily caused them to fail until Jonah worked out the issue).

Smirke does ponder if he brought the Entities into existence when he says “Fourteen powers, with their opposites and their allies, each with an aim no more or less than manifestation. Apocalypse. Apotheosis. I wonder, did my work bring about these dreadful things, or – did I simply develop the means by which they can be known?” But I don’t think he’s the sole reason they exist and I’m more inclined to say that he developed “the means by which they can be known”. His categories allowed others to try to understand the Entities and what they want in a manner that was more digestible. In MAG 200 we see Jon walk through the birth of each of the Entities and interestingly The Web seems to have identified itself as being at least somewhat distinct from the other Entities even if it does identify the other Entities as parts of itself: “But there was one, the part that some would call the Spider, that had been given a gift beyond all its brethren. The minds that feared grew suspicious of their own schemes, of connections and consequences, and over time these suspicions became threads, then webs, then nerves that granted the Spider, the Mother-of-Puppets, the Hidden Machination, a mind of its own; to plot and plan and draw its own connections, its own conclusions. Wheels, within wheels within wheels… It would not, could not tell its other parts, for were they even able to understand such things, which they could not, to trust, to share in such a way ran counter to its very essence.”

We also know that the Entities used to be more harmonious but then began to clash and warp as more fears came into existence: “And as these tiny, strange minds grew and learned, they did something new. They began to take their thoughts, their instincts and their horrors, and they crystallised them. They gave them sound and form and shape to share them. And as they did the thing that was fear felt itself began to tear, to crack and fracture along a thousand unseen fault lines. It bled and warped and multiplied, and could no longer see itself as once it did. It could never be whole again.” Funnily enough, this implies that language probably has a big part to play in the manifestation of the Entities but it seems like a general thing as opposed to Smirke singlehandedly fracturing a nigh primordial being with a checklist of vague categories. The invention of language created new ways to transmit and think about fear. Languages that we know probably also exist in the Protocol universe (such as English).

So how does one reconcile The Web distinguishing itself from other parts? Well, I would use Leitner’s example of a large body. In MAG 80 (The Librarian) Leitner says “Imagine, you are an ant, and you have never before seen a human. Then one day, into your colony, a huge fingernail is thrust, scraping and digging. You flee to another entrance, only to be confronted by a staring eye gazing at you. You climb to the top, trying to find escape and, above you, can see the vast dark shadow of a boot falling upon you. Would that ant be able to construct these things into the form of a single human being? Or would it believe itself to be under attack by three different, equally terrible, but very distinct assailants?” Well, the thing about a body is you don’t have complete control over all parts of it. Your iris will automatically contract or relax when exposed to light, your body may have an allergic reaction to something that won’t harm it, your nails and hair will continue to grow so you must cut them, etc.. So The Web is still kind of an amorphous blob and a part of a greater whole but it’s a sentient blob? At least sentient in a way conventional humans can more easily understand.

This is all to say that I think Smirke’s categories are kind of less impactful on the Entities than people give credit for while also being more useful than people give them credit for. I’ve seen people wonder if the Entities blended together when they went through the gap in reality and while that’s possible, if we use Gerard’s color example, the Entities might be closer to wavelengths of light. So it might just be like shining a light through a hole. Sure the light might look like white light sometimes but at the end of the day all the colors of the rainbow are still in there somewhere. I think people get too hung up on Jon saying the categories are bogus while ignoring the times where he admits their merit or finds them convenient to use.

There’s always the chance that I could be wrong, I admit, but I don’t think people give Smirke’s categories enough credit. It’s possible that the people in this new universe use different categories or divide the Entities up differently but that wouldn’t necessarily mean that say The Desolation just no longer exists. Just like me switching from meters to feet as a unit of measurement doesn’t literally change distance. All I’ve done by doing that is just change my point of reference for what’s happening, and the distance is still the same.

Also, from a narrative perspective, while the categories CAN be obtuse and limit one’s understanding (while this might seem reductive to say) the fear categories are a major part of TMA’s identity and what help make it unique from a lot of horror. I’ve seen people who don’t like the Fears and wish the categories didn’t exist (and arguably they missed Jon’s point about arbitrary lines) but at the same time most horror I’ve come across doesn’t really have the various Entities like TMA does. I would go as far as saying that it helps set TMA apart from a lot of other stuff at the end of the day. But, like I said, who's to say that the people in the Protocol universe don’t have their own categories and dividing lines or things didn’t get shaken up at least a little.

However, I think some people are also getting too caught up on previously established manifestations of the Fears. It feels like some people have a long checklist of things like “fire, dirt, ocean, cameras, etc.” and just go through that list looking for things to checkmark. If something isn’t on that list they assume that it must be a new Fear or breaking all the known rules. But remember what Leitner says in MAG 80 when Jon asks “What about bones? Does one of them manifest with, with bones?” “You’re thinking too literally. Examining the physical categorisation, but ignoring the meaning of the thing. What are the bones? In the Distortion, your “Michael”, the structure of a skeleton, an established reality in your mind, is twisted and warped into an impossible form. But in other cases? Are they a symbol of slaughter and butchery? Are they the familiar made wrong? Or are they simply part of the messy, physicality of flesh?” It’s not so much as what the Entities manifest as but why. The Entities can manifest as seemingly just about anything as long as it generates their respective fear. The Vast often manifests as the sky and storms but The Spiral manifested as a storm to torment Michael Crew. Almost any Entity could manifest as needles or what have you in the right circumstances depending on what the focus is. It’s important to focus more on what the fears embody generally and not just tunnel vision on the physical manifestations. The Stranger is the fear of the unknown and mystery for example, not simply just the fear of clowns or circuses. In this way, reducing The Stranger to “the circus one” can be inaccurate despite the relation. The Desolation is the fear of loss and destruction, so while it can be fire it can just as easily hypothetically be a natural disaster like a tornado, earthquake, or even a swarm of locusts destroying your crops. It could even be a bank draining all your assets.

That being said, the reason why I think Smirke’s 14 is still at least somewhat applicable is because none of the cases we have gotten have really been anything that Entities haven’t done or couldn’t do before. This is already long enough so I’m sorry that I can’t go through each of these in extreme detail but RedCanary seems Eye related, Arthur sounds like the Anglerfish, the case in episode 2 is one of the most Flesh statements I’ve ever heard, the case in episode 3 reeks of The Corruption, the case in episode 4 is music that can make people fight each other (probably The Slaughter), the case in “Personal Screening” seems like The Eye again, Needles is a bit unclear to me but considering someone tried to stab them The Slaughter wouldn’t be unlikely (but Enttiies like The Flesh are possible), the case in “Give and Take” sounds like a manifestation of The Stranger, episode 8’s case resembles The Lonely, Episode 9’s case sounds like either The Web or The Desolation, Mr. Bonzo sounds pretty in line for what we’ve seen in regards to The Stranger, whatever “deep” is calling out to Gordon in episode 11 sounds the most like The Buried (The Buried is even referred to as the “Forever Deep Below” in TMA which would relate it to “The Deep” Gordon is talking about. There’s an argument for The Vast too but considering all the graves and the desire to bury things in them I’m more inclined to assume Buried), and episode 12 is just Mr. Bonzo showing up. If you want my full thoughts or have any specific questions you can check out the respective articles here (TMP Quick Thoughts Archive).

There’s one Entity I haven’t mentioned though. That’s The Extinction. The Extinction is sort of confirmed to exist but it’s a bit unclear. In MAG 175 (Epoch) Jon says “Of course it was real – A-At least in the sense that – it was a thing people feared. Whether it was strong enough in its own right to be considered at a level with Smirke’s Fourteen, or – whether it was on its way to getting there, I – maybe. This sort of thing is always muddy.” Whether or not The Change allowed the Extinction to gain enough fear to fully emerge is still unclear. There’s an argument that The Extinction was possibly sent back to square one since it seemed like Jonah didn’t need to involve it in his ritual so it’s possible it didn’t emerge in time. But, like I said previously, a lot of the fears that started giving birth to The Extinction in the first place within the world of TMA probably still exist in Protocol.

Then you have to consider the possibility that other characters or monsters may have been dragged with the Entities to the Protocol universe. If something like the Anglerfish or any number of other beings tied to the Entities got sucked into the Protocol universe it would not be impossible for them to introduce the already existing categories to new people. Likewise, they might still have many similar alliances and biases, a being that identified itself as being a part of The Stranger might still tend to dislike The Eye.

As mundane and unsatisfying as my answer might seem, my reasoning basically boils down to “I have yet to see any conclusive evidence that would prove to me this isn’t Smirke’s 14 and The Extinction” and “All of the stuff we are seeing is stuff Smirke’s 14 did or could do to begin with.”

#tmagp #the magnus protocol #the magnus archives #tma #smirkes 14

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nasa-is-shaking · 9 months ago

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Happy Thursday everyone, I know there's no ep this week so I'm gonna take the opportunity to share my theory with the class.

My friend and I have been calling it the "fear smoothie" theory, and I believe that our encounters with fears consist of two or more entities working as one to create even more terrifying and horrific instances.

So during TMA we kinda caught on to the fact that each of the fears has a handful of signature tropes associated with them! (think manikins or doors, that kind of thing. Just stuff that gets the audience to catch onto who might be behind a statement) Well as I've been listening to TMAGP I've been trying to find those same tropes and I noticed something interesting. (and this is gonna be a bit long but bear with me)

In each of the eps so far I have picked up tropes from two or more of the fears working in tandem to create even more horrific situations!

How did this happen? Good question I have three equally plausible situations on why the entities are doing this.

Number 1: During the aftermath of the eyepocalypse the fears were smushed even closer together than they had been previously been, when they were forced through the hole in the universe. Therefore they are now so intrinsically close that they physically cannot work separately.

Number 2: This is web bullshit, most of the fears aren't really too conscious besides "feed" so it makes sense if the web is trying to relive what it was like in the eyepocalypse.

Number 3: The fears remember how wonderful it was when the world went wrong. They are working together because they liked it. it made them realize that their teamwork was the best way to get the most fear and by working together they are hoping to create another "Archivist" (someone touched by all of the fears) to put them back to their full power. What's the best way to do that? Make 100 avatars touched by at least 2 fears each and make them race!

Here is my current list of eps and what I think the smoothies are for each:

EP 1 First Shift ~ Eye + Web

EP 2 Making Adjustments ~ Flesh + Desolation

EP 3 Putting Down Roots ~ Corruption + Spiral

EP 4 Taking Notes ~ Slaughter + Flesh

EP 5 Personal Screening ~ Web + Stranger

EP 6 Introductions ~ Flesh + Spiral

EP 7 Give and Take ~ Stranger + Buried

EP8 Running on Empty ~ Spiral + Lonely (+ some elements of the Vast and the Flesh but not enough to officially make the board)

EP 9 Rolling With It ~ Hunt + End

EP 10 Saturday Night ~ Hunt + Stranger

Anywho! Lemme know if you have any ideas for future eps as well as if you disagree with one of my points and think a different fear would fit better!!

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angels-and-wizards · 4 months ago

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Ok, so clearly, the fears (mostly) aren't fitting neatly into the original 15

So I have 2 kinda theories on this so far

1. The fears are kinda... blended a little. Like I think Archivist in TMAGP 26 is a combo of The End AND The Eye personally, and that would be so cool. Idk if it would be like... equally blended or still primarily one with aspects of the others, but idk it's fun to think about!

2. This universe already *has* it's own fears. The jump from the TMA timeline to this one bringing Smirke's 15 with them caused there to now be 2 pantheons of fears. And they're at war. (This is supported by The Hunt's avatar imo)

Personally I want 2 to be correct cos it would lead to some bloodbaths xD

#no i have no theories on the rest of it at the moment #tma spoilers #tmagp spoilers #tma #tmagp

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ravenwraithe · 11 months ago

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hoooooooooo boy, tmagp 4 go-

this time its becoming apparent that there are some themes and clues that tmagp wants us to notice, the sections stand out, begging for attention

like the recurring theme of bones, and blood, and gore in general (it might be too soon to tell exactly what themes are leading to, but they are definitely there)

the violin could fit right in grifter's bone with it's affinity to music and violence

(the music feels aligned to circus over spiral or web

tho there are elements of the web what with the mind control, but i fear all fears possess a certain degree of control, as such

the violence feels more of the slaughter variety rather than the hunt, though you could make a valid argument for flesh as the words 'sacrifice', 'payment' and 'creature with needs and purposes of its own' do stick in mind

once again i do not think that tmagp follows the same format as the smirke's fourteen (or 15) , i merely use them as parallels to better explain what aspects of the episode sticks out to me (and for me refer back later on))

as other listeners have noted, another theme that tmagp in general follows, is 'obsession', rather than tma's 'fear'

i feel this is also paralleling (intentionally or not) the audience's own listening habits and motives

we first consumed the magnus archives for its content of horror

and yet we are back for the magnus protocol like we never left, and perhaps

we never did

the statement's first person pov depicts a truly horrific picture of the slaughter, of the violence that the violin demands

and his descriptions of the mania on the audience's faces too

it's eerily reminiscent of the france's dancing plague

enough about the statement, lets talk about my boy sam and his co-workers, and their workplace in general

there's a protocol surrounding the magnus institute? interesting interesting, very similar to the police division daisy and basira were part of, the unofficial supernatural division

is this like the civil servant version of such?

another thing that is interesting; how is freddy getting these statements incidents? like sam asked, how exactly does a letter from the 18th century end up in the system?

i don't think gwen's answer is satisfactory (and we weren't meant to either), sure someone might be updating the archives website for reasons unknown but rarely in magpod is something a dead end, every little thing is a clue, a small part of the larger picture

so how exactly does a letter from the 18th century is in freddy's system?

perhaps an 'avatar' or the equivalent (such people are suggested to exist in tmagp universe, like the tattooist from daria's statement)

or maybe the fears themselves manifest in phenomena that upload relevant content to freddy

colin my guy, still being iconic and not trusting tech, hats off to you, the only real character in the whole show

never trust any piece of technology older than paper

the video of lena that gwen got in the end? weird? yeah, fuck yes, but how did she even get it? is there any sort of personal communication available on the ancient system? why gwen?

i have so many questions and so many more thoughts, but this is already so long, im gonna write a separate post about tmagp so far, in general

#the magnus protocol #the magnus institute #tma #tmagp #magpod #the slaughter #the flesh #the circus #tmagp 4 #samama khalid #gwen bouchard #colin becher #freddy #fr3 d1 #themes #tmagp analysis #tmagp 4 taking notes #tw gore mention #lena kelley

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teepussilakana · 8 months ago

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wild tmagp theories below, read at own risk

ok so i think that the fears/entities as we know them no longer exist

we already know that the magnus institute is Very different from tma

i believe they had a different approach to it, some sort of compromise where they worked together to create avatars either for their own gain or to research them in order to stop them. and then someone found out or turned on them (Gertrude/Gerry?) and the fire of 1999 happened.

after that there was a shift, the avatars were freed or had no one to control them and wreaked havoc. The OIAR was either already a thing or was created at that point in order to do damage control and keep track of the avatars and externals.

all of this is to say:

we shouldnt try to push them into the bixes we already know from tma

they arent the right shape, they have different themes and avatars have not shown the same powers. We know very little at this point because let us not forget THIS IS SEASON ONE

we are still in Monster Of The Week territory!! we have a few little clues but remember how long it took us to get any clear info in tma? it was mostly small stories at first before there was any sort of clarity

the only ones we know for certain about is The Deep and maybe The Hunt?

my theory? instead of fears the entities are looking for Ambition. they squeeze it our of their victims. Makes sense with the dice guy, the violin guy, the artist and the bitcoin bro.

#tmagp #tmagp spoilers #the magnus protocol #the magnus protocol spoilers

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beelzeblob · 8 months ago

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Ok, I have a theory for the magnus protocol.

So while it seems pretty clear by now that, yes, the entities from tma are also the same ones in tmagp, I DO NOT BELIEVE FOR ONE SECOND JONNY AND ALEX ARE GONNA KEEP IT AT THAT! Let me explain:

All the major entities are back, which seems pretty clear from cases like TMAGP 3 (the corruption), TMAGP 5 (clearly the eye) and TMAGP 15 (the hunt). There are some cases though that I don't think really fit any of the entities we already know. So I believe there are going to be new entities, but rather than being big, lovecraftian, universal fears like the entities, they're going to be more like phobias, in that some people have them and other people just don't. I mean just look at needles. They have this whole insecurity about actually being scary and act like they are only just getting used to being a fear entity. So that would be trypanophobia aka fear of needles. Then there's the snakes in the walls ep, which some people are saying is the corruption, but I think it would be more interesting if it was its own thing, so there we have ophidiophobiaor fear of snakes. I can't really immediately think of any other examples, except maybe that ep 8 running on empty might make a case for horror vacui aka keno-phobia or fear of empty spaces and emptiness. So yeah, that's my theory.

I do have one last thing to back this up, although I might be reading too much into this. If you go the official soundtrack for the magnus protocol by Sam Jones, there's a track there I'm pretty certain has played in all of the aforementioned cases. It's title? PHOBIAS S1

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #the magnus archives #tma podcast #theory #sam jones #phobia #hello jon apologies for the deception

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anthroposeen · 7 months ago

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tma/tmagp spoilers below!!

𓁺𓁺𓁺

im very hesitant to make any theories about the type of powers at work in the tmagp universe, i dont think theyre the exact same set we had in tma, but i do think the old fears exist in some capacity in this dimension, but likely as different factions, all swirled together, one huge conglomerate, or a secret fourth thing (mixing with whatever entities originally existed in this universe). but after the recent few tmagp episodes im starting to think the old fears (and their divisions) are still playing a role in how the powers are manifesting.

ink5oul is largely an eye-coded avatar to me. they seem to be following a similar path to tma avatars (ink5oul has their own agenda and is researching old tattoo artists and likely has a connection to alchemy in some respect). as an influencer, they feed from the fear of people watching their content and the person whos being tattooed. their victims that we know about have also been somewhat eye-adjacent. in episode 2, they feed off of a woman who suffers from extreme body dysmorphia and is hyper-aware of how others perceive her. she refuses to turn on her camera for therapy, constantly compares her own appearance to others, and insists her therapist perceive her as sane. madam e is similar in that the perceptions of others physically harms her. she says that the hate comments and online drama were cutting her, saying she could feel it when people viewed her content. her body deteriorated because she was famous, because she made a call out video, because she just wanted to be known. these are both incredibly eye-aligned incidents, though they do have aspects of other powers.

other incidents have struck me as overwhelmingly similar to fears we knew from tma, episodes 15 and 14 were heavy handed with their tma fear alignments. lady mowbray is the head of a hunting party who instructed a man to chase after his coworkers and kill them to prove himself as worthy prey, exploring a twist on themes of pack hunting we saw in tma. in episode 14 we get a man whos been puppeted by snakes, operating a disgusting shop infested with pests and littered with rotting food- obviously adjacent to the corruption. just like with ink5oul's victims, these cases also had elements that related to other fears, but ultimately i think they highlight a specific type of fear within each incident. even tma statements had cases that overlapped- confession/desecrated host, monster pig, lost johns cave, murder club. i do think that the tma fears still exist in the tmagp universe, and im actually coming to believe theyre operating similar to in their "original" (who knows) universe, but with some extra variables to scrabble things around.

im still super vague on what i think is affecting the fears, and i doubt ill subscribe to a true concrete theory before we get a reveal, but i do have some loose connections across the tmagp episodes so far. alchemy has been an obvious aspect of whatever is making tmagp's fears a different flavor to tma's fears. the logo for the series is of the trinity expressing the mind, body, and soul- together creating the philosopher's stone, a key to immortality. im being careful to not draw many connections to tma since i believe this to be largely an independent storyline, but this draws some obvious similarities to jonah's pursuits of immortality, ruling the world, and combining the fears to create one all-powerful entity. or, as lena said, creating balance. im unsure of how this is playing out so far- i think whatever big bad (if there is one) that wants to disrupt or bring about this balance is either not known to us yet or has yet to fulfill their arc into a big bad (this could be a corruption arc for someone like sam or gwen, or a reveal of big bads lurking in the background like jmj). but whatever the details of that are, im confident that achieving a balance and connection of the alchemic trinity is a key aspect of how the fears are being expressed in this universe. i mean, there were never really 14 fears, but they still manifested that way because they were partially constructed by human minds. if this universe comprehends them through the lens of alchemy, seeing them as manifestations of the mind, the body, and the soul, then they'll likely conform to that in some way.

another thread i think might be relevant is the amount of gore and personal harm in just about every incident so far. in almost every case we've seen theres been some instance of pain, loss, and intentional harm. this is especially connected to getting a response or reward (being fed) from the encounter. needles needs to cause fear, and he accomplishes that through physically harming someone. the murder violin and the fedora guy dice are both fed by the suffering of others. ink5oul made one girl tear into her own face, and made another self inflict her own heart problems. lady mowbray is a devout cannibal. i dont feel the need to get into mr bonzos messy history. for every avatar/external/feeder of these powers, they inflict a physical mark or pain upon the people theyre feeding from. this draws a much more physical horror than the more psychological fears we dealt with in tma. im not entirely sure what this means in terms of its connections with alchemy and the fears, im not sure if its a real dot to connect or not, but its some food for thought!

#tmagp #the magnus protocol #tma #the magnus archives #tmagp theory #tmagp thoughts

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autismprotocol · 10 months ago

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Hey, sorry if this is long, but I really like what you guys are doing and have nowhere else to put my theories, so...

Firstly, sorry to be that person, but I actually think you mislabeled the entities for two episodes. Needles reads like an avatar of the slaughter to me. It's like Lietner said, the physical description is less important then the emotional or metaphorical. Needles' thing isn't "look at this scary trick I can do with my flesh body." It's "I am going to cause you intense pain at random by stabbing you with my needles. Please be scared of me :)"

I was also surprised you didn't mark Putting Down Roots as a filth statement. Illness, rotting alive, swarming flies, a deeply unhealthy romantic love. All reads as corruption to me.

Now let's get to my fun crack theory. Episode 7 almost reads to me like the point the powers breached into the new world. Think about it, hilltop road was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of artifacts and "people" (avatars) that map to many different powers (I counted stranger, slaughter, dark, filth, and possibly hunt among the artifacts present). The timeliness doesn't quite match up (we have a statement from the 1800s), but maybe the powers are capable of having retroactively always existed. Or maybe the fan theory that the entities are now the "hungers" that feed on obsession was true until the fears intruded into the world.

Omg thank you so much for the ask I absolutely love over analyzing this goofy lil podcast and i really wanted to have this board be a collaborative and community thing for all of us TMAG/TMAGP fans out there!

starting with the board corrections you pointed out you are absolutely right after reading this I ended up rereading the wiki entries about the Entities because its been a hot second since I've read up on those goobers and I've kinda forgotten how many little nuances that each one has. I had no idea how we missed the clear corruption tie-ins that were occurring in Samuel Webbers journal (Putting Down Roots) especially when you brought up his toxic relationship to his partner.

As with Needles before doing my reread about the fears I just assumed flesh because body modified with needles. but looking into it, sudden piercing needles more cleanly falls into slaughter.

I actually have this ongoing theory originated by my roommate and other blog contributor that the fears might have been scrambled when crossing dimensions. maybe because of this many minor powers have begun to branch out from the main 15 and with that hybrid avatars and entities have been created. With needles I think maybe they fall under the umbrella of slaughter and spiral because of the way they mentally toy with their victims. also could explain why needles has to convince the man on the phone that they're scary because this hybrid power may be new and people have not gotten fearful of it yet.

I'll be making those changes for next weeks board so thank you for pointing them out :D

on to your theory that would make sense especially since this episode (EP 7) is kind of serving as the catalyst for the story to shift into high gear. I think that if the Hilltop charity shop was the entrance point for all of the fears to enter the world it would make complete sense. Hilltop is the one place in the Magnus canon that people have reported traveling to different dimensions. also the date of the incident falls right about the time that Archives started early 2016 so the fears may have also gone back in time to when Jon became the Archivist in TMAs universe (since Jons death is the catalyst that forced them to jump dimensions.) I'm really liking where your theory is heading

also real quick if anyone has more info about the theory that Protocols world lived off of hunger and desire pre the fears appearing I'd love to hear more about that because I've never heard of the until now.

Again thank you so much for the ask I'm so happy you're liking what we're doing here and I hope you continue to share your thoughts and theories with this blog.

-Echo

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chronicallyblyrie · 7 months ago

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TMAGP 16 live thoughts!!

This episode started with a hello Jon dedication I'm already feeling like this won't be a fun time

-oh my god poor Alice the trauma is already starting

-celia does believe you alice trust she's seen some shit

-no the Horrors need to pay their dues with you alice

-alice dyer everybody, working right after watching a woman die

-yeah Sam stop talking

-CHESTERRRRR

-social media??

-#GOTHGIRL MY GOD

-WOAH INKSOUL BACK??

-okay inksoul is important

-oh my god it's a live stream archive

-oh my fucking god they're using internet slang

-WHO TOLD THEM THEY HAD ACCESS TO USE NO CAP IN A SCRIPT?

-holy shit this is awful

-PLEASE INKSOUL KILL THIS WOMAN SO I DONT HAVE TO HEAR HER SAY ANOTHER WORD

-please fucking KILL me

-OH MY GOD THE SOUND EFFECTS ARE KILLING ME

-woah world's quickest tattoo

-what in the fuck tattoo did they give you??

- dude inksoul got so tired of her shit so quick I'm with them on this

-GIRL YOU ARE NOT IN A SITUATIONSHIP THEY HATES YOUR ASS

-HOLY SHIT PLEASE THE SOUND EFFECTS ARE GONNA KILL ME

-when is Madam's soundboard gonna drop I need it

-i never thought I would hear the word "sus" in a rusty quill podcast but okay

-so this is the point we've reached in humanity

-STOP SAYING SUS

-I AM IN CLASS LISTENING TO THIS TRYING NOT TO BURST OUT LAUGHING PLEEEEEASE

-oh my god inksoul is digging up bodies?? WAIT no this related to the other case where uh person with tattoos was looking for the body they dug up, is this the same cemetary?? So it was actually inksoul trying to find that body??

-NOT THE BRUH SOUND EFFECT

-"so I bail" I can imagine her scurrying away like a cartoon character

-yeah girl only real goths dig up corpses, get with the times girly

-oh naurrrr

-OKAY SO THEY ARE ROBBING GRAVES

-vicious pick me trash fr girl

-OH MY GOD ITS A YOUTUBER APOLOGY BAHAHA

-"Im such a good person" OH MY GOD KILL ME

-"ig we're ops??" Who in the fuck wrote this episode

-I need to stop typing this post is going to be so long because I can't bare listening to the internet slang

-oh so her heart IS breaking

-yeah you're actually not okay

-UMMMM "help" ????

-THIS HAPPENED RECENTLY IN MARCH??

-oh thank god the cats are okay

-oh my god she's actually letting hate comments kill her wtf

-OH OH OH EW EW EW THAT NOISE

-DID HER HEART RIP OUT??

-please alice go get coffee get me some too

-gwen wtf

-oh so Lena is pissed

-I DONT LIKE THIS

-lmao Lena is actually being sensible here

-STOP BRINGING ELDRITCH HORRORS INTO THE OFFICE??? LENA IS KINDA RIGHT HERE YOU SAW WHAT BONZO WAS WHY DID YOU THINK THIS EXTERNAL WAS ANY BETTER

-yeah you might just die holy shit gwen

-Gwen you are gonna get fired

-okay who wrote this episode credits tell me

-ALEXANDER J NEWALL YOU FUCKING BASTARD

Okay ignoring everything else I just had to torture myself with by listening to, genuinely interesting episode. We have confirmation now that inksoul is hunting down corpses for some reason. Inksoul is definitely important and will be showing up again soon I fear.

#tmagp #the magnus protocol #tmagp spoilers

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magpod-confessions · 8 months ago

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(ignore this ask if i’ve sent this already, i had a brief panic about whether i hallucinated sending this and thought i’d just ask again to be safe lol)

“the web is underrated” “the buried is underrated” “the dark is the most underrated”

yes. you are right, i agree. but they are all underrated. none of the fears get the attention they deserve.

the dark and the end are almost completely forgotten about due to their perceived simplicity. the buried, the flesh, the hunt, etc are so unexplored, no one bothers to look any deeper into them. the desolation is not just fire, but no one ever tries to represent it some other way. don’t get me started on the whole spiral-distortion thing (perhaps i will make this a future confession bc oh boy do i have a lot to say). with all of them people seem to be scared of diverging from the explicit canon representations.

no one seems to care about the fears anymore. THE fears. you know, the one thing that makes tma so special? i’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve seen someone say “after listening to tma i can never look at things the same. i always categorise them by the entities” yet people don’t really seem to care all that much

that’s all they are treated as, categories. perhaps this is an odd way to describe horrific manifestations of our deepest fears, but i think they are beautiful concepts. i could spend hours thinking about each one and the ways they bleed into one another, i probably have.

yeah, at this point smirke’s 14 are old news, but there are always new angles to explore. we saw that in season 5 of tma, and we are seeing it now in tmagp (though the fears are of course different). why did we stop talking about that? (i wasn’t actually on tumblr when tma was happening so idk. maybe no one ever cared)

talk about the fears, put your ideas for unconventional statements or avatar or whatever out there, there’s an audience (me at least). say stuff about how different fears crossover, or some new aspect of one. “but surely people would have already said this at some point” respectfully, i don’t give a shit. if i come across mutliple posts analysing a similar aspect of the vast, i’m going to be fucking overjoyed. because much of the fears is up to intepretation, they have slightly different meanings to different people, so every single person’s interpretation adds value and adds something unique.

we should keep discussing the fears. i don’t know why we ever stopped.

(sorry this is so long and rambling, i hope you can see the points i’m trying to make.)

🗣️ i’d love to hear your thoughts on this

Ask is posted here dw you didnt hallucinate it

#magpod #tma #the magnus archives #magpod confession #🗣#posting this now

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theanxiousghostartist · 3 months ago

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TMAGP 30 Spoilers

(Reactions and Theories for S2)

Man, this one was a wild ride...

Sam and Celia:

Sam, pick up the damn phone!!

Alice doesn't understand, Celia? What doesn't Alice understand? That you are from another world? That you need Sam to manipulate so you can figure out what happened? Sam's trauma with the Institute and his need to figure out what happened to him?

Celia is definitely pushing Sam towards Hilltop Road. There has to be something important there...

Celia, what's your plan? What are you going to use Sam for?

How does Celia know that they are safe on the train? I assume she is just saying it to Sam to calm him down but still. It's true that [Error] was on the train, but they never attacked them. Maybe they aren't after Sam and Celia but something on Hilltop Road? The rift perhaps?

Alice and Colin:

I get why Alice chose to go after Sam and Celia, after all, she knew that they were in immediate danger. Plus, to everyone else, Colin seems to be "overreacting." He kept mixing up "I" with "Freddy," I wonder if he is Becoming? Maybe he is Becoming a part of Freddy? Or maybe a vessel for Freddy, like how Jonah used Elias to body-hop?

The ticket officer isn't paid enough for this. I love the transcript lol

Lena and Gwen:

Lena was FIRED???? Lena, what did you have to do for the OIAR? Who did you have to kill? What did you have to cover up?

Lena noooo, come back please!!

Theory for S2: Lena is going to appear as a mentor character and explain things, like Gerry did for Jon. I think she is going to distance herself from the OIAR, and eventually, send them snippets of information to help them figure out what is going on. She is probably going to send things to Alice, since Alice has been there the longest and didn't actively try to steal her job. I also think she might go in a vigilante - style to destroy the Externals, since she isn't restrained by the OIAR anymore.

Sam and Celia:

Ok, so Sam did eventually read some of Alice's messages.

17, I wonder if that number is a reference to something. I might have to more digging on this one.

"We want your teeth!" Dentist -> Stranger, probably. Maybe the Flesh or Web?

Knocking from the Gray's Appliances? Maybe the Buried or Spiral. I'm leaning more towards the Buried since the coffin had knocking while the Distortion's Doors were more settle and luring.

Someone works here???

Celia got that reflex during the apocalypse.

His bit seems like he's had to tell a good amount of people to stay away. I wonder how many people he's saved.

It's not supposed to be reassuring Sam )):

Alice: Yeah! Go save Celia and Sam!! :D I get that the Taxi Driver didn't want to get involved with anything. Glad that they stayed behind.

Statement:

[Error]!!!! The Custodian was able to resist the Compulsion more than Sam. I wonder if it's because they have been in a close proximity to the Fears.

So, there was a lot of dried blood on Hilltop Road, makes sense, especially if they were hunting for people to mark.

The owner had a wide smile, and didn't like questions being asked, so probably an Avatar?

1997- A drunk guy went into buy a lighter and was marked by the Desolation by a "haggard yet eager old woman," so probably not Agnes.

The store Patience had mannequins that were alive. Definitely the Stranger.

And then the Owner basically threatened him to not look into things anymore. Interesting.

The Owner died in his office, with all his blood vessels strung around. Maybe the Web?

At the end of his statement, the Custodian begins to turn into concrete, and Transform, saying that Hilltop and he are one. Maybe [Error] is triggering a Becoming-like Transformation and he is becoming a vessel for Hilltop Road. The transcript says, "he is gone." not that he died, so maybe his identity is gone? Maybe this is what happened to [Error]?

Sam and Celia:

Celia's tone here is very scary tbh.

Stairs, to a basement... Isn't this how Sam and Alice released [Error]? Even when she's joking with Sam, her tone is just not right?

It's the rift!!

I don't blame Sam for snapping. He's under a lot of stress, with a headache, and this is something really big to keep from him. CELIA FINALLY SAID THAT SHE'S FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE!!

So, the worlds are out of balance and the rift is trying to force Celia back while she sleeps, and she wanted to sacrifice Sam to the rift, so she could stay with Jack, but for some reason, she couldn't bring herself to do it before [Error] came in. Is it because she likes Sam, she would feel bad sacrificing him? Why couldn't she find someone else? Like pretend to go on a date with a random person and take them here and push them in. Why did it have to be Sam?

Oh, maybe it's because Sam was involved with the Institute? But she was originally going to go to Hilltop Road with Sam AND Alice; Alice would stop Celia from hurting Sam, and Celia knows this, so maybe she was going to sacrifice both of them? But then the world would still be off-balance.

Maybe because Sam gave his statement to [Error] it connected him with the Institute more so that it would work?

[Error]!! And Celia's giving a statement about the Stranger! "AT LAST. IT IS MINE." Do they mean Celia's statement from another world or the rift? What do they want to do?

Sam is going to fight the [Error]. Go Sam!

Alice: GO ALICE!!!

Oh, so maybe I'm right about the Custodian, since they are still talking.

Gwen: I have a feeling Lena keeps alcohol in her office to cope...

Gwen, did you not realize that you got the job??

Gwen, you need to think this stuff through. You don't even know what your new job is. 😭 She has your full support to do WHAT Trevor??? Theory: I think that Trevor is alluding to killing Lena here and telling Gwen that he'll help her if needed. But because Gwen doesn't know wtf she's doing, Lena is going to live and go into hiding, which will come back to bite Gwen later.

Alice and Celia:

Sam and [Error] feel into the rift??? So, are they going to show up at Hilltop Road in TMA!Verse?

But the universes will be off-balance again, won't they? So maybe someone from TMA!Verse will be pulled through to maintain balance?

If someone does come, I think it will either be Melonie King or Annabelle Cane.

Melonie -> She is one of the only TMA!Verse characters that don't have a counterpart that we have met in TMAPG!Verse, so this would be a way to bring her in.

Annabelle Cane -> Annabelle was at Hilltop Road, and we have not heard anything about/from her, so I like to think, especially since Hilltop Road is a place of huge Web activity, like the Institute is for the Eye.

Overall thoughts: Great episode! 10/10! Did not expect half the things that happened! The only thing that could have made it better was another cameo lol.

Old Predictions:

I was basically completely wrong. The only thing I might be right about is that 'someone will Become', but that is not confirmed yet.

Predictions for Season 2:

Colin is going to Become a vessel for Fr3D1 and become something like [Error].

Lena is going into hiding and is going to observe the OIAR from afar for a while. She might try to send some information to Alice.

Teddy is starting to Become and get involved with the Externals, he will probably die.

Gwen is going to struggle with her new job and start relying on Fr3d1 for help. She will be manipulated by Augustus. She might become a vessel for him.

Alice and Celia are going to go back to one of their places after having an argument about what happened to Sam. Celia will explain everything to Alice and the two will continue working together at the OIAR. They will also start investigating the Insitute deeply and try to get more information out of Helen and Gertrude. Alice is going to resent Celia, but she will still work with her for Sam's sake.

Sam and [Error] are going to arrive at Hilltop Road in TMA!Verse, and [Error] is going to grow significantly weaker because of their distance from the Fears. They might start giving their own statement and we will get clues to their past identity, but we will not have a definite conformation of their past. Sam is going to find the ruins of the Institute and find someone, probably Barisa, Melonie, or Georgie, and rope them into helping him get back to TMAGP!Verse.

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