#daisy/elias because i want daisy to give into the hunt fully. and i want elias to be scared and hunted and the prey.

[thermodynamic-comedian]

basically the way i come up with new tma ships is. wouldn't it be interesting if these characters had something. how would they change each other. which is why so many of them include jonah magnus. he is the most fun to put into situations

[just-an-enby-lemon]

The people are different versions but still exist in TMAGP and that absolutly is the one thing moving a very specific TMA AU.

Basically besides joining the Institute, Tim gets very into online supernatural foruns trying to find people with similar experiences. So one day he gets a mysterious mensage from someone about the "thing wearing my brother's skin". The e-mail is about a young lady that says something very similar happened to her and her uncle and she has been investigating similar stories since. They chat more and with Sasha advice Tim decides fuck it and meets the woman, both pretend it's a date.

Everything is well until Tim mentions working dor the Magnus Institute, she, who presented herself only by Gwen, pales and goes "oh you're one of them" and leaves after saying "I'm not playing his games. I'm not feeding him." Tim is very confused, he thinks maybe the Institue tried to investigate her case and failed. They are not in the archive yet so he asks Jon and Sasha with help without giving any detail, basically hoping Sasha conection with Gertrude means she has acess to the archives and Jon being way to into spending long nights working will help them sort whatever Sasha finds.

Except Sasha finds nothing. Until a random day were she comes up with a big grim and goes "you guys won't ever be abble to guess what I found out?" and open in a very funky web page advertising Gwendolyn Bouchard, paranormal lawyer. Sasha is laughting, Jon is ranting about what a paranormal lawyer would even be but Tim is like "oh shit, that's her".

He doesn't connect the dots at first. Or doesn't want to. But he keeps thinking about "I'm not feeding him" and he is like "random question what do you guys know about Elias" and Sasha goes research into it.

At this point he and Jon aren't close friends but they are friends and if their boss is one of the things that ate his brother he needs to figure out something. With the assumption Elias is a clown, Tim does actually notice how creepy Elias is with Jon and is fully "Jon won't belive me but Elias is totally into eating his insides or whatever". So he tells the truth to Sasha and tricks Jon into visiting Gwen's lawyer thing for answers.

I still did not figure out most of the other things, except that Alice and Gwen are together in this verse and Alice made the web design for Gwen's page. I also know I want alt Sam and I want just our Celia who keeps almost meeting them but never doing. Or even a Celia that came back and has a dificult time being at her world and interacting with different versions of people that mattered so much to her.

I don't know still what to do with Sam, because I think Martin was very clearly Jonah backup archivist and the thing is Elias will try to convince Jon Gwen is the crazy/evil one and either he'll suceed making Jon betray his friends and be the archivist but with different assistants (except Martin) or he won't and Martin will start as the archivist. And while backup archivist/archival assistant Sam makes sense I'm unsure I want that for him. I'm thinking maybe this version of Sam after failing to get into Oxford went into a "rebelious" phase instead of doubling down in trying to met his parents high expectations and ended up joining Melanie ghost hunting channel. But not sure.

Like if I actually go the route of Celia is back trying to find help for both her worlds a Sam that's not quite the Sam she knows/cares about would be interesting. Like he is deep down the same but also he isn't in some obvious ways and she might just miss her Sam more. But if this is an AU not as connected with Protocol than maybe a Sam that's pretty much our Sam but if he was in Archives would make sense. Idk.

And ofc Basira and Daisy that I'm always partial to but I have no clue how to add, except maybe with them starting as Gwen and Alice rivals because Gwen attorney bussiness interferes with their sectioned police work. Also Gwen being an attorney is a 100% because I fully think she was her normal manipulative rise to the top and keep the Bouchard's name girl and went into law school for it except she mets Alice and by the same period Jonah happens and she was close to Elias (even if in parts was because she looked better in the family eyes when they were together by comparison) and it changed everything.

I don't know a lot about Alice either but she was Lena's college roomate and atended classes with Colin (yes he is here as well, unsure what to do with him tho). She had a paranormal encounter that left a scar similar but in oposition to Georgie's where she has a "spider sense" sort of think and can feel when the fears are involved, she knows if a library or book fair has a Leitner and where for example. It happened when she was young and possibly involved meeting my boy Gerry but she tried to avoid the supernatural ever since. She was very reluctant over helping Gwen except she acidentaly overheard her talking to "Elias" and Jonah messed with her head. More importantly she knows that ignoring sometimes is worse because some secret involving her baby brother who may or may not have joined Grifters Bone and becamed a Slaughter Avatar.

The supernatural lawyer was a joke from Alice but Gwen took it seriusly and Alice was loke "really?" and guess this moron will need help to not die/became an avatar and became her paralegal (tho it had nothing to do with her actual college diploma).

[recorded-anew]

So, before you've mentioned swapping Trevor and Julia with Daisy and Basira and I think it's an amazing idea.

Daisy and Basira get their hands on Michael the Skin Book out of police evidence and bargain with him for information. Michael is the one to request that they kidnap Sasha because he wants the chance to meet the new Archivist and also a chance to escape the book.

Daisy and Basira are both still cops but they're both Hunter's, although Basira has a bit more of a handle on it. Or maybe they become ex-cops and go off on their own to hunt down Avatars by themselves once they find Michael, which Michael accepts to on the condition that 1. Once he's taught them everything they release him and 2. They also burn books along the way. They do accept the second condition but they never get to the first condition, always claiming he's got more information than he does.

For Julia and Trevor, I think for most of the seasons, Julia is mostly unaligned (leaning towards Hunt but she's holding on with her last strands of common sense) while Trevor is a full Hunt Avatar. Once Trevor saved her, she helps him find and research people he suspects are Avatars. They travel around a bit and occasionally look up stuff in the Archives, leading to specifically Julia getting wrapped up in helping Sasha and Elias as things ramp up. Julia ends up signing into the Archives as an assistant while Trevor hunts down Avatars for them.

Then, the Unknowing Happens. And instead of Trevor going to the Unknowing, Julia goes with the reasoning being that one of the many jobs she worked at while moving around required her to learn how to use explosives. And since there's a swap between the Coffin and the Distortion, she ends up in the Spirals hallways.

While she's in there, she clings onto one thing like a life line: her bare bones connection to the Hunt. She uses every bit of energy to focus on Hunting down the exit. She may also have a trinket of some kind from Trevor that's Hunt aligned without anyone realizing. It's not a very powerful connection, but it's just enough to keep the Spiral from fully sinking in.

Once she gets rescued, instead of a physical recovery, it's a mental one. She has to both get used to reality again while also digging in her heels against falling into the Hunt, which is now much much harder after spending months clinging onto just that.

She eventually gives in while the Archives are being attacked like the end of season 4, while making Trevor promise to Hunt her down after all of this, because she doesn't want to fall to the Hunt, she wants to be a normal person, she doesn't want to be the murderer that all the tabloids claimed she'd become after her father's murder spree. Trevor, painfully, agrees.

From there, there's like at least 3 different ways that I can see all their dynamics playing out in season 5, but what do you think?

This is AMAZING. I've been struggling with figuring out WHAT to do with Trevor and Julia, but I think you've nailed it. I love this so much.

[fakecrfan]

thoughts on dark!basira? I know she is canonically aligned to the hunt/the eye, but ultimately its pieces of the dark that she keeps coming back to.

Well I actually had a whole AU with someone where Basira became a dark avatar actually. It was going to center on her relationship with Jon. Or, well, it was mostly me blabbing the au and getting emoji reactions but... here is what I got:

Basira gets put on the strike force that goes after the Church of the Divine Host to rescue Callum Brodie long before she meets Jon. This means she is much less prepared for the encounter.

The good news is that stops the dark ooze from crawling into Callum Brodie. The bad news is once she does that, it latches onto her face.

Everything goes dark. It doesn't get all of the way in. Doesn't… stay all of the way out either.

Basira wakes up restrained in a dark room with some shadowy figures around her. She asks them to shine a little light in there, but--well. It's already fully lit, they say.

She has in fact been kidnapped by the remains of the Church of the Divine Host, who think--correctly--that there is now a piece of Rayner, their cult leader, in her brain trying to take over as the new host.

This at first starts with Basira locked up and kept under close watch. But slowly, Basira starts to hear a Rayner-like voice in her head and the cult members whisper around her and start to give her more freedom.

One--Manuela--spends more time with Basira.

Manuela is convinced that Basira already has all of the essence of the dark in her needed to be a member or even their leader, and all they need to do is cut her more slack and she will Become.

They cut Basira more slack. She escapes and runs right back to the police.

Basira rushes up to embrace Daisy who grabs her... sniffs? and then snarls and starts to strangle her.

"It's not her!" Daisy yells. "It's something else!"

The other police, of course, believe Daisy. Daisy is the expert on monsters.

Basira barely makes it away. In the end, she has to listen to Manuela's voice and slip into shadows where Daisy can't find her.

The cult lovingly welcomes her back.

Basira's captivity becomes more ambiguous. They don't lock her up. They don't tie her down. They don't even threaten to do anything if she tries to escape again. The real threat is Daisy--and all of the other cops, who are now on an active manhunt for Basira and will shoot her on sight. Basira actually needs the cult's help to stay safe from them.

Basira resigns herself. She settles down. She talks more to Manuela.

She starts to help them back. Uses her knowledge of tactics and the workings of the police force to improve their strategy.

They listen to her, because they think Rayner is working through her.

There... is still a voice in Basira's head. But she actively represses it. She thinks she's still herself. She just... decides not to think about it, or look into the matter too closely.

In fact, there are a lot of things Basira decides not to look into more closely.

One of Basira's decisions/suggestions is to make amends and ally with the Magnus Institute. This turns out to be pretty easy to do: all Elias Bouchard wants them to do is to meet the Archivist and... help him "understand" their god.

So Basira meets Jon in this context. Elias expects this to end in Jon being marked because avatars are sadistic pricks who would take Elias's wording as an excuse to terrify the New Guy. But Basira is working in more of a diplomatic mindset so she tells everyone in the cult to Not Bully The Archivist, That Might Fuck Up Our Alliance.

Elias is Extremely chagrined by this, because it's not like he can SAY that he wanted them to fuck up his guy, that would reveal his whole plan!

Jon goes in having read several statements on the cult, including ones from the police, and is brought to Basira.

"Maxwell Rayner?" he asks.

"Not really," Basira says.

And they collaborate without more words on the subject.

Jon assumes that Basira is still the cult leader. They meet up a few times after this, and he gets the church's help. But after a few meetings, he gets curious and ends up compelling her story out of her.

This ends up causing Basira to articulate quite a few things that she had been trying so hard not to think about, like the fact that she feels trapped and wouldn't be here if she felt like she had any other choice.

This freaks out everyone in the cult and they furiously shove Jon out and refuse to ever let him speak to their leader again.

Jon... has to accept this. But later, when Tim is dead and Martin is gone and Melanie won't even look at him and Jon is eaten up by guilt... he'll start to want to save someone to justify his own existence to himself. And then, in lieu of someone in a coffin to rescue, his mind will turn back to the alleged cult leader who said she didn't even want to be there, and who got cut off from their meetings the second she expressed this.

Jon starts to make a plan.

[supercasey]

Dumb thoughts on the Child Avatars AU

I dunno, just some dumb ideas I’ve had since I started talking about the AU online/brainstorming about it. (Putting it under a readmore for everyone’s sake)

The “Daisy kidnaps Jon” situation in this AU is Daisy riding her bike to Simon Fairchild’s mansion, holding a water-gun up to both Mike and Jon’s heads, and ordering them to ride with her to the grocery store to buy soda and hang out at a nearby playground for the day. Cue Elias flipping tf out when Jon isn’t at Simon’s place when he goes to pick him up later, Simon being half asleep because he was napping while the kids hung out, and Mike getting soaked by Daisy before he agrees to go with her, and since this happens in, like, late fall or early winter, he gets pneumonia afterwards and can’t hang out for awhile, leading to the kids jokingly saying he’s dead. Btw the only reason the trio was found is because Basira was invited after they made it to the park, and she convinced Daisy to let the boys go home. Daisy literally only kidnapped them because she wanted to play with someone.

Also the Buried!Daisy arc is Daisy getting eaten by a Buried controlled sandbox and Jon jumping in after her. The rest of the kids, who thankfully witnessed this, spent the next three hours digging for them, with Breekon & Hope eventually joining in to help since they were in the area. Daisy and Jon form a trauma bond afterwards and are now best friends.

Jon keeps getting marked by shit and it’s stressing Elias out because hE’S NOT READY FOR THE WATCHER’S CROWN YET!!! He needs more time to prepare, but his son is literally getting marked faster than fucking Sonic.

Speaking of Sonic, seeing as the “Console Wars” (Sega vs Nintendo) are happening during this time period, the kids take the rivalry Very Seriously. The biggest arguments are had between Sasha, Daisy, Julia, and Mike, who are all on Team Sega, and Jon, Martin, Tim, and Danny, who are all on Team Nintendo.

Sasha, close to tears she’s so angry: “Sega DO what NintenDON’T, Tim!!!”

When Martin was born, he only had one thick clump of curly hair that was white, but as he’s grown older and entered the Lonely multiple times, more of his hair has begun to turn white. As of the time of the AU “starting” (so when he’s 8 years old), he looks like he has white highlights in his hair.

Trevor isn’t a fully-fledged Hunt avatar yet, but the girls more or less are, so if you’ve ever watched Wolf Children, that’s pretty much the situation Trevor is currently trapped in. His daughters keeping changing into wolf pups and running wild as he frantically tries to hide their powers from anyone who isn’t Gerry.

(All of the kids secretly know already, even Basira.)

Basira is pretty much the only “normal” kid of the avatar children, save MAYBE for Tim, but he’s been deeply marked by the circus and has a few tiny powers (think S3 Jon as he was figuring out some of his powers, but wasn’t a full-on Archivist just yet).

The season 1 gang (including Danny) are the closest group of friends in the AU, save for Daisy and Basira’s friendship, and they hang out a lot at each other’s homes on the weekends.

Adelard usually brings Jane with him for his “trips” away from the institute, so it’s not unusual for her to be gone for long periods of time. But she always sends postcards and gifts to the institute for everyone!

Helen is three years old, so theoretically she should be able to talk, but she rarely does so, preferring to communicate via giggles and laughter. Only Jon, the Stoker brothers, and Michael can understand her, and they take turns translating for everyone else.

Whenever she’s brought to the institute, Helen takes to toddling around after Jon and Martin, giggling up a storm the whole time. Jon finds it a bit annoying while Martin is endlessly amused by her antics.

A list of the guardian’s/adult’s ages before I fucking forget (as of when the AU “starts” in 1994): Gertrude Robinson - 62, Elias Bouchard “Jonah Magnus” - 51 (200+), Peter Lukas - 55, Simon Fairchild - 83 (300+), Gerard “Gerry” Keay - 30, Michael Shelley - 32, Alfred Grifter - Unknown, Adelard Dekker - 48, Nikola Orsinov - 30ish (100+), Annabelle Cane - 34 (Unknown), Trevor Herbert - 47, Agnes Montague - 25ish (60+), Jude Perry - 35, Jared Hopworth - 29, The Admiral - 10.

The “good” parents all keep trying to set up some kind of PTA meeting so they can actually talk about how to raise these supernatural kids properly, but it keeps going horribly wrong; last time they tried, Alfred Grifter and his band showed up and nearly made Simon go deaf, so no one wants to initiate the next attempt at a meeting.

Tbh, at this point the Fear rituals are more successful than Elias’s shitty attempts at forming a PTA.

At some point in the AU Gerry, Michael, and Trevor all pitch in to buy a decently big house together, which leads to some serious Shenanigans now that Melanie is around Michael and Trevor’s kids/wards... let’s just say there’s gonna be a lot of knife related accidents.

Gerry taught Melanie how to fight when he took her in and it is the single worst decision he’s ever made in his short, goth life, even if he’ll never admit it. Melanie can now beat the shit out of everyone but Julia and Daisy, and it’s pure chaos every time. Tim puts up a decent fight, but he’s been spoiled on easy wins over his brother all his life. Jon tries and fails to so much as push her. Martin runs away crying before Melanie even throws the first punch. Needless to say, the other kids are very cautious about playing with Melanie now.

None of the kids have an education of any kind except for Mike. I’m serious; the only kid who’s decently educated is being raised by Foxy Grandpa Off His Shits McGee! Julia and Daisy have had some public education but not much, Elias refuses to do anything but home-school Jon yet he sucks shit at math, Tim and Danny don’t even know what a school fucking looks like, Melanie and Jane were too young to go to school when they became avatars, Martin has only recently been allowed near other kids so fuck public school (Peter can do math but Nothing Else), Annabelle fucking forgot to give Sasha any kind of an education outside of Web stuff, and Helen is still a very small child. None of these kids have gone to school for more than a few years at most and dear g-d is that gonna suck for them later down the line.

As a result of this, Basira has taught the other kids a few things when she’s come over and insisted on playing “school” with everyone, but she’s still just a kid and can’t always get them to pay attention during her lessons.

Because of this Rosie, Gerry, Michael, and Gertrude have all started making an effort to more or less home-school all of the kids, which has gone... well enough, I suppose. However, things have recently taken a weird turn since Jon keeps giving everyone the answers to assignments/tests via telepathy.

Jon: Whoa, you can make tea all by yourself, Martin!? Martin: Yeah, I’ve been doing it by myself since I was a toddler. I can also do laundry, mop floors, vacuum, and cook a few things, too! Tim: Wow, that’s really cool, Martin! I wish I could do stuff like that. Gertrude, off to the side: *Gives Peter a horrified look* I’m sorry, but did Martin just say he’s been making tea on his own since he was a toddler? Peter:  ╮(╯ _╰ )╭  Unfortunately, I’m severely depressed.

Yeeeeeeeah, Martin’s in a similar childhood situation to his canon one, but at least there are people actually willing to help him out of it in this universe. Also, Peter will clean himself up at some point here, he’s just still dealing with more or less disowning himself from his family and learning hoe to not be so lonely.

Speaking Of Which, the Lukas family are pretty big antagonists in this AU, primarily through Peter’s mother (I’ll come up with a name for her later if I can’t find it on the wiki), who is trying to kidnap Martin and more or less feed him to the Lonely so Peter will get over his “childish feelings” and return to being her favorite child.

And yes, she DOES accidentally kidnap Jon instead at some point... this kid can literally not avoid getting kidnapped.

I like to think Mike and Julia are really good friends in this AU, being the closest in age and all. They hang out a lot since their dads are both so chill and won’t get upset about it, the two of them mostly just playing video games, watching movies, and biking around their respective neighborhoods together.

(Also they may or may not be responsible for a statement that involves a woman seeing a “flying wolf” passing over London... they’ve yet to confess to it, but Elias is dead certain they’re behind the incident.)

The worms incident is 100% Jane’s secret worm collection getting fucking loose... she was keeping them in the walls “for safe keeping” and No One Fucking Knew, not even Elias, until Jon saw a spider, punched the wall, and Revealed them.

Jon and Tim got their scars because Jane lost control of the worms and they burrowed into the kids. Cue a very panicked 999 call from someone in the institute and Child Services almost getting involved, but Elias managed to cover it up.

Afterwards, Jon is incredibly self-conscious about his worm scars, but Martin tells him “now we both have freckles!” and it honestly makes him feel a little better about the whole thing.

Also Adelard makes an effort to track down a child psychologist/counselor with institute ties so he can get Jane some therapy/help controlling her powers. He loves her to the moon and back, and he’s terrified of her getting traumatized by what she accidentally did.

During the incident, a Notthem gets loose from Artifact Storage and attacks Sasha, but seeing as Sasha is of the Web and the Notthem is connected to a Web artifact, it only manages to really hurt her, but thankfully not kill her. She ends up hospitalized for a few weeks, but comes out fine later on. The table mysteriously disappears afterwards, and no one knows if it was Gertrude or Annabelle’s doing, but either way, the kids never have to deal with a Notthem again.

At some point I wanna get into Jon’s paranoia in season 2 for this AU, but I’m considering changing it from being because of the Jane Prentiss issue to be because of Mr. Spider almost killing him. I dunno how exactly it’ll play out, but I think it has a lot of potential!

Okay, before I end this post full of weird rambling ideas for the AU, I wanna make a list of the powers that the kids have at the time of the story “starting”/the ones they develop down the line because Jonny Sims himself said that all avatars have different powers, and I really wanna infodump on my thoughts for the kids!

Current powers of Jonathan Sims-Bouchard: Can simply know things whenever he wants to (so long as the Eye lets him, but the Eye sometimes keeps him from knowing anything he isn’t mature enough to handle), can compel people to tell him things (the other kids are better at resisting it, and so are other people touched by the Eye), can survive on very little food if he’s fed mostly statements/other people’s trauma, can non-consensually feel the pain and emotions of the people around him, has some weak telepathy powers, and he can subconsciously summon tape recorders.

Future powers of Jonathan Sims-Bouchard: Increased healing abilities, can know most anything if he tries, ability to resist other Eye avatars’ compulsions, can survive purely off of statements/other people’s trauma, can choose whether or not to feel the pain and emotions of the people around him, has much stronger telepathy powers than before, can force himself into people’s minds and read their thoughts, and he can summon tape recorders at will (though some still show up without his knowledge sometimes).

Current powers of Martin Blackwood-Lukas: Can disappear into the Fog for several hours at a time (he cannot be seen by anyone but other Lonely avatars while in the fog), can summon clouds of fog that he can momentarily hide things in (including people), can “banish” most anyone into the fog, and has “Sea Captain Eyes” (he knows where the Tundra is at all times, and can lead someone to it without a map or compass).

Future powers of Martin Blackwood-Lukas: Can change his hair color at will (only to red, white, and a mix of the two colors), can see much better in the Fog and can find anyone he’s pushed into it, can more or less teleport using the Fog, and he has what’s more or less a pocket dimension of fog for storage/hiding his friends from danger (think the inside of Gems in Steven Universe).

Current powers of Tim Stoker-Orsinov: Can make small bipedal toys “come to life” for a few minutes at a time (they can’t talk or communicate; only move around and perform small tasks/dances), can tell when a Notthem is masquerading as someone else, is supernaturally talented at gymnastics, and can dance alongside the creatures of the Stranger without being fully corrupted by them.

Future powers of Tim Stoker-Orsinov: Better control over the powers he already has as well as a high tolerance for the Spiral.

Current powers of Danny Stoker-Orsinov: Can order around creatures of the Stranger against their will, can tell when a Notthem is masquerading as someone else, can dance alongside the creatures of the Stranger without being fully corrupted by them, is supernaturally talented at gymnastics, and can change his voice to anything he likes (not always intentionally, though).

Future powers of Danny Stoker-Orsinov: Can more or less “teleport” to other circus locations by walking into theaters, can now change his voice to whatever he likes with his knowledge and consent, can take over as the Stranger’s ringmaster if necessary, can trigger a mesmerizing dance whenever he’d like, and has a high tolerance for the Spiral.

Current powers of Sasha James-Cane: Can communicate with spiders and have them send messages to other Web avatars, can read minds if she tries really hard, can “trap“ other entities in large webs that she can summon (takes a lot of energy), and she has Spider-Man-like abilities (can walk on walls and ceilings, can carry much more than her weight should allow, etc).

Future powers of Sasha James-Cane: Can now read minds without too much effort, can navigate almost any area that’s being controlled/influenced by the Web, can create webs without nearly as much effort as before, can transform her body to have more arms, legs, and eyes, and she now has venomous fangs (which can thankfully be controlled and/or hidden).

Current powers of Alice “Daisy” Tonner: Can turn into a wolf at will/when she’s especially emotional, can smell blood from several miles away, and has supernatural senses/physical abilities.

Future powers of Alice “Daisy” Tonner: Can now track most any monster she’s hunting once she gets at least one good look at them, can communicate with other Hunters via howling, and can navigate the Buried if needed (though this is very triggering for her and will cause her to pass out afterwards).

Current powers of Julia Montauk: Can turn into a wolf at will/when she’s especially emotional, can smell blood from several miles away, has supernatural senses/physical abilities, can track most any monster if she knows their name, can communicate with other Hunters via howling, and she can shift into a bipedal werewolf when she feels like she’s in danger.

Future powers of Julia Montauk: All of her previous powers have drastically improved, plus she has better control of them now.

Current powers of Basira Hussain: She has common fucking sense, something almost none of the other children have.

Future powers of Basira Hussain: She common sense AND she has a werewolf GF now. :) ((No dating for the babies, not until they’re at least teenagers))

Current powers of Melanie King-Grifter: Can listen to Grifter’s Bone without being damaged in any way, the music of Grifter’s Bone makes her powers exemplified for a period of time after she listens to it, the smell of blood triggers her to become violent, she can summon sharp weapons (knives, swords, etc) from thin air, and she can see a red aura around other people who have been marked by the Slaughter.

Future powers of Melanie King-Grifter: She has much better control of her abilities now, she can perform Grifter’s Bone songs for people and keep them from dying/going feral, and she can now also summon other weapons from thin air (guns, baseball bats, etc).

Current powers of Oliver Banks: Can see people’s deaths a week in advance via his dreams, he sees dark tentacles around people who are going to die soon, can see but not talk to ghosts, and he can smell death on anyone who’s undead/controlling other people’s bodies.

Future powers of Oliver Banks: Can raise the dead and control them to do his bidding (takes a lot of energy), can speak cat (not End related; Admiral related), and he can cause people to die within the week if he touches them in his dreams.

Current powers of Georgie Barker: Can see a “death countdown” over people who are going to die within the next thirty days, doesn’t feel any fear whatsoever, can see but not talk to ghosts, and she sees a dark sludge staining the clothes of people who have been marked by the End.

Future powers of Georgie Barker: Can bring people back to life for a minute or so by touching them (think Pushing Daisies type powers), can speak cat (not End related; Admiral is best cat dad), and she can communicate with ghosts much better now.

Current powers of Jane Prentiss-Dekker: Can summon bugs of most kinds from her mouth and under her fingernails, can communicate with bugs, and can fight off most diseases without any trouble.

Future powers of Jane Prentiss-Dekker: Can now completely control bugs via a hive mind effect, can summon bugs from anywhere on her body, has much stronger healing abilities than Jon, and she can see invisible bugs crawling on the skin of those who the Corruption wants her to get rid of (it’s hard for her not to give in to it’s desires).

Current powers of Mike Crew-Fairchild: Can levitate/fly at will, can summon clouds of any kind (rain, thunder, snow, etc) in any conditions, has much higher resistance to the weather/temperature, and he can “banish” people into the Vast at will.

Future powers of Mike Crew-Fairchild: Same as before, but with slightly better control than he had as a teenager.

Current powers for Helen Richardson-Shelley: Can change the world around her to be more like the Spiral (adding more doors, changing the colors of things, causing hallucinations, etc), can change any door into a doorway into the Spiral, and she can amplify her voice (very hard to control as a baby).

Future powers for Helen Richardson-Shelley: Can now summon doors that lead to the Spiral from thin air, has much better control over her powers and abilities than before, can morph her body to be longer and sharper at will, and she can “banish” people into the endless hallways of the Spiral.

((Holy shit, that took awhile))

Anyways, here’s a playlist I made for the AU, feel free to scream at me for my very weird taste in music: Pinky Swear That You Won’t Go Changing

[smallestclowninthecircus]

Season 3 notes popping off

due to my desire to not completely fail all my classes this year i made myself slow down significantly while listening to this season, and the fact that the other person i'm listening along with had to catch up. We've managed to convert several other people to start listening and its pretty great.

ep 81: what does it even mean to be chosen by one of them? And if he was chosen by the eye. we know Gertrude wasnt? Because she cut the eyes out of the magazines?

ep 82: elias lmao. I understand why people like him so much bahshdhdk i thought he was gonna snitch on Jon but he didnt so he's fine. Ok but how do we think he knew all that stuff. Idk probably just institute connections. I love the fact that the recorder just wants to record stuff randomly bjahsjdhd. Elias feels a lot like Michael in the sense that he knows more than he should and talks in a way that implies he just wants to wait and see how things play out for his own benefit. I understand him knowing the things that happened but his description of her emotions implies something paranormal. Maybe he's connected to one of the entities. Which one I cannot guess.

ep 83: did a file get delivered randomly to the place he's staying at? Probably elias lmao. He thinks the mannequin is related to the stranger. Idk I would believe it.

ep 84: worms? I know he says earth worms but idk. Again? Is she making gordon golems out of trash? Martin popping off. You can tell the statements get to him more that they get to Jon. How come martin is so mad about it? I want to assume he just doesnt want her to get stuck there but idk. Jude Perry. The calliope organ. Jon heard a circus in one of the last episodes

ep 89: he's talking to perry? Like jude Perry? He says ... God? Is that what it is? Lmao. The Desolation. Jon is tired of ppl being vague and not telling him stuff lmao. Oh God Jon is so confused. Compel her? Is she assuming he has some kind of power? Does he have powers? Hmm. im agreeing with jon here please jesus christ why does everyone have to be so cryptic. Just say what you mean. "maybe you get an itchy eye" bahasjkdfklsjdf girl what. Agnes saved her? Oh this is the girl from the cafe story? So theres the Cult of the Lightless Flame? They worship whatever entity this is? The Desolation? Why do they all seem like they sorta worship her then? Is Gretchen gonna die oh god. fuckin michael. a different michael aaah. i see. dont do it shes gonna burn you. sir. please. sir dont you dare do- WHAT DID I SAY what did you think was gonna happen hhh.

ep 90: try to make it less obvious you're trying to get fired big T. Elias that doesnt sound like the most healthy thing to do. oh dear is this gonna be triggering for me. uuuuuh. uuuuuuuuuh. doesnt seem like it ok gonna keep listening. Jared. hmmmmm. Ok we've seen Keay and hotner or whatever his name was.

ep 91: Michael Crew. Oh is this the lightning scar guy. Mister jon sir did you just die. No? God everyone is so fuckin cryptic. Say normal things please. They all just like to go on about pain and agony and j e s u s c h r i s t we get it you got hurted by whatever thing. So theyre avatars? question mark? Jude Perry is an avatar of The Desolation? hhhh fractals. thats a spiral thing innit. Yup. messing with your perceptions. God they all talk about feeding their god and feeding that which feeds them and. hh what does that meann. Leave big J. please. uh oh. is it daisy? how come he has the web lighter still? the tape recorder just turns on sometimes you know how it is. So he can compel people? not that he knows it obviously but. a bit wack. powers go brr i guess? If the eye just wants knowledge i guess he feeds it by getting the statements? b/c i doubt it wants him to murder ppl or whatever.

ep 92: elias you all knowing fuck what do you know. (i guess all given what i just said) Lukas. Heard of them before. Mordecai Lukas. Loneliness. The lonely even. Jonah Magnus. Elias ur sounding like a bit of a dickhead rn. lmao jon's just like "i dont care" elias what is ur deal. Why does he want to tie her in. ohh i see. lmao theyre all just like "elias why" The Unknowing lol seems very much like something the eye wouldnt like. lol elias is gettin all philosophical. what does it really mean to be human. this still doesnt answer why gertrude wanted to destroy the archives tho.

ep 93: bahsjdfh he seems so dead inside rip. awww admiral. i love him already. ghh breacon and hope. purple mold. doesnt sound like anything we've seen so far. I think the funniest explanation for breacon and hope is that they dont actually serve the stranger they just kinda happen to be a random neutral party that cart around random spooky entity related stuff. ooooh. when we hear the slight static of the tape recorder it's cuz he's compelling ppl.

ep 94: the end! listen man they were all just grayed up for 4/13.

ep 95: the end also? death but also savagery/ animalistic shit. aww martin. lmao becerra. she's just been chillin in the corner.

ep 96: return to sender. haha minecraft go brr. prediction: breacon and hope? yup there we go. jon why is there an echo. are you in a stairwell? is he gonna eat it- yup. how did i call it. unsure abt what theyre talking about but ok. they kidnapped someone? Sarah Baldwin. ooooh that guy.

ok im just putting this here so i have notes for when nicholas gets to this part. It seems like (from jon's conversation with jude perry) that the desolation and the eye are kinda at odds with eachother? like i guess not directly but it seems like they dont really vibe? so how could be with both. Cuz if he has the heat powers and shit then we know he's an avatar of the desolation. but then why does he have so much eye imagery. also he got burned intentionally? like jude did when she went on her monologue about the feeling of burning? but then why did he wear the eye pendant. it stops him from being burned all the way which seems like he's not fully accepting the fire or whatever.

Nooooo I lost like a bunch of my notes rip. I keep forgetting to save.

Ep 104: tim gives a coherent statement without jon even being there. Ugh. Fucking robert smirk. Dont like him. Joey. Dont recognize the name. The show must go on. Clown. The spooky circus?

ep 105: total war... shogun 2? jon is just understanding languages again. "if i understood mandarin or cantonese" are you sure you dont big man?

ep 106: havent we heard this one already? mans in space? oh no this is just another episode in space. fairchild... uuuh. cant remember. oh! this is related to that! this is one of the ppl from the other side. sounds like a Vast thing. oh he's the one that the dude saw? but that guy didnt have a face... she's sorta like jon. wanting to dismiss the statements. lmao i love the workplace gossip. ace jon for the win! oh cmon elias dont be a dick. sunny meadows or whatever. thats the place we heard about.

ep 107: oh great is it jude perry again. Third Degree. bahahsdkfj she was arrested. sorry but imagining this old british lady getting arrested is funny. she was trying to resurrect him. using the skin book. he's not feeling well. jon take a nap. i wonder if this is what happens when he uses his powers too much. He gets into The Zone when he reads statements lol. didn't we have a burning train car in anothre statement? is it julia fairchild? bahahahs "kidnapped. Again." poor jon honestly. julia... about her dad. daughter of the murder shed guy? hunting like your dad liked to hunt or normal people hunting. oh hunting vampires!

ep 108: melanie has been suffering. poor martin peter lukas why do you have to be like this. can he not just use the front door? does he have to bother the ppl doing statements?

ep 109: how come he cut her off? kinda rude tbh. its either jon's influence or there was smth he didnt want her saying. is it gerard on the table? this sounds kinda like smth from one of the university episodes. is it the closed eye on the hand? yup. he's like one of the students! if the thing listening in is elias then... he can do that without the tape recorder yknow. plus who's to say it wont just turn itself on again

110: who wants to bet its a leitner?

111: Lukas related to The Lonely. I used to not like Gerard that much but i like him more now. but i thought there were 15? ohhh thats right isnt flesh newer? gerry for the win honestly. finally telling jon things.

112: lol "again" no one ever tells any of these ppl anything. tim and basira are just out of the loop constantly. music, like the war episodes. The hunt or the slaughter? probably the hunt. so Daisy is related to the hunt right? basira likes the reading, she's doing fine at the institute. daisy's getting worried...

113: it just turned on randomly. what is it lol. explossives! oh boy. why do they always assume he turned it on intentionally. melanie youre not making me like you that much. which entity is this about i cant tell. lol he was disappointed it was just the end. The title Breathing Room made me think it was gonna be about the buried but i guess not. So many of these entities deal with death but the end is one that deals in just death. it has no need for fancy deaths, just death is enough

114: more hilltop road statements? the tree. oh boy. ok the tree has 8 arms obviously theres the spider parallels. was she taken into an alternate universe? oh no. jon tries to phrase things so he's not asking questions. thats honestly good. "sometimes i was kidnapped" oh dear. they got gertrude. daisy ur so odd lmao. who wants to bet they dont know the tape recorder's running?

115: silaca? or whatever? antique man? meat grinder... related to the meat is meat episode? oh wow. they buy antiques from him. maybe dont antagonize this creature which can kill you?

116: lol theyre all just so done with elias. music? is it like the one band that if you hear them you die or wtvr. oh its chess? i am very much confused. mmm stranger go brr. gorilla skin? oh shit the dance. woah. this is so good. this is so gender. the words are wonderful. "you can just say tim" lmao trying to fool elias never feels like a good idea.

117: except elias lmaoo. oh shit. leitner getting some use for once idk. bruuh poor melanie she has been thru so much shit. martin you can just say youre worried about jon. lol he's so accurate in his jon impression. lol who was that. was that daisy? lmaoo. oop hi tim. oh god i hope tim doesnt die. i feel like i wouldve heard about that? but im not sure. destroying the source of knowledge is gonna be hard for jon. yay jon! you did a good thing. let him rest.

118: go off martin lmao. awww poor martin. oh god the tape gets that squealy quality and its awful.

119: woah. lots of things happening. uhh. POP OFF TIM!!

120: lmao elias giving a statement about jon's dreams lol. damn jon doesnt even get his own dreams? has to stay Watching even when he's asleep? f in the chat this man goes thru so much shit. oh boy its peter. lol martin my beloved. idk i dont trust peter.

[that-one-girl-behind-you]

jgm soulmate anon, and I maaaayyy have started writing a version of this myself but I a b s o l u t e l y wanna hear more 👀 how would you bring Gerry into their lives?

Aaaa Anon i’m excite!! Lmk if you post it, I’d love to read it!

Thanks for letting me ramble a bit more haha, here comes the brain vomit.

First off, I want it on the record that if I’m writing the AU, Gerry (and lbh the rest of the crew too) is alive bc they deserve to be happy and well, and I will give it to them if it kills me. All on board? All on board. 

Onwards to the headcanons!

Sasha and Tim are soulmates too, but since Sasha I’m feeling Sasha as Aro in this, they keep it platonic. They love each other and they belong together, whatever way they choose to go about it.

Jon reconciles with Georgie earlier, in fact, he calls her the very same day he meets Martin, panicking.

“Georgie remember how my first soulmate was a murderer well my second one is my bumbling, incompetent employee, Georgie what do I DO?!”

Georgie laughs herself silly, of course.

I want to say Jon is a bit nicer to Martin in this AU but who are we kidding, he probably doubles down on keeping it “professional” and ends up being a douche.

He still drops every statement that mentions Gerry on Martin’s desk, simply saying “He’s in this one too,” before going back to his office.

Martin has a split second to regret having discovered his soulmates before he flees Carlos Vittery’s building, because the bright red of Jane Prentiss’ dress is seared in his mind, probably for the rest of his life.

Jon does his head out of his ass when they’re trapped during the invasion, averting his eyes in shame and regret, before muttering, “I’m- I apologize, Martin... I was- you were not a bad soulmate to have.”

Maritn doesn’t even care that he’s about worm’d, he’s living his romance moment, and he’s gonna live it right. He stretches a hand to lay it on Jon’s shoulder-

And Tim breaks through the wall like the Kool-Aid man.

Sasha does see the table, it does call to her, but when she takes the first step towards it, her vision starts going grey, and she books it before it can enthrall her.

With Sasha being Sasha and having accepted that Martin is solidly an firmly on his side, S2!Jon is considerably less paranoid, which of course, causes less frictions with his team. All four of them are focused on finding out who killed Gertrude, and who might be coming for Jon next.

BUT you asked specifically about Gerry so everyone hold my hand it’s loving Gerry hours.

He has conflicted feelings towards the concept of soulmates. He knows they exist, he knows he has one. He also knows he’s possibly the least suited for a life with one, what with hunting Leitners and getting into life-or-death situations parctically every day. It doesn’t feel fair, for whoever it is he’s bound to.

“Did you have a soulmate?” he asked his mother once, when he was younger. “Yes, your father,” she responded, and Gerry knew even back then that she was lying.

“Did you have a soulmate?” He asks Gertrude once, during their travels. “No,” says Gertrude, her eyes somewhere far away, and Gerry knows she’s lying too.

He does die of cancer in America (he gets better)

Gerry comes back to London as a fully realized avatar of the Eye, looking for Gertrude with the intention of giving her a piece of his mind for leaving him behind like a broken toy.

He practically bursts into the Archives, ignoring the confused stares and calls of the two assistants outside Gertrude’s office, and shoves the door open roughly.

“Gertrude, what the ever-loving fuck is wrong with... you?” Gerry freezes at the door, staring down at the man sitting behind Getrude’s desk. He’s got small, round scars all over his face, his glasses are pushed up over his messy hair, and he’s looking back at him like Gerry’s a ghost (which he guesses he kind of is).

But more importantly, Gerry realizes, he’s wearing a blue sweater vest, Gerry can see the blue, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to think of anything else, doesn’t even care that the grey remains in his vision, he-

He’s promptly corrected when the door to the office opens again, and a soft, confused voice speaks behind him. “Jon? What’s going... oh.”

Gerry turns towards the third man in the room, and his vision practically explodes with color, every remaining gray blown away by vibrant greens and yellows.

“I- can I take a seat?” Gerry asks demurely, feeling like his whole world has been turned on its head.

“...Please do,” the man behind the desk says, his voice strained. “Martin? Could you close the door?

Gerry quickly explains to his two soulmates -his mind keeps hyper focusing on the words. His. Soulmates.- that no, he did not, in fact, kill his mother. Or Gertrude, he clarifies when Jon -His soulmates’ names are Jon and Martin, and they sound so well together, so right- asks with a suspicious glare.

It takes a while for them to fall in sync. Martin is over the moon at having them both there, and Gerry finds it immediately endearing that Martin swears up and down he always knew he wasn’t a murderer. Jon takes a bit longer to come around, still nervous, still paranoid, until Gerry sits him down and tells him, very seriously, that if anyone tries to come after him, they’re going to have to get through Gerry first.

Gerry’s with Jon when they find Letiner at the tunnels, and he wants to, he desperately wants to kill the man, especially since he’s found out why Jon bears the mark of the Web, but Jon is overwhelmed, and Gerry steps outside with him because he can’t be certain he won’t strangle Leitner if he stays alone with him.

Gerry takes the blame for the murder, I think. Elias still tries to frame Jon for it, but Gerry goes and confesses to it because “what’s one more suspected murder in my record?”

This means he’s pretty much out of the picture for the entirety of S3, but it also means Jon doesn’t have to go hide at Georgie’s and his powers grow a bit faster because he can keep at the Institute.

Speaking of Georgie! She and Melanie don’t have soulmates, but fuck you if you think that’s going to stop them from falling in love and making a happy ending for themselves.

Gerry gives Elias a smug smile as Basira escorts him out and past his cell, and he’s immediately unnerved by the fact that Elias responds in kind.

Then he finds out Jon is in a comma and Martin is cavorting with Peter Lukas, and Basira and Daisy have to pretty much hold him back from going right back in and beating Elias to death.

That’s gonna have to be it for now, might make another post about the rest of season 4 if there’s interest when I have a bit more time!

[spiralesbian]

ALRIGHT

here’s my full Stranger Avatar Sasha Archivist timeline:

(also, thanks to @artbyblastweave for being so interested in my lil au!)

SEASON ONE

sasha james is hired as the head archivist of the magnus institute!

her assistants are jon, tim, and martin

tim takes the thematic role of martin (aka getting tormented by my worm wife jane, and stays in the archives)

sasha reads thru statements and is a skeptic! she really does not believe it’s real until jane comes along.

“tim……………………..did you die here?”

“no, but every time i come to work i die a little more inside.”

cute timsha moment in the supply closet tho.

until martin kool-aid-mans through the door and gets them out of there

jon used to work in artefact storage so he hides in there. he’ll be fine

i actually can’t remember how they all get out but they do it KKJSDGFJHD

sasha takes everyone’s statements. tim is fucked up, martin is also fucked up, jon is actually fine though he seems pretty normal about this whole situation most definitely.

sasha realizes this is a bit more than a regular archivist job.

SEASON TWO

sasha gets paranoid of course. she learns more about gertrude because she never got the chance to meet her

she takes a statement from a guy named michael shelley. weird dude. then helen shows up :)

jon is most definitely himself he is just a normal regular grumpy jon i swear :)

sasha starts to manifest her powers a little bit. she doesn’t know it, but she is an avatar of the stranger, and a prisoner of the eye.

she starts to notice more things about jon? similar to this comic but with jon

eventually she + tim + martin help get jon out of the grip of the NotJon. this is my au and i get to choose who dies (it’s no one because i miss the s1 archival assistants too much).

jon is pretty fucked up from this though and at like a season-3-tim mindset already.

fucking goddamn leitner avatar of the fucking whore shows up to trap the NotJon in one of his shitty fucking novels. fuck this guy tho

he’s like Sasha We Must Talk and shes like okay but stay 8 ft away from me at all times you bitch

she leaves the room for 10 minutes and pipe murder occurs. good riddance

wait are the cops in the season i genuinely can’t remember. if they are, their roles don’t change very much. melanie and sasha feud, battle of the bi queens

SEASON THREE:

uh oh! girlie’s be framed for murder! she crashes at her ex gf georgie’s flat. also the admiral is there don’t think i would EVER cut him out of this story

(also jon is georgie’s ex too because i think that would be fun JDHBFHS)

sasha learns abt an upcoming web ritual (mirroring the unknowing), all that shit. gets kidnapped a ton of times, as usual.

helen is like “i am going to kill you because i hate gertrude <3 i was that dumb bitch’s assistant for too long” but michael busts out of the door like Hi Guys and traps her in the hallway.

sasha also gives her statement about a leitner she found as a child that marked her. its a stranger book and we learn her edgy orphan origin story how her parents were both murked by the stranger. fucked up if true!

back at the archives jon is like so fucking tired of this shit honestly and now martin is also pretty paranoid. also jm romance subplot is still very present!

tim is just trying to protect sasha at all times and he’s pissed she keeps leaving the country and getting fucking kidnapped

(remember when jon persuades the traffic cop?) sasha starts to fill her archivist role in a different way. she can shapeshift into the subject of a statement and uses her affiliation with the eye to coerce statements or info out of people. (example: if she needed a live statement from the guy in #90 Body Builder, she could temporarily make herself look like jared hopworth to the guy and ask “what happened to me?” or “what did i do?” and the guy would be like well he built some fucken bodies i guess let me tell you all about it) while reading the statements in america that refuel her, she fully shapeshifts into the statement giver while reading out loud.

once again i truly can’t remember daisy + basira’s roles until the end of the season. also melanie get shot by the ghost at some point

anyways sasha gets kidnapped by trevor and julia and they gerry lays out all the shit for her and she’s like ah! i’m fucked

tim offhand mentions the web ritual to martin and he loses his shit cause he’s marked by the web blah blah this isn’t a web!martin thing i swear i just need someone to fill tim’s role in the ritual and a lonely ritual would be fucking boring as hell as we learned from ass man peter lukas. i hate that man

so they make the plan to stop the web ritual (which is fucking hard when the offense knows your every move) so sasha, basira, daisy, jon, and martin go.

tim stays back at the institute to burn shit and distract elias. elias does some fucked up shit as usual and it makes me sad

the ritual starts! they have a plan to blow it up and run but like. u know how it goes

instead of the unknowing-stranger-dream-sequence, we get everyone kinda mixed up in a huge spider’s web on the big stage and its still quite confusing because this ritual not only manipulates the prey, but also the prey’s perceived reality. the web is also in current control of the buried coffin cause they think that shit is kinda fun. they yeet daisy into it.

hard to describe what happens, but basira keeps her cool, jon is a bit lost in his own mind, sasha tries to use her powers to escape but fails. she manages to get through to martin through the strings and mounds of spiders and she tosses him the detonator.

[squishing spider noises]

SEASON FOUR:

martin doesn't die, i told you i can't kill the og archival assistants! he does lose most of one leg though, he took the blunt of the explosion.

sasha in da hospital in da coma. tim is mad he can’t wake her up and then my man ollie says “ur fucked up mate” and she wakes up

(and because coma jon has such wild hair controversy, i’m establishing that her head was shaved when she was in the coma. it grows back thru s4. it she keeps one side shaved cause she’s cool)

meanwhile tim is recruited by that dumbass man you know who i don’t even wanna say his stupid fucking name

sasha gets daisy out of the buried. they become avatar pals!

(there is the biggest blank in my memory where all of season four should be. at this point i should just relisten to the entire fucking show but i would literally just forget it all again)

melanie says hm. fuck this! and blinds herself. she goes to live with georgie (and that’s the moment jon and sasha realize they are both georgie’s exes FHFHDJD)

tim continues to fight the lonely pull. he thinks that since p*ter l*kas is tied to the institute, he can blind himself out cause melanie was successful. he is wrong. he is also interrupted by elias midway, and only blinds one eye, and loses most of his sight in the other. elias’s hold on him is weak, but this just drives him way farther into the lonely.

gotta be honest i remember the end of season four but like i couldn’t visualize what was happening at the end so i like don’t understand what happened JGDKFJGD but sasha intervenes (???) and peter yeets tim into the lonely (???) and sasha jumps in (??????) after him. elias is just there i guess?

instead of “look at me martin,” sasha finds tim and at this point her form is warped and hard to recognize because of stranger powers, and tim is almost 100% blind, so she says “don’t look at me, see me. see me tim, it’s me.” and finally creates a clear image of herself. “it’s...it’s you. you’re my sasha.”

they break free and go to scotland i guess KHSDDKDSF

idk what happens with jon and martin im losing continuity at this point. fuck it, they smooch <3

“ah these are the statements.”

“yes. basira said last week she’d send some up as soon as the archives weren’t a crime scene. and she wasn’t sure which ones you’ve read already, so she, she just said she’d send a bunch.”

“.........Hello Sasha.”

(alternate ending: personally i think sasha would read through each statement before speaking them aloud cause that’s what i would fucking do, so she would get this statement and be like “lmao tim come look at this elias trying to prank me dumb bitch think i’ll start the apocalypse for him. fucking little puny bitch boy. anyways what do you want for dinner?”)

SEASON FIVE:

“just. listen.”

“...i’m dead. and you have been chosen to be my replacement as head archivist. hopefully, this means you, jon, but if someone else is hearing this, and elias has made a different choice for some reason, then these words are still very much intended for you.”

sasha in full stranger avatar mode and is like 8ft tall and her faces shift a lot as they go through the realms. except the stranger is the second to last one (the panopticon is last obviously).

helen and michael actually talk shit out in the spiral hallway and now they are mlm wlw solidarity and both like tim and sasha are such bi and trans icons <3 this is so fun don’t you love the fearpocalypse <3

oh daisy n basira trapped in the hunt, and jon and martin are trapped in the stranger. wtgfs + the admiral are like in space or some shit idk but they are ok :)

not much to report other than she is my monster wife <3

i really don’t have many theories to how everything in s5 is gonna pan out, and i would like to closely mirror the actual show, so maybe as we get closer to the end i’ll build more on to this! thanks a lot for all the notes on my first sarchivist post!! also if u wanna make art this specific au DEF tag me in it i’d love to see!!

[bare1ythere]

Who’re your top five favorite TMA characters?

OHHH Thanks for asking!!

1. Martin! Mainly because of the sheer amount I project on him!! I thought he was fun and cute in S1 (and love(d) that he described himself as “not the smallest guy in the world”) and S2 but when he faced off against Elias in S3 I got REALLY attached. like FUCK, he CRIED. He only really became my favourite character in S4 where his whole arc with the Lonely really meant a lot to me and I related a lot to it. Now in S5 his personality is SO FUN and I love that he’s in every single episode. 

Fanon wise many folks draw him a lot like me (which is fun since I project on him enough as is) and make him trans and its all just SO GOOD and means So much to me. In conclusion Give this man a knife and set him in front of elias its what he deserves. I love him so much.

2. Jon! Jon is a really close second because he was my favourite character up until S4 (not his fault, my love for Martin just grew A LOT in s4). I actually really didn’t like him in s1 during my first listen until Episode 22 when he showed Some kindness to martin and I just went “OH SO HES SOFT BUT GUARDED!! I SEE”

I know im talking a lot so Im just gonna talk about highlights: S3 Jon is my absolute favourite. Knowing enough to be Really Scared but not knowing enough to be comfortable in that knowledge was a really fun time for him. He was traveling around and had softened significantly from s1 and s2, and also went through one of my absolute favourite tropes of “becoming the thing you’ve been fighting against.” S4 Jon makes my heart ache he deserved SO much better and S5 Jon makes me want to scream into a pillow because he’s the most openly happy he’s every been in the dang podcast but its all MELANCHOLY. I love every design for him, especially colourschemes folks use for his outfits. He’s very cool I love him

3. Helen!! I LOVED Michael (specifically his laugh) But Helen’s progression into being an avatar at the same time as Jon was SO interesting to me. I didn’t start to really love her until S5/late S4, though. She’s just SO chaotic neutral and Likes to Cause Problems on Purpose and ACTIVELY FOUND JON’S SMITING ENTERTAINING I GHDSKJFHDSSFD. Her whole vibe is very fun and funky and I love her a lot. The only thing that stopped me from liking her in S4 was her not helping Jon when he begged her in like MAG156 I think gdshjkfds but Thats mainly because when I first listening I was in Full Panic Mode for Jon and Martin

4. Daisy!! Okay well, I don’t like Daisy before s4. I actively Hated Daisy in S3, killing Mike Crew and then almost killing Jon. Being aggressive with the archival crew (minus elias because he deserved it) in MAG81 iirc. And you know, all of her Hunt Crimes. Daisy’s change post-buried though was very good. I loved the episode with her and Jon in the coffin a Lot. She became a lot sweeter and her willingness to starve to never give into the hunt again was very devastating, especially with Basira trying to convince her to lean into it again. She was also arguably the one who was the nicest to Jon in S4, though she wasn’t perfect. The reason she isn’t higher is because she’s a cop and that definitely stops me from enjoying her fully and without hesitation because Fuck That. I more enjoy her arc than her character as an entirety. Anyway I hope she turns out ok in the upcoming act though Im not very optimistic :c

5. Melanie!! Melanie’s first interaction with Jon in season 1 was VERY funny but her later character is very very good. During the small period of time in S3 after she got hired but before Elias confessed to murdering gertrude I loved her attitude about her job and her personality. Afterwords, It was fun to see her try to assassinate Elias and her part in the Slaughter in S4 both scared me and also was very interesting to listen to. I’m glad she got to leave the institute though and at least got a very short happy ending with georgie and the admiral and even maybe jon!! as a friend!!! She said he could be his friend!!!!! Im SOFT. I hope she’s okay right now and I can’t wait to hear from her again ówò

HONOURABLE MENTIONS: Hezekiah Wakely because he might’ve been a one off character but he GOT IT and Jonah Magnus but more because of his fanon interpretation than anything we got in canon, so he didnt make the list ghdksjfds

[pilferingapples]

TMA S2 Natter I guess!!

LORE LORE LORE LORE WHOOO

under the cut for massive major spoilers of course

- I’m really glad I’m binging this, it helps me remember things to have a big chunk of story and lots to pick up on all stacked together and reinforcing itself. I still have to check and double check the Fan Wiki for names here and there, when I hear someone I KNOW I recognize from earlier; I’ve inevitably run across some spoilers that way, thanks to the structure of the wiki, so I’m really glad I’m needing to do that less and less as the show goes on; I don’t think I had to check anything in the last ten episodes, thought I did still have to go to the wiki to get links to the Transcripts, because 

- I find the tunnel-echo effects make the dialogue pretty unparseable no matter how loud I have the show, unfortunately. I could understand Michael,and not much else. (I mean,I could understand Michael’s voice, the Spiral’s motives and all are fairly opaque to me still.) The voices and acting lend so much ambiance, I would have been happy to watch along on the YT vid with subtitles , but it doesn’t have subtitles? Frustrating, but I do  really appreciate there being transcripts! 

- Michael makes me really, really sad. He was just a kid who stayed out in the rain a second too late! It wasn’t even his idea! And he got Marked and he lost his whole damn life to this thing before he was even old enough to have a good grasp on what reality is in the normal swing of things. Poor kid. Poor Michael-that-should-have-been. (ETA so I don’t answer this multiple times: I’m aware Lightning-and-Tower Michael might not be Hallways and Hands Michael, but this is just name-association, really.  Also, there’s a growing horror in S2 in finding so many people who seemed to escape their encounters showing  up again in much worse shape in other Statements...)

- Thanks to Tumblr Osmosis , I’m  sure the Endgame OTP (at least so far) in Jon/Martin, and while I’m currently not a fan of that (though totally prepared to change my mind according to character/relationship development!) I am  delighted to be able to enjoy Jon and Basira’s relationship without worrying that her character is going to be suddenly smashed flat to make her The Love Interest. I love their weird uneasy alliance!  I hope she comes back but also hope she goes somewhere Far Away and lives Ordinarily Ever After. 

-on that note, Daisy Daisy Daisy bring back Daisy, I don’t usually get into cop characters but WEIRD CRYPTID FORCE COPS are apparently a potential weakness for me  (..also I know, I know  they are probably Hunt-aligned. I’ve already said I’m unfortunately Weak for The Hunt ).  

-I miss Actual!Sasha >:

- Tim is seriously the only person in this whole damn institute with any self preservation either supernatural or normal??  “Yeah you’re right I don’t like the boss who stalks me and keeps secrets about a situation which is directly about my own personal safety like I was the enemy and takes his trauma out on me directly while I’m recovering from,in this case , exactly the same trauma thanks “

Martin: Wow Tim you’re so selfish, how can you even think about fleeing our supernatural hellscape, why aren’t you more concerned with the guy who is very overtly considering you a potential enemy and crossing all boundaries in a way that, in any normal job, would right off be enough to get HR and maybe the cops involved?  WHY ARE YOU BEING SO UNREASONABLE, TIM??...Now excuse me while I run to my probable death with no preparation in defense of a guy who seems to go out of his way to hit my very obvious emotional weak points and considered me so useless  he thought I might be dead already, because unlike you I am making good decisions!!! LEEEROY JENKINNNSSSSS”

-honestly the apparent connection between why the Institute/Elias accepted Martin as sacrifice an employee and Martin’s emotional Everything is both screamingly apparent and worth an essay all on its own , that’s some Good Charactering

-I never trusted Elia-- Never Trust the Boss Of Shadowy Organization With Mysterious Backers, that’s my motto-- but HE KILLED THE INFODUMP SOURCE. HOW DARE. INSTANT LEAST FAVE.

- I KNEW LEITNER WAS A RESEARCHER I KNEW IT I KNEW IT, who has a vast occult library BUT never really figures in any accounts of actually DOING anything?? AN OCCULT NERD DOING RESEARCH.  (I say, well aware that *I* did not do my research as fully as I’d like here, to avoid spoilers, and thus may be forgetting a Big Thing he apparently did)

- I did NOT know he was still alive?? and totally didn’t see him working with Gertrude (it was actually Gert’s Occult Book Hunting that made me slap my head and go OH RIGHT about Leitner!) 

-I want to know more about Gertrude 

- The OH NO moment I had during Leitner’s description of obvious multiple entities working together to just wreck his shop!!  BAD, BAD, THE INJUSTICE LEAGUE OF AAAAAH IS BAD 

- also now I know for sure that the Web and the Stranger are enemies? this puts at least 2/3 Fear Entities that could, I am aware , pretty much have me as a pawn for a cheap ice-cream cone allied against the one  Entity that makes me absolutely go into Screaming Phobia Murder Mode, I don’t know if everyone’s feeling the same way or if this is just the show happening to find my particular keys like that 

-...listen Elias is THE WORRRRSSSST and I am sure The Institute is Not Good but if The Stranger existed and was A Thing like this then they wouldn’t have  to Play me to get my assistance on taking it out , every single episode about it makes me go Mad Raccoon in A Box ,  I want it gone, the enemy of the Stranger is my ...slightly less enemy 

-Jonnycakes Sims is the Avatar of the Human Trainwreck, but I did not realize until this episode that he does not drink coffee??  I’m torn between thinking he should and thinking all caffeine should be taken away from him forever. 

-Also, Dammit, Jonet, this “keeping info about supernatural horror schemes from my team For Their Own Good” nonsense?  BAD , you are not a Victorian patriarch and they are not your children, GIVE THEM A FIGHTING CHANCE YOU GOOBER, DID YOU EVER READ ONE GOTHIC NOVEL, IGNORANCE IS DEATH 

- ..HOW DID YOU DECIDE TO SMASH THE TABLE YOU. GOOBER PIE.   I take it back, definitely Jonny needs to drink all the more caffeine. 

--in conclusion, ELIAS TOOK MY LORE HOOKUP AND HE MUST PAY FOR HIS CRIMES. 

(Supplemental:P) 

I'm getting the impression, from responses to my earlier little post, that people don't? like Tim ?? and I am Afraid this means he is Something Horrible?? but he's fun and friendly and smart and reacting like a human with normal human self-preservation instincts + a touch of Heroic honestly?? why do people not like Tim, is he a secret Horror, NO DON'T ACTUALLY TELL ME but  D:  NERVOUS NOW

[42eyeballs]

a continuation of the biblical parallels ive found in tma but it got way too long

Bereshit starts with the beginning; God calls the (added) expanse Sky... and there was...a second day... and God saw that this was good. And God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation..." The earth brought forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind... and God saw that this was good. (1:8-12) An inverse would be a change in sky (look at the sky. It’s looking back) to show the end of the world (the apocalypse), and if fear is to be taken as a type of sustenance surely then the mention of vegetation of every kind would be akin to the ritual of which brought all the Powers through to the new world at once (180), creating a fertile land full of fear to devour. 

It is noted that the world was created before Adam was placed into it (2:8)! Creating a slight shift in timelines for their beginnings, paralleled by Jon staying within the cottage for his chrysalis, staying there until he emerged as an adult insect (?). Insect imagery aside Adam was created and placed into his Eden as a full adult, as so is Jon.  “This place wishes to be our tomb. But the Eye does not wish that. No, the Eye wishes instead that it be my chrysalis.” (162) Which has an implication that it was always meant to be a stage to pass through, similarly there are interpretations that the Garden was always meant to be an intermediary stage humanity was meant to grow out of (along with a few other things). If there is the cottage, there is the Garden; if there is the world outside of Eden, there is the world wracked by the apocalypse. 

The cottage is this false artificial refuge from the other parts of the world. Eden was this prison of everything the couple may have needed. 162 describes the cottage as a place “deep in the heart of fear, where [they] trap [themselves] and claim that it is safety… a rotten sanctuary of lonely companionship” and yet is small enough that “the one [Jon] loves is always near, so close that refuge sometimes feels a prison.” Eden is a sanctuary where the only one to talk to and lean on is a lover; the world will rage on but this small bubble will never change, just wait for when they are ready. 

There’s also an interesting inversion with Eden being given to have this motif of having been created and alive, all of which from the perspective of the setting is very passive, and the Extinction being active in its creation; it will seek to create a lifeless world. Some interpretations suggest it might replace us with something new - that can then fear annihilation in turn, which has a similar flavor to Spinoza’s idea of a substance that desires only it’s existence - said substance only wants to be itself, it wants to be eternal. Such is inscribed into it’s very being, and yet there are different modes of the substance that exist differently. Oliver calls himself a death prophet, and says he has knowledge of death but not an understanding of what to do with it or why (121); Jon who watch[s] and know[s] and understand[s] none…  listen[s] and hear[s] and [does not] comprehend (160) is a fascinating parallel in structure of Spinoza’s idea of prophets that are gifted with knowledge but not understanding - knowledge that is gifted to them via some mode of the substance.

    There is also a period of time before the creation of Adam and the giving of life to him, and if we are to take research Jonathan as being in his insectoid egg, and archivist Jonathan as being a sort of larva that has yet to reach adulthood in his chrysalis, then this is the period of larvae. He is alive but not fully peaked in his awakening as an avatar. He does not yet see and is not yet fully living as such; the shift being when he shifts in his hospital bed and begins to breathe again (121), a parallel to when God blew into Adam the breath of life, and man became a living being (2:7). Jon, about two months after living again, takes out a bone, specifically a rib, specifically specifically something he won’t miss, for an anchor (131), and jumps into the Buried. Why specifically a rib? It is the same bone as the one God took out of Adam to bring him Eve (2:21), though she had not a name until after they had already left the Garden. Adam had all the world’s array of animals and wild beasts to choose from and yet none were a fitting partner; the Hunt has an affinity towards predatory animals, one could say wild beasts. This is where Daisy fits in. Martin had not yet been brought to Jon yet at this point, and slotted between the place between being Alive and Partnered is Daisy who is not his wife and who is not his partner and who is, or was and will be, a wild beast (2:19-20). Martin, who has very aptly been called Jon’s actual anchor to humanity, and Jon’s actual anchor out of the Buried,  placed dozens of tape recorders (132, 134) on top and around of the coffin, waiting for Jon. There is no hard evidence that says that without Martin's actions, Jon could not have found his way out again, but there is the implication because he does lose the presence of his rib while in there, only to be reunited with it after Martin has placed the recorders. This actively associates Martin with being Jon’s anchor instead of the rib, swapping their places. A bone for a person. 

    Jon goes into the lonely for Martin, and is able to find him and, more than that, bring him back (159). They are together despite the Lonely saying that to live is to be alone. They are together, and they link living (as opposed to surviving) to loving (be it in whatever form it may) (159), similarly there is God’s statement of how it is not good for man to be alone (2:18). Martin can be heavily associated with an Eve persona now, and he continues the role in the cottage by giving Jon the statements.

    God said not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad (in some translations); Jon, as soon as he knew what the statement was, knew it was bad, knew he did not want it, he knew he should not read it. Statements have been written to become more equivalent to food as the plot goes on, accumulating into this final statement, this final fruit of knowledge, where the world then goes topsy turvy and flips on its head. This is where there begins to be a massive inversion of the parallels, not a diversion but more of an opposite in sides. If Adam were to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, his “eyes [would] be opened and [he would] be like diving beings,” (3:5), same goes with Jon and his statement, but Adam was also told if he eats the fruit, he would gain the ability to die (2:15-17). Jon  wouldn’t gain the ability to know good and evil, he already had that, however little he may have used it. If anything being so close to such a source of power made it harder for him to determine what is good, and what is evil (171, 174, 166, etc.), along with the added bonus of not really being susceptible to death, but oh does he gain raw knowledge. 

    Eve, of course, is told to eat the fruit by a snake, and Adam eats the fruit that Eve gave him; interesting then that Elias puts his false statement in with real ones to be delivered to the cottage (the fruit in the Garden) for Martin to give to Jon (Eve to give to Adam). This also equates Elias to a snake which is wonderfully appropriate. There’s also this small line where Basira said that she would just send a bunch of statements because she wasn’t sure which ones he has already read, not that big of a line but it does imply that there was likely some statements that he had read, and at least one that he hadn’t (Elias’); there was also likely two trees of which Adam has not eaten from, until the end, the tree of knowledge, but there is also a tree of life. In reading the statement, Jon invokes the line “I am to be a king of a ruined world” (160); Adam was meant to rule over and master what filled the earth, the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, all the living things, but his world was meant to be one of joy and prosperity, and this carries over onto Jon who does see beauty and wonder in the world that is. 

    Adam and Eve aren’t immediately cast out, they first hide themselves from what they have wrought upon them; Jon too, hides from what was wrought upon the world, until he doesn’t and he is filled with hatred and anger. Eve, too, was filled with anger and enmity for the snake, which presumably Adam shared but the text isn’t specific, but Martin was already ready to leave if not angry. So God banishes them from the Garden, to “till the soil from which he was taken,” (3:23) and on one hand this is to make it so that humanity cannot have both the knowledge and immortality, but it also acts as a way to say that humanity has grown enough to leave the house of their childhood, that Jon is ready to leave his chrysalis. The banishment from Eden is also the destruction of Eden, as it no longer has anyone to tend to it, as was Adam's original purpose; Eden, being the only place Adam ever was, his whole world, then being destroyed, even if he was not able to watch it actively happen. Elias, too, forces Jon to destroy the world he has lived in (180), and he passes out, only being able to see the result of him reading the statement. But more so, Adam and Eve were afraid after they knew (3:10).

    They walk through the door of the cottage, and the gates of the Garden, into the world that is now theirs to do with what they will. Adam and Eve have death slowly approaching, but it is not here yet because despite what most translations say, they do not immediately die, death, and the End, is very patient (121). And the biblical couple propagates, and births Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel, and is cursed to become a ceaseless wanderer on Earth, which interestingly is what Jon is doing, slowly wandering towards the Panopticon, but Cain is also marked, so as to allow for him to wander without fear, without being killed despite what others (what others I don’t know) may want (4:12). Jon, too is cursed with life, and he cannot likely be killed by just anything, but the curse says nothing about hurt, which is where how Daisy could hurt him makes sense (179) despite what he might have intuitively thought. 

    Time goes on, and God regretted what she had made, and her heart saddened (6:6), which is right before the Flood. If we stretch to say that the plot will continue to follow this path, and it may due to it being said that if there were a removal of the Fears the Earth would go back to normal, similarly to the Floor getting rid of all but a few select humans. 

    This leaves the questions: who plays the role of Abel? It may well be Lukas, but I’m not sure as Abel also carries farm animals including sheep and perhaps cows as iconography, but he was also meant to be the second of a pair to Cain; if the Flood is to happen, who will be saved? Who will be left to die? The nephilim already have some kind of divinity, which has been sprinkled around with the Fears and Jon and God, but where do they lie?

    One last thing to mention is the usage of the Torah as a way to store stories, as an archive of the history of a people if you will, and archivist[s]... care about compiling experiences [and] collecting the fears of others (180). Records of fear and records of strength in face of adversity. Jon is an archive of fear, but he may well also be an archive of love and strength. 

[tanoraqui]

Some recap and musing on what to expect in the last several episodes of Magnus Archives s4:

From the start, this season has been about choices. Last season, we got pretty definitive answers on a lot of the big worldbuilding questions, most notably in the Gerry Keay Postmortem Seminar on Fear, and the gist of those answers was: everything is terrible. There are terrible Powers channeled by terrible people who want to feed on your fear forever. And you might be one of those people. S4 has added another fun element: the Powers themselves are almost certainly devoid of any human-ish thought; we’re all just idiots reacting to nightmares and everything is pointless but we still can’t stop.

Unless you die. Because somehow, your choices matter. Maybe not on any macro scale, maybe not enough to save your friends, maybe you can’t even make informed choices bc no one fucking tells you anything - because, in part, nobody knows anything. Nonetheless, the crux of this season has not been so much a driving mystery or looming threat (though the Extinction and Peter’s plans are somewhat), but a question for all the characters: given the above terrible world, how do you react? What choice do you make?

The question is mostly for Jon, of course, but building up to the finale, all the other character have been giving us their answers:

149. Georgie: you get out as best you can, try to pull people out after you if they’re willing to make the effort but don’t try for those who aren’t

150. Melanie: stay (bc she’s trapped) but stop furthering the terrible things, no matter what (note: yet unclear what effects to her health may be.) Try to get better, non-supernaturally, even if she can’t fully get out

151. Martin*: work with who/what you need to, become what you need to, but with a greater goal in mind that does matter, and keep all the sacrifice to yourself

152. Helen: accept that you aren’t going to stop terrorizing people and instead just stop feeling guilty, you nerds

153. Daisy: continue to further the terror in the little ways as necessary, but absolutely do not become the monster you could be. Die slowly instead (cost seems apparent)

*I don’t really think this is the last we’re going to hear from Martin of his vhoices before the finale kicks in properly. We only really have Basira left otherwise - and Jon, of course, who may come to some sort of conclusion before everything goes to hell, and may not.

I’m VERY excited for Basira. We’ve had a fair amount of her, but it’s always in regard to others - Jon, Martin - rather than her own choices for herself. I could ramble about her for a while, but tldr I think she’s desperately trying to maintain some control of her life and to that end, applying black-and-white thinking (us vs. them, not monsters vs. monsters) to the world - despite knowing, not even very deep down, that that’s wrong. She’s particularly in denial about how monstrous she’s becoming herself, “Detective” riding a line somewhere between Eye and Hunt. I REALLY hope 154 has some sort of stubborn declaration from Basira about where she’s landing, maybe including breaking down those walls she’s desperately maintaining. Though maybe it will just be her adamant declaration of denial?

And that would leave us 155 for a final statement from Martin and 156 for, oh, probably Jon to decide something just in time for it to be thrown out the window by whatever disaster of Peter Lukas’s they’ll all need to avert. The more I think about it, the more I think Extinction is more or less a red herring and Peter is the real antagonist we’re going to have to kill. The main problem of the next season gets mentioned clearly in the previous season finale, pre-finale a bit - Gertrude’s murder mystery and not!Sasha in s1, Elias and Leitner discussing the Unknowing in s2...Extinction didn’t come up at all at the end of s3, but you know who appeared in the last couple minutes of the finale? Peter Lukas. And the Lonely was the first statement we saw this season, after Jon’s ep121 first big choice.

[aneilert]

The One With Everything [MAG158: Panopticon]

This episode was delayed almost 20 hours, sending the whole early-access-community into a gradually deafening frenzy even before it launched. And then it took off for real. 

The rest of the day has been a bit of a blur, to be honest, and if I’ve done anything not connected to relistening and speculating, then at least I can guarantee that neither my brain nor my heart was involved in it.

It’s hard to be eloquent when faced with this much content. I have raved elsewhere about the quality as well as the sheer quantity of content this episode can boast, but I’d like at least to post my List of Things We Had Expected, Hoped For and/or Dreaded and that happened, were confirmed or who returned in this episode:

1. Tim mention and grief

The fandom has never stopped grieving Tim Stoker, and every once in a while, someone will sigh about how they miss him and how much they wish his death would be at least mentioned on the show. Did he have no impact? Have they forgotten him? Well, canon has spoken: They have not. 

2. Not!Sasha coming back

I can honestly say I never spent much time on the theories that muttered about how she had been enclosed in the tunnels and probably still was there. My bad. I will certainly never again forget the old rule that if someone (or something) doesn’t die on camera (as it were), they’re not dead. (And fuck were those amazing voice distortions!)

3. Leitner’s book coming back

Don’t forget where you put your evil book. It might not be there anymore when you come back for it a year or two later. (The blood on it, btw? Also Leitner. That bit was hilarious. I despise Peter, but he has brought some of the funniest lines this season; «In my defence, it’s still quite funny» is my personal favourite.)

4. Elias escaping prison

We didn’t think anything was keeping him there longer than he wanted to, and we were right; it was just a matter of timing. He would never want to come sneaking back if he could be making an Entrance.

5. Jonah!Elias

Probably the most popular fan theory (apart from those concerning various ships) is canon. And what a deliciously disturbing visual it is; Jonah Magnus’ eyeless body aging in the Panopticon while his eyes do what they have always done: watch over his Institute. Never has Elias sounded more smug and delighted with himself than in this episode, and you know what? Much as I hate him, I’d say he’s earned it.

6. Elias/Peter meeting

Trust fandoms to make feverish ships built out of characters who have never interacted in canon. And boy, do the LonelyEyes shippers feel vindicated today! Not only did the two horrible old men finally interact, but their dynamic was revealed to be exactly that of an old, dysfunctional and probably multiple times divorced couple. Even Jonny said so. 

7. Martin having A Plan / having played Peter

We love Martin and worry about Martin, and we have been extremely worried about his latest signs of being fully on board (sic) with Peter’s nebulous plan. Is he that naïve? Is he that far gone? Or … is he playing Peter? Is he weaving his own little web, like in the previous season, when he managed to play Elias?

The truth, as so often, is a place in between. He has been playing Peter (and God was that an amazing reveal and a heart-rending speech! And Christ was Elias gleeful when he reminded Peter that he had been warned not to underestimate Martin, but that he still did it!), but he has also been joining the Lonely. There is something to be said for being able to keep distance, I guess. Even though it makes me heartsick.

8. Tape with Gertrude’s death and last confrontation with Elias

This is something I have been wanted for some time now. Gertrude is awesome and marvellous and badass and truly scary, and I have been wondering: did her hubris kill her? How did Elias take her down? What happened? 

Well, now we know. Or … we know part of it. Gertrude’s body had three shots fired in it, but the tape only contained one. And the tape was numbered #0182509-A, hinting at possibly a B existing somewhere. Maybe we haven’t heard the last from Gertrude yet?

Also: How very satisfying it was to see that Gertrude had basically the same plan as Martin: Burn some Institute stuff to keep Elias from seeing the real threat! I love what this says about Elias’ complacency and underestimation when it comes to Martin (but I worry what yet another parallel with Gertrude might bode for his future …).

9. Peter taking Martin into the Lonely

The premise of a lot of fics. Can’t wait to see how it plays out in canon.

10. Hunters returning at an inopportune moment

We all, including Jon and the gang, knew they were out there and that it was just a matter of time. Still fun! (Particularly Trevor yelling JONNY BOY!)

11. Daisy going feral

Oh, this is hard; she wanted so much to be free of the Hunt. But honestly: this is why she was brought back, whether she (or Jon) knew it or not: To reconnect with her humanity, and then to give it up willingly to save her friends. And, why not, to have the savage joy of ripping out a few more throats while she’s at it. 

Will Basira honour their promise? Well, that’s a tale for another day, as the story says. For now, let’s just enjoy the amazing sound distortion on Daisy’s breath, her voice and finally her growl. Daisy scared fucking Julia Montouk, and not many can boast that.

12. Jon and Elias talk

It’s been a long time coming. It was not at all what I had expected in any way, but it was amazing. And Jon hardly even noted what Elias was saying or how he gloated, because he was 100 % focused on …

13. Jon following Martin into the Lonely

Of course he did. Of course. He went into the Buried to get Daisy, and he didn’t even like Daisy, and she tried to kill him. Of course there’s no limit anymore to how much he will risk himself for a tiny sliver of hope that he might save Martin.

I worry so for them, though. Martin has refused Peter’s plans, true enough, but he has not refused the Lonely. He has been sliding into Forsaken for Jon’s sake, but he has still been sliding into Forsaken! And Jon’s journey into monsterdom is if anything even more worrying and harder to reverse.They have both been trying desperately and without any real clue as to how to save the world for each other’s sake, but what have they given up along the way? 

Still. Jon clawed his way out of the Buried fuelled by Martin and by the signal from his rib. Who’s to say it might not work a second time?

Also: the one person we didn’t meet who I almost had expected, was Annabelle. Someone must have put this last tape on Jon’s desk – and someone must also, long ago, have given him that lighter that he never can focus on long enough to remember he has. Is there a silvery Web thread connected to it, where it lies in his pocket? Could he be able to follow that thread out again?

I have no idea. I also have no idea how I am supposed to wait for the next two episodes. Or how my head felt before this podcast ate my entire brain. 

[friendlycybird]

Season 3 Reactions - Part 1

I’ve developed a strange association since I’ve begun listening to The Magnus Archives.  I don’t know how it started but somehow, my go-to food choice for listening is, for some reason, Cup of Noodles. Chicken Flavor, Typically.  I don’t understand how this happened, or why, but I strongly associate Cup of Noodle with TMA and I will never understand it, I’ll just go with it. So it is with a Styrofoam cup of cooking noodles set beside my computer that I begin this post.

I’m halfway through season 3, which I was told way back when I was halfway through season one would be the big Lore building season. I just didn’t anticipate how much.  I know so much more now then I did at the end of last season, and I’m fully aware I’ve only scratched the surface. So, as of right now, here’s what I think of the first half of season 3. 

81. Jon’s awareness of his personality flaws dating all the way back to childhood is, on one hand, good. On the other, I’m always wary when I hear a parental figure described as having “done their best” with a troublesome child...I’m never convinced that was a healthy upbringing. 

82. I have a lot of feelings about Martin’s unwavering faith in Jon. Well, unwavering may be a slightly strong word for it but I almost cried when he had that pleased reaction to being told people say he and Jon are close. 

83. I love Georgie. Also, I am of course, not surprised that it was a circus display, of all things, that went wrong in this statement. 

84. I am so happy that Martin’s reading statements now? I mean. I’m not happy for Martin since reading statements is obviously extremely draining and difficult but I love Martin so getting more of him is always good for me, however bad it may be for him. Also, Melanie stepping in to replace Sasha gives me some...mixed feelings. I really like Melanie and I’m glad to have her on board but this...this kinda makes it real, you know? I think this is when that last bit of hope I was still stupidly clinging to, even after Leitner stated point-blank that Sasha was dead, finally died as well. Sasha’s well and truly gone and has been since season one.  It’s Melanie’s turn. 

85. I’ve heard this rhyme before. Taking it to its logical conclusion like this was deeply unsettling. 

86. This episode was a reminder exactly why I didn’t use to listen to TMA at night. I’ve become a lot more flexible on the subject, and yes, I regret it. I fully intended to sleep with the lights on after I listened to this episode. My partner needed it off so she could get to sleep though so I gave in and settled for just not being alone. 

87. I’ve listened to... thirteen episodes after this one. Thirteen. When I listened to this episode, Gertrude’s closing comments were...largely nonsensical to me. All I knew was that something was that she’d been injured somehow, and that this statement suggested an unexpected alliance between avatars and a rushed timeline for The Unknowing. Already a lot of information.  I just went back and read the transcript of her closing statement and...there’s so much here. The connection between Gertrude and Jude Perry was one I picked up on a couple episodes later.  Looking at this now, it seems like a pretty clear who’s-who of the biggest players currently on the board. 

88. I love Martin and I genuinely feel so bad for him with all this.  Recording statements is hard and change is harder and everyone expecting him to know things. 

89. It’s not often anymore I hear a piece of media and have a bone-deep jealousy of the performer. Jude Perry is a character I want to play.  Her dialogue, her *statement*, her power, her...god. She’s just. She might be my favorite antagonist. 

90. Poor Tim. He tried to leave, he actually tried to just pack up and go, and it almost killed him. He hates this place with everything in him and hates himself for working there but he’s not ready to die just to stop. 

91. I can not tell you how taken aback I was by the fact that the first line we hear from Mike Crew is “You’re sure I can’t get you a cup of tea?” The fact that it seems all he really wants is to be left alone with his powers makes him...I can’t properly say sympathetic. Not after episode 75 but close enough that I’m a little sad Daisy killed him.

92. I was...genuinely prepared to come out of this hating Elias. God knows everyone who was in that room did. I don’t though.  Elias comes off to me as nothing so much as the tutor who’s finished his masters thesis on a subject and is sitting down with a first-year undergrad in that subject and trying to explain that yes, I absoloutly could tell you exactly how all of this works but if you don’t learn it for yourself you’ll never pass your tests.  Except, with the stakes turned up to 11. I think about Elias a lot. I don’t...I’m not as attached to him as I am to the others, to everyone else who was in that room...but I like him. He’s...interesting. 

93. Admiral is a good kitty, comforting Jon like that at the beginning. But the exchange toward the end I will never be over is “I don’t want to talk about it.” “Tough.” “Look, I’m moving out anyway, so just...just forget it. I’m out of your life. Alright?” “No.”  - Just. Georgie’s absolute refusal to take Jon’s shit and insistence on actually properly *helping* him - I love her. 

94. I remember we’ve seen this philosophy before, the idea that “The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one.” the idea that the present and the future are not distinct from one another. I can’t remember what episode it came up in before but also the thought that - accepting that? Accepting the...smallness? Of the universe? Of the human experience? Would just kill you where you stand or, if you survive it, stop you from ever feeling fear again? That’s...a powerful statement really. And one I’m not sure I agree with? It’ll take some time to unpack the philosophy here. 

95. Poor Martin. I say that a lot but no really, poor Martin. He’s trying so hard and it’s all just too much. For him to give up on professionalism is just sad. His exchange with Basira at the end is another look into the philosophy it seems the show is building. What do you do in the face of helplessness?  “You make the best of things.” Basira says. Of course, as interested as I am in the overall message of TMA (beyond always carry a fucking flashlight, which was the lesson I took from season 1 and now there’s one clipped to my purse) I’m even more overwhelmed by the fact that the idea of escaping himself never occurred to Martin. 

96. Feels good to get some answers about Breekon and Hope finally. Proper ties to the circus it seems, although the questions from episode 93 all still stand.  TMA is really good at it, at giving you an answer, and it’s definitely an answer you know something you didn’t - and yet, none of your actual questions have been answered. 

97. As if it wasn’t enough that the statement hit a little closer to home than the typical TMA episode as I live in Oregon, so less then 500 miles from whatever the fuck that pit was. Of course, when the statement occurred I was safely down in California but all the same, unnerving.  As if THAT WASN’T ENOUGH. Fucking. Orsinov fucked me up, guys. I was *shaking*.  I don’t know what it is but she is, as a character, well beyond terrifying. I. I don’t have words for how much she scares me. I don’t even know why. I just. Everything about her is just. Fuck. 

98. I quite enjoyed Tim pointing out the problem with the “They can never know I have to project them” bullshit that Jon is prone to. That said, I find it ironic that Tim can, in the space of a page, go from calling the Institute, and by extension the Eye, evil, to saying “ignorance isn’t going to save anyone.” - because that’s what The Eye seems to be. Just knowledge. Observing, Learning, Knowing.  It’s not...at least...I don’t know that it’s as evil as Tim thinks it is.  Ruthless, detached, inhuman, yes. Evil? I’m not at all sure of that. 

99. Another American Statement, this time about The Dust Bowl. We also get names of several more...powers. The Spiral, The Buried, The Hunt. But more then that. We find out that Michael use to be Gertrude’s Assistant!  Which. Is he like Mike? Did something change him? He always felt...older...than that? It would explain why he seems to have so much curiosity toward the archive and the archivist though...

100. and finally, an anthology of sorts, of what happens when people who don’t have The Archivist’s ability try to take statements live. Two things stand out to me about this.  The first? Martin, you absoloute sweetheart why are you trying to pay the woman? She gave you fuckall and might not even have been telling the truth.  And also... “Elias can be quite... ‘protective’ of his people.”  Like. !!!!!!! I mean.  After reading that statement, that whole speech for Jon before everyone got there back in episode 92... after all that and people like Peter Lukas still see Elias as ‘protective’  ...I..you know I think it might be true? His total lack of anger when Melanie tried to poison him and just the fact that he’s trying so hard to prepare Jon? I don’t know. It’s funny, I’m always inclined to think the best of people. With Elias though, I’m not so quick to think there might be anything genuinely good to him, but, I definitely can’t see him as evil either.