#episodes 1-4 tmagp

[missjesselsgh0st]

This is exactly what I got from Alice as well!!

with the caveat that its only ep 4 and characters are still being developed;

im surprised at how cautious alice is

from ep 1 and 2, she comes across as a jokester, as lackadaisical, self-described as 'your cool older sister'- so i didn't expect her to be the one telling Sam to stop poking his nose into things

its not so much a respect for authority (calling lena an 'emotionally distant mother' in ep 1 was just as disrespectful as anything gwen said imo) but there is a fierce undercurrent to all her actions to Stay Out Of Trouble

she is delighted Lena hasn't said more than ten words to her in a year bc it means she is flying under the radar

she wants central IT to look at FR3-d1 but tries to outsource actually asking for it to avoid Colin getting upset with her

she compartmentalises all the weird, spooky and awful things she reads about, she walks away from the cases that are spoken out loud, she does everything in her power to not engage with the work while still doing her job

we don't know (yet) how long Alice has been working in the OIAR, but it is long enough that she knew the 'old guard', it is long enough that she has seen people 'go weird'

either Alice has witnessed or actively been a part of something going wrong or someone digging too deep and being punished for it

ALICE This is not something you go poking around in. Not if you want to keep your job… or your neck.

and now the stakes are even higher for her because the person who could get in trouble here isn't just another co-worker, it's Sam- it's her friend that she got into this job in the first place, and she wants him to stay safe

[lostwords-found]

Okay. Okay, there's a bunch of wildly speculative stuff that I can't quite pin down right now, so for now I'm going to stick with a couple definite points and just a tiny bit of the speculation:

Point 1: The case from TMAGP 4 is dated November 19, 1831, according to its case number. That's only two days before the letter in MAG 127, from Jonathan Fanshawe to Jonah Magnus, that detailed how Albrecht Von Closen died.

Which is interesting not just because of the dates, but because how Albrecht died seems REALLY FUCKING SIMILAR to what we know about what happened to Red Canary. Albrecht took a bunch of books from the Württemberg tomb. He went wildly off the rails. And when he tried to return what he had taken:

"Do I need to tell you what I found, Jonah? Do I need to detail what covered his organs, his bones, the inside of his skin? What clustered together in their dozens, and all turned as one to focus on me as I opened his chest, their pupils constricting in the light, with irises of every hue and color?" (MAG 127)

Point 2: As I said over here, TMAGP 3's case is dated very close to when Anya Villette crossed between realities at Hilltop Road. They're only about three weeks apart, which seems pretty close for coincidence considering Anya's the only character we see definitely make that crossing at any point in TMA. The timing gets closer if you recall that Anya landed in TMA's world two weeks before she went to Hilltop Road in hers.

The tiny bit of speculation that I'm posting for now in a desperate attempt to conserve my sanity:

There's all this emotional/thematic resonance between the case files each voice has read and the characters they each appear to be linked to (if not to be outright), and I've been pretty swept up in that. And still am, won't lie! But I'm starting to suspect that they (or whatever is behind them) are actually searching, very deliberately, for something else entirely, and using potentially significant touchpoints from TMA's world as starting places. And that the cases we're actually hearing, and many of the thematic parallels they contain, may be only tangential to that.

[hikaaa-bi]

all of the episodes were amazing but personal screening was something else! i wasn't exactly scared but i do so adore the open internet format!

[tristansfreezingtheirbrain]

TMAGP SPOILERS!!!!!!

Going from binge watching TMA to having Magnus Thursdays is crazy. It’s like I’m experiencing withdrawals… I have Tmagp 4 memorized… all of my friends have heard of the lady with the zombie husband, the artist with the new editions, the tree man who murdered the love of his life, and the Audrey II violin with a taste for violence. I can’t stop talking about it. The smallest thing can send me into a frenzy of theory’s and rants of conspiracies.

I think I finally understand you, S2 Jon.

[char-lie-spirals]

So, since @gristlebloom-orchid asked, I DO have a Flesh!Graham AU and I finally sat down to put my thoughts about it into something comprehensive, and then into words! So, I figured I might as well make a post about it! Actually this is my 2nd attempt at making it because apparently version 1 was like 2 times too long for a Tumblr post or something?? Messed up :/

Warning for Flesh-typical content, mostly of the dysmorphic kind, along with some Drastic measures to "fix" that

So, the entire AU starts with one simple change - the NotThem doesn't manage to kill Graham when it attacks him. He survives by pure chance, and doesn't come out of the encounter unscathed, but no matter how much blood it spilled, at least he made it out alive!

Except, the whole thing really messes with the way he sees himself. He can barely recognize his own reflection, so many little things about it seem wrong, things he doesn't even know words/names for, but they're all just wrong wrong wrong that's not him!!

The NotThem gets a good meal out of him just... feeling like a Stranger in his own skin, so instead of finishing the job, it hangs around, sometimes pretend-attacks him just so that he locks himself in the bathroom and has nothing to do but stare in the mirror, and it's enjoying this "arrangement" very much!

It doesn't take Graham too long to pick up on the pattern. A few weeks in, he locks himself in the bathroom with nothing but a notebook on him, and ends up trying to write down what exactly bothers him in the reflection.

No matter how hard he tries, the descriptions aren't detailed enough. His face isn't "wrong", it's his eyes and nose and mouth and skin and- no, no, that's still too broad. His eye color seems too dark, and his eyelids are folded differently, and they seem too far apart, and-

The NotThem leaves him alone, satisfied enough, much faster than usual. This is the point where a realization strikes him, and all of his previous thought process gets off-track for a Stranger victim. Because you see, from his perspective, all what he knows is:

There is something herding him around, and he keeps falling for it's tricks. It torments him, and then leaves, seemingly content enough with his fear. Seemingly... fed by it. On top of that, he's barely himself through his own eyes, so to anyone else he's surely unrecognizable, just one slip up away from losing his self entirely, and is he still a person at that point? Is he a person at this point??

He doesn't feel that far off from an animal serving its purpose up until it will get slaughtered. With this one simple trick (overthinking), he has managed to change his fear of the Stranger into a fear of the Flesh! The NotThem hates him!

Does he react impulsively to this realization? Yeah, probably, since his response is to up and leave his flat instantly, only grabbing a few necessities along the way and with not intentions of coming back

He wanders for a while, feeling horrible and shuddering at each reflective surface he passes by because there is something wrong with his body, and it makes his skin crawl. Before he knows it, he's already desperate enough that he'd do just about anything to fix it

He feels he can't really trust anyone to try and fix all those little things without messing them up further, so that's off the table. He'll have to fix them on his own, with his bare hands if he has to. Then again, there's no telling if he won't mess himself up more by trying to fix things!

He decides he needs to get some practice. And some tools. And sure, he's been walking around for a while now, but it doesn't take him all that long to come across the nearest butcher store, and it's open! Just... strangely quiet. Up until,,, oh oops! uh oh!

Yeah, he kind of. Happened to walk into Jared Hopworth's Butcher Store? While the man is in the middle of disposing of a guy for the mafia? And those people were quite clear, no witnesses are allowed to leave, so... he's just stuck here now.

He's scared at first, as one would be upon walking in on a Huge guy torturing some other guy, but then... then he sees the way Jared pulls bones from the man, how he re-shapes them...

If he's going to die here, he might as well ask for help with a few of his own issues. For a start, he's pretty sure his right forearm doesn't look quite right because the bone should be a bit more squashed, and at a different angle, but that's apparently fixable???

Jared's not used to people wanting to be reshaped (this is like early-mid 2006, 6 years before the gym statement takes place, give him time), but he complies and is even more surprised by the honest positive reaction.

He asks if Graham needs help with anything else in his body, and Graham just pulls out his notebook. He knows that much fixing won't be free, but now at least one of his limbs looks his own again, he can't possibly stop now?? Not to mention, some of the bits are easier to replace or add to rather than re-shape, so... if he ends up having to lead a few people to their doom... well. So be it.

With every little change, he becomes more himself, but at the same time, strays further and further from who he used to be. And when he's finally satisfied with his results? He might just keep trying to bring more people to the butcher shop out of habit. :]

That's about it for the story I have properly planned. I do, however, have the idea that once Jared moves on to owning that gym of his, Graham will be Very helpful in finding future customers! All he has to do is approach people and kindly point out the few things he can just see are wrong about them, and then tell them he knows a place where they can fix those!

I'm not sure how/if he'll get involved with the main archives crew - maybe when Jane Prentiss traps Martin in his own home, he reaches a few similar conclusions that Graham did and that draws him in? Maybe he's been looking for the NotThem in case it slips up and can't finish the job properly again, which leads him to the institute? Maybe he happens to be one of the people Jon contacts all the way in season 3, since he managed to escape the Stranger's grasp and that might be useful? Who knows! I certainly don't, not yet!

Also I'm open to feedback on this AU since I don't cover Flesh much in my AUs and writing, so I feel a bit out of my depth? But I figured the body dysmorphia aspect of it could fit the mess I like to make of -selfs and identities when the NotThem is involved and I'm feeling a bit silly :] but I tried not to abandon the more animistic aspects of it? But again if that just Doesn't Work as well as I was hoping it would, like I said I am open to feedback!

[1wn8ure]

You know, the genius part of the TMAGP April Fool’s joke is that there’s several steps to it.

1. Protocol episode?? I thought they were on hiatus!

2. A fluff episode? And it’s an hour long? That seems strange…

3. Oooh, nice intro!

4. ….nice, long, intro?

5. Skip ahead. And ahead. And ahead.

6. Realize the date. Moment of shame for being thoroughly got.

7. Skip through the rest just to double check. It’s all Bonzo.

8. Then: remember this is Jonathan Sims you’re dealing with. And it is just feasible enough for him to hide something somewhere within this mind numbing hour of clown music.

9. You have a decision to make. Either potentially miss out on discovering a secret……. or spend the next hour in auditory hell.

10. Spend the next hour in auditory hell. Second round of gotcha, but at least now you’re sure there’s nothing you missed.

11. ….unless-

To conclude, Jonathan Sims is an evil, evil man and I applaud his manipulation of our own mistrust

[sparrownnax]

so. tmagp and food.

episode 1, lena is insisting that they eat at the building. episode 5, the guy was "touchy" about tom not taking the popcorn and it was apparently Really Good Popcorn. episode 6, lena again with the mini donuts "must be consumed at work" or whatever. i don't recall if there was anything in episodes 2-4 someone back me up here

[ur4niumgl4ss]

Okay now that its not 10 pm for me after a long trip! I've got a few notes on the new magnus protocol ep (29) as a czech person because there are some tidbits in the context that may be good to mention :3c

Spoilers for TMAGP ep 29 below the cut!

First of all, I am super excited abt the rep no matter what. I think the base is actualy pretty solid and i love that they used the locks as a part of it because man thats such a fun aspect of Prague culture to turn into horror.

1. Idk if Andrej was intended to be, but his descriptors + where he appeared STRONGLY remind me of a Vodník, a slavic folk creature usualy taking the form of a man with a pipe in messed up patchy clothes. They are known to manipulate water, drown their victims and then keep their souls inside cups in their underwater lairs. They can also shapeshift into catfish or carps! This overall lines up Strongly with, yknow, the ep where a guy got brutally drowned in Prague.

2. Prague is known for its Alchemy! Which is a strong theme in TMAGP. Rudolph II Habsburg also used to reside here. One of his main alchymists was none other than Edward Kelley (sound familiar? Wink wonk)

3. The Sex Museum is a real place. There is also a waffle shop in Prague that sells waffles shaped like genitalia. Just a funny side note.

4. While I appreciate the attempt from the team to include czech language in the episode. Please please know czech has a completely different structure to english and a lot of the pronounciation was butchered. Mainly the key (lmao) phrase "Odemknout své srdce" is pronounced differently. Also it translates more as "to unlock your heart", the correct phrasing should be "Odemkni své srdce" aka "unlock your heart".

5. "Zamčené muzeum" also doesn’t translate as "The lock museum" but "the locked museum" which could either be a really cool spooky detail that the place isn't meant to be accessed since the statement giver is obviously a person that doesn’t speak czech on a native level or a slip up, "the lock muzeum" would translate as "muzeum zámků"

Either way??? This ep went hard, i am so excited for next week. Its on the train yall.

[ace-disgrace-on-the-case]

GUYS I THINK I FIGURED OUT THE FILING SYSTEM FOR THE STATEMENTS IN FR3-D1

Ok so. so. As I am rapidly beginning to figure out the ARG stuff might just be important to our understanding of the overall story of TMAGP. And so I started digging through all the wonderful detective work the folks who participated did (their data and thus a decent bit of the ARG are still preserved). I'd like to draw your attention to one file in particular (I might make more posts with more ramblings as I think about more stuff but for right now):

klaus.xls is an excel sheet that they were able to dig up in the ARG which seems to contain partially corrupted data regarding, to my best guess, incidents. I was particularly interested in this file because that name came up in episode 4's transcript as the name of the person Lena had a disagreement with/seemed to be threatening. I have thoughts about this as well but it will be a separate post.

This data might actually be internal to the OIAR, and if what I'm guessing is correct, then this data actually corresponds to FR3-D1 entries! Using this, I think I've been able to dissect the case names (for example, we're going to use episode 1's magnus institute case)

CAT23RAB2155-10042022-09012024

A lot of the information on the leftmost data cluster seems to correspond to what's in the table, so:

CAT23: Category 23. There were only a few categories in the Klaus data that weren't 1, 2, or 3 so I'm guessing inputting multiple numbers means this incident could either be category 2 or category 3 (or someone thought this case needed a very very high category shared by almost nothing else).

RAB: Rank A/B. This we know means the ranking is either A or ranking B. I have not, however, managed to determine what the difference between Category and Rank is, so if someone else has thoughts on that I'd love to hear them. Based on other case titles the R is not always part of this section, only in cases where multiple rankings are specified. This also places this case very high in the ranking system, as most cases in the Klaus data appear to be rank C or B (with only a single S and two As, one of which is a dual A/B).

2155: This section is always a four digit code. It corresponds to the TSHU column of the Klaus data, which is also always a four digit code. If I had to speculate, I believe this is the internal code for the case category (which are all laid out in that giant binder on Sam's desk). I wish I knew specifically what each one meant but I figure we'll have to watch the numbers and see.

10042022: It took me a minute on these number strings, I'll be honest. There's nothing approximating them in the Klaus data, but then I noticed that the second string contains "2024" at the very end in every statement thus far recorded. Then it dawned on me: these are dates. This first string corresponds to report submission date, I think: this report was submitted to the OIAR on the 10th of April 2022. This then means that:

09012024: Corresponds to the date of filing. Sam filed this case on the 9th of January, 2024. This also allows us to go through and see that the episodes seem to be following the time passing between episodes for us almost 1:1, with most cases being a few days before when we receive them.

[wyvspike]

123 TMAGP (CAT#) Theory

So I haven't seen my theory about how the CAT# works on here so I'm not sure if anybody else has noticed this but I figured I should share! I'm pretty sure that whether a statement is labelled 1-2-3 defines what kind of content is paranormal in the episode.

EDIT: Spoilers below the cut

Here's my spreadsheet ordered by CAT# ("code" in the last column):

I noticed that when I put the statements in order of "code", the main focus of each episode had something in common. Looking at statements coded "1" I noticed that they all had to do with a person. Episode 6 -- Needles, Episode 10 and 12 -- Bonzo, and episode 1 "reanimation" was the zombie guy. Okay, so statements labelled with a 1 seem to have something to do with people.

Next set, the 2s. Episode 5 -- the cinema. Episode 7 -- Hilltop Centre. Episode 8 -- Pennine Tower. These episodes all have to do with place that are paranormal by nature.

Finally, the 3s: episode 2 -- a tattoo. Episode 4 -- the slaughter violin. Episode 9 -- bone dice. Episode 13 -- the app. These episodes all have an "artefact" of some kind, whether that be a physical object or something literally tattooed into someone's body, that doesn't seem to matter. It's some kind of thing or object.

Of course, as we've noticed, CAT#s have appeared as 1 / 2 / 3, but also as groups of numbers, such as 23 in episodes 1 and 11, and on the Klaus spreadsheet as 12 and 13. This indicates that statements with multiple types of paranormal presences can have multiple IDs. In the case of episode 1 "transformation," the Magnus Institute is the paranormal place, and the box might be the object. In episode 11, the graveyard and the tattoo are the two major appearances.

Here's my spreadsheet with who / where / what

I just thought it was cool! And the episodes seem to align with my theory the majority of the time (the only one i'm mildy uncertain about is episode 3, because that implies that the reason the guy turned into a tree was because of the place but it's been a while since i listened to that episode so maybe it makes sense lol).

[trans-jon-rights]

Let's adress the case numbers in TMAGP !

Spoiler warning up to episode 19

Here are all the cases by categories and ranks :

CAT 1 :

MAGP 1 (Case 1) : 'Some of him' // RBC

MAGP 6 : Needles // RB

MAGP 10 : Bonzo // RB

MAGP 12 : Bonzo // RB

MAGP 14 : Snakes // RB

MAGP 15 : Lady Mowbray // RB

MAGP 16 : Ink5oul // RB

CAT 2 :

MAGP 18 : Corpse talking // RC

MAGP 19* : Newton's science project

MAGP 1 (Case 2)* : Red Canary // RAB

MAGP 3 : Guy who becomes a tree // C

MAGP 5 : Voyeur // RB

MAGP 7 : Charity shop // RC

MAGP 8 : Brutalist Architecture // RBC

MAGP 11* : 'The deep will care for his bones' // RC

CAT 3 :

MAGP 17 : Weirdly successful Double // RC

MAGP 1 (Case 2)* : Red Canary // RAB

MAGP 2 : Tattoo // RB

MAGP 4 : Murder Violin // C

MAGP 9 : Murder Dices // RB

MAGP 11* : 'The deep will care for his bones' // RC

*The Red Canary Case and the 'Deep' Case are labelled as CAT23, so I put them in both CAT 2 and CAT3

MAGP 13 : Murder Crypto // RB

MAGP 19* : Newton's science project

Okay ? Okay.

*MAGP 19 is labelled as CAT13, so I put it in both 1 and 3.

So now I think we can say each category have a thing :

CAT1 is for 'living' manifestations (that used to be human/animal or not)

CAT2 is for specific places (MAGP 3 is a garden and MAGP 5 is the cinema)

CAT3 is for artefacts/non-living manifestations.

About MAGP 1 (Case 2) and MAGP 11, I think they are in both categories because it got to do with both. For Red Canary it was both the Institute and the box he took from there, and for the other it was both the tattoo and the ocean/cliff (unsure if its one or the other).

You could argue that MAGP 5 got more to djo with the movie than the cinema, and I would agree ! However, I think the movie is also part of the cinema, in some way. The whole place was creepy, and if it was only the movie, it could have been done with simply a DVD or something. The fact that it was in a cinema was intentional.

For the ranks, I think it's pretty much self explanatory : RA to RC to categorise the levels of danger.

What is concerning about it however is that :

A) The Institute is ranked AB, which is the highest on this list for now.

B) All 'living' manifestations are ranked B or below, which means that our heroes would be pretty fucked should they encounter a rank A.

C) Some cases (namely, MAGP 3 and 4) are simply labelled 'C' without it being an actual rank. I could pass it off as a typo, but were talking about Jonathan Sims here, folks.

Another theory I have is that the O.I.A.R only handle B-ranked Externals, and eliminate those whose rank is higher. We'll need to verify that once the next External turns up, but until then I'm running with that. Bonzo and the Lady are both indicating that.

The case of MAGP 17 is a bit more tricky. My current theory (see the final comments on this post) is that whatever caused it was the therapy room the subject was in.

MAGP 1.1 and MAGP 18 are a bit similar in the kind of manifestations I think, as both has to do with dead people talking, though the MAGP 1.1 one is seemingly more dangerous.

Here, that was my rambling. Have a good one <3

[theendorisit]

we have 4 more episodes of Season 1 TMAGP

my prediction is that season 1 will end with the cliffhanger of Lena talking into a phone

“We need to enact The Protocol.”

[lostwords-found]

Oh god. Okay. SO. The Protocol red string board is going places and I am chewing drywall.

Note: I've been working on this post for a few days and nothing in here involves episode 27--I don't talk about episodes before they're out for everyone, so no worries about patreon spoilers.

Quick recap of some suspicions about Protocolverse I've written about previously:

1. I think this universe runs on a kind of balance of good & bad luck (or suffering and happiness), and that it's possible--under certain circumstances--to pawn the bad stuff off on other people and keep the good that arises to balance it out. I suspect a big piece of Protocol's overarching plot is going to be about the different ways people go about trying to come out ahead in that bargain.

2. I think some alchemists figured out how to attach bad luck and/or other similarly abstract ills into physical form.

3. I think they were trying to use this to cast out bad luck to other worlds (including that of Archives) and get good luck back. I think this is how the Fears got to Archives in the first place.

4. I think the books and coin in the tomb from MAG 23 got there this way, probably with the involvement of Protocolverse Albertus Magnus. The year on the coin -- 1279 -- is the year before Albertus Magnus died.

We'll come back to that stuff in a bit.

There's an apparently minor detail that was nagging at me recently: in TMAGP 22 Hans Berger specifically mentions having switched to silver wires in his experiments, and this change enabling his breakthroughs. It's through these silver wires, implanted directly into Herr Schmidt's brain, that he later receives the desperate telegraph signals that appear to be from a previously unheard part of Schmidt's brain.

By itself, that wouldn't ping any alarms. Silver wires are in fact what Berger used in real life; silver's highly conductive so if you're trying to read electrical impulses from the brain, probably a good choice of material. But the writing is very deliberate about mentioning them, and coming only three episodes after another historical letter about a scientist also working with silver -- Newton's tree in TMAGP 19 was a fantastical variant of a Tree of Diana, dendritic silver -- Berger's wires start feeling like maybe they're not just there for accuracy.

If, as it appears from Newton's work, consuming silver in certain forms can cause a new kind of consciousness to arise--and also, uh, turn you into a tree--what might implanting silver wires in a human brain do? Is the silver contacting or awakening something that was already there, or is it putting something there? Was that desperate OUT OUT OUT message really from half of Herr Schmidt's mind--or from something in the wire itself that was trying to get out?

That would be weird though. I mean--what, Protocolverse silver's inherently evil or something? But then I got back to thinking about alchemists trying to transmute things into precious metals. Gold's the one we mostly think of, but silver was also of interest. Which in real life is where you got stuff like the tree of Diana--alchemists thought that was a precursor to the philosopher's stone.

So... then I start thinking, if I was right in my other post that alchemists were figuring out how to put evil / misfortune / suffering into a physical form that could be used to transfer it somewhere else, what if silver was involved in that? What if they were either turning misfortune into silver, or trapping it in silver that already existed?

What if they did that, meaning to send it away, and some of that silver made its way into use?

Then I started looking some stuff up.

Did you know silver used to be mined in the Black Forest, in Germany? One mine there had a name meaning "Blessing of God." That mine dates back to the 1200s--Albertus Magnus's lifetime.

Did you know that starting in the 1600s, the G strings on high quality violins were typically wrapped in silver wire?

Do you know why movies are called the silver screen? In the 1920s, literal silver was used to make cinema screens. This fell out of favor as other cheaper designs were worked out, BUT in the 2000s silver has come back into use a bit because it works well for 3D movies. I would not be surprised at all if the screen that Tom went to see Voyeur on had silver in it.

Did you know that in the early 90s there was a specific plant in the UK that manufactured CDs covered with a layer of silver? This later turned out to cause some problems as the silver reacted with sulfur (oh hai, another alchemically significant substance!) and slowly degraded the discs. In real life these CDs were manufactured up through 1993. Per TMAGP 10, Mr Bonzo made his debut in '96 (the interview is from 2021 and is the 25th anniversary of Mr Bonzo's first appearance). The two times Mr Bonzo has appeared in person he's been summoned by playing a CD of his theme song. I wonder where and when those CDs were manufactured...

Did you notice the caterer Lady Mowbray hired in TMAGP 15 mentions that his company did silver service events? Betcha that particular feast was served on literal silver platters.

...I'm starting to think it's a really good thing ink5oul didn't end up tattooing Gwen with that silver spoon.

Okay. This all seems like there's maybe a theme here, but let's take a step back. Some materials have just been used for a lot of things throughout history; it could be coincidence. IF the above is actually on the mark--IF these were all intentional majorly-plot-relevant inclusions of Things Wot Involve Silver--where else would we expect to see this cropping up in the story? Because the topic of silver has barely been raised directly at all; I'm extrapolating wildly here, mostly on the basis of a couple episodes.

Well, here's a thought: silver was used in everyday currency for a long, long time. If there was a bunch of Evil Silver floating around surely someone would have stuck it into some money at some point. "Ill fortune" in the most literal possible sense, or whole new meaning to the phrase "bad penny" -- there are various bad jokes there that more or less write themselves. Though whoever was doing this would have had to to mark the bad money somehow so that they could avoid it...

Hey, um, remember how the OIAR's offices are in the building that housed the Royal Mint for like 150 years?

Actually, while we're on that subject, here's a funny little tidbit: Before it moved to Royal Mint Court, the Royal Mint was in the Tower of London for several centuries--its first home after being centralized. Wanna guess what year the Royal Mint was established in the Tower of London? Go on. Guess.

1279.

The same. Fucking. Year. As was on that coin waaaaaay back in MAG 23. Which was a thing I had noticed a while back when looking at the Germany eps, but I hadn't been considering a "what if some metals can be Bad" angle at that point and had just written it off as an odd coincidence.

Which I mean, it's probably still just a weird coincidence, I'm building this entire elaborate framework out of assumptions on top of assumptions on top of -- hang the fuck on, let me look something up real quick, I've gotta be misremembering--

I'm not misremembering! Isaac Newton was the Master of the Royal Mint for the last 30 years of his life.

Cool. Okay. So that's--hm. I think I'm genuinely starting to convince myself none of this is a coincidence.

Then I start poking through Wikipedia, and you wanna know some other interesting things? One, Newton himself apparently saw his work in economics as a continuation of his alchemical work. And two, during his tenure at the Royal Mint, he put limits on how much gold people were allowed to exchange for silver, and this led to a silver shortage. Because apparently, when other countries imported goods to them, the British paid for those goods in silver coins. When they exported goods to other countries, though?

They would only take payment in gold.

And there it is--there's the exact outsourcing scheme I was looking for. Stick all your suffering and pain and misfortune into your money, use that money to pay other countries, and get only the good stuff back. That... sounds really believable for the British Empire, honestly.

So I really think I might have some decent guesses on the historical stuff at play here. That only goes just so far though, because these days, silver doesn't really get used in coinage much.

Know where it does get used? Circuits. Electronics.

Computers.

If I'm right, whatever machinery the Mint used to store the intangible evils of the world in physical coinage for exportation, I would guess the OIAR is now using to instill all of those evils into FR3-D1 instead. One all-containing artifact of misfortune.

What the endgame is there, what the government gets out of it, I'm still not 100% sure--but I can't help thinking about Jonah's line in MAG 160 that Jon is not the Archivist but the Archive. That he is the record of fear, the physical embodiment of it.

There's people wanting to outsource absolutely fucking everything to AI these days, I guess.

SO THAT'S BEEN MY WEEK this is what my brain does when I have to drive all the way across the US alone, apparently. How are you all?

[alice-apparently]

I think Agent / Subject / Catalyst are the three categories [CAT 1-3] in the case numbers.

Bear with me.

So aside from the dates, the case numbers are split in 3 parts, right:

CAT 1-3 (rarely combination of 2 numbers) -> category

*R (-> rank) A/B/C (sometimes combination of 2 letters from ABC)

DPHW (4 digit number)

* the case numbers for episodes #3 and #4 don't have the R for some reason

This is very much taking into account/based on the stuff from the ARG klaus.xls document btw, which has these exact 3 columns & features some of the episodes' cases where these match up exactly with the case numbers. [if you're interested, it's #2 line 80; #3 line 64; #5 line 75; #7 line 77]

Both category and rank are divided into 3 options, with some exceptions of cases having 2 applied at the same time. So now episode 9 gave us another nice group of three. And I thought, hm, maybe those ideas, Agent, Subject, and Catalyst, could match up with one these as a classification of the cases. And I think it does.

Based on the cases we had so far, I think category 1 is Agent, category 2 Subject, and category 3 Catalyst.

In my tmagp paranoia document with all my notes, I made a table sorting the cases according to the categories for a better overview and to be able to maybe spot similarities:

Let me explain what I think the classifications mean.

1 - Agent.

That's the most self-explanatory one I think. I'm not the first to make the comparison between avatar and agent, and not the first to point out that Needles acts like a TMA avatar.

Agent then is an active purveyor of fear/terror. someone deliberatly acting in such a way to spread it, to scare people. It is the person themself directly and possibly willingly causing the 'unsettling experiences' and spreading fear. Needles is the prime example.

It doesn't work quite so well with #1A, but I'd say the "he" that she interacts with acts as an agent, with him luring her to the cemetary and the unsettling way he is described there, but more importantly, with the laughter that follows, that he seems to enjoy what's happening, her fear. Her fear that's caused by him.

2. Subject.

Subject I would describe with "being subjected to something" or that "something just happens". A subject to fear. Maybe as a victim of sorts, but that's not quite it. Anyway, I think the cases in category 2 group together easily:

What's interesting is that all of the cases feature in some way a person entering a space and being affected by it/by something in a certain space. Or at least it is centred on a certain space. they are subject(ed) to the space.

In #1B it's the TMI ruins, in #3 the garden, in #5 the cinema, in #7 the charity store, and in #8 the service station. The person in #8 himself blames it explicitly on the place, the architecture, on the space he entered.

3. Catalyst.

Catalyst, I would argue, means a moveable object that works to spread fear. That is, a person with a certain object--or artifact, if you will--working together: it's a person with the object as a catalyst, it's the object through a person spreading fear.

To put it more concisely, it's cases of a person carrying an artifact and through them, allowing the artifact to affect other people.

We have the violin and the dice in episodes #4 and #9. In both cases the people who pick them up spread harm/misfortune by using them. In both cases the person first harms themself before learning they can/how they can instead spread it to others.

In episode #1B, which was in both category 2 and 3, RedCanary takes that wooden box/old wooden thing home with them. And it's that box, taking that box, that's linked to what's happening to them. Or what they do afterwards. Because we don't actually know what happens to RedCanary or what RedCanary goes on to do afterwards. We've kinda assumed that they just die, but maybe not? Anyway, my point is, old wooden box thing = artefact/catalyst.

Episode #2 is the biggest hole in this theory I think. Without knowing I probably would've put it as category 1, agent, with Ink5oul as the agent. But instead it's rather that the tattoo acts as a catalyst, through the artist. So far it rather has seemed to affect the artist herself rather than other people through her, except for the confrontation with her roommate. But, as @amelie-isnt-french pointed out, we don't know what she moved on to do afterwards. Maybe it would go on to affect other people. Maybe she just hasn't learned how to do so yet.

Or maybe affecting other people is not even a criteria at all. Maybe it's enough that the artifact comes into contact with a person and affecting them.

I'm aware that this theory isn't without flaws; both cases in episode #1, and esp. #2 don't fit into this as well as the others. But I think it still works.

That being said, I can go even more crazy.

You know that other ARG document, the chdb.xlsx, with the list of the gifted children tested at the Magnus Institute, the one that features Sam and Gerry, the one that's possibly the one Sam mentions in episode #8 through which he found Gerry.

Now my question on looking at this document, or you know, one of my questions, was what does the chdb stand for. I figured db might probably be database. the c could be children, because that's who were tested and listed. but the h? I had the stray thought at some point that it might be host. which I found very unsettling, but also didn't really work as a whole, like "Children Host Data Base"? nah.

But what if the C is not for Children. What if it's for Catalyst. Because Catalyst Host Data Base suddenly makes a lot of sense. We know that the TMAGP Magnus Institute is interested in "supernaturally active items" as the episode 9 statement giver tells us. They have been collecting artefacts/catalysts. Cf. also that old wooden box RedCanary found in its ruins. So they might have in the children been looking for potential hosts for them.

[gaiusgoose]

I don’t think we’re seeing Smirke’s 14.5

First, I would like to point out that a lot of the point of season 4&5’s “mechanics” was that the fears are not really 14, or 15 but fingers and toes and eyes and teeth of Fear, the singular entity.

For a time it is helpful, understanding how these things function, like Jon’s smiting or how The Web does The Web things, but that’s like understanding that the nose smells and the brain thinks. Really, it’s a singular thing that humans have tried to understand and simplify, abstract and restrict. It’s wholly possible that in tmagp

Now notice how the current few statements have manifested:

First episode we have some more, fairly usual statements:

- the resurrection one, which I think we can all agree would fall into Stranger + Terminus

- Canary, who is definitely, solidly, Beholding focused.

Yet notice that the resurrection one has a blending of fear subtypes, without any distinct dominant type emerging (imo). See how Canary is a subtlety different interpretation of Beholding then we got before, focusing on a fear of the possibility of being seen and ridiculed and all that, while more classic ones are actually about being watched, the action is done. Overall, these points are stretches, and could fit within tma easily, but I think these subtleties are indicative of what is to come

Because next episode, about the artist, is really confusing from a tma perspective. We start with The Eye, focusing on self image then being streamed to the world, yet moving onto a Flesh esque mania of self reformation, but if they’re becoming something of an avatar (generating that fear in others such as their roommate, not themselves, I have another post on this) then they’re probably closer to becoming a part of the stranger. Essentially, the paints are muddled and we can’t just look at it and say “blue”.

Then with about the same level of muddling is episode 3. He’s clearly spiraling the entire time, delusional and fearful. I won’t chalk up his fear of being caught to the eye, that’s probably not strong enough nor supernatural enough to count imo. But as the statement progresses, he becomes more and more corruption + flesh. Corruption and flesh are often packaged together, even Jane Prentiss was the Flesh Hive, it’s honestly quite hard to escape The Flesh, but again like the resurrection from episode 1 it’s muddled to the point where no fear is dominant.

Finally notice the state of Chester and Norris. While I’m hesitant to jump to any conclusions about them, because we know next to nothing, but I suspect they’re some of the first cases of the stated theme of the show “what makes someone a person.” They’re clearly sentient, but they’re also clearly not wholly human anymore. Are they still people? Dunno.

I suggest that in tmagp we might be seeing emergence of a different categorization. I suspect they’re going to focus much more on identity and the loss of it, like tree man and the artist losing themselves.

So uh yeah

[tryyda]

tmagp spoilers

this will be a compilation of all the glitch sounds (happen when a character is lying and are not in the transcript) that I can find. I will write down the episode, the time stamp and a quote from the podcast, the word that had a glitch in it will be bold and italic. everything will be under the cut. I'll keep updating.

EP 1 - 04:27-04:28

TEDDY: We'll stay in touch, right?

ALICE: ...'course.

EP 1 - 06:24-06:28

LENA: Enjoying the party?

TEDDY: Colin was just saying how much of a blast he's having, isn't that right?

LENA: Oh, really?

COLLIN: Uh, sure. (this one was much louder than the others)

EP 1 - 22:48-22:49 (I'm not sure about this one)

GWEN: Surprise, surprise.

LENA: I'm sorry to put it so bluntly, but I really do fear your ambition is misplaced here. (it sounded a lot like the other ones but this was in Lena's office and the sound quality was different so I'm not sure)

EP 1 - 35:58-35:59

GWEN: Sam? You okay?

SAM: Uh – yeah.

EP 4 - 04:10-04:20

ALICE: This is not something you go poking around in. Not if you want to keep your job... or your neck.

SAM: Okay, okay! I get it. Consider me scared straight.

EP 5 - 04:25-04-28 this isn't a usual glitch sound more of a rise of buzzing and stating and glitching sounds.

LENA: I am certain that should he fine his responsibilities unmanageable, he will request assistance. Or resign of course.

EP 7 - 05:38-05:41

ALICE: Why do you ask?

CELIA: Just figuring it all out.

EP 7 - 17:38-17:40

ALICE: Listen, if you need to step out for some air–

CELIA: No, I'm fine, really.