#er been scared by tma

[future-crab]

I struggle with horror movies because I’m kinda squeamish and easily scared, but horror in non-visual media (books, podcasts) is great because if anything gets too gruesome I just go, “Welp. Not imagining that.” and move on.

[the-wardenn]

*pulls up with a calliope and starts playing the Unknowing music from tma*

"You Have Been Invited To The Dance! We Cannot Wait For When Everyones Face Is Not A Face And They Try To Reach With Things They Know Not Of And They Try To Run But They Dont Know What Legs Are Anymore And All They Know Is They Are/Are Not Them And They Are Scared"

"When It Finally Starts And The World Unravels But Never Twists We Hope To See You There! :o)"

-🎪🎪🎪

"...er. I'm gonna....politely decline."

[doofus-and-dragons]

Incase anyone reads these digital journal things I post:

TMA 159 & 160 SPOILERS

If you don't read these, ignore the green text lmao

159:

Here we go fellas, into the lonely

SHUT UP PETER THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSNIESS

Damn this man is in your element I'm going to cry

Jon continue being an ass to him its the only thing keeping me from crying

Be confident

He is real he wants to save you Martin please

No don't fall into it please

"I really loved you, you know?" My heart is shattering.

MARTIN MAY NOT BE STANDING, BUT HE'S ON HIS HANDS AND KNEES. HE'S NOT FALLEN YET

Jon don't fall too!

...oh nice play jon! Very proud of you!

Compell him!!! Do it! Spit it out, you old bastard!

I don't blame them for leaving damn

Wait, so who had Evan??? Wasn't he a Lukas? Was it one of his sisters? I know it's not that important cause he's dead, but I need to know.

Ok probably one of those distant relatives

Peter, you were literally bred to be an avatar

Yeah, until you fed them to the Lonely

Gertrude scares me too

Was he trying to build a fear factory or something?? Damn.

WAIT THATS WHERE THAT ONE GUY-George?-MOVE TO

OOOOOH he built it.

...Martin was a bet????

That's depressing. I've been there tho (the bet not the bet-er)

The Bet: Martin. The prize: John

YES GO ELDRICH MODE ON HIM JON

Haha he exploded

No Martin he does need you!

If nothing else I do

HE'S BACK!!! MY BOY!!!

160:

Well that title isn't ominous or anything

...

Well, more than usual

Unpacked? Where are they now?

OH OH IS THIS THE SAFE HOUSE ARC

YAY

Awww he's got snackies

Awww the good cows comment

My heart

This is so fluffy

Wait who is this what the fuck

What's going on

There's static what's going on

WHAT

Jonah what are you planning

Fuck you fuck you fuck you

I'm so very afraid

I hope someone kills Jonah Magnus for good. Please dears do get rid of him.

Pretty please with a cherry on top?

So you were helping Jon to make sure you got your ritual done first?

No, my guess is Gertrude liked humanity better than power.

Hey, I would go on a vicious rampage against the forces of fear if one killed my cat too

The fears are like a wheel then. To reference Jon: whereas each fear is a color, the fears need to be together in a color wheel.

What's the thing about the Archivist???

Oh shit Jon's a walking archive. Damn

He's literally an encyclopedia. He's a walking fear encyclopedia

Leave him out of this he's been through enough.

JON WAS MARKED BY THE WEB?!

Wait! Mr.Spider! Of course! An encounter with a fear never leaves you alone!

The web, the eye, the stranger, the spiral. We're up to four.

WAIT DAISY WAS HIS LINK TO THE HUNT

MIKE TO THE VAST

JUDE TO THE DESOLATION

I'm still shook about the slaughter thing

Not that it happened, more that I missed it some how

Tim was pretty much the End. That's 7 I think.

Oh god

Is martin the lonely??

John literally walked into the flesh and the buried so

9

Right. That damn sun

10

Oh ok the lonely mark was Peter

Leave Martin alone, Magnus. Leave Jon alone, too! You've been enough of an ass!

You're not going to make things any better! You're going to make things so bad for his mental health! Stop!

What is he repeating?!

Magnus!?!

This is bad!!!!!

No stay where you are!!!

Don't do any of that!!!

Jon?!?!

Oh fuck...

Jon it wasn't your fault you litterally couldn't stop.

Laughing so you don't cry, been there.

DAMN WHAT A FINALE

[imchoosingnottoexist]

The Sims Epilogues #1. Eyes Closed. A TMA continuation fanfic. Spoilers ahead

Statement of Yara Pendleton, regarding two strange men taken into the hospital in which she works. Statement extracted direct from subject, March 29th, 2021

Statement Begins

I've been a nurse at London Central Hospital for 5 years now. Most nights recently I've been stuck in the ER. I don't like the job but I've become so invested in it now that I really feel like I can't stop. I hate how long the nights are, so many people treat you so terribly when you work in any medical field, but especially in the Emergency Room. There hasn’t been a day I haven’t been harassed or screamed at, or whatever other terrible things people can think to do. I guess that’s what I signed up for, still, it doesn’t make the job any less difficult.

But if I'm being truly honest, I keep the job because I like to know what's happening. People underestimate how much the people around them hear when they speak, or how what they wear says about them. Patients and even coworkers will say things so loudly when they don’t think anyone is listening.

My coworkers say I'm a lurker or a gossip. But once they start talking to me I guess that doesn't really matter to them. I know sometimes they judge me for my nosiness but since I listen to them when they have problems to spew I don't think they really actually care. But I always remember what they tell me. I take it in. I don't know if they really know how much I remember, I hope they don't. Truthfully even I find my gossip collection odd at times, but I've been like this for as long as I can remember and I'm not going to stop any time soon. So it is what it is.

I've picked up some genuinely good pieces of gossip over the years. I know who's cheating on their partners, who's stealing from work. That's not to say nothing escapes my view but what I see is very valuable, at least to me. Frankly, I think some of my colleagues are genuinely scared of me at times. But sometimes fear is very helpful in the workplace so truly, I don't mind.

You see a lot of disgusting things in a hospital, and you see a lot of brutal things in a hospital. But it's rare I ever see something I would describe as "paranormal". You see, I've never been much of a believer in the paranormal, never had a reason to. Usually, it's easy to explain away whenever something odd happens. I get a bunch of crazed patients that yell of monsters, stalkers, and things that go bump in the night, but I know they're just sick and need help. That their demons are internal instead of something else stalking them.

It wasn't until just a couple of weeks ago I encountered someone I truly can't explain. It was the 25th of March, a late night. Unremarkable, the floor was quiet for the first time in what seemed like months and you just know when it's that quiet that something terrible is going to happen. But I didn't just have that suspicion that something bad would happen as one would usually have on a night like that.. no, I knew that something bad was going to happen. It's going to sound stupid, but I felt this tension in the air that was ever so slowly expanding. Like the air kept getting heavier and heavier and eventually all that tension would burst into something terrible. It scared me to think about.

It was around 10:30 when the men arrived. Two of them were on stretchers. Paramedics said it was like they had just appeared out of nowhere, the men had no identification, and they had both looked… out of place. I remember how the room felt when they came in, it was like I was in a dream. When the doors opened to let in the stretchers the air felt lighter, the tension had burst and the men were what it left. Everything felt a little less right. Like life was suddenly not what it usually was, what it should have been. These two men were not meant to be here, I knew they weren’t meant to be here, and it was as if the world knew too.

The first man immediately caught my attention. Despite all the investigating I've done to him over the past several days… I still can't tell you what he looked like. He had been taken in for a stab wound in his abdomen. The blood soaked into his clothes but stopped flowing by the time he arrived. As he was wheeled closer to me almost immediately I was hit with the smell of fire and gas. He smelled as if he had been caught in a natural gas fire, but his body lacked any burns indicative of such a disaster.

I remember he had scars all over his body, little pockmarks like he had been bitten by hundreds of bugs, they made me feel itchy underneath my skin. Looking upon them for a split second I felt the hordes of tiny creatures inching their way under my skin, and it hurt terribly. I felt evil behind those pockmarks, a crawling, rotting evil. One that I think could’ve corrupted me if I let it.

I kept searching him and I found that there was an old, deep scar on his throat. I couldn't tell you how I knew, but I knew it was from a knife. When I looked at the scar I knew that it was from an attack, I could see the rage that went into it, the brutal sharpness, and… I could feel the man's fear… I felt my heart beat faster when I saw it.

One of his hands was burned heavily, and the sight of it made me recoil. In a moment my entire body began to feel uncomfortably hot, like standing near a fire for too long. There was a terrible heat that came off of it even though it had obviously been there for a while. I don't know what could've caused it, in all my years I hadn't seen anything like it, it looked like a candle that had been chucked into a fire, no situation could've done that and only burned one hand. I didn't dare to touch the thick melted scars that coated it.

The second man is even harder to remember. There was nothing defining about him at all, other than the expression of sadness cemented into his face. I looked at him for no less than 20 minutes and I still don't know what he looks like. Thinking about him fogs my mind, clouds it. He was cold… so cold that the air around him became colder with him in it. He was much colder than he should've been, the air outside was temperate, leaning on warm.

The cold that came off of his body hurt. Not a skin-deep frostbite cold, but a cold inside my heart, a deep cold that hollowed out my insides to make room for painful emptiness. I started crying when the cold hit. I don't know how long I stood there for, it couldn't have been more than 2 minutes. But that moment felt like an eternity, I just stood there and cried, and the sight of him made me so terribly sad I couldn't bear it. I only snapped out of it when he was pushed out of my sight.

The men were admitted immediately. But besides their unconsciousness, they weren't injured in any way that would actually kill them. Before I knew it they had been wheeled out of my sight. The sudden normalcy was quite startling, to feel so overwhelmed by emotion and then to feel nothing at all. I actually started feeling uncomfortable with the silence, I needed to know what was happening.

The paramedics said that when the men were found the person that had called them was still at the scene, staring intensely at the men's bodies. Like they were having a staring contest with something no one else could see. They said it was like a dream, a situation weirder than one they had ever been in before. And it wasn't unexplainably weird to them, it just felt odd.

I didn't sleep the next night. I went online to start researching these men. Seeing if I could dig anything up. There was nothing. These two hadn't existed up until the point they were found. I spent hours on hours and still found nothing. No faces, no names. I thought such an odd pair would have at least something about them online. But I got zilch.

That day I decided to see if I could find anything on their bodies. By the time I got to the hospital, they had been put in gowns. The room had taken on the same look that the men had when they first arrived. Like it wasn't quite real… like it didn't belong… like it came from somewhere else.

The pockmarked man's stab wound had already almost fully healed. I pried his eyelids open to test his response to light but when I opened them… it looked as if he had been blinded and then healed somehow. They were milky white with specks of color seeping through. I could tell there was still something behind them. I didn't have to run any tests. When I looked at those pale empty eyes, I could tell something was staring back at me. He knew I was there, and he stared into me deeper than any other pair of eyes I'd seen.

After he looked at me his bug bite scars began to pulse and throb, I could make out shapes under his skin beginning to squirm before they were pushed back down. The scar on his throat went from a light pink to red. His burnt hand started to produce a terrible vicious heat and the skin began to melt again as it seemed to have done before.

I backed away in shock but instead hit the other man's bed. The man's body was cold to the touch. It wasn't the cold of a corpse, I knew that cold well. It was the cold of a person that had been left alone and lost the energy to make warmth anymore. It was a sad, effortless cold and when I touched him, I felt the freezing cold pulse through my body and into my core. The cold struck deep into my heart and fogged my mind. I don't really know how long I sat there, but the cold gave me such a terror I can't describe. My heart and mind were suffocated in his freezing fog.

When I finally backed away from the bodies I began feeling like I was being watched. I looked behind me to see if anyone was there but there was nothing. The room was the same as when I first entered. I could sense it, that in the corner or behind my back was a pair of eyes consuming the pain I had been caused. I had to leave after that, I couldn't take it anymore.

The police were no help in finding out who the Joe Bloggs were. When one of the other nurses called the authorities it was like they ignored the bodies completely. They asked basic questions but when the police left they stopped talking to us about them at all as if they had forgotten about the bodies overnight. And of course, I was the only one of my colleagues that was actually ever around them. Everyone else avoided their room, and when I brought the bodies up they tried to change the topic. Just two homeless drifters, they would say, or just a few more people off the street. They had this shake in their voice that told me they were lying to themselves and they knew it. These two aren't normal. I know they aren't normal.

I've started feeling watched even when I'm outside of the hospital room. Sometimes it gets so bad I have to look over my shoulder. When I'm walking down the street, or getting groceries, or even in my own home I feel eyes staring down at me. Sometimes in the fleeting seconds when my eyes are moving to look behind my back I can see the smaller man in my periphery. I can see the pale flesh of his eyes. I can feel them staring. I've become more and more reclusive. Shutting myself in my home when I'm not at work, and when I'm at work I'm in the room, staring at the men. Feeling the terror that comes off them.

They still haven't woken up. I don't know if they ever will. But I can't be satisfied anymore. I have to know who they are. I don't think they'll stop watching me until I do.

Statement ends

Check me out u/imchoosingnottoexist on Reddit. @mx_gray on TikTok

Special thanks to mcspookee, the_real_odditycommodity, mymoms1stchild, and spaceheck on TikTok for proofreading and brainstorming

[bluejayblueskies]

for tma fantasy week prompt 7: legend

.

Jon’s foot slips on a tree root, and he nearly falls before he manages to catch himself on a tree, the rough bark cutting into the palm of his hand. He mutters a curse and checks to make sure he hasn’t dropped any items from his basket. The mushrooms and herbs seem to be in order, and Jon carefully tucks a delicate white flower back into place before starting forward again.

 That’s what he gets for foraging at night, he supposes. But the flowers he’s looking for bloom in a very specific time frame, and if he doesn’t pick them then, they’ll lose their medicinal quality. So, Jon grits his teeth and slows his pace slightly, taking more care with where he places his feet lest he end up actually hurting himself or—gods forbid—losing some of his supplies. He needs those flowers; most of his medicines rely on the little purple blossoms clustered near the shore of the lake, and he’s the only one who makes them. So, he spends most of his nights in the woods and most of his days fighting off exhaustion. The bags under his eyes have reached rather impressive proportions.

 It’s not his fault everyone else is too scared to venture into the woods at night. Putting so much stock in a local legend, in what is essentially a child’s tale, is ridiculous, and Jon will have no part of it.

He’s heard the legend before, of course, so many times that the words have begun to grate on his ears like sandpaper. According to legend, there had once been a man who lived in the very center of the forest. He lived alone, isolated and hidden away in the trees, with only the flora and fauna for company. But it had never bothered him, and he had spent his time painting the forest in yellows and purples and blues, spreading wildflowers all the way to the edges of the wood and carving paths in the earth for creeks and streams to flow. (This was the part that annoyed Jon the most; a man living alone in the woods he could believe, but that? Ridiculous.)

 The man had grown comfortable being alone. He’d loved it. And then, one day, another came to the center of the wood, looking to build a home there. The stranger stepped on the flowers the man had carefully cultivated and scared away the birds and disrupted the gentle silence of the trees and the leaves with boisterous words. So, from within the forest, the man summoned a great fog, thick and heavy as it rolled over the ground and through the trees, and swallowed the stranger whole. And then the man was alone again.  

 Something something legend says he still lives in the woods, something something only comes out at night, something something people sometimes see fog peeking through the trees when they get too close, whatever. It’s all nonsense. Jon knows it is, because he’s been visiting the forest at night for months and he’s never seen anything but a few startled rabbits and a plethora of moths.

 They’d even named the place after him. Blackwood Forest. Jon had always disliked the name—it felt rather repetitive for it to contain both wood and forest, and there had almost certainly never been a man called Blackwood living in this forest.

 Jon is crouched by the lake, halfway through collecting that night’s quota of flowers, when he realizes with a start that he can’t see his hands clearly anymore. They’re hazy before him, like he’s viewing them through warped glass, and when he looks up and over the lake, he’s met with only grey, stagnant and flat and unmoving as it surrounds him.

 Jon stands, gripping his basket tightly. He can barely see its contents; they’re smudged by the fog, turned greyscale and desaturated. His own skin looks sickly, like all the color has been drawn out of it.

 “Hello?” he says, his voice too-loud in the stillness that surrounds him, and if it shakes a bit he pretends it doesn’t because he’s not scared. There’s no ghostly specter of a man planning to trap him in fog forever. It’s a temperate night; fog is to be expected. There’s nothing supernatural about a bit of fog.

 Then, a voice drifts out of the fog, and Jon nearly drops his basket in shock.

 “You’re not supposed to be here,” it says. The words reverberate through the fog, echoing over and over again until they trail away into nothing.

 What? Indignance wipes away Jon’s surprise in the span of a breath, and he snaps back, “I can go where I very well please, thank you. I’ve been coming here for months, and I’m not going to stop just because you tell me to.”

 Gods, he’s talking to fog. This is a new low for him.

 There’s a moment of silence before Jon swears he hears the fog sigh. It’s almost absurd enough to make him laugh. “Still, you… you should leave.”

 Jon scoffs and decides to entertain, just for a moment, the notion that he’s speaking to the man everyone’s convinced is haunting these woods. “What, can’t you just threaten to steal me away? To hold me captive in the fog forever? Apparently, it’s what you do.”

 It’s quiet for a long while—long enough that Jon begins to shift impatiently and consider how long it might take him to navigate out of the forest without being able to see the route in front of him. Then, so quietly Jon can barely hear it, the voice says, “It’s not.”

 If Jon didn’t know any better, he’d think that whatever’s hiding in the fog sounds sad. “What?”

 The fog clusters a bit heavier around Jon, tickling at his skin and leaving behind a fine mist of water, before retreating suddenly, leaving the ground and the trees bare around him, illuminated by the moon above. And, not five feet away, stands a man, his edges blurred and every part of him an icy white, from the curls that spill down his shoulders to his skin to the cloak he has wrapped tightly around him (though, when Jon looks closer, he thinks that might actually be fog, thick and clinging to the man’s skin). The man is looking at a point just behind Jon’s shoulder, avoiding his eyes. “It’s not,” he repeats. “I- I don’t want to hurt anyone. I haven’t hurt anyone.” He lets out a humorless laugh. “Who’s there to hurt? Nobody comes here anymore.”

 Well. Jon still doesn’t believe in legends, but this is hardly a legend anymore, is it, with the man in question stood there in front of him? A bit warier, Jon says, “So then… what do you want?”

 The man looks at Jon then—really looks at him—and a shiver runs through Jon’s body like he’s just stuck his hand in ice water. “I… I don’t really know?” He hugs his cloak tighter to him, the fog shifting as he does so, and continues, “I… I suppose we could… we could talk?”

 “Talk,” Jon repeats flatly. “I hardly see why the fog was necessary, then.”

 A few tendrils of fog snake out from the man, reaching toward Jon, before the man seems to notice, and they retreat back into the fabric of his cloak. More sharply than Jon expects, the man says, “I’m a bit out of practice, okay? Like, a few decades out of practice. I think I’m allowed a bit of leeway.”

 Maybe Jon’s imagining things, but he thinks, just for a moment, that he sees a flash of color—a wisp of tawny brown lacing through the man’s hair. When he blinks, though, it’s vanished, and so he puts it out of mind. “And what did you want to talk about?”

 The man pauses at that, wrings his hands together. “Anything?” he says finally with a small shrug. “Like, er… what do you use the viccolas for?”

 “The what?”

 The man gestures toward Jon’s basket. “The viccolas? They’re one of my favorite flowers here—a shame they only bloom at night, really—and I used to use them in my tea, to- to help with the pain. I, er. I used to be quite ill before I…” The man trails off and makes a small, distressed noise.

 “Died?” Jon suggests helpfully.

 “What?” The man’s head snaps up to look at him, eyes wide with surprise, and there it is again—that small flash of color, just for a moment, this time along the side of the man’s face, a light peach almost indistinguishable from the pale white surrounding it but there all the same. “No, I- I’m not a ghost! Why- why would you think that?”

 “To be fair, you do look like one.”

 The man makes a frustrated noise. “I- I suppose, but that’s- that’s not what happened! I’m still alive, I’m just not—”

 The man cuts off again, sharper this time. When he speaks again, his voice is choked, as if with tears. “I’m just not human anymore, I don’t think.”

 Well, Jon could have told him that much. It’s really rather obvious. Still, he doesn’t think that would be well received. So, instead, he says, “I use the flowers for medicines. Nobody else comes into these woods at night, but I’ve never been afraid of- well, of you, I suppose.”

 He wants to ask the man if he’d created the flowers. If he’d painted them by the lake like the legends say. But that would be ridiculous, and Jon’s not keen on indulging his own childish sense of curiosity.

 “Oh,” the man says quietly. “So, then, you… you’ll keep coming back for them?”

 Jon frowns. “Yes, of course. Some of the people I help would die without the medicine I give them.” His expression turns wary again. “So I would suggest you not try to stop me.”

 “No, no, of course not,” the man says quickly, looking rather horrified at the thought. Which does put Jon’s mind at peace a little. “I… I suppose I just thought that maybe we- we could talk again? Er, whenever you come back, that is.” He lets out a small, bitten-off laugh. “I promise I won’t surround you with fog this time?”

 “Yes, that would be preferable.”

 The man’s eyes brighten at that, his irises lit briefly with a flash of baby blue. “Is- is that a yes?”

 He looks so excited at the prospect of another conversation with Jon—one that will surely feel just as much like pulling teeth as this one, though that could just be Jon’s poor interpersonal skills. And unlike what some people might think, Jon is not heartless. Besides, he can’t deny that he’s curious about the man who lives at the center of the Blackwood Forest.

 “All right,” Jon says with a small nod. “I’ll be back this time next week.”

 The lips that smile back at him are rosy red. “G- great! Er, sorry, I- I realize I never actually asked… what’s your name?”

 After a pause during which Jon briefly entertains the notion of giving out a false name, he says, “Jon. You can call me Jon.”

 “Jon,” the man says, as if testing its weight upon his tongue. “I’m- I’m Martin. Er, Martin Blackwood.”

 Right. A bit of truth in the legends after all, then.

 Jon leaves with his flowers, and Martin fades back into the fog that hangs over the lake’s surface. And when Jon returns the next week, they talk. And the next, and the next, until it becomes routine. Until it becomes something Jon looks forward to. Until he spends most nights in the woods, sat next to the lake and unraveling every facet of a man whose life is so much more than has been spelled out on paper.

 And when the flashes of color begin to resolve into vibrant skin and hair and eyes and Martin begins to cry, Jon wraps his arms around a man who’s become solid once more and finds him warm.

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 89 - Twice as Bright

Jon: Right. But no more abattoir metaphors, please. Jude: Suppose it’s not really me, is it?

Yeah, too Fleshy.

Jon: I just have a few questions. Did you burn down a section of Gwydir Forest last year? Jude: Not alone, but yes. You should have seen how devastated they were, such a loss. Jon: I’m sure the Forestry Commission were mortified. Why? Jude: Stop that! And it was because Nikola Orsinov asked us to.

Jon doesn't even know what he's doing and Jude is getting all bristly, like a scared cat hissing.

Jon: I just… er, you were a friend of Agnes Montague, correct? Jude: She’s not one of your little stories. Jon: According to the statement of Jack Barnabas, she very much is.

Anyone going to throw things at me if I say "Oooh, burn!" in this context? Because, this is very much an Ooooh burn sort of situation.

Jon: Yes, yes, I understand, you could easily kill me, I’m at your mercy, blah, blah, blah. I have heard it before. And from things much scarier than you.

Jeez, Jon, where's all THIS coming from all of the sudden? Man, I wish I ever went from 'exhaustedly done with the world's shit' to 'I'm giving the world its shit right back!' like that!

Jude: Are you trying to talk me into killing you? If I wanted, I could reach through your chest like runny wax, and hold your heart while it cooked. No-one would even notice, if I didn’t give you time to scream.

Oh god, I love Jude. Every other avatar we've met is all quiet menace until they go full-monster and even then they're just 'JooOoon, coming to fiiiiind youuuu'. And here's Jude just CHEWING the goddamn scenery with relish, cutting things asunder with her edge. I've said this multiple times to people while discussing TMA but Jude is just basically the navy seal copypasta of avatardom and I'm enjoying her so much right now!

Jude: Hard to say. When I look at you I feel that burning liquid pain, eager to flow out and purify your rotten carcass, but I feel that a lot. Jon: Oh. M-More or less than normal? Jude: Hard to say when every nerve ending’s on fire. Hard to tell degrees. Jon: Third degree, maybe?

I cannot tell you which of the two I want to squeal at more right now. I adore this entire dialogue so much.

Jude: Oh please, your god is nothing! The Eye, Beholding, Ceaseless Watcher, whatever you call it, that’s all it does, it watches and knows, sitting bulbous and comfortable in the ignorance of infinite knowledge. I serve a reckoning, a surging tide of destruction and pain.

Okay, but you still react like a cat that's been sprayed with water whenever Jon asks you a question, Jude, love, you're not fooling anyone...

Jude: The unfathomable contest of eternal forces is not the only reason I might want someone dead.

This is important right here. Obviously the idea that avatars are still their own people, regardless of the Entity they serve, became really obvious somewhere along the line, but at this point in my first go I was still basically thinking in terms of "Hm, well, this power and that power interact in this way... wait, that makes no sense..." and sort of discounting that it's not always ABOUT the powers, despite how obvious that was!

Jon: Statement of Jude Perry, regarding… some advice.

Jon just vacillates wildly between fear and being so DONE with Jude's bullshit and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Jude: The pain is sensational. You feel your flesh cooking, your nerves screaming out as they die exquisitely. Your whole body changes texture as you become that which feeds the fire. In that agonising, beautiful transformation, you can feel it ignite again and again and again.

Okay, now she's just making self-immolation sound tempting...

It was Agnes, of course. I don’t know where she found me, I only remember sitting in a booth with a beautiful young woman who smelled like matches and incense.

Well, someone's certainly smitten...

And with each act of glorious, hateful destruction, I felt my god’s love embrace me, consume me, give me life. Any feelings of pity or mercy I might have had for the poor woman I fed from were cauterised.

Ah, come on, like they existed to need cauterising in the first place...

And so I ended it. For all the agony and pain on Gretchen’s face, she didn’t seem surprised when I doused myself in kerosene and set it alight. I think she screamed. She must have screamed.

Tbh, Gretchen may have been traumatised for life but Jude seems to have lost interest in her after, so that was probably fucking lucky for poor Gretchen here.

Jon: Michael? (...) Corridors, weird limbs, laughs like a… headache? Jude: What? No. He’s pale, got a big, weird scar. Smells of, um… Jon: Oh, ozone! Jude: Yeah, that’s the one. Hangs around with the Fairchilds sometimes.

I love that the podcast is lampshading the fact that they've got two recurring characters named Michael (AND one Mikaele on top but at least he's usually referred to by his last name). I wonder at what point Johnny went "Whoops, I may have created a confusion." (I mean, not that it's unrealistic, my UK friend group-and-adjacent-people had enough Andrews, Johns and Matts that they basically all ended up with weird nicknames but it's just a bad idea to have identical names in fiction.)

Jude: Come on. It won’t hurt. (...) I lied. Jon: - SCREAMING IN INCREASING AGONY -

I mean, first of all, duh, yeah, OF COURSE SHE LIED! But also, Johnny is not a bad actor. The scream reminded me a little of that one time that my partner managed to scald a hand with boiling water while making tea (one of the worst sounds I've ever heard, incidentally, would like to not hear that again.)

My impression of this episode

First of all, I adore Jude. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean I'd be friends with her (I mean, duh, she was despicable as a human being and is now a fully devoted servant of the Entity-of-torment-and-loss, having near-orgasms over the idea of making people suffer, so...) but as a character she's just so beautifully over the top! It's fun! And Jon's interaction with her is incredibly interesting because, well, this may be the first time that Jon meets anything Entity-adjacent that is actually afraid of HIM (and yeah, Jude may be putting on a tough act, but she seems fucking terrified.) That was just really fun to watch, to be honest. A little bit of ... vicarious power fantasy, perhaps, at least until Jude turns the tables again. This was just a really enjoyable episode!

[ashes-in-a-jar]

Tma relisten Episodes 6-10

(Still really long)

Alot of really important details that are going to be very relevant later on. Very facinating how early on you find these out. Relistens are good.

Episode 6 squirm

It's a good thing tma doesn't do much of sexual encounters and their connection to entities. While I'm sure that's a thing that in any realistic universe would exist avoiding it was a good choice. This statement was *shudder*

Interesting that she had no visible mark on her. Also being repulsed by police stations because the sectioned officers could have helped.

Naked in the streets after lighting his apartment on fire. What an image.

So technically the worms were in the archives 3 times: when Jane made her first statement, when Timothy hodge made his and when Jane attacked. The worms are very familiar with the magnus institute.

"This story is concerning. Not because of Mr. Hodge’s experience, although I’m sure it was very upsetting." ace Jon talking very technical about "experiences"

" though obviously it’s a tragic loss of life, etcetera, etcetera." Jon being Jon.

Ecdc are aware of Jane and corruption typical attacks which is off the bat interesting world building.

He's skeptic here because of lack of evidence but does admit the existence of a threat in Jane Prentiss

Also! He knows of her from before probably when he was a researcher. This confused me on first listen because I was trying to remember if she was ever mentioned before this. But she wasn't.

Episode 7 the piper

Wilfred kind of sounds like martin in some way but maybe it's just me assigning poetry to anyone like him.

But he hated apathy which might be very Martin like

Gentle sadness and creeping fear from the music. For violence of war... Is that what it means to immortalize it?

It's really cool that the concept of music in this podcast is associated specifically with war and unwarranted violence. There's a very strong statement in there somewhere that needs to be explored.

God this statement was intense. Lying for such a long time in that trench surrounded by violent death. But what's most interesting is that this statement doesn't feel like a supernatural one and yet... The piper was with Wilfred throughout the various battles and bouts of violence until the moment it was officially over. But in a very subtle way.

The description of the piper is really intense with the 3 faces. I think I missed it the first time but hearing that representation of war and fear is something I'm going to look for in artistic depictions now.

Wait. Who is Joseph Rayner? I know of Maxwell but never heard of Joseph.a victim instead of Wilfred? Collaborator with the Slaughter? Hmmm

I wonder how Accidental it was that the statement from 1922 was filed in the 2000s. Maybe to show that the piper never really leaves and the war never really ends. Ever.

Episode 8 burned out

Wow Hilltop Road already! I forgot how many of the first episodes were so important to the plot later on.

"That side of the road backed onto South Park with fences marking the bottom of each garden." this is wrong btw. Hilltop Road in Oxford does not run along Sount Park but is perpendicular to it, meeting it in the corner with Divinity Road which meets with Morrell Avenue which is the road running along South Park. Just FYI because I had to look this up to get a good picture. But I guess Morrell doesn't sound as exciting as Hilltop (which isn't even at the top of the hill smh)

Ivo lensik describes Raymond fielding as white which makes me automatically think he is not. Just a thought that popped in my mind.

Huh. His family had a history of schizophrenia. And his dad was obsessed with fractals. Being followed by The spiral (all the bones are in his hands) was also part of this story really interesting.

Agnes had mousy brown hair and looked like Raymond! Not red hair ( at least at first) like I pictured. Also she was a hell of a creepy child...

So did he time travel? Seeing the moments of Raymond's end? Seems like time doesn't work right in that place anyway.

Web person being devout church goer is also an interesting touch

Father Edwin Burroughs! I forgot he was here too! The knock reminded me of Mr Spider *shiver*

The priest explaining that the church exorcized demons but what not decisive if ghosts exist was hilarious. Jon dismisses paranormal but asks Martin if he's a ghost is opposite of the church.

Hmmm the web pushing him to cut the tree to uncover box from antique table...

Apple full of spiders ugh. Maybe something web was trapped in there by Desolation and ivo managed free it as Agnes was dying.

"We cannot prove any connection, but Martin unearthed a report on an Agnes Montague, who was found dead in her Sheffield flat on the evening of November 23rd 2006, the same day Mr. Lensik claims to have uprooted the tree." wow that's an obscure thing to find well done Martin!

Jon still looks for credence for this story despite the schizophrenia that could leave him skeptical.

"while I trust Mr. Lensik’s testimony of his own experiences about as far as I can throw a bleeding tree," again Jon with his special brand of jokes.

Episode 9 a Father's love

The Montauk's story! I always thought their family had one of the most tragic ones. The hunt is a really cruel patron with its forced hunger and having other entities use them as tools.

Julia telling the truth of the story to the Magnus Institute instead of the police is also heartbreaking. How desperate and alone she must have felt drowned in that awful literally unbelievable story. The magnus institute feeds off of those people too.

So many of the hunt end up in police it's just... Such a strong statement against that establishment. What do we do to make that less of a horrible, unjust, all consuming system? That feeds on the hunger of some and the abject fear of others? And it doesn't have to be supernatural. It's interesting how season five, of all seasons, is the one that gave us that perspective. The non supernatural one on the subject while the world itself is so far away from the natural. God everything about this idea is so heavy and painful.

I kind of hate Julia's fate because of her background and how much alot of its beginning was out of her control. It's like Daisy. The hunt can never be forgiven no matter how compulsive it is.

The dark that took her mother turned her into part of it? Like the dark liquid?

A dark room to develop his photos of his victims huh? A play on words here.

Oooh they put a heartbeats in the soundscape really cool actually.

So Montauk killed other dark members that tried to leave? For the ritual? Like Julia's mother?

The hunt compelled him to keep the hearts as trophies? which is very self destructive of the hunt to do. Or is it part of the dark ritual with the sacrifices that the heart had to be kept?

I think Montauk was trying to slow down the ritual as revenge that night, rendering the sacrifices he helped create useless. Which is why pitch came after them that night and dissappeared once Montauk finished his ritual.

Sourcing the Serial killer enthusiast community. Love that the archives use whatever source of info they can access.

So Maxwell dissappeared in 1994 from public eye land yet the cult kept working towards a ritual. But now in secret? Their timeline always confused me.

Episode 10 vampire killer

I never noticed Trevor came right after Julia! Oooh this is so much connecting the dots so early on!

Vampires are so disturbing here makes you ever wonder how the hell media like twilight were ever created. But hehe the monster ****er community has always been a vibrant one. Not these vampires tho.

Trevor is so sassy I love his statements. Like Julia it really makes me sad how consumed he became at the end and how awful his death was. Once again the tragedy of the Hunt.

"I taught myself to read, I read as much on the subject as I could, and it isn’t covered often or clearly in those books I have found." can you imagine what kinds of books he might have found during the sexy vampire Era? This is a hilarious picture to paint.

So vampires feed off of blood and not fear which is an interesting creature to have in this kind of universe. Although hunters are also like that but there is still alot of fear and awareness involved with that while the vampires try to conceal themselves until the last moment.

There's alot of mosquito imagery in these vampires which is... Ugh

Also interesting how many time Trevor just uses the vampire's full name. Never shortened and never talked about in another title. Sylvia McDonald this Sylvia McDonald that. Also the other vampire. They always had a name that was psychicly imposed on the victims to be remembered fully. Very Stranger behavior.

Ahhhh the one vampire weakness... Drrrugs.

It's also very flammable which sets interesting precedence to setting unnatural things on fire to make them disappear.

Alard dupont comes in a later statement right? Yeah in 56

Martin was there when the statement was given which was 2010 and in 2016 he's 29 so he worked there for a while! At least since age 23 perhaps we'll find out even earlier. And he was still scared to be found under qualified after all this time! Oof...

I wonder how draining it is to give a statement that it kills someone who is sick.

The government is in on this! Looking for the teeth Trevor gave the institute... Somehow that strikes me as hilarious in the world building of this podcast. And it really leaves Jon no choice but to concede that there is something to the statement even if he refuses to use the term vampire like Trevor did so freely.

[haberdashing]

Like Emptiness In Harmony

TMA AU of 160. When Jon wakes up after that statement, he finds that he’s changed just as the world around him has.

on AO3

Jon came back to himself... no, that wasn’t right; Jon’s self was far too nebulous a concept for that. How many weeks, months, years had passed since he’d truly been himself, free of influence by eldritch powers? Had he even truly been himself before he’d joined the Magnus Institute, or had he been controlled by the Web back then, too? Would he even recognize his true self, his human self, anymore? (Were his true self and his human self even the same thing these days?)

Jon came back to consciousness on the floor of the safehouse, with Martin standing over him, and for a brief second things seemed alright, seemed as normal as they ever were, before he saw the terror in Martin’s eyes and remembered what he’d read out loud before passing out and knew (lower-case) that something had gone terribly wrong.

The details were still fuzzy in Jon’s mind, though, and as Jon struggled to put the pieces together, to wake up more fully and figure out exactly what kind of trouble he was in this time, he was only able to say a single word.

“Martin.”

But... but it didn’t sound right, somehow. The word was clear enough, luckily, it wasn’t like he was trying to spit it out through a gagged mouth (which was a sensation Jon unfortunately knew all too well thanks to Nikola), but the tone was off. Jon was confused and curious and scared, but when he called out Martin’s name, none of that came through. Instead, his voice sounded... smug, smug and vaguely condescending, much closer to the sort of tone he would have used to dismiss Martin before Prentiss’ attack than the one he’d meant to adopt now.

“Jon?” Jon wasn’t sure how much of the uncertainty he heard in Martin’s voice just then was real and how much of it was just his mind projecting. Probably some of both there.

Jon cleared his throat and tried again.

“Martin.”

It came out the same as before--exactly the same as before, actually, his tone and enunciation both identical to when he’d said Martin’s name before, as much so as if he’d recorded it before and simply played it back again instead of actually speaking anew.

An analogy that, when Jon examined it more closely, seemed entirely too on the nose.

“My god.”

He said the words only partially because they were what he actually wanted to say; if Jon were free to speak his mind, his speech would probably be significantly less coherent right now, and filled with half-formed questions. But this would have to do at short notice, combining actual meaning with a way to test his current theory.

Sure enough, he was able to say those words just fine, just as he had... how long ago was it, now? Minutes, hours, an eternity ago? And with them came that same smug, self-congratulatory tone, one that almost made Jon want to punch himself in the face for sounding like that. But it wasn’t really himself that he wanted to punch in the face at the moment, just as it hadn’t been himself, exactly, who had first said those words. It was his voice, sure, but the words themselves, the mind behind them, were not his own.

Jon opened his mouth to say Fuck Jonah Magnus, but was far from surprised to find that the words refused to cross the gap between his mind and the world around him.

It was all starting to come together, now. It didn’t click, per se, just continued on the progression from lazy analogy to hunch to theory to something just shy of a dark certainty.

Why did nobody ever swear in the statements, goddammit?

Though that- that wasn’t quite true, was it, there were one or two instances in there where-

And then it clicked. Jon Knew, then, what he could and couldn’t say, the exact limits of his strange new vocabulary. (Or... not new, really. None of these words were new to him. Perhaps he would never say anything new again.)

“Jon, are you alright?”

Even Knowing what he could say didn’t mean controlling his speech was easy, though. It was a little like trying to conduct a conversation by flipping through a dictionary, having to find just the right word in its pages every time a new one was needed.

“No. No, of course not.” The words were right, or close enough at any rate, but the tone was all wrong, and it wasn’t even Jon’s own voice this time, the voice and words of a now-dead man leaving his lips instead.

Jon laughed, then, and that at least sounded normal enough... well, for a certain definition of normal, at any rate. It sounded sharp and cold and full of fear, without a hint of humor to be found, and that wasn’t normal for a laugh, no, but it was what Jon had intended at any rate, a sound that was still all his own.

“Jon, you’re, you’re scaring me a bit, something about your voice seems weird...” Oh, good, he noticed that much at least. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know... and it makes me very afraid.” At least it was his voice again, now, not that of... well. Jon wanted to call Mike Crew a killer, a monster, but those weren’t exactly distinguishing features, were they? Martin probably didn’t even recognize the voice that Jon had adopted a moment ago; it’s not as if he’d had the chance to chat up Mike before Daisy killed him.

“Right. Alright. Well then, er... is, is there anything I can do to help?”

Jon laughed, and this time there was humor to it, or at least levity, despite the world having gone wrong, despite his voice no longer being entirely his own, because no matter what Martin was still Martin, trying to help, putting Jon’s well-being above all else, even when the world was quite possibly falling to pieces around them.

“I am unsure if I will... be able to stand myself up again.” Between the words and the hand extended in Martin’s direction, Jon hoped that the instruction would be clear enough.

Evidently it was, as Martin took his hand, helping pull Jon off of the floor and back onto his feet. It took more effort than it should have, Jon thought, Martin grunting and breathing heavily by the end of it despite past jokes about how easy it was to pick Jon up, but it worked, though Martin’s whole body was shaking by the end of it. (Jon wasn’t sure whether said shaking was even entirely physical in nature, truth be told.)

Jon half-walked, half-stumbled his way forward.

“No, no, no--don’t, don’t go outside. It’s--it’s real bad.”

Outside had never been Jon’s destination, however, though Martin seemed to believe otherwise. Jon didn’t want to go outside, to experience the horrors that had now been unleashed upon the world outside their cabin. He simply wanted to... Jon had to suppress a bout of hysterical laughter as it occurred to him that he simply wanted to see what had happened, to watch the chaos unfold, and wasn’t that all too fitting...

The view outside the nearest window was enough to confirm all of Jon’s worst suspicions. The world had been torn apart, all the fears unleashed upon it to wreak havoc, all because of what he’d just read out loud (all because of him).

“My god.” It felt wrong, somehow, using the words of the man who had orchestrated this apocalypse to describe it, but Jon didn’t have much in the way of alternatives at his disposal.

“I don’t know if it’s just here, or-”

“No. No...” Between trying to put the world’s destruction into words and trying to translate what words he could come up with into something said in the statements, Jon struggled to speak, though it didn’t show in his voice when he did manage to string a few more words together. “...the populated world... edged with a strange, creeping fear... far, far away...”

“Is that Peter’s voice? Jon, don’t... just, please don’t.” Martin laughed briefly, though Jon could see that his eyes were filling with tears. “I, I think I’ve heard enough from him already, thanks.”

Jon nodded enthusiastically, went to apologize, realized that even a simple “I’m sorry” was beyond his reach now, settled for “I was an idiot.” instead.

“Don’t say that. You’re not an idiot for not thinking of it, it’s just...” Martin let out a long sigh. “Jon, I’m scared.”

“...fear can just become as routine as hunger... I felt every feeling... They overwhelmed me... my impact on the world... my failure...” Jon switched between different statements, different voices, desperate to find the words to explain what had happened, what the world had become and how it was all his own fault. The end result felt like almost as great a failure as what it was purporting to describe, but it was an attempt, at least. It would have to do.

Martin wrapped one arm around Jon’s shoulder; Jon briefly considered pushing it off because he was about the last person who deserved to be comforted now, when he was the one who had caused so much pain and suffering, but decided against it because that would hurt Martin’s feelings more than it would appease his own, and he couldn’t exactly explain his own thought process to Martin at the moment.

“You’re not a failure, Jon. No matter what this is, no matter what else happens, you’re not a failure.”

Jon laughed and shook his head and laughed some more, a laugh that kept threatening to turn into a sob as he looked out at the ruins of the world he had wrecked entirely.

“And with each act of glorious, hateful destruction, I felt my god’s love embrace me, consume me... ”

Jon pointed to the sky, to the giant eye that now engulfed it.

“It’s still there, still watching me.”

The laugh that kept threatening to turn into a sob finally did so after a long minute, and as it did the tears that had been building in Martin’s eyes began to flow, and the two men threw their arms around each other, holding one another for comfort as they cried over the loss of their world.

[eliasbouchardisarobloxthot]

chapter 1 of an au i am writing

this is jokingly titled “power of friendship au” in my doc, but that’s essentially it - tim, sasha, and jon (for now) team up while they’re all still interns to befriend all of the creatures they meet!  the timeline is obviously a bit different from tma canon, but it will still be mostly non-spoiler. this chapter in particular has only mid-early season one spoilers, so you all should be fine! as usual, under the cut...

"We are not supposed to be doing this," Tim hissed, but he made no move to run.

Jon wasn’t listening. The box of cigarettes in his hand was nearly crushed, but he stood his ground as they made their way to Old Fishmarket Close.

"Do you really think we're gonna—" Sasha's voice wavered. "I mean, the file in Gertrude's office said it’s not—it isn’t always there, right?”

“We’re going to find it,” he said resolutely. The hills were high, higher than any of them had expected, but they managed to make their way up to the alleyway that was listed on the map.

It was dark out. Jon convinced them all earlier that day to come with him and help after they left for the night, and Tim was doing a very bad job of hiding the fact that it made him incredibly nervous to be out this late. The streets were nearly empty—at nine o’clock on a Tuesday evening, no one was going to be out and about.

A quiet voice echoed from in the alleyway—”Can I have a cigarette?”

Sasha screamed. In her haste to wrap herself around Tim for safety, she nearly hit him in the face. Somehow, though, Jon stood his ground.

“You can have a cigarette if you come out of the alleyway. We know what you are. We just want to talk.” He set the pack of cigarettes down just a bit out of reach, then sat down in front of the alley with his legs crossed. “We can wait here all night.”

“Wait, what? Maybe you can, but some of us have work tomorrow. Or have you forgotten about our literal job? The one we met at? Earth to Jon, but we do still have to work. In the twenty minutes it took us to get here, capitalism as an institution has not yet been overthrown.”

“Shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.” Jon sat there staring at the alleyway. “Come out of the alley now, please.”

His stare was incredibly intense, seeming to cut through the darkness obscuring the figure and illuminate the alley. As they sat there in the alley, a voice that was most certainly not the one from before—and was also certainly not human—echoed out from the alley.

“Fine.”

“Come out where I can see you,” Jon said. 

The vaguely human silhouette in the alley warped and twisted, changing from human to inhuman in barely a second. It skulked out of the alley, sitting down across from Jonathan.

He could see how from certain angles it could maybe look sort of human. If it tried. It reminded him of one of those optical illusion sculptures in museums—from one angle, it looked like a giraffe, from the other two elephants. Except from one angle, this thing was human, and from the other… well, most definitely not.

“Do you have a name?” Jon asked. Somewhere, quiet static hummed. 

“No,” it said. “You call me the Anglerfish, though.”

“Do you want a name?”

“Maybe. If you pick a good one.” 

“Louis,” Tim said.

“Felix,” Sasha said at the same time.

“No,” the Anglerfish said, decisively.

“You’re a fish, right? What if we just call you Ariel?” Sasha tilted her head to one side, thinking hard. “You look like an Ariel.”

“Ariel as in The Tempest?” Jon asked, looking confused. “I mean, sure, the water reference is there—”

“Ariel as in The Little Mermaid, you fucking idiot,” Tim said with a sigh that could have shaken the city down. 

“Never seen it.”

“What’s a mermaid?” the Anglerfish asked, testing the word out in its human voice. 

“Oh my god. Firstly, your name is Ariel now.” Tim pointed at the Anglerfish. “Secondly, you get a pass for not knowing because you’re a spooky monster thing. Thirdly, Jon, how have you not seen The Little Mermaid? Did you just straight-up not have a childhood?”

Jon didn’t reply.

“So we’re going to my apartment and renting it off Netflix and—I can’t believe I’m having a slumber party! I’m not a kid anymore… but it’s necessary. Objectively speaking.” Sasha looped her arm through Jon’s, pulling him to his feet. 

“Are we sure this is necessary?”

“Yes,” Sasha said, glaring at Tim. “I think I actually have some microwave popcorn we can make, do a full movie night.” 

Jon sighed, following Sasha as best he could.

“What’s a movie?” Ariel asked quickly. “What are those?”

“You have a lot to learn,” Sasha said, with a wide grin. “But if you like it here and want to talk about it more, then… well, you can just chill with us!”

—

“What did you say your name was again?”

“Patel? Amy Patel?”

“Alright, Amy, and do you think you can tell me some more about how this all happened? I know you gave your statement to Gertrude already, but—”

“Oh, no, it’s no trouble,” Amy said, gesturing into her flat. “I moved, but I still have my address down if you want me to give it to you. And, er, the flat that used to be Graham’s, I can get you that address too if you need it.”

Sasha shook her head. “You don’t have to give us all that. Just by letting us in you’re doing enough already.” 

Amy smiled in that bemused sort of way that older adults tended to smile at younger ones, with a look in her eyes that said something like “who are these little children and why are they trying to be professional around me?” 

“We should—I should have introduced myself.” Jon gestured to Tim and Sasha. “That’s Tim Stoker, this is Sasha James, and I’m Jonathan Sims—we work with the Magnus Institute, under the head archivist. We’re only interns, though.”

“I’d noticed,” she said. “Come on, sit down. I’ll put on some tea if you’d like?”

“Tea would be lovely,” Sasha said before the others could interject. “Now, can you tell us a bit more about your experience with Graham?”

“Oh, well, where to begin,” Amy said, pouring milk into a saucepan on the stove. “I mean, I’ve told you basically everything in my statement already. You contacted me saying there was an update a while back, but honestly I’d almost forgotten about it. The whole thing. It was a few years ago now, so… yeah.”

“Alright. Um. Do you—can you tell us anything about what you do now? Like, the sorts of jobs you’ve been doing, or—”

“Yeah, uh… yeah. Like I said in my statement, I do statistical analysis mostly. Been taking a few more classes sort of in the field of criminal studies—” she waved her hand— “all that sort of stuff. I actually did take a liking to it, might try working with that sort of stuff in the near future. I’m already looking for applications."

"That's very interesting, Amy," Jon said, fidgeting with the packet of cigarettes in his pocket. 

"It really is," she said as she strained the chai, setting four mugs on the table and sitting down next to them. 

Jonathan had taken the box of cigarettes out, and was now shaking them absentmindedly a few centimeters away from his face as he thought.

"Oh, can you not smoke in here?" Amy asked quickly. "It's just—my landlord hates when people smoke inside, we have an area over outside for it—"

"I don't smoke," Jon said, looking somewhat confused. Sasha took the cigarettes from,him and put them in her pocket.

"They're for our friend Ariel, Jon just carries them for it."

"It?" Amy looked more confused than ever.

"She eats them," Tim explained. "And she told us to call her 'she' in front of other people, Sasha."

By this point, Amy had taken a long drink of chai.

"You kids work with monsters. Right? All those things in the statements. Other people have to have given statements, there's got to be some others that are true."

Jon nodded solemnly. "We've been looking into other cases with provable aspects—yours does, by the way, we know yours is at least partially true." 

"How comforting," Amy said with a wry smile.

“And… well, this is going to sound very bad, but I would prefer it if Tim stopped sleeping with people to get information.”

“Hey! That was one time!” 

Amy laughed. “So you’re asking me to help you get information. Right?”

Jon nodded, having started to fidget with the cuffs of his shirt once Sasha had taken away the cigarette box. 

“I mean, I do have access to quite a few databases. If you wanted my help, though, you’ll have to promise something.” It sounded like she was talking to some unruly teenagers. 

“Certainly.” He tried to look as professional as possible.

“Please just take care of yourselves,” Amy said with a sigh. “You guys are just kids and you’re running yourselves into the ground, and you’re putting so much work into this—I’m scared you’re going to either get hurt by one of these things or hurt yourselves trying to befriend them.” 

“I—” Jon tugged at the button on his sleeve for a moment. “I understand where you’re coming from here, I really do, but there’s, there’s just so many and I want to give them a chance. Because we still have to—if there’s any chance they’re a good person, deep down, I want to help them.”

Amy sighed, leaning back in her chair. “If you’re serious about this—”

“We are,” Sasha said quickly. 

“Then I’ll help you.” She picked up a pad of paper sitting on the table and scribbled something on it in smooth, curling handwriting. “That’s my phone number for my work phone, just call it if you need anything. I usually have it on me.”

She thought for a moment. “Give me a sec. You’ll want this.” 

Leaving Jon, Tim, and Martin alone at the table, she walked into her bedroom and returned carrying what appeared to be a very old, very worn-out three-ring notebook. There were dividers of various colors separating things, a bookmark that was just a piece of ribbon stapled into the spine, and a label on the front that read “MONSTERS”. 

Jon flipped through it quickly, looking through the sections. The dividers were labeled with different numbers, and at the front was a table of contents with each number labeled with a small explanation of each different number. 

“This is incredible, Amy,” he said, turning the pages reverently. “There’s so much detail here—this could be more than we have at the Institute, really.”

“Well, I have had a bit of help,” she said amusedly. Opening up the cover, she moved her hand over something inside and set it down on the table. As she did, the inside cover was revealed.

“Is that skin?” Tim asked, looking disgusted. “Ew.”

“What, am I too gross for you?” a voice suddenly said. Sitting on Amy’s sofa was a man who looked to be about Tim’s age, with his hair long and poorly dyed black. All of his joints were tattooed with tiny open eyes, and he wore dark eye makeup in circles around his eyes that trailed down his face. The clothes he wore were ripped and tattered, but it was obvious that they had at one point been a t-shirt for a band, a leather jacket, and a pair of dark jeans. 

He was also hovering several feet in the air.

“Nice to meet you, everyone,” he said with a grin. “I’m Gerard Keay, and I used to work for your boss.” 

Jon stood there open-mouthed for a few moments. “Sorry, what?”

“I used to work for Gertrude. That’s your boss, right? She still there?”

“Yeah, she’s still there. Uh, just—you’re a ghost, aren’t you.” 

“Yep,” he said, leaning back to hover above the couch with his hands behind his head. “They taking the book with them, Amy?”

“I think so. Because, well, they’re—I think they’re more able to investigate these things than I am.”

“Shame,” Gerard said with a sigh, pushing off the wall and sighing. “You were cool. Plus you didn’t mind if I listened to music on your phone while you worked.”

“You can still see me sometimes,” Amy said with a laugh. “Not like I’m dead. And besides, that wouldn’t really be too much of a problem, would it?”

Gerard rolled his eyes. He very pointedly turned away from Amy and looked at the interns, hovering in a cross-legged position in the air. “Well. My life is in your hands now. I mean, not really life exactly, I’m still dead, but my existence is in your hands. Don’t fuck it up.”

“We won’t,” Tim said. 

“Well. This has certainly been informative.” Amy moved closer to the door. “Thank you for giving me Graham’s old notebook, and for a very interesting discussion. I assume I’ll be hearing from you shortly?”

“Yes. I think we’ll start at the beginning? What’s the oldest entry you have in this book?”

“That’d be… the one right at the start of section three for distorted reality. He likes to hang out in graveyards, you’ll probably be able to find him pretty quickly. Blond hair that’s all long and frazzled-looking, tall, kind of thin—if you see him in a reflection or through glass he looks tall, unnaturally tall, and his hands look all gross and creepy.” She shuddered, moving to open the door. “You still have my number?”

“Yep.” Sasha held up the page. 

“It’s really been lovely,” Jon said. “Thank you.” 

“No problem at all,” Amy said. “I’ll see you all soon.”

thats all folks! thank you so much for reading it. i may upload chapter 2 soon, but that is it for now!!

[amugeona382]

Dear H,

being back in Korea is weird. Nothing changed. Only time passed. Summer 2016 was the last time I was here. Still with you. I try to remember what happened then. You worked and I worked out. Therre was Wolfi and adorable Sunshim. We hung around that Area a lot. One time we went to that Seul-place and there was that cute babycat. I went to the mart a lot by myself. There was also that coffee place, that was so cold. And the store where I bought all the bananas.

But it was a tough time. I was so lost. My master thesis wasn’t going well because I was so worried about my futue. I believed I could never get any job at all. I had spend so much time in Koea but it was still a closed country for me. I could never fit in. Also because it was so hard for me to adapt. My Korean wasn’t improving and I felt so uncomfortable talking in Korean. I was always uncomfortable. Wherever I walked I was too much aware of being a foreigner and I didn’t like it one bit. I never accepted that. It made living in Korea so hard. I didn’t make any friends who could maybe help me realize my foreigness didn’t matter, so I only could rely on your word. But I was also foreign to you. Not to you as a person, but to you as a Korean, with a Korean family and a Korean workplace where all this mattered. I felt like I always had to defend my position. Make double the effort to prove I was worthy. Of being with you. Being with any Korean. I tried my best but it wasn’t good enough. The only person that really liked me was Iseul. Nobody else cared. The others only cared about me as your girlfriend. It made me so lonely.

I didn’t change my situation. I just got more insecure and more bitter and lost and the more I felt rejected from Korean society the more you had to matter, the bigger our love had to be, i thad to make up for all the other pain. At the same time we had been together some time. I wasn’t in love anymore, meaning, I didn’t have a crush on you anymore. It’s a normal step in any relationshop. People either interpret it as “not being in love anymore” or as a love changing, growing, getting older. But how to tell them apart?

I was very down. I couldn’t talk to anyone, because I didn’t let myself think of this topic. Like anyone I got scared - “is this the real thing?” I didn’t fit into Korea. I was scared it would be the same with you and Europe. I forgot it wasn’t my choice and also not up to me.

Any relationship comes to a poiint where tings get tricky. You pushed forward and I pulled back. You broke up with me but I ended it.

It’s normal. Can happen to the most in love couple. I distanced myself quickly. I was tired and full on diving into a deep depression where I did nothing but lie in bed, starve, sleep, hate myself.

All the pain is still so fresh. I worry it will never fade. Why am I always so shy, responsible, afraid. I never dare, I never risk. I’m the opposite of you emotionally. I tmaed this relationship last. You brought the passion and I brought the stability.

People still scare me here. I feel so judged. I always stand out. I’m more comfortable walking around with Mike. She doesn’t seem to care so much to stand out. I never wanna stand out. Why is that? It could be a good thing! But it is so ingraved in me to be modest. To the point where I vanish. Why do I wanna vanish? Where is my place in this world? Why can’t I just take up SPACE.

Now I’m heavier, so I do take up more space. It makes me so uncomfortable. It makes people judge me more. I can vanish in Austria. I don’t put on any makeup. I dress so basic. Why can’t I accept my existence? Everybody deserves a space in this world - except they don’t. Other poeple don’t accept that. We fight for space, people, jobs, housing. There is no space for everyone. Migrants don’t deserve to take up space. Ugly people don’t deserve space.

Minimalism is a way to take up less space. I minimalize my personality. But there should be something left - except I vanish. Become indifferent. No opinions. No wants, no needs. Who deserves to want or need something in this capitalist societies, where all we HAVE TO want and need stuff. It’s painful to want and need and having to be modest. I can only want a little for my life. But I need so much love, attention, money, rest, physical touch, rest, peace, a peace of mind. Modesty and not wanting things give a peace of mind but so cruelly cuts everything else. Anger, frustration, upset-ment are so involving othere people. Conflict, disharmony is the result. Zen is my way of being. “I want happiness”. Remove the “want”, remove the “I” and you will be left with happiness but at what cost? No I? No wants? I vanish.

Yesterday we met a friend of Mike from Sogang. The instant we met I felt reminded of all the times I met any Korean “friends”. Why do I always get so insecure and shy? It’s like there is a boundary I can’t cross but Mike steps over it so easily. It seems like it doesn’t exist for her. What is this weight I feel, this wall? I can feel it anytime I meet someone new or not-that-close. Like i can’t read the signs.

I remember when we ere on that island close to North Korea. When we looked at those stones. The water, the sound of the waves reminds me of Hangang here.

I’m so grateful for everything you did for me. All the trips we made. Ships, busses, cares, we went anywhere by anything.

Inside of me and I guess many other people there is somemthing nobody can touch. I can never show it. It doesn’t have any form. There are no words to descrive it. I hide it like a dark secret. It’s the essence of my being.

I believe no one sees it.

I believe too, that it sometimes showsin between the doing, talking.

The essence of a person. A human being. Anything alive.

I guess you saw some of it. A glimpse.

How scary.

You still loved me.

You also broke up with me.

There is no way I can ever understand what happend. I guess it’s normal too.

I’m leaving again tomorrow. Yesterday we went out and drank and I suddenly was so drunk and I ended up in a motel with a guy and just... everything felt wrong. I don’t wanna kiss someone I don’t know. I don’t wanna get “intimite”  with someon I’m not intimite with.

I miss you and I’m confused, I don’t wanna miss you. These feelings are old, aren’t they from the past, only coming up now by the smell of this country, the sounds, the situations.

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 79 - Hide and Seek

Tim: Yeah, and then he said, “Sorry for everything”. Something’s up. Martin: You don’t think he’s going to… y’know… Tim: I don’t know. But he’s going to do something, and it’s going to be bad. And I don’t mean like ‘sneaking a cigarette’ bad. Like properly bad. Martin: So we need to help him? Tim: We need to stop him.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that what Martin is thinking here is that Jon might harm himself whereas Tim is much more focused on Jon potentially harming someone else (I mean, Tim is kinda right here, but only because Jon was being a complete and utter idiot!)

Martin: Court? Tim: Yeah. Er, tribunal if we’re lucky, inquest if we’re not.

I'm not sure if this is UK-specific terminology, but I sure as fuck didn't know what Tim was on about and kind of ignored it during my first listen, so now I've looked it up. For anyone as clueless as me "tribunal court" is the kind that you'd think of when someone says going to court whereas an inquest court is specifically about examining an unexplained death. Yikes, Tim.

Martin: You did use a new tape, didn’t you? Tim: Yeah, I took one off the pile. Martin: Was it blank or… Tim?

I'd say "Priorities, Martin!" but the fact of the matter is that I've got some shit I recorded on tapes as a child and teenager that I would also be pretty crushed if someone just went and taped over, so I can understand Martin's anxiety here.

Tim: Martin! What do you think is happening here? This isn’t office politics. It’s not like he’s had one too many at the Christmas party and started ranting about the Greeks.

That's ... really specific, but an oddly plausible group of people for a racist from the UK to rant about in an inebriated state.

Martin: So you really think the Institute is, what, haunted? Tim: I used to. Now I think it’s worse. Martin: Worse how? Not!Sasha (breaking through doors, screaming distortedly): JooooOoooOn!

Perfect comedic timing by the Not!Them!

Jon: At least it didn’t leave me trapped in some corridor hellmaze… a different corridor hellmaze, at least.

I was, at the time, wondering why Distortion!Michael kept being so fucking helpful? I mean, helpful in a terrifying, disturbing way, but still, helpful. I guess in hindsight some motivations have become a bit clearer.

Jon: God, I’m an idiot. Smash the table, kill the monster, stupid! Lazy, sloppy assumption. Of course the table was binding it. The table is webs and spiders. Spiders are something else. They don’t help each other, they oppose, they… they weaken. It was caught in a web, and I… All the pieces were there. And I just… I couldn’t see it.

YOU DON'T SAY!

Tim: I… I’m not just going to leave you down here. Martin: You were all about quitting. Tim: Oh, for God’s sake, this isn’t about you. Martin: It never is.

Oh. Oh, ouch. Yeah, maybe this counts as a bit manipulative on Martin's end, but I think it's also a genuine expression of abandonment issues tinged with self-loathing. The way I read Martin, I don't think he's standing there thinking "How do I get Tim to stay", I think that's just a side effect of his emotions bursting out of him, bypassing the brain-to-mouth filter.

Martin: No, no, okay, because there’s two of us and there’s one of you, okay. He’s not killing anyone! Tim: Martin, look at his hands! Martin: Oh.

Oh god, somehow this scene is so much creepier if Michael's NOT revealing his full distortion form from the start. You've just got the inhuman sounding voice and yeah, they must know he's not actually human but they don't yet know HOW not human he is and then he slowly distorts, so gradually that they don't even notice there's a change. Or maybe - maybe there was never a change at all... Oh, I like this version of the scene a lot. It's just become so much better in my head!

Jon: I just hope this tape works the same, that my voice remains intact. Even if I’m gone, even if it wears a face that people think is mine, pulls me apart, becomes me. Listen, it’s not me! Whoever hears this: it is not me.

Oh god, shivers all over. He's so desperate, so scared and yeah, dying and being replaced so that none of your loved ones ever knows it's not you (or that they're in horrible danger for that matter) would be so much worse than just dying. Even if you're not around to experience it either way, the thought alone...

Jon: I don’t even remember what she looks like. Even now that I know, now I’ve seen it twisted and… I still don’t remember her. The only face I can picture is…

And now you've gone and made me sad.

Not!Sasha: I’m going to wear you, Jon. I’m going to wear everything you are. Like you never existed. No-one will even know. And it will hurt. Oh, yes, it will hurt. It hurt Sasha.

And back to being creeped the fuck out while also being a little sad.

Not!Sasha: So the monster got its friends to carry the table all around, and it still got to take faces and scare people.

Oh, okay, Breekon and Hope were specifically "hired" BY the Not!Them somehow.

Not!Sasha: Then one day it was sent to the house of its enemy, which had the biggest eyes you ever did see.

I'm loving the fairy-tale tone of this. Also, in hindsight the "biggest eyes you ever did see" is just so ... I'm not sure how to describe my emotion about this line but it does make me squee a bit at the writing.

Jon: I’m sorry. Martin, Tim… Sasha. I’m so sorry. I should have… I didn’t… I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.

And back to being sad again at Jon's final words (or what he thinks will be his final words) being an apology, a cry for forgiveness at his inadequacy, that he should have been better, that he should have somehow prevented all this...

Not!Sasha: I wonder, if I wear you, will I really become the Archivist? Rob the eye of its pupil?

These lines are SO MUCH BETTER now that I know what they mean. I think I just sort of glossed over them on my first listen.

My impression of this episode

In one word: Woah! There's just a lot going on here. The magnificent horror that is Not!Sasha finally revealing herself. All the personality-revealing details of Tim and Martin's conversation. The emotional roller coaster that is Jon's absolute desperation. Michael being his usual self. And then that last minute rescue by a mysteeeerious figure, which made for a very nice cliffhanger at the time (I remember that I was very glad I'd come to TMA late so I could just go on to listen to the next episode without having to wait for a week.)

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 40 - Human Remains

Jon: No. I need to be here. Keep watch. I need to be sure…

Damn, poor Jon... and this is basically him for the rest of the show, isn't it? Keeping watch. Whether he wants to or not. First in the normal human sense, then increasingly in the Eye sense.

Elias: I do apologise that it took me quite so long to figure out how to actually work the system. If I’d been quicker…

Oh sure, Elias, like you weren't standing there, whistling a merry tune and counting down the seconds until Jon had been thoroughly wormed.

Jon: It’s the last thing I remember before blacking out. Tens of thousands of… things without mouths screaming as one.

Urgh. TMA continues to be eerily good at evoking the indescribable through description.

Tim: Sure. Just… quarantine, y’know? Not as much fun as it sounds.

YOU DON'T SAY!

Tim: I’m fine, though. Except for the holes. And the pain. And the blood and the nightmares.

The entire Tim story arc is really just one big exercise in breaking the optimist, isn't it?

Tim: I spotted the tape recorder lying on the ground, and went over to, er, see if it was damaged

Suuuure you did.

Tim: It’s a bit of blur, to be honest, ‘cause when I turned around, there she was. Prentiss. Her face so full of holes it’s like, “my eyes are up here”, but they’re not, you know?

Pffffffffft.

Tim: After that… my memory gets a bit fuzzy. I think the paramedic called it ‘respiratory acidosis’… from breathing in all the carbon dioxide, rather than your more traditional oxygen.

Tim keeps making me laugh with the way he phrases things.

Tim: You know that worm smell? That earthy rotten smell? Jon: Oh yes.

The tremor in Jon's voice as he says 'Oh yes'! Love it a lot.

Tim: It’s like, something in the Institute slows them down, and makes them, um, heh, sluggish.

Yeah, the Corruption and the Eye don't exactly see ... well ... eye to eye, do they?

Not-Sasha: They took you away, so I waited with Elias. He was looking at me strangely, but we were both quiet.

Yeah, no surprise he was looking at her strangely! Obviously, he knew! What was going through his mind at the time? "Huh, well, this is interesting. And rather convenient!"

Jon: It’s important to me. Are you feeling alright? You seem a bit out of it. Not-Sasha: Yes, I’m very tired. It’s hard to keep track of things sometimes.

I didn't notice this when I first listened to this episode, but Not-Sasha DOES sound off. She doesn't emote nearly as much as the other characters or actual!Sasha did and when she talks about her experiences, it sounds very distant, like she's just going through the motions. You could put this down to trauma or tiredness ... or to the fact that she's LITERALLY NOT TALKING ABOUT HER OWN EXPERIENCES. I'm actually kind of impressed with the voice actor if this was deliberate.

Martin: No, I mean… I’m sorry I left you. (...) It was an accident. I thought you two were with me! I mean, the worms came at us, and they were so much faster, and then there was the gas, and the running, and I just… I, I thought you were right behind me. But when I turned round you were gone. You were both gone. It was an accident.

Well, I hope you feel like a right arse now, Jon! (Also someone give Martin a hug, poor thing.)

Martin: And there was more dust in those corridors too, and dead rats, even some discarded wine bottles. At one point there was an empty packet of mint imperials

Jeez, Jurgen, clean up after yourself!

Jon: MARTIN! How did she die? Martin: She was shot! Three times, that I could see. Three shots to the chest.

I remember this made me go "Woah!" at the time. I'd expected some grisly supernatural death but not that.

Jon: Gertrude Robinson, the last Archivist at the Magnus Institute, and my predecessor, was murdered. There were no worms to infest her, no strange, ghostly apparitions to warp her mind, or caves to entomb her. She was killed, in the Archives, by someone who used a gun, and that scares me far more than any spectre or twisted creature. Because that means someone here is a killer.

Somehow I, as a listener, also found it scarier - it's just such a "normal" way to go, just ... "human on human" violence.

There’s no sign of debris, or anything that would indicate they’ve been destroyed, but, in addition to the tape Sasha lost earlier, the tapes for cases 0051701 and 0160204 are gone.

Those are Strange Music and A Distortion, both of which feature Actual!Sasha's voice. (No, I didn't figure this out on my first listen, 'cause I couldn't be bothered to look up the numbers, but of course it makes perfect sense for Not!Sasha to get rid of any evidence that she's - well - not Sasha. Mind, if it was a bunch of people like me working in the archive she needn't have bothered...)

My impression of this episode

When I first listened to this episode it was immediately after the previous one and they just kind of blurred together into one nail-biting conclusion. Listening to it separately now, it feels mostly like a bridge between season 1 and season 2, ending old plot threads and setting up new ones. Not particularly memorable as a stand-alone episode but extremely important in the context of the story.