#i want her to be horrifying i want her to be an eldritch horror that haunts him and i want him to break down over it <3 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

icedragonlizard · 1 month ago

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As you may have seen on my Kirby therapy tier list, I put Kirby himself in the "needs therapy" tier.

I've seen people argue that Kirby doesn't need therapy or that he could even be the one playing therapist to others in the series. I don't disagree with these sentiments, although it's just a matter of interpretation more than anything.

There are actual reasons as to why I put Kirby himself in the tier where he is. I'll make it clear that it's based on my personal interpretation of him, but here's why:

I get the sense that Kirby must be really feeling the weight on his non-existent shoulders to be playing the hero all the time. He's been through so much, has confronted so many eldritch horrors, and have saved so many people, and it definitely has to be affecting him mentally. Even if he attempts to repress it, that doesn't mean the stress isn't there.

And the thing is that Kirby, at least in my interpretation, is a bleeding heart. He cares about people so much. He's always been wanting to help others that need it. He feels like it's an obligation for him. If he ends up failing to save someone, it hurts him. It would hurt him and break his heart if one of his friends were to die, or if a loved one of one of his friends were to die.

I'll mention two incidents where he feels like he failed: the deaths of Sectonia and Max Haltmann.

Kirby wishes that he helped save them, and it really hurt him that he didn't. When he was informed by Taranza and Susie that they were trying to save their respective loved ones, and told him about their backstories and how Sectonia and Haltmann weren't always evil and that they were corrupted by outside forces, it broke his heart. Both situations broke his heart. He wishes he could've helped Taranza and Susie get the happy endings that he believes they deserved, and the fact that it didn't happen makes him feel like he failed them.

Taranza and Susie aren't mad at Kirby over it, though. They understand that he was just protecting his home, and they feel more responsible for their loved ones' death than he is. They're friends with him, and although the process of them becoming his friends was admittedly a little awkward, in the end they don't hold a grudge against him despite the initial bad starts they had with him.

(Note that I headcanon that Susie is generally pretty guarded, as she hasn't opened up about her backstory to most people. But Kirby is one of the people that she did disclose her backstory to, although it was a little while after becoming friends when she did so, and he promised not to tell anyone when she said to keep it secret. Needless to say, learning about the Haltmanns' backstory was really horrifying and upsetting for Kirby)

I've seen people come up with the interpretation that Kirby saved everyone in the Switch games (including saving Hyness and Leongar) because of the guilt that he has over the 3DS tragedies, and I think that's a great interpretation. Enough to make me want to adapt it for my headcanons. And when it makes him look back at those previous incidents, it makes him upset. Kirby still wishes he could've helped save Sectonia and Haltmann like he did for Hyness and Leongar.

And so this is something that my interpretation of Kirby could use therapy over. He feels guilty and that he failed in those two situations. That, and alongside whatever stress he could (secretly?) be having over the weight on his shoulders of playing hero all the time.

I'll mention another thing for my interp's Kirby: After the events of Milky Way Wishes, he didn't see Marx for a long time, and it made him believe that he killed him. It made him sad, because even though Marx did turn out to be evil at the time, Kirby had the feeling he could've been redeemed and that they could've been friends. He would've loved to see Marx survive and do better, but there was a time where he thought that he died, and it admittedly upsetted him.

But Marx came back. It turns out he survived Nova's explosion, and crossed paths with Kirby again a long time after. Kirby was very happy to see that he survived and they became friends. The same also goes for Magolor, because Kirby didn't see him for a while after RTDL and was worried, but he was happy to see him come back and become a friend as well.

At least Marx and Magolor came back and became Kirby's friends, but sadly Sectonia and Haltmann did not and will not. Kirby will always feel the weight of those tragedies.

That sums up my thoughts on the matter and as to why I put Kirby in the "needs therapy" tier on that list. I do believe he can handle his problems a lot better than most of the others in the cast, but there are legitimately stuff he'd need therapy over. Of course, if you're one of those who believe he doesn't need it or that he himself is the therapist, bravo to you. Funny enough, the latter is also somewhat existent in my verse's Kirby too, on top of him also needing it.

#kirby #taranza #queen sectonia #triple deluxe #susie haltmann #max profitt haltmann #kirby planet robobot #marx #marx kirby #milky way wishes #magolor

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kidokear · 3 months ago

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Spoilers for Murder Drones Ep 8.

What ride! I loved it. ^^

Although, there is this particular line from J that had been stuck in my mind since I watched the episode.

"You know there's no escape, even in death!"

Outstanding delivery aside (seriously, the VA killed it), The line itself (even on a surface level) shows how trapped these drones are, but I'd like to delve deeper here. There is something about it that makes the gears in my head turns and I want to drop the product here.

Here we go.

To start, I'd like to say that, of course, J would know that more than anyone. She died so many times during the show. There is even a J death count in the credit scene. If someone would feel like it's impossible to leave, it would be J because her experience showed her that something as final as death could not break the Solver's hold. (Following this line of thoughts can give us a wealth of information about J and her character! But that's for later)

Now, thinking about it, there are more than one way for the Solver to nullify (heh) death, and I think that makes it even more terrifying and, well, absolute. More so than death. It's not one blockage. There are layers.

For one, we know how difficult it is to kill a Solver afflicted drone. They regenerate so much, so quickly. Even when you take out a crucial part (like the head) or a good chunk of them, they'll come back. And when you do manage to damage them enough to the point that they can't just self-repair, if their core is intact you'll get the 'autorun Solver failsafe' where they'll mutate and turn into eldritch abomination that collect matter until it can repair the host back into the original stat, effectively bring them back to life (and we don't even know the level of awareness the host have during the matter collection process).

Second, even if there is no eldritch phase, they'll still live as a core (like Nori!), a body is not needed.

And if the core is destroyed? Not enough. Because there are backups. J's core was destroyed at the second episode, and oh look! she's back, and seemingly with her memories (on some level) intact from her previous run.

But there is more! Now, this part is mostly speculation and theories, so take it with a grain of salt. But there is a point, after Uzi ate the Solver core where the screen had red in it, and, some says, Doll's name flashed there. Now, I don't think Cyn kept a back up of Doll, and her core was eaten. So what does that mean? I think that could mean that any drone connected to the solver (or maybe eaten by it) would be saved in it's... data base? (not sure what to call it). So even if there is no core, no back up, a drone might not cease to exist and 'die' if it was connected to the solver, even passively. They could forever exist within the Solver itself, which mean that the only way to truly die is to erase the Solver and everything within it completely. which I'm not even sure is possible, considering it's nature of being a 'code mutation' with the possibility of popping up again (although, maybe the end of one strain of Solver could 'free' those within this strain. Or we could have a case of Halo's Flood where even when gone, the new one will carry what the old has, which is honestly horrifying and depressing).

And the patch won't safe you because it keep the primary host out, but not the Solver (and honestly, even if it blocks the Solver itself, I don't think a patch would be effective for long, I think it could pull a flu and mutate to bypass it).

All in all, the Solver is living up to it's name and is being one of my favorite cosmic/existential horrors, not just bending the laws of physics but life itself. A background hopelessness that become more and more prominent once you think about it.

Sorry if that was a mess. Like I said, I just wanted to word vomit my thoughts. XD

#Murder drones #absolute solver #MD #Analysis #Serial designation J #SDJ #Cyn #Oh the things I can do with this massive wiggling room MD left for us at the end #😈#Solver is one of those things that the more you think about the more terrifying it gets #This might be just a recap of how no one can truly die with it around #Kido thoughts #my thoughts

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moreespressoformydepresso · 6 months ago

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Lowkey considering starting on writing a TBOSAS horror AU where Gaul experiments on the dead tributes’ bodies and unexpectedly become eldritch monsters who put a stop to the games by brutally slaughtering Gaul after some (read: a shit tone of) psychological and physical torment as retribution for her actions. This gives the mentors a chance to make up for their behavior towards the tributes, but will the now terrifying kids accept it?

The eldritch tributes wreak some havoc and do some horror-movie esque shit to scare their city of tormentors before one of the better mentors figures out that this is their dead tributes’ doing. This happens before Sejanus is hung, so both he and Lucy Gray survive through eldritch interference. Not all the magical abilities the tributes get are horrifying on their own, but the way in which they can be used sure are. It ends by the Capitol’s arm being twisted into making life better for the districts for fear of the torture and death given to those who caused the tributes the most pain. I have some ideas for at least some of the tributes’ otherworldly abilities, so lmk if you want me to share those and/or possible plotlines (I already have a few good ones, hence me wanting to actually write it for once. Aside from it being good practice for my book that I’m writing).

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shara-dreamer · 3 months ago

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(Platonic) Uzi x Detective! Brother reader

A/n: I am so sorry if this is short or ooc I am very tired also I am both ok and not ok after the series ending.

you are the eldest child of the doorman family, Uzi's older brother. I guess both of you could be considered disappointments since you didn't go into the door business either.

You are a detective who never really had much to do, but you did support Uzi's idea of defending against the disassembly drones. You helped her build her railgun and even had her make a smaller one for you to carry around, just in case.

You met N with her and even stood by her with her self imposed banishment, but you didn't say anything to your dad before you left. You didn't have anything left to say to him as you already weren't afraid to speak against your dad.

You were just as tired of all of this hiding since you were there when your mom died when uzi was just a baby.

You did get a call about some missing drones since you seemed to be one of the few detectives that actually did your job, so you snuck back in under the lie of going to look for more machine parts.

When you got inside, you started looking around, noting the mass amount of “absolute solver” messages burned into the wall and also went to investigate the dead drone bodies.

It was all a blur of pain and bullets before you dived behind a wall, looking down at the gun with you bleeding oil, 15 minutes until recharge. “Damn it damn it.” you hissed, hearing running and screaming, quickly getting up to follow it.

You slid to a stop by uzi, who was pointing her railgun at multiple camera looking things. “Y/n? What are you doing here? I thought you were looking for machine parts.” Uzi glanced in between you and the eldritch horror, taking note of your hurt arm and oiled stained jacket.

“Yeah, I uh, I lied.” You replied.

“Why would you lie about going back? Are you hiding things from me?” Uzi demanded.

“No, I’m not hiding things from you, I wanted to see what was happening, scout ahead to see how dangerous it was and well..we both see how that ended.” You replied, motioning to J. “So what's with the freaky robot worm camera monster?”

“What’s with the voice, J?” Uzi asked, pointing the rail gun at her.

“Oh, J’s not here. We are trying to repair that host as per our directive.” The robotic voice spoke, showing a hologram of the decapitated J.

“So you are a program?” Uzi asked.

“That explains all the signs I saw.” You muttered.

“More like you are our cute puppets. It hurts our feelings you don’t remember us.”

Both you and uzi looked horrified, you more so, “Mom..” You breathed, your voice barely audible. That same symbol being shared between Nori and baby Uzi.

“N? What’s with the mom hologram?”

“Easier to assimilate than explain.”

“Not. Happening.” You spoke firmly, voice shaking from either rage or fear, stepping in front of Uzi, holding an arm out to protect her, gripping your normal gun, knowing it wouldn’t do much.

“Fair, but poor choice. Now we will have to do something shocking.” J’s head came down and pulled out your dad.

“Whoa – hey!” Uzi charged forward, you quick on her heels.

“Goodbye, dad.” Khan ripped your dad in half, tossing his body aside like nothing, making both of you freeze as J bit into his head, oil pouring to the ground.

The monster charged at you two, putting your body in front of Uzi to protect her, a missile coming out of nowhere and firing at the creature.

“Wait, what?”

“Uzi, shoot!” N exclaimed, “Or give it to me!” “Give me the gun, Uzi!” You exclaimed while N fired at the creature.

“Close one. Snarl.”

“Uzi, You good?” N asked.

“No.” Her voice trembled, making your heart hurt as she gave the gun to N.

“Uzi look out!-”

“Pranked, idiot.” The solver laughed, smacking the two of you back, “You big stupid.” You both hit the wall with a grunt as the rail gun was destroyed.

“Uzi!” You yelled through a strained voice as the solver grabbed her.

“Lucky for you, it’s snack time. Time to go into my mouth now.”

You were cut free by N and you stumbled towards uzi, N grabbing the both of you as the rail gun exploded, luckily N’s wings protected the two of you. The hologram of your dad disappeared and a weird black ball floated away, “W-what was– which parts of that were real?” Uzi’s voice trembled.

“Breath…” You said quietly. It was hard to tell if you were saying it to her or to yourself.

Some weird crab creature jumped from the rubble “Sneaky, sneaky. Sneaking away. Get snuck-up on.” N stabbed it, thankfully, with a collections of ‘ows’ from it before it turned into another black sphere.

The sound of people were getting closer and n walked over, offering a hand and then tried to reach out to uzi, but you grabbed his wrist with a glare, holding an arm in front of uzi as she gasped and flinched, looking up at n fearfully and he pulled away, noting how your own hand was shaking.

“What..are you things?”

The two of your watched as N slowly backed away and the people drew closer.

“Uzi? Y/n?” Your father carefully called out. “What are you doing h-” He was cut off by uzi hugging him tightly, but you stood by, holding your arm as khan hugged back, motioning for the other officers to search further.

Later at home, uzi was asleep in her room and you sat at the table with a heavy sigh, your arm patched up and jacket resting behind you. “What happened back there?” Khan asked, more like demanded.

“I’ve already told you..” You muttered, rubbing your forehead, you suddenly felt very tired.

“It still sounds ridiculous.” Khan sighed.

“More ridiculous than what mom was always muttering about..?” You raised your head slightly, khan looking slightly guilty at the mention of your mother. “Look, those things are inside now and uzi is going to keep looking into them, whether you want her to or not, no matter what I say or tell her to do. Are you going to help us, or keep hiding like the coward you are?” “y/n-” “That thing showed us mom, this ‘solver’ or whatever it is, knew mom and Uzi's eye has that symbol, just like mom did and it shares that resemblance to the drawings mom did. Something big is happening and you seem content in just letting it fester and ignoring it, putting me and uzi in danger.” You were agitated, getting up in his face. The silence was tense as the two of you stared at each other.

You let out a frustrated sigh, grabbing your jacket and heading to the door as you put it on, “W-wait! Where are you going?” Khan called out after you.

“I’m going to get a drink.”

#murder drones x reader #murder drones #n #uzi doorman #khan doorman #x reader

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lemon-natalia · 4 months ago

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Nona the Ninth Reaction - John 1:20

i honestly hadn’t considered that John would have access to a bunch of other info, like the FTL planning to leave everyone behind, via the politician he’s puppeting around. he’s practically running the government of this unspecified country at this point. i mean i guess it was good practice for everything he’d later end up doing as Emperor

‘I’ve got plans for that arm’ um. what. y'know what i really really don’t want to even know

for a guy who keeps saying he didn’t want to nuke anything he’s reallyyy leaning into the nukes every chance he gets

something i find very interesting is that John possibly also has powers besides necromancy that he’s seemingly glossed over a lot? even though they’re very toothy, he can apparently grow roses, and earlier C— talks about him potentially stabilising the North Glacier like that’s something he could definitely do. i wonder if it is actually possible to use thalergy, the life energy stuff, which really never gets mentioned that much tbh, in a similar way to thanergy?

ok how on earth is ‘Cows exhibit mourning behaviour for other cows’ such a goddamn impactful line. like its a really chilling moment of John confirming that he’s willing to start a nuclear war rather than let the ships leave. and it’s also objectively fucking ridiculous

John’s reflection here on his friends doubting him, and how ‘People don’t forgive, not really’ is very interesting considering his actions at the end of HtN, where he asks Augustine if they can have a ‘fresh slate’ in the wake of him killing Mercy. idk really what i’m trying to say here, but i do wonder how much John really meant what he was offering there

well what with Ianthe, Harrow, and Kiriona, John certainly took M—’s remark about recruiting teenage girls in the next cult to heart

what i’m personally choosing to take away from this chapter is that multitasking is the true villain of the Locked Tomb universe. get some sleep and stop trying to do six things at once kids, or you might just end up nuking the entire earth

‘I can’t Sister. It’s too big’ i’m quite frankly a little disappointed that John didn’t take the opportunity to make a ‘that’s what she said’ joke here

holy crap, the nun shooting herself is certainly a moment. this is really leaning into the eldritch horror of what it would be like to be a human and aware of the Earth literally screaming at you

there’s such a tragic contrast between M— literally begging in her last moments for them not to shoot John vs Mercy being the one to kill him & John killing her so horrifically in return

John’s been essentially levelling up in necromancy as all of these chapters have progressed, but it’s a truly horrifying level of power he displays here. it’s not even the nukes that end up killing a lot of people, because John points out that he was able to just straight up snap the necks of about half of the entire world population

so much about this chapter is just walking the line between absurdist comedy and abject horror, but there is something just so … viscerally disturbing about the mental image of John literally just eating dirt as he consumes the soul of the Earth

THIS is where the Barbie comparison comes in??? this?! John modelled a body for the remains of the soul of the partially-absorbed soul of the earth after BARBIE?!! talk about taking Barbieheimer to a whole new level

‘I drank them in, and it wasn’t enough’ someone better at comedy than me has probably made a very Hungry Caterpillar joke about this chapter

‘You and I went full fucking Hungry Caterpillar’ DUDE. ok i stg i made the Hungry Caterpillar annotation immediately before i read like the next page and saw this

‘I picked you to change [...] I still love you’ well, there’s some form of answer about how John actually got his necromancy in the first place. there’s something so awful about being a human being given powers you just straight up can’t really comprehend by a being so much bigger than you out of love

the message reads ‘THE/TOWER/HAS/REACTIVAT’. at this point i can’t really think of anything else it could say other than ‘reactivated’. and given this is the chapter where John describes himself as becoming God, there’s something very poetic about the chapter heading being John 1:20, in which John the Baptist confesses that he isn’t the Messiah

#lemon natalia reads the locked tomb #the locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb liveblog #nona the ninth #it took me a good two weeks to realise i'd written corona instead of kiriona

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isogenderskitty · 8 months ago

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the delivery of pete's line "all my life, i just wanted a girl to like me... but i guess it's not all roses, huh?" is so fucking heart shattering. even through all the grief and dread and fear and hopelessness you can still hear that he still feels some happiness and relief that she does like him back. even though he knows he's about to die. it still matters. it still matters that steph likes him. and not only does she like him, he is what she cherishes most in the world. he is the single most important thing in her life, to the point where insatiable eldritch horrors want her to sacrifice him to them and would not accept anything else from her. this horrifying situation is conclusive evidence that she is just as hopelessly in love with him as he is with her. it's clear in his face and the way he talks about it that mixed in with all the worst emotions possible, there's still some joy alive there. still some misplaced excitement, even though he knows it's about to be snuffed out far too quickly. god it's so complex and messy and real and it makes me insane

#aughghughguhg #lautski #dont fucking touch me i stg #npmd #hatchetfield #joey richter the man that you are...

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lilacthebooklover · 9 months ago

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part of the reason why i find nightmare time episodes so interesting is because in half of them, i'm not even sure who the writers want me to root for.

take honey queen, for example. linda's the focus of it and we see her emotions, motivations & family, so it's expected that she would be the "hero" of the episode. but she isn't. the episode consists of her doing horrible things to zoey, zoey doing horrible things to her, and it gradually escalating to the point of kidnapping and murder. it's due to linda that zoey dies. and she gets what she wants, what the whole episode has been about her vying to achieve, but we as viewers don't feel satisfied, because how can all that's happened possibly be worth such a tiny, temporary, meaningless title? linda's father seems to be proud of her, which is what she's been hoping to gain and added an extra element of sympathy for her character. but in the end, he sacrifices her to an eldritch being because she "the hungriest". honey queen is tragic and comedic and messed up and chaotic and there are The Horrors and nobody is distinctly good.

and that stays the same in every nightmare time episode. so many of these characters wouldn't care a bit if they killed someone, as long as they were able to survive. but that's just hatchetfield. a strange community of selfish people with no clear morals, because that's all they know and that's all they can be if they want to survive. they have a magic child fighting ring, they have evil weed birds, they have clones in the technical department, they have an asexual axe murderer in the woods, they have a wealthy doting mother who's been alive for centuries, they have a 1986 foxbody mustang possessed by a dead psychiatrist, so on and so forth.

the whole hatchetfield universe is so surreal: this is a place where people go missing every day, where gruesome murders are dismissed unless it threatens their football team losing to the clivesdale chemists, where a character can do the most horrendous things or seem absolutely irredeemable, only for the narrative to put them through so much that the audience ends up loving them.

each character is so complex and unique (i could write an essay about literally any of them if i tried to- and yet that includes peanuts the hatchetfield pocket squirrel). none of them are meant to be all good, and none of them are meant to be all bad. they're realistic to their environment and screwed over by their universe and they all have their own lives to focus on.

the vast majority of the antagonistic characters are very beloved in this fandom, because this is hatchetfield, where the most horrifying things are normalised in-universe, so they begin to be for us, too. we don't think it's as awful when we see zoey's body hanging from the rafters, or watch boy jeri be killed by his own son, or see eldritch beings hunt people down, since that's all seen as far more normal in this world. besides that, people like to have flawed characters, it's good to have little fictional freaks committing atrocities since it means the episodes are completely unpredictable.

every volume of nightmare time is a rollercoaster or a fever dream, because they'll take the most unexpected characters and the most random concepts ever and throw them into a completely absurd plot. so many modern pieces of media follow a specific genre or structure, but the hatchetfield universe does whatever the hell it wants, and it's so investing to see. there aren't any limits here, and each episode is a separate timeline, so the creators can go wild and do literally anything with this town. it's like a treasured collection of cracky aus that have been written and performed astonishingly beautifully.

anyway, this is your sign to go check out nightmare time and @blinkysrewatchparty! it will be entirely worth it, i promise <3

#nightmare time propaganda #LOOK IT'S SO UNHINGED I NEED MORE PEOPLE TO RAMBLE ABOUT IT WITH ME #nightmare time #nightmare time 2 #exposing myself #i still have over half of the episodes to watch #i've seen lots of snippets from tumblr of what happens in each #(e.g. tom makes love to a car #ted & tinky's whole thing #paul 23 and emdroid)#but the only ones i've watched to completion are #honey queen #abstinence camp #daddy nmt #and #hey melissa #they were all phenomenal though & i'm very much looking forward to finding time to watch the rest of the series!#watcher world seems especially up my alley :)#nightmare time starkid #starkid #starkid productions #hatchetfield universe #hrhhghhff it's so insane <3 #linda monroe #zoey chambers #team starkid #hatchetfield #hatchetverse #i'm pretty sure the only 2 characters the fandom genuinely despises are pamela & melissa #the rest are our blorbos <33

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see-arcane · 10 months ago

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Alright having listened to TMP 1 and 2 now, current impressions:

-Samama is coming off like a blend of Sasha, Jon, and Martin circa season 1. Sasha's drive to investigate, Jon's role as the person placed in a New Position Under Scrutiny, and Martin's early friendliness/attempt to people please.

-Alice is my best friend. And possibly a spiritual cousin to Tim Stoker.

-Gwendolyn has a cross of Sasha (organized) and Basira (terse) in her clear ability to keep to the job's system*** and is understandably a bit hackle-raised between her asshole boss and the new guy seemingly poking holes in her methods. Surname obviously dangles the possibility of relation to Elias Bouchard--but whether this world's Elias is himself or not, or even alive, is up in the air.

-Oh, Lena. I don't care if she's eldritch or not, I am throwing the heaviest clunker computer in the building at her head. Other than that, there's the possibility that she's A) Got Jonah Magnus' eyes in her skull, B) This world's Web's Plan B should the Magnus Institute fall through, another backup avatar in case Jonah Magnus failed to stop Gertrude, or C) Somehow none of the above.***

-Colin sir, I cannot wait to see whatever secret brew you're working on. Show me the conspiracy's bones. I'm ready.

-CHESTER AND NORRIS. A) Jon and Martin are pulling a reverse Uno card and trying to use their familiar voices to wall off the Web's influence somehow, B) These are Jon and Martin's stolen voices that the Web is using to their own ends, or C) ...Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood are alive and well and non-avatared in this world and just so happened to get jobs recording spooky shit. Georgie hooked them up.

-***SO. About the """system""" involved with this lovely horrifying data entry position. These guys are recording statements. It's clear that avatars are still running around here doing their scary business. But what's getting to me is the fact that while these things are recorded and technically filed away, the system of organization, even with Gwendolyn's comparatively sharper intuition of the whats and wheres, the statements are seemingly purposefully dumped in "order" based on...you know. Vibes. Nothing concrete, nothing precise, and with the people working there going out of their way to insist nobody thinks about the work or the statements, period.

Which feels like a setup that falls very short of what the Eye or the Web would want. If there's a defined and understandable system that used to be there, whose rules of labeling were forgotten--perhaps erased?--that seems like someone's purposeful intention of putting at least a tiny wrench into the works. At least once that someone realized what that tidy organization was accidentally aiding. Who that might be, I can't guess yet.

But.

Because hope springs eternal, I do have an idea of where the Office of Incident Assessment and Response--replete with that very, very interesting classical logo--came from in the first place. If not Jonah Magnus, then someone else who's aware of the Fears. Maybe someone who was touched by the Eye and was appalled? Enough to want to do something about this horror, however small. Say, someone taken notice of around the same time as Jonah Magnus?

Jonathan Fanshawe, sir.

Was this you?

#many thoughts head splitting #the magnus protocol #the magnus archives

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one-wasp · 4 months ago

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Ey, posting about my still unnamed limbus company au (i really need to figure one out) again.

This time I wanted to start going over how the characters react to each other, specifically how the book characters react to what the limbus ones tell them.

I think it's safe to say, but the world the limbus characters come from is drastically different then their book counter parts. This, of course, leads to a sort of 'universal' dissconect (i don't really know what else to call it).

So, the limbus characters will talk about about things that, to them, are (somewhat) normal. Monsters created from one's psyche, distored or mutated humans, just all the horrors that come from The City.

To the book characters, however, these things are absolutly not normal, in any sense of the word. To them, these sound like things straight from hell, or from a madman's fever dream.

I thought of an example of this between the Ishmaels. Limbus Ishmael offhandedly mentions the Whales of the Great Lake, and Book Ishmael (ever the whale lover) ends up asking her about what the whales are like where she's from. So, of course, Limbus Ishmael goes on about how they're great calamitys that turn people into monstrous mermaids; becuase that's what they are in The City, monsters that live within an (seemingly) endless lake.

But to Book Ishmael, those aren't 'whales' but 'horrifying eldritch leviathans that mearly appear as whales'. That, right there, is the kind of disconnects that end up happening. I hope you get the idea.

#limbus company #project moon #limbus company au #sorry if it isnt explained the best

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mllemaenad · 10 months ago

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Right, well, I wanted to write, so I'm going to do that, even if my wrists hurt. Things I will pay for later, but make me feel better now.

Have now listened to episodes 1 and 2 of The Magnus Protocol.

My first impression is that this is much worse than what was going on in The Magnus Archives.

The Magnus Institute was a private institution with no obvious access to other people's information (Magnus's occasional psychic spying notwithstanding). Most information it received seems to have at least been given willingly. There are a handful of instances of John forcing people to talk, yes, but not so many that I am constantly concerned for the privacy of London's citizens. Gertrude is said to have disliked compelling people to talk (Family Business), so while her tally very likely exceeds John's purely due to the length of time she was in the job, it's still probably not very high. It's impossible to account for the behaviour of previous archivists of course but, well, the whole place is set up to entice people in to tell their tales. I would hazard that most of the materiel in the archives was volunteered.

Even in cases where someone was forced – at least they knew about it, because they were there. The lady in Scrutiny who was so deeply disturbed by John's behaviour was also able to make that behaviour stop just by rolling up to The Magnus Institute and reporting it – which is a reasonably straightforward outcome, given the general weirdness of their world.

I don't mean to say that The Magnus Institute didn't do harm – it very obviously did. But even in terms of its final apocalypse, we're looking at a horror that lasted mere months (assuming a passage of time that broadly corresponds to the broadcasting schedule) before a group of disgruntled employees (and Georgie) burned the nightmare tower down, stabbed Magnus and reset reality. There were limitations to The Magnus Institute's reach, and Jonah Magnus's personal ambitions concluded with an utter, embarrassing flop by any reasonable estimation.

Here, though, you're looking at a government department with truly concerning access to people's data. The forum-based statement in First Shift is perhaps not too awful (forum threads can often be read by anyone, even if actually posting requires an account), but the earlier piece regarding the bereaved woman was a private email thread, and the story in Making Adjustments is drawn from a recording of a woman's session with her therapist. Sam calls out the massive invasion of privacy this sort of thing entails, but is shut down on the grounds that it's fine because they "work for the government".

Alice Ok, so looks like it's an email. Sam And I just… read it? Is that even legal? Alice Probably. We do work for the government. Sort of. Sam What about GDPR? Alice Look, Sam, I don't know what to tell you. This is the job. I've been doing it for years and there's never been any problems. Maybe ask Lena? She’d probably know. – The Magnus Protocol: First Shift

While it is too early to definitively establish the worldbuilding rules here:

In The Magnus Archives, giving a statement was functionally feeding an eldritch power

Gertrude Robinson took statements, but kept the archives themselves in a state of disarray, to impede Magnus's plans (Dwelling)

Much of The Magnus Archives played on the difference between knowing a thing and understanding it

The characters in The Magnus Protocol are not just collecting, but blindly categorising statements – they are organising them by keyword, but not encouraged to analyse what they see or hear – Alice notes that they are paid not to care (Making Adjustments)

At least in The Magnus Archives, making a statement tended to come with consequences: typically horrifying recurring nightmares

So you have to wonder – what consequences will there be for these people, who have had their stories stolen from them?

In terms of workplace horror, this is very much coming at it from the opposite direction. The Magnus Archives was about the horrible job you couldn't quit. Most people find themselves stuck in these for economic reasons rather than supernatural ones, although in fairness both Martin (Children of the Night) and Melanie (Dig) are explicitly called out as very much needing the work, but the characters are nevertheless stuck and constantly call back to the fact that they would absolutely quit – if only they could.

It ran on punishing hours and constant exhaustion, the expectation that you would take on tasks you were in no way qualified or trained for (this started with "archiving" and escalated quickly to "apocalypses"), the boss who expected you to "just know" things you couldn't possibly know at all, and a soul destroying amount of responsibility with little hope of advancement. The same person ran the institute since its founding, literally consuming his employees along the way, and if you wanted, say, to be Head Archivist, you were very much stuck waiting for the current occupant of the role to die.

It is significant that, with the noted exception of Eric Delano, all of Gertrude's assistants died on the job (some of them by her hand), and tallying John's assistants is a bit like listing off the wives of Henry VIII: dead, dead, dead, divorced, survived, status unknown. While the story leans on deaths for drama, it gets a lot of mileage out of using historical data, so characters stick around. It's weird for them to be actually gone.

The Magnus Protocol opens with Teddy quitting the OIAR to take a job in insurance. The very first thing you learn about this place is that people leave, and this idea is reinforced a number of times even in the first two episodes: Gwen is pressured to resign by Lena because she is "difficult", and Lena notes outright that, for most people, this job is strictly short term:

Lena Hmmm. I’ve always known you thought you were slumming it down here, but I never actually considered you might think of this as the first step of a career. Most people simply move on within 12 months or so. Gwen I’m not most people. – The Magnus Protocol: First Shift

Moreover, Making Adjustments concludes first with a fraught conversation about possible redundancies and then with Alice accusing Sam (however playfully) of looking to "jump ship" when he's seen researching The Magnus Institute.

This is the horrible job you might lose tomorrow. While the threat in The Magnus Archives was that you were probably going to die in this job, here it leans more toward – if you didn't show up tomorrow, who would question it? People leave.

It is a night shift, for no clear reason – they're doing data entry on what definitely looks like non-essential information so why the hell can't they do that in the day? Employees are not encouraged to think about their work, and Gwen is criticised for favouring accuracy over speed. It is grimly impersonal, and what little solidarity there is appears to be hard won; it's noted, for instance, that Colin is really only social with Alice, and Alice seems committed to team camaraderie.

But above that is the sense that the employees are considered too insignificant to participate in what is really happening here. I mean, among other things, Colin seems to be having a wildly different workplace experience to everyone else.

Alice postulates that they are a fossilised department – one that only really exists because it's been forgotten – although even she notes that the theory only works if you don't poke at it too hard:

Sam I've no real idea what the OIAR even is. Alice You and everyone else. I’ve checked and there's not really much info on it. My current working theory is that maybe it got set up in the 70s, back when everyone was off their tits on LSD and giving ghost-hunters massive grants to wave crystals in graveyards. I reckon at some point they must have put together a small government department to, like, oversee the spending and monitor this stuff and no-one's noticed it's still going. Sam Makes sense. Alice As long as you don’t pay too much attention. – The Magnus Protocol: First Shift

Even if that is a bit extreme, the general consensus is that their work goes nowhere and does nothing. Which fits broadly with the general lack of action and urgency in the department ... unless you happen to be Colin.

Alice Colin! There’s my guy! How's it hanging? Is it an app yet? Do we have a minimalist logo? I assume you’ve finished all the social features? Colin Don't you start. I swear I'm going to shove a cable down that prick's throat, pull it out his ministerial anus and floss him to death. ... Teddy Colin, mate, you know you’re never getting out of here. Colin Christ, don’t say that. Teddy Even if his nibs lets you off the hook, which he won’t, you couldn’t bring yourself to just leave. Not 'til you’ve figured out all these fun little errors. Colin Or they finally kill me. ... Colin I already have to explain to some chinless inbred politician that we’re running on something as old as the goddamn Atari Falcon, now I’ve got some green little smartarse giving me lip for it too? Well you can take your funny little lines and shove them up – – The Magnus Protocol: First Shift

Colin, specifically, is suffering from ministerial oversight. A lot of it, apparently. Departments that only continue to exist because they've been forgotten don't typically have the responsible minister leaning on the IT manager. Not even on the boss – the IT guy. It's interesting because his specific level of stress and frustration seems more consistent with what was going on in The Magnus Archives than here.

And then, of course, there are the stories themselves. It's impossible not to note that the text-to-speech programs sound an awful lot like the protagonists of the previous series. Presumably this is plot relevant, or else it's a really distracting choice. It's impossible to state at this stage whether that means it actually is them or not, but assuming for the moment that it is (because it is not interesting to discuss other possibilities until they become interesting) then what they have to say seems noteworthy.

They are presumably reacting to Sam specifically (welcome to the cursed protagonist club, new guy!), possibly to the box he ticked during onboarding, and likely to whatever past trauma led him to this job in the first place. And both seem to be issuing a warning.

Norris/Martin tells a story that Gwen classifies as "reanimation", but I admit I'm not sure I agree. The thing sounds like an iteration of the Anglerfish monster.

Norris/Harriet Winstead “Arthur? Is that you?” And that voice I have loved for twenty years answered: “Some of him.” – The Magnus Protocol: First Shift

Archivist Are you the same Sarah Baldwin that disappeared in Edinburgh in August 2006? Sarah Some of her. Skin. A few memories. Not on the inside. – The Magnus Archives: Return to Sender

That feels at least in part like an Easter egg – no newcomer is going to recognise the Anglerfish – but it is the crossing of the boundary: this is the first true story they heard, and proof that there is something very wrong with the world. And presumably the themes of grief and loss that pervade the story would relate pretty strongly to Martin's whole ... situation. I'm assuming nobody here chose to be a text-to-speech program.

Chester/John, meanwhile, issues a fairly stern warning about The Magnus Institute. The canary in the coal mine is a bit on-the-nose as a metaphor, sure, but if I were trying to explain to someone what was wrong with that place, I would likely also be blunt. The rough thing, though, is that quite explicitly no one heeds the warning: while the "removed" image is not described it pretty clearly illustrated RedCanary's fate. It's not just that the canary died down the mine. It's that it died in vain, because no one understood what killed it. And of course, it does pique Sam's interest to the point that he starts digging in to what happened. I'm disinclined to believe that curiosity is bad in these stories – if anything, John's issue was that he could never find out the things he needed to know fast enough to make a good decision. But there is a point there ... if you start looking into things, you have to be prepared to deal with them.

The third one, in Making Adjustments seems to be playing somewhat on The Picture of Dorian Gray: Sam and Gwen start the episode by doing practice runs on classification using classic horror, and the story, when it begins, draws on that confusion between art and subject. You can line Dorian up beside Dracula and Frankenstein any day. But the bigger point seems to be that the catalyst for this happened on camera:

Daria Before I could reply they hit a button on their set-up and suddenly we were live streaming with lights in my eyes and their arm tight around my shoulders. I don’t remember much of what they said to their viewers, but they kept telling everyone how lucky I was whilst they dragged me into the chair. – The Magnus Protocol: Making Adjustments

There are nested violations in this story: Daria expected a photo shoot, but at no point agreed to be tattooed on camera. Beyond that, the story she told in private to her therapist is now being recorded and catalogued by the OIAR. And whatever happened to Daria, this "Ink5oul" person seems to have profited by it, and by things like it.

I must admit, I'm not much of a "what entity is this" person, because as far as I could tell the general consensus on that in general fell between "that's arbitrary" and "all of them, probably, if only by their conspicuous absence". That sort of thing is very useful when talking about the people and their particular obsessions – if Simon Fairchild turned up, for example, you knew exactly what sort of aggravating bullshit you were in for – but worrying too much about the exact nature of a supernatural manifestation rarely leads anywhere useful.

I am more interested in the broader implications of how the story is told. In The Magnus Archives, the characters read the stories aloud – and usually adopted the persona, and sometimes even the accent – of the original statement giver. That had supernatural implications, of course, but also played into the broader themes of the story: John is very much invested in the individuals. The tragedy of Jane Prentiss, the mystery of Gertrude Robinson – these are his obsessions. Pretty much the only point he scores in his conversation with Leitner (The Librarian) is being able to instantly spot a passing reference to Gerard Keay: John is crap at the cosmology, but he's been paying attention to the people. Many of the recurring characters are very dead by the time the story starts, but they are kept alive in the narrative because the living characters step into their shoes, and care about what they did and what became of them.

Here, though, there is built in distance between the active protagonists and the individual horror stories. They largely don't even read them – Alice says she "skim(s) the case for keywords" (Making Adjustments) and otherwise tries to ignore what is happening. When a story is read aloud it is done by the text-to-speech programs, and they, as John and Martin did, adopt the personas of the authors in a way that sounds much more fluid than software from the 90s should be capable of. When the story comes straight from the source, it is not told to Sam or Alice or Gwen, but to someone else entirely. There is a reason for the audience to connect with the stories – from that external perspective you're getting pretty much the same thing you did in The Magnus Archives – but the actual characters have no reason to connect, or even to truly listen or empathise with what they're hearing, and doing so is regarded as a mistake.

Which makes you wonder – what might you miss when you're not paying attention to the people?

#the magnus protocol #the magnus protocol spoilers #the magnus archives

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dalashas · 4 months ago

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People who have had their corpus callosum cut (that bit that connects the halves of the brain that was mentioned in the epjsode) have reported feeling like two people, or like they were trapped inside their bodies unable to talk. The idea has always horrified and fascinated me and I am so glad they made a story about it in the show. What a terrifying thing to be, that right hand side of the brain which can feel and think but cannot communicate.

There have been studies on people with a severed or absent corpus callosum that show that the right brain can see, understand, and remember, but it cannot communicate verbally because it lacks Broca's area, which is a place on the left brain that activates when we speak.

In one study, a man with a severed corpus callosum was shown an image with his right eye covered. Because the left brain sees through the right eye, his left brain could not see the image. Then, he was asked what he saw. He could not say what it was. Then, he was given a pen in his left hand and asked to draw the thing he saw. He drew it perfectly fine, because the left eye and the left hand are both controlled by the right brain. So, that man's right brain had seen the image, and drawn it, but had been unable to use the speech centre to name it.

Now if you imagine that the right brain yearns for company as human minds do, but cannot communicate without an intact corpus callosum connecting it to the speaking left side, you might imagine a horrifying existence of forced silence as you watch your body speak with its left brain while you cannot communicate.

Some people who experience epilepsy have also felt this way during seizure, like they're two people for the duration. My friend experienced that and said it felt awful and she wanted to 'get out' of her own head. This was scary to even hear, let alone experience (and awkward that I'd started rambling about the corpus callosum to her not knowing she had first hand experience of feeling that way! I felt guilty for bringing it up).

There is another condition called Alien Hand Syndrome, where your hand and arm moves without your say-so. One type is called Callosal alien hand syndrome because it happens after damage to the corpus callosum. This type, in my opinion, is the most bizarre. The example behaviour for this type on webmd is that you may be buttoning up your shirt with one hand, and your alien hand will unbutton it right afterwards. It seems like callosal alien hand syndrome has the most targeted and obstructive behaviour (the other two types, frontal lobe and posterior lobe, are known more for grabbing and groping, or waving and levitating respectively). People with alien hand syndrome may feel their hand is controlled by something else. Some people have to tie it up at night or it tries to scratch them. Some need to distract it by giving it something to hold or interact with or it gets restless and obstructive.

The horror narrative of half your brain being trapped unable to speak, and controlling one arm and trying to communicate but failing because it lacks a communication centre is so scary.

In episode 22 did the machine push it to its edge somehow, make it unable to bear its existence for a moment longer and eject itself? The machine was clearly made in a flash of eldritch inspiration from the fears, as the scientist described it. So did the spooky magic get into the patient's head through the machine, and did it give the right brain conscience, or did it just lend a voice to what was already there?

Did it corrupt the right hemisphere into becoming some tortured thing that could move and live in its own, and the first thing it did was use the ability to move to explode that man's head?

#tmagp 22 #tmagp spoilers #tmagp 22 spoilers

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