#i think a full set of tma on tape would fix me

[ashironie]

reblogging bcs i have a lot of thoughts

i fucking HATED how Jon treated him s1, we also have to remember that before we see ANYTHING of Martin straight from the horses mouth, we see him from Jon’s pov. And Martin probably wasn’t very good at his job, but that’s reasonable since he transferred from the library to an archive, he most certainly didn’t expect to be in research 2.0. Martin has no clue how to do his job and he couldn’t let anyone know that because he wasn’t even supposed to be there. The reason i started liking Martin was because i hated Jon, and the reason i hated Jon was because he was mean to Martin. My thought process was thus; Jon’s an Ass to Martin for really no reason, so I’m going to like Martin to spite Jon

Now, i too sorta dislike s5 Martin, when i first listened i found him to be really whiny and kinda ungrateful. During my relisten a lot of the problems i had with him were lessened because i was just so unuse to this new Martin, and before, he would do everything I would, but now he was a lot different, which gave me whiplash. it’s like expecting the driver in a car to take a turn and then they just don’t, you can’t blame them but there’s a sense of wrongness in your stomach. Now again most of these problems i had were fixed when i relistened, knowing what was going to happen, and that was my main complaint with s5 in general, expecting a turn and the driver just keeps going straight

Now going back to s1 (since i realized i didn’t explain my point very well). When ever Jon talked about what Martin did it was heavily biased, and whenever we hear Martin talk it’s around Jon. Around the person he doesn’t want to get in trouble by. We heard in the beginning of s5 tapes that Sasha and Tim were a lot different then when being recorded in s1, so obviously Martin (with a more easily identifiable reason) would also be a lot different. Then when everything went down and he dropped the act a little, we do know he was still acting. The tapes we get in s3 before the Unknowing are the closest thing we get to him being genuine, and even still he doesn’t want to admit how much of an asshole he is.

Now it’s fine if you don’t like Martin, he’s specifically written as a very complex person, and that means that sometimes people just hate him for no reason. But I dislike the criticism that his personality was very touch and go, it’s just that we didn’t know what was actually going on in his head until end of s4 and s5.

Now my defense of why I like Martin is;

He has a very heavy faun response, which same, and that aspect makes him really interesting to me. Being manipulative and having a heavy faun response are the same, but are seen differently.

i detest the idea that he is never in the wrong or that he’s just a sweet cinnamon roll. Martin, early on, just follows the lead to anyone who makes it seem like they understand even a little, then does a full 180 into thinking he knows what’s right and wrong without any input from anyone. Then realizes that, he really doesn’t know, nobody does, and he still thinks he knows better more often than not, but he recognizes this in himself. There is no ends to anyone’s character arcs in TMA, they still grow and struggle with the same things, but they find new solutions and new problems. And i think all of that is really interesting! It adds to the tragedy, it’s fine if a character dies when they are finished atoning for whatever narrative sin they have be set up with, but it’s tragic when they never get to! They are told what they need to do, and try to do it, but die before they can. Sasha died before she could be anything but a memory, someone who almost just haunts the narrative. Tim died in a noble way, but ultimately pointless one, as we come to find out. He is still just as angry, and he still didn’t bring the two people he wanted to save back from the dead. He didn’t win, even if he and everyone else thought so. He could’ve healed, but he killed himself before he could. And Martin tries like hell to figure out how to listen to people without only listening to him, and he fails a lot, a LOT a lot. But he died before he could just relax. Jon was the same, he got too deep and thought that, with enough time, he could figure out a way, not out of the hole, but closer to the surface. And he would’ve, if given the time. But he was dragged back into the same bullshit by the same man and by the same fear.

sorry that one was a lot longer but yk.

Martin is also stubborn. He was endlessly patient with Jon early s5, and the idea that he’s impatient the rest of the season i disagree with. He is just very careful with what he gives his time, maybe a bit to careful, but again with him over-course correcting. But he is still very stubborn, which i feel like is a good word between perseverance and determination. He knows that they will find a way to get everyone safe, as much as possible. He is too patient to believe the easy answer, and too persistent to allow everyone else to settle for that either. He does dumb things sometimes, but when has a tma character not? but is still fiercely protective of his people and ideals. if not a bit misguided at times

I'll be so honest with y'all, I always thought Martin was written to be an intentionally dislikeable character (like s1 Jon) for like character development or something, and then I was even MORE sure of that by season 5, and then they just kinda never touched on it and the fandom was all obsessing over him and it's like?? What do y'all see in him unless you relate to him omg 😨

[sparxwrites]

(first tma fic, kids, let’s go!! set at some ambiguous point in s3 or something, idfk. massive thank you to @capitola, @hoodienanami, and @ladyofrosefire for beta’ing / looking this over and reassuring me it wasn’t terrible. massive thank you also to mr sims for my life lmao.)

cw for minor body horror, and eyes in places they shouldn’t be

[ao3]

There’s a light on in Jon’s office.

It’s not a bright light, just the soft glow of a desk lamp spilling out from under the door, but still. It’s well past midnight. No one should be working – hell, Martin’s only in the Archives because he’d forgotten his phone when he went out with the others for drinks. And sure, Jon’s known for his late nights and early starts, but verging on one in the morning seems ridiculous even for him.

Martin hesitates outside the door for a full minute before knocking, once.

There’s no response, but Jon’s definitely in. Or someone is, at least. There’s a voice – muffled, but still audible, speaking continuously – from inside the room. Statements, then, probably. Though why Jon would be reading statements at this time of the night is beyond Martin, especially when he’s been at it all day, too.

He hovers for another minute, another two, but the voice doesn’t quiet. The light doesn’t go off. He’s half tempted to leave his weird boss to his weird work hours and just not interfere in what could be some weird Beholding ritual for all he knows. That would be the sensible thing to do, really.

After a cumulative three minutes of worrying, Martin resolves to open the door. Just a little. Just to check if Jon’s okay.

It’s not locked, which – given the hour, and the Archives’ track record with murder attempts and/or supernatural infiltration – seems like a safety hazard. Martin pushes it open, gingerly, nudging his way into the doorway and peering inside, fully prepared to get snapped at for intruding.

Jon’s sat at his desk, which is normal, and has a half-drunk glass of whiskey by one elbow, which is not. His hands are laid flat on his desk, either side of a sheet of paper, and his face lit in strange, sharp angles by the desk lamp’s single point of light. The ever-present tape recorder whirs away in front of him, hungry for his soft words.

It’s a fairly typical scene, other than the lateness. And the whiskey. And the strange energy in the air, prickling, not the usual light touch of being watched, but the heavy weight of something present. He’s trying not to think about that one, though.

Martin watches, silently, unwilling to interrupt. Jon doesn’t appreciate being interrupted mid-statement, he’s found. Besides, it sounds like the statement’s ending anyway – something about an improbable underwater fire at an oil rig, as far as Martin can piece together from the closing remarks.

Politely reminding Jon of the twin values of sleep and of locking his office door can wait until he’s finished.

“…Statement ends,” concludes Jon, voice soft and flat in that way it only ever gets when he’s recording statements. The real statements, that is, the ones that will only go on tape. His eyes are unfocused, distant. He doesn’t even seem to be looking at the paper in front of him, which… unusually, for a statement, seems to be mostly blank. Instead, he’s staring unseeingly at the wall opposite his desk, perfectly silent and perfectly still.

It’s not like Jon’s never worked late before, and it’s not like Martin’s never found him reading statements at some god-awful, unsociable hour of the night or morning, but this… Something feels different about this. Something feels weird, and Martin’s gotten pretty confident in trusting his gut about weird feelings.

“Jon?” he says, softly, nervously. He’s still hovering in the doorway, uncertain, unwilling to cross into the room proper on sheer animal instinct.

He gets no response. Instead, Jon flinches, like he’s been stuck with a needle.

It’s an oddly restrained motion, given he doesn’t seem to be entirely present, a sort of full-body twitch accompanied by a quiet hiccup of sound. Like he’s swallowed down a sob. His breath stutters in his chest, hitches. A high-pitched, drawn-out noise of pain strangles itself in his throat, escapes through his nose instead in a long whine.

His eyes don’t refocus. His hands never move from their place settled flat against the desk. His expression doesn’t change.

“…Statement of Mrs. Anisha Singh,” he says, eventually, his voice still level and calm. It would be almost soothing, if not for that fixed stare, the line of tension in his shoulders, the whiskey on the desk. If not for that strange, heart-stopping moment of quiet agony. “Regarding the disappearance and return of a beloved family pet. Statement begins.”

Now Martin’s looking for it, he can hear the note of strain that colours the edge of each word, pain or exhaustion or some other ragged, aching thing entirely that even… whatever it is that’s keeping him blank and still can’t quite exorcise entirely.

“Jon,” says Martin, a little more firmly, because this is– weird. Even by Jon’s standards, even by the Archives’ standards, this is really, really weird.

“We’d had him for years, you see. Mr. Kibbles, I mean.” Jon’s voice softens as he slips into the statement, pitches up a little into something more female than his usual tone. There’s the slightest edge of an accent to it, though Martin isn’t sure what accent. “Years and years, and he was always so sweet. He was a rescue cat, so of course there were some issues at first, but–”

Martin hesitates and then, swallowing hard, crosses the room and scoots around the desk, until he’s standing at Jon’s elbow. “Jon?” he says again, without much hope. When he gets no response, he sets a hand on Jon’s shoulder, and shakes him, ever so gently.

“–why we thought it was strange, when he went missing,” says Jon, still staring straight ahead, hands still flat on the desk. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t respond, doesn’t so much as blink.

Martin shakes him, again, a little harder. Then his nerves run out, so he switches to sort of awkwardly rubbing Jon’s shoulder, his back, as insistently as possible. Even through Jon’s customary jumper and shirt, he can feel– bumps, almost, strange raised nodules that he thinks must be scar tissue. Must be from the worms. He shudders at the thought, and distracts himself by calling Jon’s name again, louder than before.

Nothing. It’s like Martin’s not even there.

“Okay,” says Martin, as easily as he can manage when everything in his nerves sings wrong, when there’s a prickle on the back of his neck like Jon’s staring at him. It’s ridiculous, Jon's eyes aren’t even focused, but… “Okay, right.” He unwinds his scarf from round his neck, and shrugs his jacket off, his motions jerky with unease. “I’m– I’m going to go make us some tea, then.”

It seems a bit pathetic, when he says it out loud. But it’s not like there’s any employee manual segment on what to do if your boss gets possessed by his god in the early hours of the morning, and he figures making tea can’t hurt the situation. Perhaps the warmth and steam of a cup on his desk might help… bring Jon back to himself, or something.

At the very least, doing something with his hands might stop them from shaking.

He makes the tea on autopilot, mostly, drifting from sink to kettle to cupboard, retrieving mugs and teabags and milk. His brain is too busy whirring, turning the image of Jon over and over in his head, to concentrate on the process all that much. He’s desperately trying to work out if this is okay, if this is normal capital-A Archivist business, or if this is something new, or something dangerous, or something…

The tea’s oversteeped, by the time he remembers to take the teabags out. Not that it matters, really. Only one of the cups is getting drunk, after all, and Martin’s too strung-out on nerves for overly bitter tea to be anything other than a laughable distraction.

By the time he gets back, Jon’s nearly done with the statement. He hasn’t moved an inch, hands still on the damn desk, eyes still fixed unseeing on the far wall. Martin sighs, and sets the tea on the desk a few inches from the whiskey nonetheless. “There you go,” he says, and immediately feels guilty – because Jon’s doing a statement, the tape recorder’s still running, because he’s ruining the recording.

He figures, as he retreats to a chair tucked against the wall, next to one of the bookshelves, that his priorities probably say something about how badly this job has messed him up. Boss might be possessed? It’s probably fine. Ruining a statement, though? Unforgivable.

“–know what I’m going to tell the kids,” says Jon. “They loved the cat. They were so happy when he came back. But they didn’t see it. Not like I did. They didn’t see what those fleas had done to him. They wouldn’t understand, if I told them what I had to do.”

Martin winces, and takes a sip of tea to try and stop from thinking about that too hard. It scalds his tongue a little. He’s missed the bulk of the statement, but he’s got a pretty good idea of what bugs can do to a person – or a cat, as the case may be. And he’s got a pretty good idea of what Mrs. Singh might have had to do to get rid of them.

“I’d suggest we go to the local rescue this weekend, get another cat to replace Mr. Kibbles, but… I don’t know if I’m ready to have another pet right now, after all this. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to have another pet again.” Jon pauses, unblinking, unmoving – and when he speaks again, his voice is back to his own, albeit still coloured by that awful, artificial flatness. “Statement ends.”

And again he flinches, like he’s been stuck unexpectedly with something sharp, hunching in on himself. He hiccups out another sob, another aborted hitch of sound, and then keens. It’s an awful noise, a long, drawn-out whimper so full of pain that Martin’s on his feet before he can even think about it.

He’s not sure what he can possibly do to help with this, especially when he doesn’t even know what’s going on. But it seems wrong to just sit there, to just watch, with Jon hurting in front of his eyes.

Before he can take another step, though, the skin of Jon’s neck starts to– shift. It’s not a warping or a melting, exactly, nothing like the things the Desolation does to human flesh. It’s more of an unfurling, skin parting and opening as though that was what it was always meant to do. Except it’s that’s not right, because that’s a neck, because skin doesn’t move like that, because necks don’t open–

Jon’s whine finally, finally cuts off, with a frantic gasp.

“Oh, god,” says Martin, faintly, frozen in place with his hands white-knuckled around his mug – because there, on the side of Jon’s neck, is a wide, brown eye.

It blinks, slowly, its thick black eyelashes brushing across Jon’s skin. Then it spins in its– socket? God, in whatever’s anchoring it into Jon’s skin, and Martin really doesn’t want to think about that– and settles its wide and fixed gaze on Martin.

When Martin takes a tentative step to the side, it tracks his movement, smooth and unblinking. He thinks about the bumps under Jon’s jumper, oddly soft beneath his hand, and is abruptly overcome with nausea.

How long has this been going on? How long has Jon sat here, unnaturally still, giving statement after statement with no paper to read from and no pause between? …How many of these eyes are there, under Jon’s collared shirt and long-sleeved jumpers and carefully pressed trousers, scattered across his ribs and stomach and thighs?

From the presence of the whiskey, Martin has an awful feeling that this isn’t even the first night this has happened. That this is something Jon had braced for, from prior experience.

The idea of Jon sat alone in his office, blank paper and a waiting tape recorder in front of him, grimly downing spirits in anticipation of the pain to follow, sets Martin’s chest in an abrupt and unrelenting vise.

“A-aah. Statement–” starts Jon, and there’s a definite waver to his voice now, an unsteadiness apparently even the Beholding can’t eradicate. There are fine tremors starting up across his shoulders, and wetness around the rims of his human eyes. “–o-of Mr. Gregory Freeman, regarding th-the circumstances of his daughter’s death on a family hiking trip. Statement– begins.”

Four statements later – a young woman ravenously hungry for her own flesh, a house that seemed to shrink with every passing day, an elderly man with a sudden and violent phobia of cameras, a woman who had started leaving cobwebs on everything she touched – and Jon is still going. Martin’s made another two cups of tea for them both, out of sheer anxious energy, replacing the undrunk and cooling mug on Jon’s desk each time.

Four more statements. Four more eyes emerging somewhere on Jon’s body. Four more points of pain, sending him flinching and sobbing between each statement.

Martin watches them all and clutches his empty mug, white-knuckled, helpless. He watches Jon finish each statement, watches him weather the pain, watches him start up once again– and he goes to get more tea. There’s nothing else he can do, but be witness to this, whatever this is. Be a witness to Jon’s suffering.

Jon finishes a fifth statement, and is halfway into a sixth, before he starts crying. Thin trails of tears start to drip down his nose and cheeks, over his constantly moving lips. They’re barely visible in the half-darkness, just a faint gleam as they catch the raking light from his desk lamp. His expression doesn’t change, nor his tone, but he cries silently nonetheless. The eye on his neck is not so much as damp.

Martin cries with him, softly, for a while.

No other eyes show up on his face or neck, despite the endless statements, the endless gaps between. One does form on his wrist, though, right over the bone of it, pale blue and half-hidden by the cuff of his shirt. It blinks once, indolently, at Martin, before rolling to stare fixedly at the doorway to the room. Quietly watching.

The one on Jon’s neck still stares at Martin, unblinking, single-minded. He gets used to it, after a horribly short space of time.

The time passes strangely, elastic. Martin drinks his tea, makes another cup, and drinks that too. He replaces Jon’s whenever it gets cold, out of some weird sense of duty that Jon will have at least warm tea when he snaps out of whatever’s going on. He dozes, at some points, lulled into an uneasy sleep by the soothing sound of Jon’s words. He’s inevitably reawakened when the statement ends, though, by Jon’s noises of pain, louder and less restrained each time. By the end of, he’s crying out openly with each new eye, voice hoarse and raw in a way that never carries over to his statements.

It’s six in the morning, by the count of the clock on the wall, before Jon finally stops. “Statement ends,” he says, and Martin waits, patient and exhausted, for him to start again with statement of – but it never comes.

Instead, Jon– collapses. Crumples over his desk with an unsteady exhale, like a puppet with its strings cut. Out of the grip of the eye, the shaking is worse – violent, shocky, like he’s about to fall apart.

Maybe he is.

For a second, Martin’s worried he’s having a seizure, or some more eldritch equivalent. Then he realises Jon isn’t just breathing, jerky and unsteady and on the edge of sobbing. He’s speaking, still, muttering soft and frantic to himself.

“No more. No more. No more. Please. No–”

“Jon?” says Martin, as gently as he can manage, because he can’t bear it a second longer. “Are you–”

Jon goes silent in a heartbeat, and as still as he can with the tremors still running through him. “Martin.” His voice is wrecked, but he still cuts Martin off with such authority. “What– what are you doing here? God, what– time is it?”

He’s slurring a little, under the hoarse rasp, but Martin’s not sure it’s anything to do with the whiskey. There’s a giddy edge to it that rubs up against the exhaustion, like he’s overstimulated and wrung out all at once. Perhaps he is, after a night of being force-fed statements directly into his brain.

Jon drags himself upright again, slowly, painfully, until he’s at least slumped in his seat rather than collapsed over his desk. There are dark bags under his human eyes, and his hair’s a mess, and that wide, brown eye in the side of his neck is still staring. Martin really wishes it wouldn’t. Wishes that it would at least stare at something other than him.

The eye, as though reading his thoughts – and god, for all Martin knows, it is – blinks. Just once.

“I, um. It’s about six, I think. In the morning. I, I came in last night, and you were– aha, well, um, I don’t really know what you were! But it seemed kind of weird, so I thought… I’d better keep you company. In case it got weirder, you know?”

It feels stupid, when he says it like that. What did he do, other than sitting there, watching, making tea? It was ridiculous of him to have thought he could help in the first place.

Jon opens his mouth as if to reply – but his eyes catch on the lukewarm cup of tea by one elbow, and he stops. Swallows. Closes his mouth. “…That was– thoughtful of you, Martin,” he says, in the end, which isn’t quite a thank you but is remarkably close. He grabs the mug of tea, and downs half of it in one long swallow, before reaching up to scrub a hand over his face, his neck. “I suppose it goes without saying that this–”

The moment his fingers touch the eye, he freezes. Then he slaps a hand over it, almost guiltily, and stares at Martin with wide, wild eyes.

“…It’s been watching me all night,” says Martin, and winces as he watches Jon’s expression crumple. “Look, don’t– here.” He grabs his scarf off the back of his chair and stumbles over to the desk, shoves it towards Jon in a bundle. “You can cover it up or something, if you want. And… please don’t freak out, but– there’s one on your wrist, too.”

Jon stares at the scarf for a long, long moment, before laughing hollowly. When he reaches across the desk to take it, he uses the hand that was covering his neck, and that wide brown eye stares accusatorily back at Martin. He doesn’t put the scarf on – just sits there, holding it, fingers white-knuckled against the soft wool.

“I was doing so well,” he says, and he sounds exhausted. When he reaches for a drink again, it’s from the half-full glass of whiskey. “I was doing so well, keeping them covered…”

There’s a comment to be made about drinking on the job, and also about the ill-advisedness of whiskey at six in the morning, but Martin bites his tongue. “Maybe they want to be uncovered…?” he offers, and winces immediately. “Just. You know. Eyes, and all that. Maybe they want to be able to see.”

“They can see whether they’re covered or not,” mutters Jon, sourly. “They’re not– this,” he gestures to his neck, “is just another, another test, or some kind of sick game, I know it. It’s just–”

“How many are there?” blurts Martin, because Jon’s starting to spiral, and it’s the first thing that springs to mind. “–Oh, god, you. You don’t have to answer that, just forget I asked, really. Really.”

Jon hesitates, before standing up abruptly enough that his chair screeches against the floor. “Oh, damn it,” he mutters, setting the scarf down on the desk and knocking back the rest of the whiskey. He pulls a face at the burn of it, but his hands are already fumbling with the hem of his jumper, tugging it off over his head and immediately going for the buttons on his shirt. “Damn it all–”

His hands are shaking badly enough Martin almost wants to help, but the situation is weird enough already without offering to help his boss strip, so he… doesn’t. Instead, he just stands there, awkwardly, as Jon fights to get the buttons on his shirt open.

When he finally manages it, Martin can’t quite hold back a sharp, panicked intake of breath.

“There’s more lower down,” says Jon, quiet misery in his wrecked voice. “And on my back. And my arms, and– I don’t know how many. I… I haven’t counted. Maybe– a hundred? More?”

The dozens of eyes across his torso don’t blink, but they do shift, pupils contracting in the sudden light and darting around for something to focus on. They’re different sizes, shapes, colours, peppered across his skin and overlapping with his many scars as though competing for space.

Jon prods at a red-rimmed, newish-looking one on his stomach, scowling, and hisses out a breath of pain at the unpleasant, yielding contact between eyeball and finger. It blinks in retaliation, and somehow manages to look annoyed.

For a strange, nauseating second, Martin isn’t sure whether he wants to run, or to step closer, to fit his hands against the curve of Jon’s too-prominent ribs and feel the soft brush of eyelashes against his palms. In the end, thankfully, he does neither – just stands there, dumb, staring, as Jon reaches for his shirt buttons and starts to dress himself once more.

“You– you should sleep,” he offers, unsteadily, as Jon tugs his jumper back over his head. “I can go set up the bed, if you like. You know, where I slept, when…”

Jon finishes wrestling the jumper into submission, and collapses back into his chair, sighing. “I… yes. I suppose I should,” he says, and the slur is stronger now, without the anger and panic to camouflage it. The trembling, never quite banished from the line of his shoulders, is coming back stronger again. “Sleep would be– nice.”

There’s something bitter in the way he says it, almost sarcastic, but Martin’s too tired to call him up on it. “Okay,” he says, instead. “Okay, I’ll go, um, I’ll go set up the bed then. You just wait here, and, and maybe… drink some of the tea? Might help your throat. Definitely no more whiskey, though, please.”

Jon huffs out something that might almost be a laugh, though it sounds raw and rasping. “No more whiskey tonight– this morning,” he agrees, groping across the desk for the by now rather cold mug tea. “The pain’s fading now, anyway, I’ll be fine.” The words seem to slip out of him, an admission of vulnerability he’s too hurting and exhausted to hold them back. “…Thank you, Martin.”

The hand not currently curled around the mug of tea has found the wool of Martin’s scarf again, fingers curled absently into the softness of it. Martin’s not sure if he’s getting that back. He’s not sure he minds, either.

“It’s no problem. Really!” he says, with a small smile – and, despite the night full of confusion, and worry, and far too much oversteeped tea, he means it. He means it with all his heart. “You’re– you’re welcome.”

[fearfearer]

more thoughts about the magnus archives as i reread the transcripts

i was thinking about how gertrude robinson was really an extraordinary person (not extraordinarily Morally Sound, but extraordinary) just because of who she was, whereas the only extraordinary things about jonathan sims are things that have been arranged for him (i.e. his role). i don't mean this as a diss for jonathan, as i'm not extraordinary either. it's just striking that gertrude was so driven and confident compared to jon. of course, now we know that basically everything she did was in the pursuit of a moot goal (i.e. killing people in order to stop rituals that were already doomed to fail) so maybe my point is somewhat moot as well.

i've been doing some rereading of episodes on my phone (i.e. away from this text document on my computer) and i'll have a realization like "right, i should note that down when i get back to my computer" and i have forgotten all of them now that i am back at my computer. suffice it to say there are quite a few things i misheard/misunderstood on the first listen, unsurprisingly.

reading through the first 20 or so episodes i'm surprised by how well i remember each of them, considering i was listening like 4 episodes a day when i started. then again, it was only a month or two ago that i even listened to them, so one should hope my memory is at least this good. anyway the first episode i'm re-listening instead of rereading is 22 bc that's the first one where we hear martin's voice, i'm pretty sure

i've also noticed some errors in the official transcripts, which aren't a big deal because obviously what matters most is the audio, but still... some of them have been simple typos. magnus archives hire me as your official transcriptionist and i'll make all your transcripts 100% error-free bc im smatr

(reading through the rest of the transcripts and my standards went way down in terms of grammar/stylistic consistency, as most of the later ones are fan transcripts by several different people. i found quite a few mistakes, but obviously i have no particular way to help fix them short of sending an email to the tma transcripts fansite person like “hey there’s all these mistakes. upload my good version instead?” bc i’m not that much of a dick)

the whole reason martin went to the spider guy's building was because he didn't want jon to be disappointed in him for not doing Due Diligence. he says so twice. then he went back for the same reason. it seems the fandom joke is "jon asks his assistants to do crimes for him" but in this case martin is like "oh no maybe i didn't do enough crimes to satisfy jon"

jon was doing his archivist voice HEAVILY in season 1, huh?

tim's first appearance is so jovial compared to how he ends up...

if this boat lady is speaking spanish in brazil, then it doesn't matter if it was "bad spanish" or not. anyway now i understand why we already knew peter lukas was serving the lonely by the time jon mentioned offhand that peter lukas was serving the lonely. it was my whole “let’s not bother noting down any FREQUENTLY RECURRING names”

well i guess robert smirke was a real person. should i feel dumb about this? idk. it’s such a fictional-sounding name, to be fair. but i guess that set the precedent of using a real person as an important historical figure in the fiction that we see happening again when edmund halley is referenced later on. also episode 35 has foreshadowing for the separation of 14 powers, and people thought it was 13 because they mention 13 halls PLUS the one they came through.

totally forgot about tim goofing around in episode 39... he was really not having the worst time at this job before bad things started happening and he realized he was trapped, huh

the worms were trying to make a doorway into the Worm Wealm

ep 40 jon's like "I need to hear it. I need to record it. Or else I can't finish." (lightly abridged)

listening to the season 1 Q&A for the first time and EARL BIGMAC

also good to know there's only going to be 5 seasons. very good to know. this seems like a good kind of series to write with a fixed endpoint in mind, as it's very easy to do an episode that has effectively no bearing on the MetaPlot but which is still a short story in itself and therefore doesn't count as "filler"

jonathan sims performs with a mythical space pirate music cabaret. so he IS a ham

jonny says, "no rude words. i could say bums, maybe..." (alexander j newall does a laugh while i do the exact same laugh irl) "...but i won't."

some dumbass writing into the Q&A to ask if the background music is diegetic... get a podcast brain, ya fool. though for my part, i have to say that one of the most striking things about this podcast when i first started listening (though i never made a note of it before) was the Too Spooky Music, and i didn't like it at all. the reason was that i am, and have been, vulnerable to Getting Spooked about irrational things at night, such that it becomes really hard to fall asleep... and one of the things that has an outsize effect on my level of Spookédness is spooky audio. so if i was watching a video at night and i was worried it would Get Me Spooked, i would just turn the sound off, and it would turn out fine. but obviously you can't turn the sound off on a podcast. and i've been listening to podcasts after work, i.e. after 5pm, and i go to bed at like 8 or 9pm because i'm old. so the way it turned out was that even if the actual subject of the podcast wasn't that scary to me, the music would amplify it in an unpleasant way and make me more likely to have trouble sleeping. also i think most of the episodes would have been fine without the music, or maybe with some less intentionally-disconcerting background music.

this just in: i seem to have totally missed episode 50 on my first listen-through, despite having gone in linear order. bc i'm listening to it now and i've definitely never heard this before. fortunately it doesn't seem to have much of a bearing on the rest of the series, so it's not like i missed any crucial information. tbh the only worthwhile bit was a brief moment of tim being a ham, which was good. i hope i didn't miss any other episodes the first time... still don't know how i managed to miss this one.

the official transcript said [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER] ...

so gertrude and leitner WERE played by jonny's parents <:3c i'd thought as much when i saw the cast names but i like that it's confirmed. his mom is a really good actress too. i always find the gertrude episodes to be striking in a certain way

"it's Fine working with your parents. it's Fine." as someone who worked with my mom for like a year i can confirm this

i'm tickled to find that the official transcripts have a sense of humor. i wonder who is behind them. i also wonder, what is the excuse for not having a full set of official transcripts when it is a script-based show? surely you know what is going to be said beforehand, and you have it written down, and if someone ends up saying something different in the final recording, surely it wouldn’t be too hard to give the original script a little edit, and bam! that’s a transcript. i wonder if this approach is not feasible for some reason.

whenever martin reads statements, he says something about jon... whenever he talks to someone, he says something about jon

i think episode 110 is an instance of the tape recorder turning ITSELF off... at the end of the episode. because they walk away, and they say something distantly, and then it turns off. lots of other times, there had to be a diegetic reason for the tape recorder to turn off at the end.

i noticed something which i missed last time, which was that there is a rumor between melanie and georgie and basira that implies that jonathan is asexual. worth noting, i think. [side note added in later: yeah it’s canon. cool]

also i listened to episode 103 again and yes. i had thought-- i had been SURE-- that the person interrogating the traffic cop (using the asky ability) was martin. but it was actually jon. how did i possibly manage that mistake? i'm not great at distinguishing voices, but i'm not THAT bad. the only possible answer: when i was listening to the episode for the first time... i must have been eating a crunchy snack.

"it doesn't have to make sense! alex has to make it sense." (jonny sims re: writing the spiral)

glad to know that jonny sims regrets using his own name for the protagonist. doesn't make a difference either way at this point but yeah

YES i knew episode 100 was improvised. and i see, all the statementers had actually had supernatural experiences, but because the archivist was absent, their statements didn't have the coherence and clarity normally lent to them by the eye (in exchange for becoming cursed). i think melanie or basira actually said pretty much that in the episode itself, but i still couldn't be sure that all of those people had something real to talk about.

"in the same way that tim is dead, michael is helen." good shit

the archivist is canon a bit of a drama queen. the first bullet point in my first tma notes document is vindicated

jonny sims mentions another podcast (apocrypals) that sounds 100% up my alley, so that is appreciated, i will add that to my list i think. (listened to episodes 0 and 1 of apocrypals and i'm heavily struck by how VERY clearly i can hear the smiles in chris sims's voice. i did not know smiling could be so audible, truly.) (listened to quite a few more episodes of apocrypals and it’s certainly entertaining at times. i should’ve been reading along though. maybe some other time)

I DIDN'T LISTEN TO THE SEASON 4 TEASER THE FIRST TIME AROUND.........................................

i must confess something that people who know me well may already know: i hate when stories have a bad ending. an unhappy ending. a painful ending. a hopeless ending. bittersweet is the furthest in that direction i can tolerate. my perspective, which is pretty deep-seated, is that there's no point in getting to know and love characters if you're only going to be hurt by that connection to them when the end turns out to be bad. if i have even a mild inkling that a story is heading toward a bad ending, i make a conscious effort to regard all characters from afar and not develop any strong attachments. this is not so much "how i think all stories need to be," but rather, "the characteristics a story needs to have to appeal to me personally." so i understand that my view is very subjective and mostly based on my own mental weakness. but i can't help but apply it to the media i consume. and the idea that someone would do something like "make characters very human and strongly developed" IN COMBINATION WITH "heading toward a bad end" makes me upset. like, picture a horror movie. think about the characters in a horror movie. with the exception of a main character, if there is one, there's no guarantee that anyone is going to survive to the end of the film... BUT... the characters generally aren't fleshed out and very sympathetic. i wouldn't go so far as to say they're disposable, but you're not SUPPOSED to cry when they die; you're just supposed to get scared. their purpose is as objects of fear, and you never expect or even hope for a happy ending. but in the magnus archives... all i'm saying... is that i would cry if any of the remaining members of the main cast died. and it seems clear that we're not heading to a happy ending. so i'm somewhat afraid, and not in a good way. i don't know how much i can trust jonny sims to give me the story i want, and obviously, i'm not entitled to it.

if your name is jonathan and you want to shorten it, the short form is jon. it ain't john, no matter what the official transcripts say. where'd you get that h, huh? stole it from someone else's name? are you shortening it like JOnatHaN? you can’t just be that sneaky!

i listened to scrutiny again and it hits so hard. now, in heart of darkness, when manuela begs jon not to force her statement, it's really heavy given the direct context of the previous two episodes where we see how compulsion works and how it hurts.

also when jon was talking about how to destroy the dark sun and he was like "i just need to see it," when i first heard it, i assumed he meant something along the lines of, "by seeing it, i will learn how to destroy it." but now i understand that the mere act of the eye seeing it destroys it, because being known is what the darkness is weakest to.

the magnus employees who work in the library probably at least have a LITTLE BIT of a feeling that they work in an almost normal place, given that jon and all his assistants were able to have that impression before transferring to the archives. so i wonder how the magnus library people feel about their institute's director getting arrested for double murder and now the big boss is a completely unrelated ship captain who seems to want nothing to do with the place but simultaneously is trying to continue business as usual

on second listen, listening to jon ask helen when the guilt stops (wrt hurting people in order to feed one's patron fear) is pretty chilling. because it seems like he's definitely accepting that he will have to hurt people, and what he's concerned about is how bad it makes HIM feel. of course, helen then answers with precisely what i just wrote, so...

i should've read the transcript for episode 159 instead of relistening because i forgot that peter lukas's actor got so gravelly and hard to listen to in this one. anyway, time to re-listen to the season 4 finale... then i'll listen to the season 4 Q&As and stuff... and then the new episode. (DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI)

i heard in the Q&A that the voice of peter lukas did multiple takes for episode 159?! but it was because of technical difficulties. right. because i can’t imagine the way it turned out being deemed the best take. sorry

ok, things i missed last time i listened to 160: daisy and the other two hunters are missing. also jon mentioned "magnus's body" and martin mentioned "an old man's corpse" and at the time i took this to mean (somewhat unthinkingly) that when jon and martin returned from the lonely, they killed elias/jonah's body. which would be a weird thing to happen "off-camera," so to speak. so i think i must have been wrong? slightly confused. ok, no, i'm now sure that elias survived, so i must have misunderstood. definitely alive.

as martin leaves and jon is about to begin the statement, he sounds so peaceful and satisfied. that's good acting.

by the way, in one of the previous few episodes, i noticed that jonah seems to have body-swapped by switching out his eyes into his preferred body, which i'm pretty sure i missed the first time.

i like that jonny sims checks reddit to see whether people have solved the mystery. that's just a really funny way to do things, sneaking a peek like "hmm how mysterious is my mystery? let's see who has figured it out..." and for the record, i wasn't even close to figuring it out. but to be fair to myself, i didn't try. like i said from the beginning, i started listening with the intent of going along for the ride. plus the mystery had already been solved before i started listening to the series, so it's not like i had a lot of time in between updates to contemplate whether elias was jonah, etc.

JON'S AMERICAN ACCENT FOR THE IONIZED YEAST AD

ALEX WAS THE VOICE OF JARED HOPWORTH?! i mean it was so messed up it could have been anybody but god

ALEX DIDN'T LET GERTUDE CACKLE

i've listened to the bloopers (including a gertrude cackle?) and the season 5 trailer (martin seems slightly cavalier about the end of the world but maybe he's just trying to keep his shit together for jon) and i'm going to listen to the new episode Soon.

final conclusion on rereads/relistens: i had pretty poor comprehension of some important happenings. i’m realizing just how easy it is to mishear/fail to hear exactly what is happening in a podcast when you’re doing other stuff at the same time. there are still a couple things i don’t quite understand, but i think i’ll have a look around the wiki one of these days.