#i used to listen to whole seasons of tma within days i can do this

[acearchivist359]

okay this episode solidified it for me i have got to finish my tma relisten [i have at most 7-8 episodes left] and restart tmagp so i can relisten to it for the finale to refresh my memory of the things that have happened

[chocolatey-umbreon]

TMA Season 5 Live Blog

Episode 171 - The Gardener

I despise Jared Hopworth’s voice SO much I want to chew glass whenever I hear it. But I have to endure. Fine. At least this time it’s not the whole episode.

I really really like how this one is done, despite hating the actual descriptions, in the way that they’re supposed to be hated, I guess. There’s so much to the Flesh. They said it coles from this animalistic fear that when mixed with modern humans’ things get weird. And they do. So it’s great that they set this main topic of being distressed with your own body and explore it so deeply and with so much detail. The notes describe very specific points which makes them so poignant, but at the same time, especially considering all the flowers, they all make up for a very broad range to find meaning. I like how it’s separated to really dissect each little piece, which become even clearer when you compare and contrast each part.

For example, the difference between the first flower, that constantly feels like is not enough and has to be more so it grows as much as possible, and the second, that instead feels like it has to be less, so it stays as small and fragile as possible without crumbling. The difference between those two that want to be more for the sake of being more or less for the sake of being less, and the third that is neither but instead wants to be just right in a way that’s not only unattainable but also impossible to preserve. They seek symmetry but it doesn’t come with the stability and equilibrium that’s usually associated with it. So it does have that same fear and despair in common with the others. And the difference between the Rose and the Lily, with how the Rose wants to be less but wants to be seen and wants to be perceived as beautiful, while the Lily needs to straight up disappear.

I like the remark with the Lily of the Damned that implies how being uncomfortable in one’s body doesn’t always have to be about its appearance. Just its presence, the fact that you can feel it and that it takes up space can be enough.

On the second listen this one reminded me of a day when I was in high school. It’s going to sound like a stupid example but it’s meaningful enough for me. The english teacher wanted us to get in pairs to discuss what we had done as homework, but first, I hadn’t done the assignment, and second, I didn’t know most of the kids in the classroom. I have social anxiety and it was at its worst in high school when everything was different from before (I went to the same small school from preschool to middle school). We had these rolling chairs that were easy to move around. So I stayed in my seat, panicking, as everyone else rolled to pair up and as the teacher asked me a couple times to just find someone, but I didn’t even have the courage to tell her why I couldn’t. After I had waited too long, I just remember her smiling, grabbing my chair, pulling it and pushing it in front of someone I had never seen before and then leaving. She was so proud of herself that she had solved the problem. In the end I think I tried to do whatever discussion we had to but eventually I just ran out the room and went to cry in the bathroom.

So when Jon talks about the gardener pulling the poor plant up into the open air I just. I get it.

And the whole Idea of the Gardener. Like, in previous episodes they’ve been like “oh this is this guy’s domain” and like yeah they’re the avatars supervising the place and such but. idk the idea that they actually owned it felt a little empty. Except for the landlord in Fire Escape —which I did mention in my post about that episode, how he did, like, represent Something within the fear itself—, and the Gardener here. He’s not just there. He loves his creations and he’s making sure they’re growing how he wants them to, enriching their environment with the proper conditions of insecurity and anxiety. Because this kind of distress is honed by an external agent, a person or a group of people or a god or anything, whose validation you’re desperate for. And it sucks that they impose those terrible feelings on you but also they do do it out of love and you do know that. You know it enough to actually feel kind of bad when Jared says goodbye to the plants. I just think it’s great.

I also think it’s great how there’s a similarity with the Archivist pointed out. He watches and soaks up on all these people’s fear, and he enjoys it. But he is, or at least pretends to be, no more than a passive observer. He wouldn’t be the one to actually tend to the garden would he? 👀

At the end once again it’s brought up this distinction Jon has to make when he decides how deserving of death he considers each character. It’s interesting how he chooses. Obviously it never was about doing good. But who is it really helping to actually pick and smite only some of them?

[ghostbustermelanieking]

some thoughts on mag 200

i’ve been having trouble articulating this, but i wanted to get some thoughts down on mag 200, and the ending of tma as a whole, now that i’ve heard the finale twice and had some time to process it all. putting this under a cut in case people don’t wanna see it -- there’s gonna be a lot of praise here, but also some legit criticism. this is a way to sort through my feelings more than anything else.

first off, relistening to the finale, and sitting on it for a while, has made me feel a hell of a lot better about the whole thing. the episode comes off a lot better when you’re not vibrating with fear and anticipation, in my opinion. the final statement was very fitting and cool -- not my favorite ever, but i can appreciate it a lot as a final closing for the fears. and i don’t have an ear for soundscaping but the sound in that statement was cool as hell. the jonah magnus gets fucking murdered scene is incredibly satisfying. a lot of other people have said this, but i love that jon finally got his revenge, and was able to lash out against jonah for all the years of manipulation and beng used, and for tim and sasha and everything else. that was perfect. i genuinely thought we might not get a scene like this after 193 but i am so glad we did. incredibly satisfying. the girls made it out!! i am very glad that they’re ok and moving on and seem to be leaning on each other. (By God I Will Wring Found Family Out Of This Podcast If It Kills Me.) and the admiral’s okay. love that

and the jonmartin ending. oh my god. while i was never the biggest fan of the possibility of martin having to kill jon, the way it went down was so painful and good. i loved that final scene. i love the ambiguity -- that they might have died but maybe they didn’t, maybe they’re all right and happy and we can decide for ourselves -- i love that i got exactly what i wanted, that i get to have my cake and eat it too, all the angst of a jmart death and still the possibility of happiness... i am going buckwild. i love it. the longer i spend with this ending, the happier i am with it. i really really loved it

on another note... i do have some reservations about the finale and the season as a whole. i understand peoples’ irritations with the finale, and while i’m trying to focus on the things i did like, i definitely have some irritations. for one, i definitely wish the finale had been longer. i would’ve loved to see more of what wtgfs and basira were doing, and the actual lighting of the archives, etc. and while i completely understand why the scene at the panopticon went as quickly as it did -- it comes off very much as wild, frantic impulse in the heat of the moment where they’re in danger and trying to protect each other -- i do wish it had gone a little slower. 

in my mind, the biggest issue in season 5 ended up being pacing. and this might be a personal preference thing -- there’s a lot of things within the show that i don’t personally vibe with, but i don’t necessarily think they’re badly written. but i do think season 5 was slow. and while slow things can certainly work in a certain context (season 4 comes off wildly slow til you listen to 160), i wish more of what actually happened in season 5 had been baked into the end game. the season felt like it had a lot of filler, which drives me mildly crazy, because the end game feels rushed and i don’t think it NEEDED to be. i liked a lot of what season 5 did -- there’s some impeccable episodes, the character interactions are weirdly lighter and softer than they have been in previous seasons, and i wouldn’t trade a lot of the things that it’s given us (all the jonmartin interactions, jon and georgie briefly rebuilding their friendship, martin and melanie friendship, wtgfs scenes and intimacy, backstory, lore, etc) for anything. but i do think it could’ve been structured and paced a little differently. i also think it could’ve given some more screentime to the character stuff we got from episodes like 161, 170, 186, 190, 191, 192, 199... i absolutely love both martin centric monologue episodes, but i hate that we didn’t get anything like that for jon. (or for melanie or georgie or basira...) the best episodes of the season, imo, are the ones that broke from traditional form of domain statement domain, and the ones that focused in hard on backstory, lore, character introspection, character interaction... i wish we had more of this. 

when it comes to the jonmartin arc... i know this has been a point of contention with a lot of people, but i don’t hate it at all. maybe it’s just because i relistened to the majority of the season back in january, but a lot of the more grating moments that seemed large week to week (martin pressuring jon to smite people, the disagreements they had earlier in the season, jon using martin as bait in 176, etc etc) come off a lot more minor when you’re binging. personally, relistening to act i made those interactions come off as things they were struggling with through continued support and reassurance. there were absolutely things i wanted addressed, especially with the “kill bill arc” -- the disagreements early in the season, and how it seemed to turn on its head in the argument they have in 194. (i didn’t like martin blaming jon for the kill bill arc and i was hoping it would get brought up.) i also wanted to see a discussion of martin going with annabelle in 194 -- i wasn’t really ever mad at martin for doing it, but i did want to see them talk it out. 

but! after relistening to 200, i think i have a better handle on why that couldn’t have happened. martin goes behind jon’s back to go with annabelle and they don’t talk about it; jon goes behind martin’s back to sabotage the plan everyone agrees on in order to prevent the fears from spreading. if they’d had a big talk about trust, and working through martin going off with annabelle, and then jon turned around and did the same thing, more or less... it would’ve completely soured that discussion. jon and martin needed to be in a place of discourse for this ending to work. 

honestly, the more i’ve thought about this final JM arc, the better i feel about it. sure, jon and martin are in a bad place, and they’ve gone behind each other’s backs and been somewhat selfish, but i don’t think this ruins their relationship. for one, martin’s break in trust comes from a place of wanting to save jon and the world. and for another, jon genuinely feels he is doing the right thing, making a decision he can live with. (i have my own opinions as to how ethical jon’s decision was, but that’s another post. and i think the muddy ethics of this ending are on purpose -- it’s horror, a genre that often doesn’t offer ethical decisions.) their final decisions and final moments come from a place of love and protectiveness, and they change their decisions for the other. they still love each other, through all of it. i don’t think these late stage betrayals equivalate jonmartin necessarily being doomed as a couple (not that anyone has said that, but it’s worth saying). and i think it’s important to remember that this is still a relatively new relationship. it existed for approximately three weeks before the literal apocalypse, and it’s been under an immense amount of stress, as well as the constant fear that one or both of them would die. (which they did.) i’m not saying that excuses certain things they’ve said or done, but i am saying i don’t think the relationship is doomed. i think, if jon and martin have survived, they’ll need to work through things. they’ll need to talk it all out. and they’ll be able to! they’ll heal from this one way or another. the tragedy isn’t that jonmartin is doomed, or toxic. it’s that these moments of betrayal are what dooms them. and the beautiful undercurrent of it all is that they still manage to come together, and make decisions that mean they stay together. and that wherever they are, they’re still together. 

all in all, i don’t think season 5 has been perfect, and i can make my peace with that. (tma’s worst is a hell of a lot better than most shows’ best.) (i also think it might be worth considering how covid could have affected certain aspects of how the season was written -- pandemics are stressful, and i can’t imagine what it’s like to finish an enormous, in the works for years project like this in the middle of that. personally, i’m impressed they’ve managed to finish the show through all of this and keep it to a similar quality.) i think critiques are valuable and worth discussing. and i think plot aspects aside, there are several other critique related things that could be brought up about this season that people have articulated much better than i ever could. but i also, personally, want to walk away from the show feeling satisfied. i tend to be weirdly positive about things i love (the x files finale was horrendous, but i managed to get to a place where i was happy with it, for example), and i think that applies here -- even more so because i really did love so many aspects of that finale. i don’t necessarily want to linger in my own mind over what i disliked, especially considering the show is over. although i did want to air out my thoughts. 

i still love this show. i loved a lot of episodes this season, frustrations aside. season 5 will forever be my only live tma experience, and it got me through one of the worst years of my life, and i am very grateful for this. i genuinely did just want to air out my thoughts and get them all down on paper. these are just my opinions -- i don’t want to criticize anyone who feels differently about the finale, or the season as a whole. everyone’s opinion is their own. 

i feel a lot, lot better about mag 200, to the point of genuinely loving it. i hope my appreciation only grows as i get further from that frenzied first day and have more time to sit with it. and i can’t wait to see all the art and read all of the amazing fics that are going to come out of this ending (and write some of my own). it’s been a wild ride. i’m glad i was here for it.

[radiosandrecordings]

I wrote a big long post, and I’m not quite sure what my point is and also it’s 2am so by the end it’s pretty much nonsensical but I just wanted to get some feelings out in words, it’s more of a For Me thing really but idk, someone else might feel similar so: 

Been thinking about Stuff recently and as I am want to do with every thought that rattles through my hollow little head, I’ve tried sifting it through a jmart lens. This originally came from a discussion I was having yesterday about how the fan base has changed a lot since jmart became canon, especially in terms of new people listening. But it was more in the context of it... I think there’s a tendency when people listen, specifically ones who came because they’ve seen fan art or they heard ‘omg canon gays!’ (It’s really becoming the new Night Vale and I have Thoughts on that but that’s for a separate post) to listen through the show as a means to get to them being ‘a canon couple’. 

And I suppose there’s a route I could go down here where I talk about how that’s kinda derisive to the show to treat this whole complex story as only a vehicle to get you to the concept of boys kissing, but to me it’s more like... I mean ‘fandoms’ as they are now, really do have a tendency to put an emphasis on romance as the main thing to be focused on, even in media where it isn’t found, that’s old hat. But I Don’t Like That. I mean, obviously I love romance stuff, I read as many fluffy jmart fics with 0 bearing on canon as the next person, I’ve been writing those since season 3 when we had no idea this was coming, when it was still ‘the dinghy’ to a lot of people.

But the whole kind of overview of it is reductive not just to the show but to other forms of relationships I think? Again this isn’t TMA exclusive, this is a common thing, I’m just filtering through one specific thing here. One of my favourite quotes from Jonny was from the S4 Q&A, when he was explaining why Daisy and Basira aren’t a romantic couple, which is a whole OTHER thing and people’s ignoring of his whole logic for that has made me kind of prickly against the ship now, but that’s another topic. Anyway, he says “So, with each relationship within the series there is a specific thing that I’m trying to explore. A specific dynamic that I feel is- is the core of the relationship in something that I am really interested in exploring.” And I adore seeing TMA through this lens. With each character Jon meets, trying to figure out what it is that their specific dynamic with him is supposed to convey. How the whole show is about how people interact with each other and that’s why to me when you boil Jon down to his only relationship being his romantic one is just feels off. 

Like I adore jmart, I truly do, and I get why they’re the most common. Romance is easy and fun to write about, and they’re the two main characters, they’re the ones we lock onto because we spend so much time with them. But if you sat me down and told me to make a list of my favourite dynamics in TMA, personally I would have them ranked third. I would rather talk about Jon and Georgie all day firstly, and then after that Jon and Gerry. Maybe there’s not as much to say for those two dynamics as their is for jmart due to the sheer amount of jmart interaction and content we have in canon, but I think the dynamics that are being explored there are more appealing to me personally to look at. 

Another thing is this notion that relationships only really start when they’re agreed upon to be a reciprocated romantic partnership, and I think that’s something often missed when people rush forward to get to S5 and see them act all coupley. This idea that their interactions only matter if they’re in service to a ship. I don’t think people ignore them interacting before that, but more that people have a tendency to hone in on the parts they think they can point at and go ‘See, see, that’s where he has a crush on him!’. As if their dynamic wasn’t interesting in itself before it became romantic, and only holds worth once they have feelings for each other in a romantic manner rather than simply caring about each other, or even how they might not care at the start. Like, if you are friends with someone for five years, and then get a crush on them for one year, and then start dating, you have had a relationship with this person for six years but the one year of your feelings being romantic doesn’t change the five years to be un-platonic, you were just friends then even if feelings came later. 

Side note -  Obviously the romance gives it obvious appeal and reason for acclaim because if you come to TMA from out of an audio drama sphere, you are likely starving for healthy gay content and so of course you want to focus on that bit of rep. But there’s better media for that, audio is full of it, just because TMA is the popular show doesn’t mean it’s what you’re looking for if you genuinely don’t like horror or the story it’s telling and are only there for the romance. You can shop around a bit until you find the story you want, I promise you it’s out there if you go looking.

Back from the side note - I think what I mean to say is. This is probably me venting my frustration at allonormativity a little in pushing romance as The Superior Dynamic and all other relationships a character has as side notes. Though obviously there’s the caveat that Martin is Jon’s most important relationship to him, hell he called him his reason! But maybe I’m just a little frustrated at their romance being treated as a crux of the show instead of one important thread in a whole woven tapestry of themes and relationships. Again this isn’t dunking on anyone for making fluffy content because I will be sitting here gobbling that up, it’s just more of a... Vent at the way relationships are viewed in general? A bit of a “Funny, you criticise the prioritising of romantic relationships over all other kinds but yet you partake in the writing of non-relevant fluff fics!” I know, but there’s absolutely a place for them because they’re Good I think I just feel like they shouldn’t be the overwhelm if that makes sense? Even some of the stuff I’ve said here now that I look back doesn’t even really apply to jmart specifically so it’s more just. throwing my thoughts at a wall and using jmart to understand some of it I guess. 

[theradioghost]

I don't know if you're still doing podcast recs, but if you are, I really like dramas, horror, sci-fi, honestly anything that gives you the feels (especially if it has lgbtq+ rep). I am not much of a comedy person though unfortunately. The only podcast I finished was tma and I really loved it.

The recommendations are always on tap here, whenever my askbox is open! You might wanna check out:

Archive 81, for a found-footage horror about mysterious archives of tapes full of encounters with otherworldly horror, dark rituals, cults, and a long-suffering archivist with the same name as the show creator who plays him, which despite all that could not possibly be more different from TMA and yet easily matches it as one of the best horror stories I have ever enjoyed. The sound design on this show is basically unparalleled – where TMA has fairly minimalist sound design, A81 goes all out. Quite a few lgbtqa+ folk also.

I Am In Eskew, for a surreal, Lynchian horror about the city of Eskew, where it’s always raining and the streets are never the same twice, as narrated by a man who is trapped there and the woman hired to find him. Take the most viscerally disturbing episodes of TMA as a baseline for how intense this show is, then imagine the Spiral built a city and invited all the other fears over for a party. Also right up there as one of my favorite horror things ever, and recently ended, so you can listen to the whole thing right now.

Within The Wires, for a found-footage scifi dystopia, telling stories from an alternate-history world. Three of the four seasons focus on lgbtqa+ leads, and the first season, a set of instructional meditation tapes provided to a prisoner in a shadowy government institution, is still some of my absolute favorite creative use of medium and framing device ever.

Kane and Feels, for a surreal noir-flavored urban fantasy/horror hybrid, about a magically-inclined academic (and sarcastic little bastard man) named Lucifer Kane and his demon-punching partner with a heart of gold, Brutus Feels. They share a flat in London, they bicker like an old married couple, and they fight supernatural evil. This show WILL confuse the hell out of you and you will enjoy every second of it.

Alice Isn’t Dead, for a weird Americana horror story about a long-distance truck driver, criss-crossing the US in search of her missing wife. Along the way she discovers that both of them have been drawn into a dangerous secret war that seethes in the empty and abandoned expanses of America, and that inhuman hunters have begun to follow her. Also finished! And as the title kind of gives away, the lesbians do not die!

Janus Descending, for a sci-fi horror miniseries about two scientists sent to survey the remains of a dead alien civilization on a distant planet, only to learn all too well why the original inhabitants have disappeared. You hear one character’s story in chronological order and the other in reverse, with their perspectives alternating, which is done in an incredibly clever way so that even technically knowing what will happen it still holds you in suspense right to the end. Also, it made me cry, a lot.

SAYER, for a sci-fi horror with a touch of dark comedy, and probably the single best use of the “evil AI” trope I have ever seen. Tells the story of employees of tech corporation Aerolith Dynamics living on Earth’s artificial second moon, Typhon, in the form of messages from their AI overseer SAYER. The first season is great, the second season is okay, and the third and fourth seasons are fucking amazing.

Tides, for a really interesting sci-fi about a lone biologist trapped on an alien world shaped by deadly tidal forces. It’s different from just about any other sci-fi I know, focusing more on the main character’s interactions with and observations of this strange new world, where she’s very aware that she is the alien invader. (Also I don’t think any of the characters are straight.)

Station to Station, for a thrilling sci-fi mystery where a group of scientists and spies on a research ship (the ocean kind) discover that the time-warping anomaly they’re studying might be causing people to vanish from existence. Corporate espionage and high-stakes heartbreak abound. (And once again I’m not sure anyone is straight.)

The Strange Case of Starship Iris, for Being Gay And Doing Crime IN SPACE! Or, decades after a war with an alien species leaves humanity decimated and under the control of totalitarian leaders, the lone survivor of a research mission joins up with a ragtag crew of rebels and smugglers to figure out why the very government she worked for tried to kill her, and to stop them from inciting a second war. 100% lgbtqa+ found family in space heist action and it’s glorious in every way.

Unwell, for the horror-ish Midwestern gothic story of a young woman who returns to her hometown to help her estranged mother after an injury, and discovers that there is something just a little bit wrong, not just with her mother, but with her mother’s house, and with the whole town. Subtle and creepy. The protagonist is a biracial lesbian, one of the other major characters is nonbinary, the cast in general is super diverse.

The Blood Crow Stories, for an lgbtqa+ focused horror anthology! The four seasons so far have been the stories of an ancient evil stalking the passengers of a WWI-era utopian cruise ship, a dark Western mystery about a group of allies trying to stop the mysterious killer known only as the Savior, a 911 operator in a cyberpunk dystopia who starts getting terrifying phone calls from demons, and strange and deadly goings-on at a film studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Everyone is Very Gay and anyone can die, especially in season 1.

The Tower, for a melancholy experimental miniseries about a young woman who decides she’s going to climb the mysterious Tower, from which no one has ever returned. Quite short and very, very good.

Palimpsest, for a creepy, heartbreakingly sad and yet incredibly beautiful anthology series. Season one is the story of a woman who suspects her new home is haunted, season two is a turn-of-the-century urban fantasy about a girl who falls in love with the imprisoned fae princess she’s been hired to care for, and season three is about a WWII codebreaker who begins seeing ghosts on the streets of London during the Blitz.

Mabel, for a part-horror, part-love story, the kind of faerie tale where you feel obliged to spell it with an E because these are the kind of faeries that are utterly inhuman, and beautiful, and dangerous. Anna, the new caretaker for an elderly woman, leaves messages for her client’s mysteriously absent granddaughter Mabel. An old house in Ireland has a life and desires of its own, few of them friendly. Two women fall in love and set out for vengeance against the King Under The Hill. Creepy, strange, and gorgeously poetic.

Ars Paradoxica, for a sci-fi time travel Cold War espionage thriller. Physicist Dr. Sally Grissom accidentally invents time travel, landing herself – and her invention – in the middle of a classified government experiment during WWII. As the course of history utterly changes around them, she and what friends she can find in this new time must struggle with the ethics of what they’ve done, and the choices they’ll have to make. An aroace protagonist, Black secret agents, time-traveling Latina assassins, Jewish lesbian mathematicians, two men of color whose love changes the course of time itself, this show says a big fuck you to the idea that there’s anything hard about having a diverse cast in a period piece and it will break your heart, multiple times. Also finished!

The Far Meridian, for a genre-bending, poetic, at-times-heartwarming-at-times-heartbreaking story about an agoraphobic woman named Peri who decides to begin a search for her long-missing brother Ace after the lighthouse in which she lives begins mysteriously transporting to different places every day. I can never forget an early review that described this show as “the audio equivalent of a Van Gogh painting.” Suffice to say it is beautiful, and fantastically written and put together.

What’s the Frequency?, for a Surrealist noir horror mystery set in mid-20th-century LA. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I can really explain what goes on in this show, but it features a detective named Walter “Troubles” Mix and his partner Whitney searching for a missing writer. Meanwhile, the only thing that seems to be playing on the radio is that writer’s show Love, Honor, and Decay, which also seems to be driving people to murder. Fantastically weird, deliciously creepy.

Directive, for a short sci-fi miniseries about a man hired to spend a very, very long trip through space alone, which doesn’t seem all that sad until suddenly it hits you with Every Feel You’ve Ever Had, seriously I don’t want to spoil it so I won’t say anything more but listen to this and then never feel the same way about Tuesdays again.

Wolf 359, for honestly one of the best podcasts out there, containing all of the drama and feels, seriously this show ended over two years ago and I still cry literal tears thinking about it sometimes. It has definite comedic leanings, especially in the first season which reads a bit more like a wacky office comedy set in space, but it takes a sharp turn towards high stakes, action, and feelings and that roller coaster never stops. Take four clashing personalities alone on a constantly-malfunctioning space station eight light years from earth, add some mysterious transmissions from the depths of space, toss in some seriously Jonah-Magnus-level manipulative evil bosses, and get ready to cry.

or, may I suggest Midnight Radio? It’s a lesbian-romance-slash-ghost-story completed miniseries about a late-night 1950s radio host in a small town who begins receiving mysterious letters from one of her listeners, and I have been assured by many people and occasionally their all-caps tweets that it provides ample Feelings! (also I wrote it.)

[dragons-bones]

The White Vault Season Three Roundup

Posting this as the tenth and final episode of the season is now in public release!

So I listened to the early release of the season finale on Saturday, screamed a lot, and immediately sat down and re-listened to the whole season. The following post is being put behind a read more for both length and season-wide (finale included) spoilers and includes discussion and theorizing for season four, which Travis confirmed is the penultimate season. (IS IT OCTOBER YET.) Please DO NOT READ until you listen to the finale!

First and foremost, I was originally a little concerned that season three would end up hitting all of the same story beats as the first two seasons without anything new, particularly on the matter of the mystery: lots of puzzle pieces that still don't quite fit together. Arguably we still don't have any clear answers...but we have a lot more pieces that I think we're seeing the overall shape. There is definitely some sort of centuries-and-continents-spanning conspiracy, one dedicated to keeping the shadow monster(s) and totem monsters fed, or appeased, or something, along with the people and civilization that revolves around these creatures. We don't know the why, we don't know the how, but I am personally surprisingly at ease with not having anything answered at this point--honestly I am having an incredible amount of fun speculating in my own mind and reading other fans' takes on tumblr and reddit. Travis and Katie confirming we have a fourth and fifth season to finish telling the story gives me a lot of confidence, particularly since season four is going to take a vastly different tack than the first three seasons.

The Documentarian confirms in the opening of episode one that she had come into possession of the information she presents to whom we knew as of episode five to be Graham "Fuck You I Have A Shotgun" Casner just a few days ago. Episode ten confirms that the events of season three literally occurred within the last few weeks and Dr. Zhou "Fuck You I Have A Frying Pan" Liu, Dr. Josepha Guerrero, and Simon "Fuck You I Am Getting Off This Mountain If I Have To Tobogan Down It" Hall may still be alive up in the caves. I am practically frothing at the mouth with excitement because this really raises the stakes for next season, and while I'm more than certain the entire cast isn't making it out alive...enough might. And in this situation: the dangers are known by both the rescue party and the scientists; and the scientists are the kind who might be able to begin putting our puzzle pieces together, along with whatever the Documentarian acquires elsewhere.

I want to give an especial shoutout to Peter Lewis as Graham Casner. I remember when I first listened to The White Vault, I was a bit uncertain about his voicework: he has a very deliberate, almost stilted-sounding delivery as Graham. His performance really clicked for me when we got the segue ways of him narrating Russian journal entries into an English translation: his Russian, to my ear, sounds very smooth with no hesitation. My thought is, English isn't Graham's first language, and his measured way of speaking is how he ensures he organizes his thoughts properly to be understood. And just--his performance this season was SO GOOD. Especially in the finale, he sounded so raw and angry and just a little bit broken over the discovery that the body Dr. Liu and Dr. Guerrero found truly wasn't Dr. Ureta (I thought, in episode nine, that they're comment of "that's not Dr. Ureta" was more a metaphoric "that's not her anymore" based on what they knew of Simon's experience so far), but Rosa. Like. Holy shit. 10/10 Peter Lewis, godDAMN.

(Aside: props to all the voice actors this season. We really heard them come into their stride as the season progressed, but special props to: Danilo Battistini as Lucas, who showcased Lucas’s descent into (religious fervor inspired?) madness; Eric Nelsen as Simon, who got saddled with a lot of the technical archaeological talk and made it sound natural (really evident when you listen to the bloopers); and Diane Casanova as Eva, who did a fantastic job showing her dealing with the stress of the situation while still remaining snarky and defiant.)

And now to Rosa--who was, unquestionably, my favorite member of the Fristed expedition, so I was, in fact, yelling like a mad thing while my heart went icy and broken when the body was identified as hers. So, I remember reading in a post-episode speculation thread on reddit earlier in the season that maybe the tunnels between Svalbard and Patagonia were connected and this was the same shadow monster as the Fristed team encountered. I thought this was particularly far-fetched bullshit, but, uh apparently not? Good job, fellow speculator! You called it! Perhaps they're not physically connected (that stretches my suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point, considering Svalbard and Patagonia are on literal opposite ends of the planet), but maybe it's a space-time distortion, and the deep caves between Svalbard and Patagonia (and Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China, and wherever else this strange civilization has pockets of activity) are linked via supernatural means. And a space-time distortion would explain why to Graham, it didn't seem too much time had passed for him in the tunnels before he found a way out, even though it was weeks if not months before he was located.

(Brief side note: definitely the Svalbard totem monster that got him, that strange walrus-like entity with the super-elongated phalanges. Also features in Artifact. That totem monster scares me and scares me deeply.)

So does this mean the shadow monster at Fristed and Piedra are the same, able to travel between locations depending on which ones have people near them? (SPOILER FOR ARTIFACT: it's implied there's more than one and they can "travel" via the totem animal artifacts END SPOILER) Does this mean we might see "Jonas" again? Oooooh, two shadow monsters, das bad, das really bad.

(Another brief side note, since I didn't do an episode nine roundup: the dark part of my mind that loves the creepy horror elements of this podcast was overjoyed at being slam-dunked right into the fucked-up-edness of the return of the still-beating heart and teeth in a stone box. Just. Good shit, lots of nightmares, jumping at shadows that night, S U P E R B.

...Wait, Rosa's is the first body actually found, even though we know the shadow monster killed her. Karina's, Walter's, and Carito's bodies never showed up, and we know their hearts and teeth ended up in the stone boxes. Does that mean Rosa's didn't? Is there specific significance to this?)

The sites do seem to be very different: China was a mountain village, most of the village open air with their private ritual rooms carved into the mountainside; Svalbard's might be under a glacier, and is an entire underground village, with its ritual sites buried beneath it; and Patagonia is less a proper village and more a winding system of living quarters and open public/ritual spaces. Svalbard is also currently the only one (that we know of, we have no information about the interior of the China site) using teeth to pave its stairs so, uh, take that as you will.

Teeth appear a lot. I have a thing about teeth, and yet The White Vault doesn't ping it? It's rather strange.

RAIMY. RAIMY YOU GO GET YOUR MAN. PROUD OF YOU, PLEASE DON'T DIE. (Honestly, though, I get the feeling if the shadow monster breathes anywhere in the general vicinity of Raimy, Simon will go batshit and beat the thing to death himself. He is injured but he is pissed.)

I continue to have low expectations about Eva's survival. That she got off the mountain is a surprise--stalked by the shadow monster, perhaps hoping she lures more people to the caves?--and that her 'infection' (excuse me as I continue to have flashbacks to Jane Prentiss in TMA Season One and cry uncontrollably because oh my gooooooooood) hasn't, y'know, gotten properly ugly yet. But goddamn I love her spirit, I love that she's so determined to get the rest of the team out. I WANT her to survive, but all the clues are pointing at REALLY BAD SHIT happening to her.

I remain deeply curious about whether or not Dr. Ureta’s previous trip to the Patagonia site is what primed her to be the first victim of the Piedra team. This might very well be something we don’t ever receive a proper answer to--sometimes some mysteries remain so, after all--but I do find it telling that we have very little of her personal thoughts, unlike the other members of the team (aside, of course, from Lucas).

Dr. Guerrero remains the loose end for me: Simon and Dr. Liu have both shown an utter lack of fucks to give about not letting this monster have them, but Dr. Guerrero was so tunnel-visioned on the science of the find that we notes and thoughts we have her don’t give us a conclusive enough picture about what to expect going forward. But we might end up surprised.

I’m very interested to see what Maheer and Dragana bring to the table: Maheer is obviously the Documentarian’s man because of a very nice paycheck, and Graham’s grumbling about Dragana’s prodding for details has me on alert mostly because Graham is my guy and he deserves a fucking nap and a vacation for all the shit he’s had to deal with.

The White Vault: Iluka is coming up this month on Patreon; I’m willing to bet this is what the Documentarian is preoccupied with while Graham and the rescue team head into the mountains. I’m really curious to see whether or not this might have anything to do with the events of the short Acquisition? I feel we’re due for that to come into play...

There is just. So much. So damn much.

IS IT OCTOBER YEEEEEEET.

[lamiralami]

TMA Retro 5: Thrown Away

Come on and get funky with your fellow feral trash pandas, it’s garbage day in MAG 5: Thrown Away

if MAG 4 was a hearty meal that needs time to digest, MAG 5 is a light and crunchy fortune cookie

(with a tooth in the centre)

which is good! it was a savvy decision to have the meta plot build so slowly over the first season. sometimes the thought of getting into something with a huge, complicated, mysterious narrative is...preemptively exhausting. but the format of singular spooky stories within a slowly illuminating enormous web eases you in, tricks your brain into getting invested despite itself. you know, like being in a pot gradually coming to a boil  🙃

this one is very self-contained indeed. I don’t even think anything in this statement ever comes up again. just get in, get spooked by a pile of teeth, get out

still, we are left with a lingering question: Which Fucking Entity Did This?

no but seriously. it could be so many!

the doll parts remind me of the Stranger, and it does come up later how much they like to play with teeth.

but then, piles of body parts would suggest the Flesh?

the metal heart sounds a little too elegant for them though (lest we forget, the Flesh ritual could have been called Hole Vores Some Meat. not sure coppersmithing is precisely their style)

could also be a bit Beholding? the whole mess would have been avoided if they hadn’t looked in the bags. Kieran talks about how bin men are privy to the secrets of those on their routes. and both he and Alan feel a compulsive need to look further into the odd disposals, an urge that leads Alan to his assumed end.

or even, maybe, just a whiff of...the Extinction?

yeah, almost certainly not.

but.

there has been garbage imagery linked to the Extinction, in MAG 149.

and this quote stuck out to me: “People have an odd mental block - this idea that as soon as they put something in the bin it’s gone. It’s officially been made rubbish and no-one will ever see it again. [...] it’s gone, far beyond all human understanding.”

maybe it’s just recent reports that make me think about this blind spot about garbage in relation to the catastrophic mess of climate change, which certainly feeds the Extinction if it’s not a manifestation of the same. a world without us, built on what we’ve left behind - that would involve a lot of trash.

okay, it’s definitely a reach. but hey! the fact that  I can make a bullshit English paper of an argument for almost any of the powers being present is in itself a good example of the entangled nature of the entities.

a thing I love about TMA is all the background detailing. the individual world building lets the statement givers breathe, makes them feel like real people. the statements become a wee window into another life.

my little T. rex arms mean I’ll never be a London bin man, but now I, too, have strong opinions about proper garbage etiquette. Solidarity!

“You can throw away a mountain of grotesque porn and, as long as you’ve tied it into neat bundles, we’re fine with it, but if you throw away cat litter without properly bagging that, you’d better believe that you’ve earned the hatred of every bin man that ever slung a sack. Still, I’m getting off topic.

Point is, the bag of dolls heads didn’t bother me.”

WHAT a transition! Gold star! ⭐

I might just have a high threshold, but the bag of doll heads doesn’t strike me as...phenomenally weird? I dunno, hang out with a few artsy friends and suddenly any mass collection of objects is dismissable as part of some demented craft project.

and then there’s the Latin Lord’s Prayer streamer. ordination party clean up perhaps?

singed edges say maybe the Desolation. they do have a cult, they’re at least pseudo-religious...

...but the Dark have a church...

god, are multiple players just - using this house as a communal dumpster, in order to fuck with some garbage men? for no real purpose other than to be Chaotic Spooky?

that

that would be extremely On Brand for almost everyone

“[...] I realised that the others were waiting for me to pick it up - I’d picked up the others, and apparently this was how it was done now. It almost felt like a ritual.” well now it probably is a ritual because your own awful human brains imbibe everything with meaning! we did this to ourselves!!

“There was something about this, beyond anything else I’d encountered, that… I don’t know. It drew me in almost as much as it disgusted me.” even on top of the near possession he experiences reading statements, this part has got to resonate pretty deeply with Jon

(and yet he still doesn’t take note that this guy survived by NOT investigating further and his coworker disappears BECAUSE he ran off to investigate on his own, he got obsessed and then his heart got ripped out and alchemized into a fairly valuable amount of haunted copper, you ever want to reach back in time and shake a fictional academic until he listens)

but anyway, speaking of said copper: hope your buddy who works the medical incinerator just did you the favour without opening the package. copper scrap sells for a pretty penny, and a big chunk of it goes a long way since it’s primarily used in wiring. so. yeah, might have us an epidemic of eldritch electricals out there.

every time Jon bitches nastily about Martin is so delicious. a nutritious meal, rich in irony. “[..] at least it got Martin out of the Institute for an afternoon, which is always a welcome relief.” you spend the entirety of season 4 barely holding back tears because Martin is out of the Archives, you absolute windchime.

I’m weirdly bothered we don’t know which tooth is in the bag. you say there’s 2,780 examples of the same tooth but you don’t tell us which one it is? incisors? canines? this will haunt me forever you bastard

it does my head in that this statement seems so clearly to be inspired by this truly cursed news coverage...except that article is from 2018 and this episode came out in 2016 🙃🙃🙃

[beholdingavatar]

But I’m Afraid You Absolutely Did Choose It

A Rumination on Fear, The Magnus Archives, and the Modern Queer Experience

***

Given the source material on which this draws, there is only one way this piece can open.

Statement begins.

I first listened to The Magnus Archives on the recommendation of the King Falls AM discord server. I’m hardly a horror fan - most horror movies make me want to throw up and then give me weeks worth of lasting nightmares - but the KFAM discord has yet to steer me wrong, so I took a chance. It was - so utterly worth it.

The Magnus Archives is a serial fiction podcast, centering around an institute for paranormal research, and particularly the archives. The series begins with the appointment of Jon Sims as the new head archivist after the brutal murder of his predecessor, Gertrude, and follows - at least for the first season - his attempts to digitize the archive. I suggest you read no further if you are interested and want to avoid spoilers, because the conceit of this piece concerns spoilers from season 2 onward.

The universe in which The Magnus Archives (hereafter TMA) operates is affected by eldritch fear entities, each with their own acolytes and servants, their own rituals to try and enter our world and rule it. I’m no stranger to fear. How could I be, with the world as it is? I’m queer, I’m autistic, I have non-citizen immigrant parents, I’m mixed race - that’s a veritable laundry list, in this day and age. And that’s without tagging on the healthy paranoia that’s developed as a result of years of having every authority figure, every person I considered a friend, pull the rug out from under me at some point or another. Usually, between the fear and the paranoia, the idea of using horror as an escape seems laughable. But there’s something about TMA that makes it different.

Maybe it’s the low, soothing, audiobook voice that Jon reads the statements in. Maybe it’s the fact that the theme music is so good. Maybe it’s relating to archival assistant Martin and his glaringly obvious crush on his boss, Jon. Maybe it’s Basira and Daisy. Maybe it is a lot of things. But the first season of TMA kept me listening, kept me waiting with bated breath for the final line of every episode, when Jon would reveal the creepiest shit to us as listeners. And after the meta plot reveal, the speed with which I listened almost doubled.

There are the fourteen fear entities in the TMA universe. Some of them are fundamentally terrifying to me, like The Buried (the fear of being buried alive, of being trapped), or The Flesh (which is almost exactly what it sounds like, and I will never forgive Jonny Sims and Alex Newall for imprinting in my brain the Foleys for a flesh pit). Some pose interesting frames through which to view myself - as someone perpetually othered due to being autistic, there’s something delightfully empowering about The Stranger (the fear of the outsider, the unknown, what doesn’t belong). Jon, Martin, Basira, Daisy, and Melanie, our core cast, work for another, The Beholding, which is far and away in my mind the most interesting of them all.

The Beholding is the Fear of being known. Not of having someone know of your general existence, but rather the fear of being utterly known, of having some other being know every inch of you, know your innermost thoughts and innermost fears, the things you would never say to anyone. I am utterly fascinated by the Beholding, for a number of reasons. The first is that I want Jon Sims’ job. I could write you a whole other essay on why I would make a fantastic Archivist, but that is not where I want to go here. No - I want to talk about the concept of Being Known.

I’m someone who doesn’t fit into the norm by any stretch of the imagination, due to a variety of parts of myself that I cannot change, all of which have neat little labels. The only problem with this is that as soon as I tell someone one of those labels, they feel entitled to all that there is of me associated with that label. The best example of this, for me, is being queer.

I’m a lesbian, technically. I’ve just never been overly fond of the term, for a whole variety of reasons, ranging from its use as a slur directed at me during my childhood, to some very complex family history I’d really rather not get into in an essay I’m going to put online eventually. Given this lack of fondness towards the term “lesbian”, I’ve gravitated towards other labels, and I’ve settled - after not very long, to be perfectly honest - on queer. Maybe that’s because I grew up around queer historians, who were rather formative, but that’s beside the point. I chose queer, the queer of “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”, and of “queer anger is queer power”, and of “not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you” because that was the person I knew myself to be.

Now, when I say I’m queer, its like whoever I’ve told feels like they can ask whatever question they want regarding my life and my identity, purely due to my use of the word. That’s not how it works. Or rather, that shouldn’t be how it works. What I have instead is the perpetual decision to make. Do I want to come out to this person? Can I deal with the questions right now? Are they the kind of person who I won’t mind knowing all of that? Maybe this is why The Beholding is so interesting to me on some level. Of all the Fears, it is the one I feel I contend with the most, the one that holds the most danger for me as a queer person.

The Fears exist as manifestations of common phobias - Jonny Sims, the creator and writer of TMA (not to be confused with the character he voices, Jon Sims, the Archivist), has confirmed as much in his season Q+As. But in seeing their presence in the world of TMA, seeing the ways that they affect those who interact with them - there’s a bizarre sense of comfort in it. Yes, says every statement Jon reads, there is a plausible reason for it all. They are swept up in the Knowing, in the Othering, there is something hovering that makes all the things you fear utterly legitimate, regardless of whatever else you might hear said. You are allowed to be afraid, there is reason, and there is reason that others will ignore, will overlook, but your fear? Your fear is valid. And, says everything that ever goes wrong in a TMA episode, more importantly, you are right to be afraid.

We, as queer people, so often end up being the keepers of the horror. We are left to remember our dead. We are left to fight battles everyone else has declared won. We are stuck in the trenches while the fronts move, trying to maintain a line without support. We scream until we are hoarse because we know from experience that “silence” is a word for gravestones, a word that leads to gravestones. We hold within our community memory, just now recouping the losses that are the consequences of silence by those in power, all the horrors that we have suffered, because no one else wants to remember them. We, as a community, Know.

So The Beholding is ours, twice over. We Know things otherwise forgotten, in the way of the avatars of the Fear, like Jon, and we are Known, and we fear that happening in ways that we cannot control. And if The Beholding is ours, then we also belong to it. We belong to The Beholding in the same way that the archival staff do. And if that is true, then it chose us. 

There is something glorious about the inexorability of joining the service of a Fear, for the sake of this extended metaphor that is really just me screaming into the void about the brilliance of Jonny Sims and my love for TMA. The Fear chooses you, and you are marked by it and bound by it. We have been marked by the fear of Knowing and of Being Known for as long as we have known who we are. It is the fear that we carry with us at all times. It has marked us. It is the Fear that drove me back into the closet for my time at high school in Virginia. It is the Fear that makes me scared for the lives of those I love. It is the Fear informed by the Knowing, by the statistics we see about suicides, about murders, about homelessness, about illness. It is our fear, as a community, as queer people in this modern world. We are afraid of the history we carry, of being silent, of not being heard, of being known too much in the wrong places, by the wrong people, at the wrong time.

I have a pair of earrings that are eyes - the symbol of The Beholding. I was gifted them long before I started listening to TMA, but now they have taken on a new meaning. I put them on any time I know I will have a tough day. I put them on when getting out of bed is a struggle. I put them on, because they belong to The Beholding, and I like to think of The Beholding as mine, as ours.

And if I’m wearing something of The Beholding, maybe it will listen to me. Maybe it will send my story on. Maybe someday, an Archivist will sit down with a tape recorder and commit this to magnetic tape, so that I am never completely silent, so that I can be Known in a way that I can control.

Statement ends.