#jonah magnus was never elias in the first place
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takemyteawithformaldehyde · 1 month ago
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i dont have any evidence to back this up other than vibes but i think Colin and protocol universe Elias Bouchard should kiss
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alliseaisfandom · 8 months ago
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this will probably be disproven across episodes but I have the Gwen brainrot so indulge me.
I know a lot of people hope that Elias is out walking around happy and high, but see the Magnus institute burned down in 1999. Jonah took Elias in 1996.
So don't imagine Gwendolyn coming 'home' after a few years studying on daddy's money, daddy's name and daddy's contempt that his youngest daughter seems perfectly fine with ignoring what is expected from a Bouchard.
Don't imagine Gwen running into her brother one night after he himself hasn't been in their family house for weeks. And realising the thing in front of her isn't Elias.
The stone cold sober, easy smiling man with impeccable posture is not the man who taught her how to play their parents to secure a peaceful life and a place in the will at the same time.
The eyes looking back at her never winked at her from across the dinner table, never shed tears of rage at the golden chains around both of them, never looked at her at her lowest and told her everything would be okay one day. Because those eyes do not belong to Elias.
'A promotion' it tells her, with the same pride Elias used to talk about a student strike that would absolutely wreck their name if it were printed on papers, but this thing wouldn't do that because this thing is. Not. Her. Brother. But she's almost as good at acting as it is, so she plays along. 'Head of the Magnus Institute'.
And Gwen knows very little of the Magnus institute. But she knows enough about Elias Bouchard. She knows about Allan and the eyeless thing that got to him, tale whispered in a panic on the night she first saw her brother as a child instead of a role model. She knows about the letter that arrived unprompted. She knows the stories of what goes on inside the too old building.
And she knows how easy it is to get her hands on gasoline for the bits of it that aren't already flammable.
When she's called in as his emergency contact, she feigns shock at the fire, throws the bone that 'the idiot couldn't even keep his fucking lighter straight' between tears.
She throws the ashes off a foggy cliff onto the sea and attends the empty casket funeral with the same expression she learns to carry from that day on. And after years of clipped conversation, she does what she promised Elias to never do.
'Get me in.' She tells her father. And his smile of relief at 'still having a worthy heir' on the day of his son's funeral sickens her. But she keeps the same expression.
Because she may have killed the thing that took Elias. But the OIAR is the place that can tell her what she killed exactly.
And she won't make her brother's mistakes.
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somuchbetterthanthat · 2 years ago
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I love Elias 'Jonah Magnus' Bouchard so much. I love this 200 year old man who loves spreadsheets and passively watching horrible shit going around him; I love him for how he heard there are horrible Fears Entities in the world, had his mentor tell him 'we need to balance them out!' whilst all their friends where picking a side and becoming horrible monsters or tragic victims and went "actually I'll pick one and just learn how to play the game until i'm untouchable". I love a man who was so afraid of death he decided he would just not die and then found a way to do it for decades without being found out. I love that he has all this terrifying fear power and he oftentimes uses it to know where there is cake in his institute.
He is a scholar. He is a boring boss. He is a smug evil prick who relishes into his evilness and power. He tells his employees to do admin to feel better. He sighs when he has to torture them because they keep try to kill him. He's impressed and horny when someone successfully challenges his expectations. His idea of comfort is to ask philosophical questions about humanity. He only starts to take actions in order to manipulate this one guy into being the key to his ritual and his equal.
I love a man who realized all the rituals meant nothing, went 'very well' and instead of like, calmly going 'this means i'm in peace" went "well i'm going to be the first one to succeed by thinking of what my good mentor had said once. they all need to be together, balanced out." and then he DID succeed. He did have his apocalypse. And it was glorious and he loved every second of horror it was.
I love a man who never once apologized for being selfish, evil, and power hungry, and embraced all his flaws quite so willingly. And who, at the end, dying, all of this going to dust, watched his most beautiful creation, his most perfect work, his legacy, rise to take his place as king,, and merely told him good luck.
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theeyesonthewalls · 2 months ago
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I will never shut up abut the parallels between Jonah Magnus and the Greek myth Icarus
tma season 5 spoilers under the cut
You have the one blissful moment in which Icarus was flying and seeing all of that sea is the apocalypse, to quote tma:
"Jon: you failed Jonah: have I? Jon: some bs about how nothing escapes death Jonah: yes, I suppose I always knew that, deep down, but it was wonderful while it lasted"
In the panopticon ,in the apocalypse, he saw/knew everything, right? Well that means he saw and knew (deep down, at least) the fact that the gang were planning to kill him. And I think that he knew (again, at least deep down) the fact that he wasn't the person the eye wanted for the role of pupil. So he probably knew that, when Jon came to kill him, the eye would let him die, just like Icarus probably felt the wax holding his wings together melt and knew that there was nothing that he could do to live, so he kept flying. Just like Jonah kept taunting Jon in Mag 200.
Icarus 100% knew what would happen when he disregarded his father's warning, but it was so amazing, for one blissful moment. For example: When Jon talks to Elias in the Panopticon the first thing Elias says is "I was having the most beautiful dream". He knew that the position of the Pupil of the Eye was not made for him, and that, if Jon came along, the eye would disregard him and let The Archive take his place, but, for a little while, he could live his biggest dream.
Icarus' dad telling him to not fly to close to the sun? That's Robert Smirke telling Jonah to not answer the Eye's siren call. And in his statement, where he details being watched, the things he must have felt because it was clear proof that Jonah failed being neutral. And the sadness Robert was probably feeling, because the Regency Guys were kinda lead by Robert, and seeing all of them fall to different powers must have been awful, especially Jonah. Seeing him fail being neutral when he knew that it wouldn't end well is like Icarus' dad seeing him fall and drown, after explicitly telling him to not fly to close to the sun.
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fiaistired · 5 months ago
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I want to figure out how old Elias Bouchard really is. When was he born?
In MAG 49 it’s said he joined the institute in 1991 and became head of the institute in 1996 after being body snatched by Jonah Magnus.
In MAG 192 Rosie says that “he seemed far too young for the role he had apparently found himself in” - referring to the head of the institute position.
How young is too young for a head of an institution position? Here’s a first not *exactly* evidence-based assumption - but let’s say it’s probably being below 40 years old. That is based solely on the experience of attending university, I’d say most institute heads at uni are at minimum 40 (also, not exactly related but all university institute heads have PhD’s). (I don’t want to get into too many details here, since I’m not a 100% sure how the higher education system works in the UK, but in my country at least, one must have at least a Habilitation, which is almost like a second PhD, or be a capital “P” Professor, which is the highest university rank, to become an institute head. To achieve these scientific titles, it usually takes a lot of time, so most people are over 40 when they get the position. Or even 50, when it comes to the Professor rank). 
One can assume then, that “Elias” is below 40-ish while he interviews Rosie. Unfortunately, we don’t know when exactly that happens. It could be anytime between 1996 and 2015. 
Some other information we do know about him is that he’s graduated collage with third class honours and has a PPE degree. According to google, students in the UK typically start university at the age of 18. Also, according to google, Oxford has never had a postgraduate degree course in PPE, so Elias has a bachelor’s degree in PPE (which btw stands for Philosophy, Politics and Economics), meaning he was either 21 or 22 when he finished uni. We do not hear anyone mention him finishing any other courses, so we can assume that’s all that he studied.
Another thing we don’t know is at what age he started working for the Magnus Institute. We do know it happened in 1991. The earliest he could have been recruited was at the age of 21 or 22, straight out of university. Making him 26/27 at the time he “got promoted” to the position of institute head, in 1996. As mentioned previously, at Rosie’s interview, where she found that he looked too young for his position, in between 1996 and 2015 (whenever that interview took place) he would’ve been between 26 and 45 years old (at the youngest) depending on the year the interview took place in. Taking my assumption from before, that during the interview he’d be 40 or lower, I’d assume that the interview probably took place anytime between 1996 and 2010 for the comment of him looking too young in his position to make sense. Of course, it could’ve been a few years after graduating uni when he got recruited, which would further push down the date of the Rosie interview. I think the oldest he could possibly be is in his late thirties during it. So, the eldest he could be in 1996, if that is when the interview took place, would be around 40 years old (which I also don’t think it did take place in 1996 since it would make Rosie work as his assistant for 20 years and I’m not certain that she could remain that oblivious to all the weird stuff going on for that long. But what do I know, maybe she’s got a gift for not noticing. I don’t know for sure).
So, in the year of his body being overtaken by Jonah Magnus, 1996, he’s between the ages of 26 and 40. 
We, the listeners, know him mostly from our time spent with him and the archives crew from 2015 onwards. Based on our established age range, in 2015 he would’ve been anywhere between 45 and 59 years old. Which would mean that last time we hear him speak is in 2018 in which he’s anywhere between 48 and 62 years old. 
I don’t know how old his va, Ben Meredith is exactly. I’m pretty sure he’s a millennial? Either way it doesn’t really matter how old his va is, though all we have to picture him by is his voice only, which at least in my opinion doesn’t really sound like the voice of a 62-year-old, but that is straight up just a subjective opinion. Maybe he’s a particularly young sounding 62-year-old?
Some additional information we supposedly get about “Elias” is that he was working as a filing clerk in 1972, which he says to Jonathan Sims in MAG 29, but that contradicts with the information gathered later by Jon and revealed in MAG 49 where he says that Elias joined the institute in 1991. All this might seem like just the lies of Jonah Magnus, but it presents an interesting point of having a conversation take place in 2016 with the reference to his being an institute employee in 1972. In 2016 he’s between the ages of 46 (which would make him 2 years old in 1972) and 60 (which would make him 16 in 1972), neither of which make sense, thought one would think that if he’s older and Jon doesn’t know how old he is exactly, it wouldn’t be that suspicious for him to have worked at the institute in 1972, though that seems like a stretch. Perhaps Jon just didn’t question or notice how it doesn’t really make sense for him to have worked there in that year, or maybe the writing-story-planning team didn’t put that much thought into this particular interaction/the implications of it, or maybe Elias looks older than he is. 
In conclusion, Elias Bouchard was born between the years of 1956 and 1970.
Also, fun fact I did a poll to see what age Tumblr users thought Elias was and they picked between 40 to 50, with 45 to 55 being a close second, so if anyone voted in that and picked anywhere between 45 and 59, I just want to let you know you’re right.
TLDR: Elias Bouchard is (most likely) anywhere between 45 and 59 at the start of the Magnus Archives.
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magnuspanoptes · 2 months ago
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and when i say jon, elias, and gertrude were basically playing out du maurier's rebecca—
Sally Beauman, Afterword to Rebecca Rebecca is the story of two women, one man, and a house. Of the four, as Hitchcock once observed, the house, Manderley, is the dominant presence.
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Heta Pyrhönen, Bluebeard's Accomplice: "Rebecca" as a Masochistic Fantasy First, however, she [Bluebeard's Wife] must pass a test of obedience: she must not visit Bluebeard's locked room. In Rebecca, the protagonist must not seek knowledge about Maxim's past, a past that has spatial correlates in Rebecca's bedroom and boathouse.
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Heta Pyrhönen, Bluebeard's Accomplice: "Rebecca" as a Masochistic Fantasy According to the contradictory logic of the "Bluebeard" tale, the husband ensures that the stated goal of obedience is never reached. In Rebecca, Manderley continues to run according to Rebecca's instructions; no changes are made in the environs she designed; her study, bedroom, and wardrobe are left intact; and even the fancy dress ball follows her arrangements. By continuing his life at Manderley as if nothing has changed, Maxim prompts his second wife to ferret out his secret. When she seeks knowledge about Rebecca and imitates her, she acts according to his covert script.
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Du Maurier's addition to the "Bluebeard" intertext is the dead first wife's participation, first by proxy
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and then as a water-eaten body, in the drama being played at Bluebeard's house.
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Sally Beauman, Afterword to Rebecca The first wife, Rebecca, is vivid and vengeful and, though dead, indestructible: her name lives on in the book’s title.
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The second wife, the drab shadowy creature who narrates this story, remains nameless. We learn that she has a “lovely and unusual” name, and that it was her father who gave it her. The only other identity she has, was also bestowed by a man—she is a wife, she is Mrs. de Winter.
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Sally Beauman, Afterword to Rebecca There is a final twist to Rebecca and it is a covert one. Maxim de Winter kills not one wife, but two. He murders the first with a gun,
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and the second by slower, more insidious methods. The second Mrs. de Winter’s fate, for which she prepares herself throughout the novel, is to be subsumed by her husband.
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in rebecca the narrator remaining nameless is meant to contrast rebecca's defiance of maxim with the narrator's acceptance of him. in the magnus archives, the obvious point being made re gertrude and jon's different recording signatures (simply her name vs his beholding title) is that unlike jon, gertrude refused to let herself be consumed by the eye and in turn, assist jonah with his plans (obligatory, no, i'm not blaming jon for being manipulated by elias). also, jon's role as jonah's archivist results in his identity as an individual slowly being subsumed in a very literal sense as he gradually gives himself up the beholding. throughout season four he resembles elias more and more as he displays his powers. and then in the finale, mag 160 - "the eye opens", he becomes jonah/elias as he assumes his voice inflection, experiences his fear, speaks his words, and fulfills his goal of summoning the entities into their world.
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Heta Pyrhönen, Bluebeard's Accomplice: "Rebecca" as a Masochistic Fantasy By confessing (to Rebecca's murder and his past), Maxim achieves his covert goal: he finds himself in the same marital structure as before. He places himself in the protagonist's hands, for now she has the power to destroy him. Du Maurier's Bluebeard is in the same situation with his second wife as with his first, for both can bring him the public humiliation he fears. Unlike Bluebeard's wives, they have the power to undo him.
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MAG 1 - "Anglerfish" // MAG 67 - "Burning Desire" // MAG 152 - "A Gravedigger's Entry" // MAG 4 - "Pageturner" // MAG 40 - "Human Remains" // MAG 44 - "Tightrope" // MAG 122 - "Zombie" // MAG MAG 158 - "Panopticon" // MAG 160 - "The Eye Opens" // MAG 161 - "Dwelling" // MAG 200 - "Last Words"
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tmagpposting · 11 months ago
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So, about TMAGP Ep 4
Some theories based on this newest episode. Major spoilers under the cut, so please go listen to it first.
I know there have been a lot of popular theories up to this point that Augustus would be Jonah Magnus, and episode 4 puts a lot more evidence out there that would seem to support this idea.
Here's what I thought was relevant to this theory after listening through the episode twice this morning:
Augustus is voiced by an older man who I don't think we've ever heard before, and we've never heard Jonah's actual voice either, since he's using Elias's voice throughout all of TMA as far as I'm aware. He sounded vaguely like Jurgen Leitner to me, although I think this is just on account of the fact that the VAs sound similar and not indicative of them being the same person or being meant to voice the same character (I didn't catch who voiced him in the credits and I couldn't find it online, if you all know please tell me and I'll update this)*
The incident report is a very old document, with a writing style and tone reminiscent of the old statements/letters to Jonah in the early days of the institute. It seems like it'd be right up Jonah's alley.
The episode revolves around a man succumbing to a dark power and eventually dedicating himself to it (the freaky bloodlust violin vs the Eye) and recruiting a younger man, in this case his relative, to serve this violent power (though probably after his death in this case, unlike with Jonah), which has some parallels to Jonah's recruitment of Jon and the rest of the staff in TMA.
We don't know much about the universe of TMAGP yet, but we know there is a Magnus institute that has aldready been linked to Eye-esque characteristics like paranoia, suspicion, (fatal) curiosity, and eyes as of Ep 1. It is possible that Augustus could be a version of Jonah from the TMAGP universe, rather than the same Jonah we dealt with in TMA.
.JMJ error could stand for some combination of Jon, Martin, and Jonah's initials, given that Chester and Norris also have Jon and Martin's voices.
In the TMA finale, Jon, Martin, and Jonah (though I assumed he was dead at that time) were close to where the fears were sucked out of the world and sent somewhere else, and Jon and Martin may also have ended up in the OIAR's computers in some form.
On the other hand, here's some evidence against Jonah being Augustus:
The other Jonah theory I've seen posits that Jonah took over RedCanary's body when they went down to investigate the ruins of the magnus institute, assuming that "canaries should stay above ground" and the gory photo of eyes was meant to represent RedCanary's eyes having been ripped out and presumably replaced with Jonah's. If you interpret things this way, it makes it less likely that Jonah is in the computers, unless you think both TMA Jonah and a hypothetical TMAGP Jonah are both around at the same time, though this theory is also a little shaky itself since it seems to be based on only a couple pieces of evidence so far. I first saw a post about this from @thermodynamic-comedian though that post says she saw other people discussing it, so please lmk if you know any major contributors to this theory and I will add them in here too.**
The fact that, to take over as the Eye's pupil, it was implied that Jon had to actually kill Jonah, and he was seemingly dead as of the TMA finale. Death was usually a very hard line in TMA except for a few avatars of the End and near-deaths where characters lost some of their agency (and/or humanity depending on your interpretation) to become an avatar instead (which Jonah already was), so him being back after seemingly already having been killed off isn't super plausible unless it's revealed that he didn't actually die in the first place.
It seems like there's enough evidence at this point that this theory definitely feels viable, though there is nothing definitive that I'm aware of, and there are some things that point to other explanations.
I personally (this is now entering pure opinion territory, tread lightly) don't love the idea of Augustus being Jonah, because I'd prefer it to be someone or something new to the series or something otherwise more surprising, rather than the same central antagonist as last time. There certainly are ways they could pull this off well, and bringing him back definitely doesn't tarnish the story on its own, especially since he was a pretty great villain with a lot of his character left more or less ambiguous or untouched by TMA, but it still feels a bit like relying on nostalgia for TMA to flesh out TMAGP's plot and conflict, at least to me. However, all the evidence pointing to it being Jonah could be some kind of red herring to specifically mislead past fans of TMA and set up for a later twist, or we could just be running our minds in circles and drawing conclusions that won't turn out to be relevant to TMAGP so early on. Only time will actually tell, and regardless, I'm really eager to see what happens.
* UPDATE: Augustus is voiced by Tim Fearon, thank you to @lokicat5 for finding that out! We haven't heard him before on this podcast, so he could be either Jonah Magnus's original voice, or a new character entirely.
** UPDATE: I found and reblogged what seems to be the original theory that Jonah killed and took over RedCanary, it's by @vertigala and @doomatix, check out their post it's pretty cool.
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thepunkmuppet · 1 year ago
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ok i just looked back through my blog and it looks like my big theory from way back last year has just… disappeared?? which i’m pretty annoyed about tbh, but i want to expand on it and update it anyway because the casting announcement and logo all validate it and make it a lot more interesting SO
my big magnus protocol theory and what i think the plot will be
so, this is a world completely without the Fears, until BAM. here they are. and with the arg, the encrypted messages and the glitchy aesthetic they seem to be going for, now further expanded on by the logo literally being a glitchy computer screen, i was thinking what if as the fears entered the universe, there was some kind of mass signal or energy surge.
imagine all the screens and electronics in the world suddenly go static, and a jumbled-up incomprehensible message (like the “statement remains” audio) can be heard everywhere, all around the world. and it goes on for around 20-30 minutes. and in those minutes, every single person in the world is fucking TERRIFIED. just frozen in absolute fear.
and of course this causes thousands and thousands of accidents and deaths and just generally terrifies everyone, so naturally every world government thinks it’s an attack of some kind. hence why we follow civil service workers, specifically those working for Incident Assessment and Response. this would be quite an incident!!
in these first few episodes following the signal, we also hear from the prime minister. and i originally thought it would be REALLY fun if the uk prime minister in this universe is the og Elias. i love this idea with all my heart for many reasons, but it doesn’t look like ben meredith will be in it, so i’ve had to modify it a bit. so, either the prime minister will be gwendolyn bouchard, who could either be a relative of elias or transfem elias (although, trans prime minister?? in this godforsaken country??) OR the tim fearon character, who could potentially be jonah magnus or a similar previously established character. but personally, i’m betting on miss gwendolyn, so keep that in mind as you read the rest of this.
and so at the end of the first or second episode, we hear this prime minister in a big meeting about the incident, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger that reveals what the unscrambled audio really was.
it’s mag 200. which is why jon and martin are (potentially) on the cast list. the fears are ushered into the universe using their voices.
but i think what would be an even cooler cliffhanger is if after this big reveal, after the tape squeals and basira says good luck, we hear something we’ve never heard before.
“oh, hello. are you still listening?”
OR
tim fearon’s voice.
so this is where the REDACTED names really come into play. idk what the actual plot will be, but my idea is that jon, martin, and the tim fearon character, who i personally think is the voice of the original jonah magnus, are:
1, stuck as “ghosts in the machine” of sorts, living on as disembodied glitchy voices and nothing more
2, are huge eldritch entities, who can speak through anything and anyone, maybe possess people, etc, and possibly act as similar entities to the fears in a way, creating their own avatars and suchlike - maybe to fight the fears in jon and martin’s cases
or 3, the fears use their voices to actually speak, probably through recordings and electronics, meaning the REDACTED isn’t just to conceal their characters, they actually just don’t have names
also this is a much smaller point but because her name and presumed age are so out of place in comparison to the rest of the cast, i think lady mowbray is a psychic or mystic woman of some kind rather than an actual noble woman, and will be able to talk to the new jon and martin, whatever they are
so yeah that’s it i guess! i hope all this makes sense, if anyone has any questions, anything to add or challenge, or just want to discuss it please please do!! i want to see what people think of this in light of all the new information because i LOVE this idea so much that if it doesn’t happen i might just write it myself lol
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klm-zoflorr · 8 months ago
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"remember when I said I didn't have anything interesting to add" at the end of a goddamn tag essay is funny as shit. anyway I'm mentally rotating the concept of elias inserting himself into Jon's s5 statements now. oughgh
Sometimes the spirit of the blorbos possesses me to write tag essays... These are the good days. You don't want to be near me on the bad days
Okay because this is. This is a great concept. Right??? That poor unsuspecting victim turns the corner and then. Boom. ELIAS. Maybe at first it's just descriptions. Then he starts talking, oh god, and what he's saying become longer and longer and more personal. Then it starts becoming JUST Elias. He's SO invasive. He's watching. Uhhh i think he knows we're coming martin.
Oh, fuck this. You know what i said about worse days? Thats one. I'm having a blast. Writoing be upon ye.
***
It wasn't much, at first. A familiar face in the crowd, someone out of place, blink and you miss it.
Jon doesn't think he was in the cabin. But then again, it wasn't really a statement, was it? Wasn't a piece of the terror he and his God feed upon now. But maybe he was. Ever Watching that he is.
He does remember the first time he noticed, because something struck him as odd. Something that wasn't quite... Right. Someone that shouldn't be there, did not have any purpose there.
Alexei feels his knees start to buckle as he sees his comrades stagger out of the cloud. Their melting teeth flow down their faces like tears, and their limbs begin to fold and collapse as the bones within them liquefy. Among them, there is a man standing there like a mirage, tall and smiling, untouched by any of the slaughter. But then there is a bright light swallowing all, and the loudest sound he will ever hear, and Alexei turns and starts to flee.
***
She's sitting, nailed to an incomfortable wooden chair. But her pins aren't metal, oh no, far worse. They're eyes, all sorts of colors and shapes and sizes and textures and wetness, peering at her from above and sideways and below. She wants to screw her eyes shut just to pretend that's not happening, but she finds with horror that she does not have lids anymore.
There is a strange man sitting in the other chair.
"Oh God, where am I, who are you?"
"I'm Jonah Magnus."
He's smiling, and it's all kinds of wrongs. She gets the feeling he is so, so pleased to be able to say this, although she doesn't understand why -how could she? Just a cog in the machine, and ignorant creature driven to her slaughter.
"What have you done to me, where am I, how do I make this stop?" She cries, because it hurts, being stared at, pierced by this otherworldly gaze that never ceases.
He wipes a tear from her face almost gently, almost paternally. His touch leaves pupils blossoming in its wake, a blessing from someone that does not wish her good.
"Don't cry, it won't stop your nightmare. Nothing can, because that's what your life is now."
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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 6 months ago
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"T" is For Tomb - a Magnus Archives one-shot
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THIS IS A DARK FIC, OKAY?????
Post MAG-200 spoilers.
Jon. Jon is somewhere.
(Or Jon is nowhere, and he is imagining, he has gone mad, he’s landed where the Fears wanted to go and the Web decided and Jon is eaten, Jon is dust, Jon is—)
Jon is somewhere. Martin will find him (or what was the point of any of this), even if it takes a thousand years.
AO3
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“What do you want me to do with this?”
Footsteps, distant voices; the crunching of rubble, both falling and loose.
“Leave it. We’re done with tapes.”
Closer steps, grinding grandeur into dust. “Want me to smash it?”
Guilt tinges this voice now, guilt its owner wants to deny. “I think… we can probably just turn it off.”
“Okay.” That voice moves away.
The guilty one (only the smallest bit, only a little aware of what she’s done) approaches, and for reasons unknown, speaks. “If anyone’s listening…” The tape whirs, voices mumble, someone shouts to someone else. “Goodbye,” says she. “I’m sorry, and…” The guilt. It is there, but too late. This cannot be undone. “Good luck.”
#
Martin wakes screaming, and he wakes alone.
He wakes, bereft in terrible discovery of self-without-him in a place of ruination.
Jon! Jon! Jonathan Sims! Please, for the love of God, answer me!
Shouting into a sea of screams, loved ones crying for loved ones, an empty spot beside him where Jon should be. Jon’s blood coating his hand, the knife, his clothes. Jon’s life coagulating, going dark, gathering rubble and dust, less like blood by the hour and more like tar.
Jon! Please!
Martin hears him. He’s sure he does: Martin. Find me, Martin. I’m waiting for you.
But where? Where? How? Jon sounds as calm and inviting as he’d ever done in the weeks before Elias (no, Jonah) sent that letter and ruined it all.
But it's not coming from anywhere. There’s no direction. It’s outside Martin’s head (he’s reasonably sure), but he can’t find it.
Can’t find Jon.
At the end of the day, the first day, the last day, the first-next-day of hell, Martin faces the truth that Jon might be gone.
He refuses to swallow it down.
#
No one sees Martin Blackwood. Not as he is. Not as he was.
Basira does, sometimes. She’s vague about it, knows his name, does not seem to remember what he’s done or whose he is. The rest of the time, she looks through him. Like when he asks about Jon.
Perhaps that’s fortunate. He runs into her a lot, and is sure she would stop him.
His key works in his apartment door (and he feels guilt for leaving the site of destruction, guilt for abandoning the place where hides Jon’s voice, guilt for going to his nice, soft bed when others huddle on rocks that used to be flats and weep for those they miss).
He should be with them. Searching. Helping.
No one searches for him. No one helps him.
He can’t.
#
He goes back the next day. Wanders, calls. Sometimes Jon calls back– just his voice, that gorgeous baritone that first hooked Martin’s thoughts then affection then desire, once Martin had learned to speak Jon and understand how quirky his new boss was, to translate from brusque and maybe mean to he’s fucking scared and lonely so it all made sense.
He hears the voice, but it is further away, and that makes him panic.
He searches, overturning brick, plunging into risky crevasses and disintegrating doorways.
No one sees Martin Blackwood. He walks past police and emergency services, past fucking Basira (who is smug, who is in charge, who seems to think she earned something for putting down a monster, but Martin knows the only thing that earns is pain).
Jon’s voice is further. 
By mid-afternoon, Martin can no longer make out words.
By dusk, it’s gone. Gone. He never found a direction. 
Martin screams.
#
By dark, he doesn't even remember going home, but finds himself there, a path walked in emptied endlessness over many years, and the silence is Buried, constricting his lungs, and the silence is Vast, endless insignificance, and he cannot breathe  at all.
He bathes, and he prays to no one, and he lies in his bed. And he’s hot, and he sweats, and his heart burns within him, and his throat twists to something it ought not be, and his skin crawls with bugs he can neither find or kill.
Jon. Jon is somewhere.
(Or Jon is nowhere, and he is imagining, he has gone mad, he’s landed where the Fears wanted to go and the Web decided and Jon is eaten, Jon is dust, Jon is—)
Jon is somewhere. Martin will find him (or what was the point of any of this), even if it takes a thousand years.
#
Somewhere around day three, he realizes he has not eaten.
He doesn’t feel hungry. Should he? He didn’t feel hungry in the apocalypse, either (and memories of bringing tea, never drunk, break him down, crush him onto the sidewalk like preserved peaches), but after his weeping, Jon is still gone.
Martin will not stop calling.
Jon!
Nothing. 
Jon!
No voice. No—
Wait.
Jon?
There is… something. A touch, a breeze, a memory of breeze, an instinct that says Jon is not too far. Jon is alive. Jon is there. Jon is—
Jon is.
Martin runs. Runs, tripping over rubble and dandruffed concrete, at last fleeing the wrecked, wry circle of the Panopticon’s fall. He ignores Basira’s shout (of course, now she sees him), following not a sound not a sight not a knowledge but an instinct, something born of faith and will and maybe madness, something he will follow even if it is right off a damn cliff.
#
It is not dissimilar to the Apocalypse, in many ways. He runs until he can’t, then walks until something kills him (and nothing does), north, following that wrong and reminiscent beckoning, through roads clogged with abandoned cars and cracked glass and memories of terror.
And he has not eaten, and it does not matter. 
Jon.
#
The sun rises and sets and rises again, and Martin wipes his face to find he sweats but does not thirst, and wonders if he will die on this trip.
It does not matter. Maybe this is the last walk. Maybe today was the last of his final days alive, and if so, he does not care. He’s done.
He had to stab his beloved. He had to do the worst thing. What more can the world ask of him?
Jon.
He feels Jon. Senses.
He walks.
#
Sun rise.
Sun set.
Sun rise, sun set, sun rise, sun set, shoes worn, hole in sole in soul in mausoleum of thought and mind and pattern, and all he can do is walk. Nothing besides remains.
Sun rise. Sun set. And on the seventh day, like creation, not terribly far from Aberfeldy, he knows that he will rest.
#
He descends into the grassy valley, past the place where good cows once stood, but the cabin is not there. Something else is. He stares, stunned in ticklish grass that lightly scratches his dried, dirty hands, and stares some more.
It is a tomb.
Above ground (necropolis like New Orleans). Burnt and blasted, abandoned and rust-stained, and its dark, decorative door hangs wide open.
(He has neither drunk nor eaten since waking, and sure he must be hallucinating now at the very least.)
And Martin opens his mouth, and for the first time since waking, truly speaks. “Jon?”
Martin
on the breeze on his cheek on his lips skipping the bother of ears—
Martin come to me
Martin comes.
It’s over. The end. Whatever comes next in this helpless world is not his to do.
“I paid for my peace,” he says like dry bones, squeaking together under sun and gnawed by something dark. “I paid for my peace! ”
(And thinks, as his dirty, frayed trainer-toe just dips into the impenetrable shadow, that this is what They were waiting for, that They are bound to Jon and he to Them, and it should not have been possible to disappear into the Lonely since Martin woke up, but it was, it is, because something went wrong, and oh, it will go so much more wrong, but Jon waited because Martin wasn’t here, and once Martin is here, it will continue to wrongness, and Martin does not care, and Martin paid for his peace, and Jon did too, and maybe Jon’s peace is no longer what it was when he was human unstabbed alive appeasable —)
Martin, whispers the tomb-wet breeze.
“Jon,” he creaks in tomb-dry tone.
Martin
Martin steps into the dark, sees nothing, feels
Finds
“Jon,” he says, falling into familiar arms, into that known funny scent of ink and electronics and spiders, does not care that he is seen and stripped and flensed in this dark of all-sight, does not care about pain or grief or anything but this, does not care that (Jon died this is not Jon this is something else) whatever remains is enough of Jon to want him back, and what more matters now?
Martin paid for his peace.
Jon doubly so.
“I’m home,” Martin whispers, crumbles, disintegrates, rests, and as he is held, the door, in need of oil, screeches closed as the world finds screaming again.
-------------
Notes:
So, uh. This is my 200th fanfic. I did not exactly plan for it to be sad? Here we are, anyway! I'll create some proper fluff to make up for it. Scout's Honor.
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beyondtheink · 11 months ago
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The Magnus Protocol theories about Augustus and why I disagree with most of them. Statement begins.
As the tags imply down below this post will contain spoilers of TMAGP up to episode 4 and spoilers for TMA.
First and foremost. Do I agree that the computer voices Chester and Norris are in fact the transferred soul fragments or consciousness of Jon and Marin? Yep.
But the overwhelming amount of people hoping for Augustus to be Jurgen Leitner, Elias Bouchard or even Gertrude Robinson is nonsensical.
We are all capable of accessing the internet and search for the VA's of aforementioned characters from TMA. Jurgen Leitner was voiced by Paul Sims (Jonny Sims' father) whilst it was Sue Sims (Jonny Sims' mother) who gave voice for Gertrude. As for Elias Bouchard (va Ben Meredith) he was a mere vessel for Jonah Magnus. In MAG049 - The Butcher's Window Jon states the following about Elias:
And yet, everything I found out about his life before the Institute seems… an ill fit with the austere man I know. He apparently graduated with a Third from Christchurch College in PPE, and I found [incredulous laugh] an old gossip column in the student newspaper, the Cherwell, that mentioned him. If I’m not reading too much into it, the implication seems to be that he was… ah, something of a pothead.
In the light of the provided information there's no reason to believe that Elias had any place being the 3rd voice (Augustus) but his body, his voice was used by the body hopping madman, Jonah Magnus.
Moreover, the main voices for The Magnus Protocol have been revealed from the start and can be found here (keep in mind that Seer Pink has been replaced by Billie Hindle)
Augustus is voiced by Tim Fearon. Meaning he can't be Jurgen Leitner or Gertrude Robinson.
He is either the original Jonah Magnus who created the Magnus Institute in 1818 or he is a completely unrelated character we've never encountered before.
What I also noticed is how the 3 computer voices divide the casements between each other.
Norris reads out the ones filled with emotions, loss of love, acceptance anything that could reflect how Martin might feel after everything that happened at the end of TMA.
Chester reads out the factual casements and possibly anything Magnus related especially if the casement warns the listener not to DIG DIG DIG out any info on the godforsaken place and get tangled with the Beholding.
Augustus will probably pick anything old as balls. Dangly, grey-haired old man balls. And gory as hell.
These preferences match with the characters Jon, Martin and Jonah perfectly.
Statement ends.
I'll pick apart another theory next time I gather the motivation to do some research and sum up my thoughts.
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fictionkinfessions · 4 months ago
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augh it's late and i'm feeling sappy and missing people from cannon so here we go.
gerard, there is so much i want to say yet not enough space in here so i will simply continue to scream about the fact i miss you. most of the time i just loop ep111 so i can at least hear you. if i find you again, we need to find an abandoned building to explore because i very much miss doing that. also miss the old mill we used to hang out in as teens.
michael, even though you were like... 10 years older than me, you were a great friend and a good person to hang out with in the archives whenever i found myself in there for whatever reason. i definitely miss helping you with research and archive stuff. i have a somewhat standin for the gold pocket watch you gave me before you left with gertrude, and i hope you managed to hang onto that purple scarf i gave you in return.
jon, i miss your annoyed comments youd throw in when sasha, tim, and i would banter and no i will never forget the fact we got you to join in on the banter many times while you were all in research. as much as you probably think you were some kinda prick, you were actually a good person, even after you became the archive. i wish i could have helped you more in the end.
martin, god the things i could say about you. i hope you know how much i miss your damn tea, i have never been able to find a single person who makes it like you and i'm now convinced you just have magic tea powers. i hated tea until you offered me some in the library one day. changed my damn mind then and there. i do hope you found jon again after everything. and i do miss the way you did your best to take care of everyone.
sasha, i always remembered the original you even after the not-them. you were like the cool aunt mum of the archives and i loved you for it, always checking on everyone, somehow keeping tim in line, never without some sarcastic remark or quick banter to lift the mood even though you were the most responsible out of all of us.
tim, first off i don't remember where you came up with the nickname 'dasher' for me but i still use it around. definitely miss the banter and witt and sarcasm and the 'too cool for these losers' attitude. you were like a second brother to me after gerry died and even though i never got to really explain that to you before the unknowing, i want to thank you for that. for being a big brother figure that i needed at the time.
basira, daisy, melanie, i'm sorry i never got to know you all very well. i know by the time you all joined the archive i wasn't exactly in a good place and was probably a bit harsh and quick to judge, but i'm sure we all would have been friends before everything went to hell.
elias and gertrude i will do this with one go because i know for a fact i pissed both of you off rummaging around the archives and institute since i was a kid and you both never seemed to be able to get rid of me. elias, i know it was jonah and not you that did most of it, but sometimes i wish we met before any of that. maybe we would have been friends even. and gertrude. i don't think i have any words for you that i didn't already say back then. you got my brother and best friend killed and i will never forgive you for that.
at the end of the day though, i miss my brother, i miss the archive folks, imma go listen to tma again and cry!
-marcus keay (non-cannon magnus archive)
x
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anysin · 10 months ago
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Fic: I Can't Wait To Know You
For @knownoevil, a JonElias with a first time conversation alone! Took a liberal route with this one but I hope you'll enjoy, a pre-canon dream encounter. Mostly SFW but with canon-typical creepery.
I Can't Wait To Know You
The dream takes Elias to a door.
He can sense the Web's presence instantly, which makes him a bit cautious; the Eye won't lead him into a dream that has the potential of harming him, but one must always be wary around the Spider. The door is urging him to knock, but instead Elias opens it, and steps inside to see what is waiting for him.
The room is covered in blood, fresh and old both, and whatever creature dwells in this place is out of sight now. Instead, Jonah sees its victim, wrapped all over in spider web, leaving only his eyes exposed. A man, a young one, is struggling against his sticky bindings, desperately trying to open his mouth to breathe or scream, or maybe both, and this is the person the Eye wants Elias to meet. Elias stands still, waiting until those panicked eyes flicker in his direction.
Interestingly enough, the man goes quiet at his presence, starting to stare at him. Elias meets his eyes, closing the door behind him before starting to approach the man. The dream makes his every move slow and drowsy, making it hard to proceed quickly, but at last he is standing next to the man, never once having broken the eye contact between them. The man is still, just staring up at him, not even blinking. It's as if Elias's appearance has made him forget his predicament, that he's in a nightmare.
They both jump when something scratches the door behind them, lightly first, but soon with vigor. The curiosity in the man's dark eyes gives way to fear, and he starts to writhe again. This time, he is screaming beneath the web.
"Get me out of here!" Without a thought, Elias kneels down to lift the man up into his arms.
He holds the stranger's slight body close to himself, close enough to feel his frightened heartbeat, hear his ragged breathing. And the man is breathing, unlike before; Elias can feel the man squirming in his embrace, the web slowly coming loose around him, even losing its stickiness. The dream is changing. Elias stands up, holding the man against his chest as the man frees first one arm, then the other, and as their surroundings shift, the man throws his arms around Elias's neck.
"Thank you," the man mutters, pressing his face into Elias's neck. "Thank you thank you thank you-"
Elias glances around him. They seem to be in some kind of a flat now, a slightly messy one that is full of cat hair, but it's obviously a familiar place of comfort for his companion. The web is entirely gone now, leaving the man naked in Elias's arms; despite his curiosity, Elias tries not to gaze at his body, and instead tries to get a look at the man's face instead. The man is leaning his forehead against Elias's shoulder, his hair falling into his face. He is breathing deeply in and out, his whole body shuddering along with his breaths.
"Thank you," the man says, and finally he looks up at Elias. His eyes are wet, wet and full of exhaustion, but he's smiling.
And Elias is struck by need.
"Who are you?" he asks, but the dream shifts again.
This time, Elias finds himself alone in the Panopticon; his body still feels warm from where the man pressed up against him, and his heart is racing as if he's been running. He sees the corpse of Jonah Magnus, whose lids are wide open, and glowing light fills the empty sockets on his face. He is staring up at the ceiling, where Elias knows the Eye is looking down on them, waiting.
"Tell me," he demands. He frowns at the sound of his own voice, but he turns his face upward. "Tell me who he is!"
He doesn't even get a chance to see his god before he wakes up.
Alone in his bedroom, Elias's body is cool all over, but his heart still beats fast. He sits up, resting his hand over his chest, to that wild beat, and concentrates on his breathing until the throb beneath his palm is calm again.
He knows the Eye has introduced him to this man for a reason, but while Elias is always curious about the whys, that reason is, at the moment, irrelevant to him. He just hopes that the Eye will bring the man to him sooner rather than later, that they can meet in flesh.
And hopefully not just once.
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my-catsface · 11 months ago
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HEELLLLOO EVERYONE!! I am going to talk about THE MAGNUS PROTOCOL and a Theory (maybe theories?) I have so spoilers for the first two episodes of The Magnus Protocol and major spoilers for the ending of The Magnus Archives!!!
(Someone has very likely said this before so it might be repeat information)
Okay. okay. Okay. okay. You guys know… that one comment Alice made about the voices reading statements, right? How there are three voices you can hear when statements are read aloud? We’ve got Jon and Martin as Chester and Norris, but she also mentioned an Augustus there too. “Auhhh but who’s that?? There was nobody else in the Panopticon-“ WRONG!! It’s our babygirl Jonah Magnus.
First off, during the end of the Magnus Archives we get a little “after” dialogue from the girlies about what’s going on. They mention something happening to Simon and why it’s probably for the best that they didn’t find any bodies. But that’s the thing. They didn’t find ANY bodies. Not Jon or Martin sure, but Elias’s corpse should’ve just been hangin’ around in there. But this seems to indicate that it wasn’t. So where’d to go? Probably the exact same place that Jon and Martin went.
Okay okay SECONDLY!! This image (below)
Tumblr media
Is taken from the trailer for the Magnus protocol, and I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with it already. The two things I want to draw attention to here are the J.01 and J.02 lines. J1 and M1 are… you know… Jon and Martin. But the J2 doesn’t really have an answer unless you think that it’s Jonah, whose body was never found when the Panopticon fell. Honestly I don’t know what’s up with the master and slave lines but I’m sure those (and the fact that they failed/are undefined) is important.
What I DO recognize however is the date that’s set for 2023 at the very bottom. Keeping in mind that Alice mentioned all this freaky stuff started happening a year ago, and the series takes place in 2024, this is likely the very event we’re seeing of the computers being all wonked out. Though the question I mostly have here is, did someone (or something) put those three in there intentionally, or did that just happen to be where they went after the end of TMA? Furthermore, why NOW? Why now years later (aside from real-life time happening (because I am 100% sure that Jonny has an answer for this and I want to know it)) in 2023? Is there something special about the specific date? What’s up with the EPA Polution Preventer (and why is it spelled wrong)? The memory test went okay, do the three remember themselves? Do they know where they are?
Okay. OKAY. I’ve rambled on for a while but don’t worry we’re close to the end of my scattered, disjointed thoughts. Because the one question I have now is “Who’s listening?” In TMA it was the Web, right? The web, with tape recorders drawn to the lighter (which I’m pretty sure is what was happening but I might be a lil forgetful). But there’s no lighter here? And we aren’t using tape recorders, we’re using… computers, maybe? A cellphone, possibly? The entities have been shown to not really play nice with technology… but there was ALSO the video of the dude who ate his own computer so I’m honestly not sure what to think. I don’t know if it’s the Web, still. Honestly I don’t even know of Smirke’s Fourteen can be APPLIED here. This might be one of those instances where TMA listeners have to forget some things to make sense of this different world. But if it IS applicable to an entity, the best guess I have would honestly be the Extinction. That might explain the EPA Polution Preventer (seems pretty extinctioncore), it might explain Jon Martin and (possibly!) Jonah here, having just come from an apocalypse/the end of the world/AN EXTINCTION EVENT, but aside from that? I honestly am not sure. Because we don’t know how many of the entities are actually intelligent. Sure they can like and dislike things but it’s kind of been very solidified in how much they aren’t very thinking, aside from the web.
So uh… what’s the deal? I have… no idea. I am frothing at the mouth in anticipation. I love this podcast. I love both of these podcasts… this is amazing… this is fantastic. I’m in love. Please anyone tell me if you have any ideas or counter evidence for any of this because I would LOVE to talk to you about all this!!
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thatpodcastkid · 6 months ago
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Magnus Archives Relisten 18, MAG 18 The Man Upstairs
Thanks for sticking with me with these! I'm much less busy now and will be posting more consistently. I've decided to keep with the Saturday/Monday schedule rather than spamming to catch up, but I might post an extra during the week once and awhile. I also recently went through my old posts and uploaded the spoiler free versions. Thanks, enjoy this MAG 18 analysis!
What an incredible thing to hear after being assigned to a first-floor apartment. Really encouraging, thank you Jonny.
Facts: Statement of Christof Rudenko, regarding his time in the first floor flat of Welbeck House. Statement given December 12, 2008.
Statement Notes: The Magnus Archives is a 200-episode long work of anti-smoking propaganda designed to scare teenagers into never lighting up due to fear of the meat monster. In this essay I will,
In all seriousness, everything that becomes "evil" in TMA smokes. Smoking is consistently the indicator that shit is about to go down. Anytime a cigarette is mentioned, you know someone will disappear under mysterious circumstances in the next 15-20 minutes. So, stay tuned!
The foreshadowing in this episode is really subtle, but that's what makes it so smart. Rudenko has a party during which his neighbors come over and ask him to turn the music down. Presumably, if the walls are thin enough that they can hear Christof's music, they should be able to hear what's going on upstairs--as well as smell it. Yet, they never complain about the hammering or the rotten meat smell. But they're not the victim. The horrors in TMA, in spite of having large scale goals, work in isolated circumstances. They instill huge amounts fear in small numbers of people at a time. There's a practical aspect to this; if 500 people discover meat covered walls in the flats above theirs, there will be enough conversation that the avatar might be found out. But by creating small centers of fear in multiple places through a variety of methods, the entities minimize their exposure while still creating significant amounts of fear. This proves that there has always been an organized mind at work; whether that mind is the entities' or the avatars' is harder to say.
The other aspect of this episode I truly love is one of the most realistic, reoccurring themes of the show: anger can supersede fear. It's essentially a truism that a sufficiently angry human being can overcome any challenge. Spite is God's greatest motivator. Allow a person to become angry enough, and they won't be afraid anymore. Anger is what pushes Rudenko to go upstairs and confront Carlisle, Martin to burn statements, Tim to blow up the museum, and Jon to kill Jonah. But of course, just because you're so angry you stop being afraid, doesn't mean there's nothing to be afraid of. Carlisle gets sick in the upstairs flat, Martin is tortured by Elias, Tim dies, and Jon is somewhere else. Anger treats the symptoms, not the cause of the disease.
Entity Alignment: "Where was he getting the meat?"
It came in boxes. Someone or something was giving it to him. He wasn't ordering it, and he wasn't killing anyone otherwise the institute would have found out.
So where was Toby Carlisle getting the meat?
There's a little movie playing in my head when I think about Carlisle. A movie about a lonely guy in a crappy flat with a crappy life who really doesn't have anything else to do. Then he gets a package. It's unmarked box with no postage and no return address, but it's addressed to him. Inside is frozen meat. It's weird, but he assumes it's steak or pork and puts it in the fridge. Then it keeps coming. His fridge fills, then his freezer, then his whole kitchens full of the stuff. But he still doesn't mind, after all it's something to do. Something to keep him intrigued and busy as life gets duller and duller. It stops coming frozen. It stops being identifiable. He doesn't know why but he's driven to plaster it across his house. It becomes an obsession. It becomes his whole life. It becomes his whole apartment. It becomes who he is.
The Flesh sent a recruitment letter. Toby Carlisle replied. Even he doesn't know where he gets the meat.
Character Notes: Martin is still "out sick." Also Sasha definitely hacked a bank? And everyone is just okay with that? Alright.
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landscaping-your-mind · 9 months ago
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I know I said I wasn't going to post another TMA fic, but I've been getting into it a bit more, so here goes. It's a vampire AU! It's not complete, but I have been working on it on and off. I never thought i'd actually finish it enough to post, but here's a first bit :3
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Jon hates job interviews, especially ones he’s not qualified for. But he wasn’t qualified for research, either, with a degree in literature, so it can’t hurt to try. Besides, if he doesn’t get the job, he might get the assistant archivist position, learn a few things. All in all, it’s going to be good for him.
His anxiety is not convinced.
“Mr. Sims?” calls Mr. Bouchard, leaning out of his office. Jon stands up and takes a deep breath. The worst he can do is say no.
Mr. Bouchard ushers Jon into his office, closing the door behind him, and taking a seat in his chair. Jon sits in the other, and tries his best not to look as anxious as he feels.
“So, tell me, why do you think you are the right fit for this job?”
Jon recites his rehearsed speech about how he’s committed to the preservation of documents, deemed both important and not, about the skills he learned in research, his own interest in anthropological research into the supernatural and his disappointment in the state of the archives disorganisation. It’s convincing, he’ll say so himself, and as he talks, he thinks he can see Elias warm up to him.
Hello, Jon. Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading, so I thought it best not to announce myself. I’m assuming you’re alone; you always did prefer to read your statements in private. I wouldn’t try too hard to stop reading; there’s every likelihood you’ll just hurt yourself. So just listen.
Now, shall we turn the page and try again?
Statement of Jonah Magnus regarding Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.
Statement begins.
I hope you’ll forgive me the self-indulgence, but I have worked so very hard for this moment, a culmination of two centuries of work. It’s rare that you get the chance to monologue through another, and you can’t tell me you’re not curious.
Why does a man seek to destroy the world?
It’s a simple enough answer: for immortality and power. Uninspired, perhaps, but – my god. The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear.
It is an awful thing to know about yourself, but the freedom, John, the freedom of it all. I have dedicated my life to handing the world to these Dread Powers all for my own gain, and I feel… nothing but satisfaction in that choice.
I am to be a king of a ruined world, and I shall never die.
I believe there are far more people in this world that would take that bargain than you would ever guess. And I have beaten all of them.
Of course, this desire did not manifest overnight. When Smirke first gathered our little band – Lukas, Scott, and the rest – to discuss and hypothesize on the nature of the things he had learned from Rayner, I felt what I believe we all felt: curiosity, and fear.
But as he compiled his taxonomy and codified his theories on the grand rituals, I began to develop a very specific concern. Smirke was so obsessed with his ideas on balance, even as our fellows began to experiment and fall to the service of our patrons.
I began to worry that if one of them successfully attempted their ritual, then I would be as much a victim as any, trapped in the nightmare landscape of a twisted world.
At first, I attempted prevention, but the cause seemed hopeless. The only way to ensure I did not suffer the tribulations of what I believed to be an inevitable transformation was to bring it about myself. So what began as an experiment soon became a race.
Beyond that, I was getting older, and mortality began to weigh more heavily on my mind. How much in this world is done because we fear death, the last and greatest terror?
I convinced Smirke to work on Millbank, leading him to design it as a temple to all the Fears in equilibrium, such that my own modifications to the design of the Panopticon went… unremarked.
It. Took. Years, for the dread of the prisoners to fully suffuse the place, and I was an old man before I made my first attempt at the Watcher’s Crown, sat in the center of that colossal eye, the great ring of cells encircling me like a coronet.
It was… flawed, of course, as all Smirke’s rituals were, and none of the inmates survived as the power I attempted to harness shook the building almost to pieces, and the murky swamp upon which the prison was built consumed it.
But it left me a gift: For sat in that watchtower, I could see everything I turned my mind to.
It was a dizzying power, and one I discovered I maintained even as I found vessels to extend my life. Of course, I had to make sure the location was kept under my control while I worked on revising my plans, and so I moved the organization I had founded to assist in my research down to London, and the Institute as you know it was born.
I’ll not bore you with details of my bodies and failures through those intervening years. Suffice to say I kept busy, both planning my own next attempt, and doing my best to stymie those others who tried versions of their own.
Surely my interpretation of the Watcher’s Crown had been incomplete; there had been some element of the ritual I had overlooked.
It was not until I met Gertrude Robinson that things began to really come into focus.
You see, the role of Archivist has been part of the Beholding for as far back as my research can go. This isn’t uncommon for the Powers; most of the beliefs around them are guesswork and fallible human interpretation, but there are certain throughlines and consistencies that can be spotted, regardless of the trappings.
But Gertrude was unlike any other Archivist. She simply did not care about compiling experiences or collecting the fears of others. She was driven to stop those who served the Powers.
More than once I thought she must secretly be of the Hunt – but there was never that sick joy in her, that thrill of predator and prey. She had simply decided that this was her position in life, and went about it with a practicality that even I found disconcerting at times.
I once asked her what drove her, what had started her down that path. She told me the Desolation had killed her cat.
I don’t know if she was joking, and, to be honest, I could never bring myself to look into her mind and find out for sure.
In any case, Gertrude’s ruthless efficiency in derailing and collapsing rituals threw into stark relief a question that had been bothering me for almost a hundred and fifty years: In the whole span of humanity, why had nobody ever succeeded?
Perhaps there were a long line of Gertrude Robinsons throughout history, but I found that hard to credit. Could it be, then, that there was something in the very concept of the rituals that meant they couldn’t succeed?
She was clearly having similar thoughts in that last year, all of which culminated with the People’s Church.
When I saw that she was making no preparations whatsoever to stop it, I realized she was putting into practice a theory, and one she couldn’t afford to be wrong. She was going to wait, and see if the unopposed ritual succeeded, or if it collapsed under its own strain as mine had all those years ago.
Knowing Gertrude, I’m sure she had a backup plan if she had miscalculated – but she had not. The ritual failed. And all at once, I realized what had to be done.
You see, the thing about the Fears is that they can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?
Even those that seem to exist in direct opposition rely on each other for their definition as much as up relies on down.
To try and create a world with only the Buried makes as much sense as trying to conceive a world with only down.
Every ritual tied itself so closely to a single power as to render itself impossible. They could bring their patron close, but never sever it from the others, and eventually it would be violently pulled back into the place next to reality where they dwell.
The solution, then, is simple: A new ritual must be devised which will bring through all the Powers at once. All fourteen, as I had hoped I could complete it before any new powers such as Extinction were able to fully emerge. All under the Eye’s auspices, of course. We mustn’t forget our roots.
And there was only one being that could possibly serve as a lynchpin for this new ritual: The Archivist. A position that had so recently become vacant, thanks to Gertrude’s ill-timed retirement plans.
Because the thing about the Archivist is that – well, it’s a bit of a misnomer.
It might, perhaps, be better named: The Archive.
Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, John. You are a record of fear, both in mind as you walk the shuddering record of each statement, and in body as the Powers each leave their mark upon you.
You are a living chronicle of terror.
Perhaps, then, if I could find an Archivist and have each Power mark them, have them confront each one and each in turn instill in them a powerful and acute fear for their life, they could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this – nightmare kingdom.
Do you see where I’m going, John?
It does tickle me, that in this world of would-be occult dynasties and ageless monsters, the Chosen One is simply that – someone I chose. It’s not in your blood, or your soul, or your destiny. It’s just in your own, rotten luck.
I’ll admit, my options were somewhat limited, but My God, when you came to me already marked by the Web, I knew it had to be you. I even held out some small hope you had been sent by the Spider as some sort of implicit blessing on the whole project, and, do you know what, I think it was.
Of course, I had to bide my time, get a measure of you before I began to push, learn how you worked – So I decided I would wait until something came for you, and see how you reacted. Attacks upon the Archives were not uncommon during Gertrude’s tenure, and, while she was always prepared, I made sure you would not be.
I reasoned if you couldn’t survive a single encounter, you were unlikely to make it through all fourteen. So, when Jane Prentiss attacked, I watched eagerly, one hand on the gas release from the start.
You acquitted yourself well enough, so I decided to see how far you would get, though I waited until the worms were in you before I pulled the lever. I needed to make sure you felt that fear all the way to your bones.
The discovery that one of the Stranger’s minions had infiltrated the Institute in the aftermath was certainly a pleasant bonus. Even if that sliver of paranoia, that vague wrongness you couldn’t quite place wouldn’t count as a mark, it was only a matter of time before it confronted you in a far more direct and affecting matter.
Admittedly, given the advent of the Unknowing, I needn’t have bothered. But what’s the old saying about hindsight?
More important to me was Sasha’s encounter with the Distortion. If it had taken an interest, then I very much wanted it to cross your path.
So I found one of its current victims and convinced her to make a statement.
Poor Helen. I actually had to put her in a taxi myself, she was getting so lost in those narrow London side streets.
It worked, though.
Between the stabbing and at least two desperate flights into its doors – you’re marked very deeply by the Spiral.
Jurgen Leitner was a surprise, of course, and I was forced to improvise. I had no idea how much Gertrude would have told him, and he could very easily have derailed everything if you learned too much too fast.
I… justified it to myself saying I was going to have to send you out into the world anyway, if you were to encounter more of the Powers, but I can’t honestly pretend it wasn’t a… rather rash move.
Still. I’d requested Detective Tonner be assigned to the case when they found Gertrude’s body in the hope that having a Hunter in the mix would eventually lead to a confrontation, and setting you up as a killer certainly hastened that.
Then it was just a matter of feeding you statements to lead you to a few Avatars I thought were likely to harm you – but probably would stop short of actually killing you.
Jude served her purpose exactly as I had hoped, as did our dearly departed Mr. Crew, marking you for the Desolation and the Vast.
Honestly, I had – nothing to do with Melanie and her Slaughter adventure, but when I saw the situation, I made sure to trap her here, so when her rage bubbled over you would be right there, a ready target.
I didn’t foresee the mark coming from surgery gone wrong, but it was a very pleasant surprise.
The Unknowing was a distraction, but not an unwelcome one. For this to work, you needed more than just the marks; you needed power. And that was something the Unknowing served to test, though it posed no actual danger in the grand scheme of things.
And it did serve another purpose, of course. It inadvertently pushed you to confront death, a mark I had been very worried about trying to orchestrate. If I tried too early, you’d just die. Too late, and you might be powerful enough to see the attempt coming, and maybe even understand why.
As it was, it was just right, and once again, you came through with flying colours.
By this point, your abilities were coming along in leaps and bounds, and I was concerned that meeting face-to-face might end up with you Knowing something you shouldn't.
I had initially planned to go into hiding, but when your colleagues surprised me with the police, well. It was simple enough to cut a deal.
All that remained, then, were the Dark, the Flesh, the Buried, and the Lonely.
I was a little put out when that idiot Jared Hopworth misinterpreted my letters and attacked the Institute too soon, before you were even out of the hospital, but then – Ho, you should have see my face when you voluntarily went to him.
I couldn’t see what happened in there, of course, but given how you came out, I’m very sure it counts as a mark.
I suspected the coffin might turn up again, and once it did, it was simply a matter of getting any, uh… restraining factors you might have had flying off on a wild goose chase, and waiting.
Honestly, Detective Tonner has been proving invaluable through this process. I’d been racking my brains for months about what I could use to lure you in.
And, of course, I knew the Dark Sun was just sitting there waiting. So when it came time, I just whipped up another apocalypse and sent you on your merry way.
Then all that remained was the Lonely.
Poor Peter. He really should have left well enough alone. Or just done what I’d asked in the first place.
Ah well. He knew what I was attempting, and was very unwilling to cooperate until I made him a little wager about Martin.
Of course, he had no way of knowing that, in addition to setting you up for the final mark, he was giving you all the tools you needed to escape from it.
How is Martin, by the way? He looks well. You will keep an eye on him when all this is over, won’t you? He’s earned that.
And there, I think, we are brought just about up to date. I have enjoyed our little trip down memory lane, but past here lies only impatience.
You are prepared. You are ready. You are marked. The power of the Ceaseless Watcher flows through you, and the time of our victory is here.
Don’t worry, John. You’ll get used to it here, in the world that we have made.
Now, repeat after me.
You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right.
Come to us in your wholeness.
Come to us in your perfection.
Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies!
Come to us.
I – OPEN – THE DOOR!
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