#mag 15

[tawnyevergreen]

I was thinking about Lost John’s Cave again

[tumb1rprincess]

Random Thoughts About the Magnus Archives

I feel like something's being said about your personality depending on which avatars you like and which ones you want to drop dead, I just don't know what. Like, anytime Peter showed up, I'd be like "You're a bitch ass, go away." But anytime distortion Michael made an appearance, I'd be like "That's my baby boy!" And there are a few that are kind of in between. Like with Nikola, I was like "You freak me the fuck out, but you're funny, so I guess that evens it out."

I think it's so interesting how despite a lot of the characters not getting any physical descriptions, a lot of artists in the fandom draw them the same way. Like, Melanie almost always has colorful hair, usually blue. Jon's hair gets longer with every season. Helen is almost always wearing purple. I just wonder how everyone unanimously agreed on some of this stuff.

I thought the Leitner rant was a canon thing, so I avoided anything about it 'cause I wanted to be surprised. I think near the end of the series though I finally looked it up and I was like "What!? This was a fan thing?" Totally hilarious though, I kind of felt the same way about Leitner.

The inside jokes are fucking hilarious, like the "homophobic vase." Or we have classics like "I just listened to the episode where the guy has sex with a bug." "Oh, which one?" and "Peter and Elias are definitely divorced."

Seeing what episodes scared people and which ones had people going "Actually, that sounds kind of nice" was very interesting. Like, episode 57 where the guy was stuck all alone in space? Emotionally destroyed me. But then others would be like "Yo, being able to be all alone in space with no one to bother me? Sign me up."

Also interesting to see which Fears scared people the most and which ones they think they would end up serving. I think the Buried scared me the most. Episodes 15, 132, and 195 freaking terrified me. I'd probably end up serving the Lonely, I remember thinking "Oh, that's me," with a lot of episodes, particularly episodes 159, 170, 186. It was a weird combination of "I'm in this statement and I don't like it" and "I actually feel seen." Like a weird mix of being called out and also kind of validated because I felt like my thoughts and feelings were finally being put into words and that meant somebody else had gone through the same thing.

What were some popular fan theories that ended up not coming true? I think I saw somewhere that a lot of people were theorizing that Martin would join the Web before he ended up serving the Lonely instead. People often say Gravity Falls fans grew up to be Magnus Archives fans and I remember Gravity Falls fans going crazy with some of the theories. And even if some of them ended up not happening, they're still really interesting.

I love how a lot of the characters do shitty things, but you completely understand why. Like, Melanie's wrong for blaming Jon for a lot of things that go wrong, but you understand that she feels trapped like an animal in a cage, so she's just lashing out. Or Tim is kind of an asshole in season 3, but you understand because he went through a lot of the same trauma that Jon did, he's just reacting with anger instead of paranoia.

I've been watching a lot of fan animations for this show and a lot of the comments are like "I checked out the Magnus Archives because of this video!" And the same thing happened to me too. Did you guys see any fan animations that made you decide to give this show a go?

When people draw Jon with long hair, they draw him like he’s the prettiest man alive and I love it. That or ends up looking like Jesus or Bruno Madrigal

I see every day things like a spiral shaped object or a spider and I jokingly think “Is that a Magnus Archives reference?” Or I’ll be listening to a song and think “Hmm, that could go in a Lonely playlist” or “Ooo, that so fits with the Vast.”

[tmascrapbook]

Mag 15: lost johns cave

[murderandcoffee]

she lost on my johns til i cave

is this anything

[alshixxah]

I always wondered why don't remember Lost John's Cave hitting that hard for me as it seems to for everyone else and now, upon re-listen I realised that instead of "take her not me" I kept hearing "this cannot be"-

SO THE FIRST TIME I HEARD ONE OF TMAS SCARIEST EPISODES I THOUGHT IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL STORY ABOUT THE INDOMITABLE HUMAN SPIRIT AND WILLING YOURSELF OUT OF EVEN THE WORST SITUATIONS😭😭😭

[banalhorrors]

listening to lost john’s cave again. Thinking about how “take her not me” might resonate with Jon’s guilt over Mr Spider. His bully was taken, not his sister. When he says he has made the decision not to follow up with the statement giver, I imagine it’s out of empathy. She should not have to know she ever wished for that

[thatpodcastkid]

Magnus Archives Relisten, MAG 15 Lost Johns' Cave

Top 10 Reasons to Never Go Spelunking (Number 8 Will Shock You!)

MAG 15 analysis, spoilers ahead!

Facts: Statement of Laura Papham, regarding her experience in the Three Counties cave system with her sister Alena Sanderson. Statement given November 9, 2014.

Statement Notes: The "safe until you aren't" trope is a TMA staple and this episode is a great example. Nothing in the cave is particularly strange or frightening, until it all is. If you aren't already afraid of the dark or tight spaces--which neither Alena nor Laura are--then you have no reason to be afraid. The area's mapped out, the women have done explorations before, they're entirely safe. Until Alena's missing. Until there's a thing reaching out for Laura. Until she's found by the cave rescue team. Until she's begging, "take her not me."

I really enjoy this horror trope/structure because I find it to be very true to life. Personally, most of the dangerous situations I've ended have started entirely normal, and it is only in hindsight that I am able to see how things became unsafe. It's fine for fans to mock the protagonists going into haunted basements or picking up befriending the creepy motel owner, but we need put ourselves in the characters' shoes. If the fun hobby you do every year with sister seemed a little weird, would you back out right away or would you wait it out?

This episode also utilizes another recurring TMA phenomenon; alternative reality. I know this is much more interesting in the context of TMAGP, but this episode demonstrates it on a smaller, more personal scale. In several episodes, the horrors seem to create an alternate specifically for their victim. In this episode specifically, Laura Papham seems to be experiencing the world in an entirely different way than her sister, husband, and cave rescue. The cave dive goes on for hours for her, but only lasts a few seconds for her sister. The malevolent light she sees morphs into an exit only after she turns away from it. Additionally, she is absolutely sure she burst out of the cave screaming, but cave rescue found her still inside. This power is seen in MAG 71, in which the victim is inside a crushed train car before finding herself back in the completely normal station, as well as many of the Lonely episodes in which people in crowded areas find themselves suddenly completely isolated even though nothing else strange is reported.

One thing that struck me as odd is the emphasis Alena Sanderson places on the fact that two people went missing in the original story of Lost Johns' Cave. This insinuates that the creature/horror within the cave intended to take both Sanderson and Popham, but it very clearly lets Laura go. She doesn't escape, she is simply found by someone else. Either the discovery of Popham broke her out before the creature could take her, or her begging work and Sanderson was taken in her place. Briefly I wondered if Alena could be stuck in an alternate world in which her sister had suddenly begun acting strangely on an exploration before going missing, but the entities canonically cannot access alternate dimensions on their own and they only seem to be able to alter reality on an individual or mass scale, all with the express purpose of frightening a single victim. Still, this would be an interesting concept and possibly could serve as the premise of another horror story. One which exists only in my mind.

Entity Alignment: While there's a case for the Dark in this episode, personally I feel it is much more strongly associated with the Buried. One of the Magnus Archives' central themes is the thing you are most comforted by becoming the thing that horrifies you. This shown so clearly in this episode as Papham plainly states "I knew that the stone I had always believed to be my friend and protector was going to entomb me here." This is often, though not always, how entity victims are created.

The flip side of this is that avatars are often created by turning the thing they are most afraid of into the thing that fuels them. This isn't always true, as avatars like Jude Perry and Jared Hopworth have no fear of the entity they serve, but this can be very clearly seen in other avatars, like Jon, Martin, and Oliver Banks. One could argue that the more powerful avatars are fueled not by their love of their entity, but their fear of it. Even Jonah Magnus, who became lord of the Panopticon, was fueled by his fear of death and powerlessness, both of which drove his endless pursuit of knowledge and eventual affiliation with the Eye.

Character Notes: Martin doesn't investigate this case because he's "a bit claustrophobic." When I first heard this, it sounded like a flimsy excuse. I thought this was possibly a lie to get out of work so he could attend to his mother. Jon would believe it because Martin has spent time establishing this weak and nervous personal.

However, I realized that the next episode is when Martin goes to investigate Carlos Vittery; when he goes missing. I will need to keep listening to establish a timeline and verify this, but it does seem entirely possible that Jon was given the excuse via text, and that Martin wasn't the one who sent it.

[kat-and-their-cats]

Favourite Episode Masterlist

[avatarofthew]

Finished a cross stitch of my favorite episode

[hauntedfarfalle]

Just some assorted s1-s2 memes

[hydrodidac]

Im so dumb i love it

[tawnyevergreen]

More Lost John’s because I drew more ✨

I spent a while mapping out the real Lost John’s system, and while each individual location exists, the route they took does not. The statement suggests this:

Deaths Head Hole—>Cathedral—>Lost Johns—>Gavel Pot

Which is not possible, or at least no one has been able to do it, and it would take several days of underground travel if they managed to find a route.

Also of note in this statement: Death’s Head Hole is not so much a tiny hole as it is a massive chasm with a big tree and a fence for rigging. It also goes straight down—no “unexpected twists.”

[yumaisbored]

the tma production team really got together and decided to make the fifteenth episode scarier than every other statement combined.

[bestiege]

Alena Sanderson and Grant Walker after discovering that Alena's sister sacrificed her to the Buried and the Dark, and Grant's brother tricked him, an acrophobe, into going to one of the tallest buildings in France only to be consumed by the Vast:

Source gif

[redbrickdoor]

mind if i play some white noise? thanks

[jonsimsmissingbraincell]

it's so funny how there's lost john's cave, the episode that most fans argue is the scariest episode, and then immediately after is just... spider that won't die