#mag 181

[cosmichearter]

When she causes problems on purpose <3

[Image ID: A black-and-white (except for purple and blue) 3 panel strip of Annabelle Cane, a black woman with white hair, in a conversation with Martin Blackwood, a white man with light grey hair and white streaks. Annabelle is wearing a white dress and her tongue and chat bubbles are purple, Martin is wearing a blue jacket over a white sweater and his tongue and chat bubbles are blue. In the first panel, Martin says “I can handle myself!” and Annabelle responds “But can you handle me?” The second panel has 3 dots on it, indicating a silence. Martin now looks angry and annoyed. In the third panel, Martin says “I don’t like you.” And Annabelle replies “I know.” while swishing her hair over her shoulder. She looks smug. /. End ID]

[microclown]

Also, I don’t agree with Martin in his belief that a person shouldn’t exist if their existence is dependent on the suffering of others (I mean, in the real world, who’s comfortable existence is not at least somewhat dependent on the suffering/exploitation of others?) But I do respect him for extending that philosophy to himself once he realized it included him. Especially since he’s shown time and again how strongly he holds that conviction.

It’s interesting that at this point, aside from Callum (a kid) and possibly Helen (I’m not at the episode with her domain yet so I imagine I’ll find out soon) Jon is his one exception.

He’s known for a while that Jon’s continued existence may be dependent on the suffering of others, even before the apocalypse. In 154, he questioned if Jon would be able to survive blinding himself/severing himself from the eye, and in MAG 181, he raises this concern again.

And based on Jon’s description of what happened to John Amherst, it doesn’t seem like this is a “suffer through withdrawal and eventually you’ll recover” situation.

(I mean he was incased in concrete, something a regular human wouldn’t have been able to survive, so I guess we don’t know what would’ve happened if he’d been breathing oxygen, eating three meals a day and voluntarily abstaining from fear… but it wouldn’t exactly be safe or easy for them to experiment and find out)

Despite this, Martin isn’t sure if he’d be able to kill Jon. I’m sure he’s trying to convince himself that theres a chance both the world and Jon could go back to how they were before the fears, but I think in his heart he knows Jon is unlikely to survive without the eye.

The idea that Martin would ask Jon to kill him if the apocalypse can’t be reversed is also very interesting because Martin knows it wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t ease anyone’s suffering but his own. His victims would still be trapped. If anything, he’d cause more suffering by leaving Jon alone. And it doesn’t sound like he would ask for Jon to kill himself afterwards. Death as an escape is a privilege most in this world do not have access to - Salesa refers to it as “the greatest blessing” his camera gave him. At that point, Martin choosing to die wouldn’t be about making things better, or even about enacting some sort of justice, it would be solely about escaping his own guilt.

And yes, I have seen some spoilers for the end, so I know a lot of this will likely come up in a big way in the finale. I know almost no details though, and I’m still very interested to see how and why we get there….

[saintbleeding]

[ID: A digital painting of Jon and Martin from TMA. They are at Upton House, sitting side by side on the sill of an open window. Their backs are towards the viewer, and their arms are linked. The sky is a pale purple with a few stars as though it is early evening, and in the distance there is a roiling red and black mess of shapes and colours. In the window frame above Jon’s head is a spider, suspended from a single thread of silk beside its web. End ID.]

if the eye chucked a tantrum because its special boy played hide and seek too well would that be fucked up or what

[tumb1rprincess]

Salesa is a little shit head, but at least he’s a chill little shit head. At least our boys got a bit of a reprieve, even with Annabelle lurking in the corners and Jon being pretty out of it by the end. Martin’s little “I’d rather be in an apocalypse with you than paradise with her” made me smile though, that was so cute.

[go-to-the-mirror]

I bet on losing dogs I know they're losing and I'll pay for my place By the ring Where I'll be looking in their eyes when they're down I'll be there on their side I'm losing by their side

MARTIN Yeah, but if, if you're that connected, that dependent, what happens if we actually, y'know, do manage to— ARCHIVIST We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I just need us to be moving on.

The price of a long due reckoning Laid in blood when the battle has done Old King Cole has paid the toll Of the crimes levied upon his soul The rebel blades have achieved their goal Laid in blood when the battle has done

Pip: We're doomed Flip: We're not. Pip: Are you sure?

There's been so little time to share We've always had our loads to bear I won't forget I won't leave you this time This time

MARTIN I refuse to accept that this— ARCHIVIST (Firm) Tough! The world doesn't care what you accept. It just... is! It just is.

It's getting late, Little Moon. Finish the song. It's not that late. You are my moon, Little Moon, and it's late enough. So climb down out of the tree. Is it safe? Safe enough. Are you dead as well?

MARTIN Yeah, yeah. Come on. We've got a job to do.

(“i bet on losing dogs” - mitski // “mag 181 - ignorance” // “laid in blood” - the mechanisms // “war of the foxes” - richard siken // “ragnarok v: end of the line” - the mechanisms // “mag 194 - parting” // “the worm king’s lullaby” - richard siken // “mag 181 - ignorance”)

[a-mag-meme-a-day]

Meme for @a-mag-a-day Day 188

MAG 181 - Ignorance

[i-will-change-this-someday]

So I was just thinking about The Magnus Archive, cause it has consumed my every waking thought, and you know in MAG 181 when Salesa is teasing Jon and he says:

“Your powers won’t work here, Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.”

Yeah well, it made me wonder how he would even know Jon said this, but then I realized he’s been roommates with Annabelle Cane for at least a couple month (I assume anyway.)

Anyway what I’m saying is, even though it’s a very funny meta joke it’s also a hint that the tapes were Web the whole time.

[themagnustournament]

Round One Part One - Match 5

I, too, would like to eat a computer in a vaguely menacing manner. But can munching on a keyboard top the Upton House Interlude?

MAG 065 - Binary | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Statement of Tessa Winters, regarding a strange computer program she downloaded from the deep web three months ago. Statement recorded direct from subject.

MAG 181 - Ignorance | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Moments of preparation and recuperation. Audio recorded by the Archivist, in situ.

[im-the-queen-of-stardust]

Jon's It’s, er… going away. That peace, the safety, the memory of ignorance… is haunting me. This one island where he is just Jon, not the Archivist and it's taken away. Bad enough that he felt weak and was fading away without the Eye but now he's not even allowed to remember what it's like to not feel the horrors all the time and enjoying it. The way he says What was it like? at the end breaks me.

[6-and-7]

Creeptober 21 - Something Broken 10 of Discs/MAG 181 - Ignorance

[lycanlovingvampyre]

MAG 181 Relisten

Activity on my first listen: cutting the French tamarisk in my garden.

SALESA: "Hmmm. Interesting…" Interesting indeed. You can clearly hear something that sounds like the tape recorder being picked up and then Salesa’s voice is a bit closer. The official transcript has this in it: [Close mic bumps as the recorder is handled] MIKAELE: (Very close) "Interesting…"

JON: [Uncomfortable] "I…er… We slept. I-I don’t know – H-How long’s it been?" SALESA: "About seventy-one hours, by my clock. How’re you feeling?" Okay, 71 hours are almost 3 days! That sounds super unhealthy, you still sweat a bit during sleep, your body needs water for chemical processes during sleep as well...

SALESA: "Annabelle tells me you work for The Eye." JON: "Well… I-I w-wouldn’t exactly say I-I ‘work for’ it." MARTIN: "Well… I-I-I mean, you say that, but when you stop to think about it, it was literally our employer, Jon, so…" JON: "I-I suppose." Lol, he's right there! Also that "eehhhh" sound Martin makes xD

SALESA: "Hmmmm. Interesting. Did you carry it in? Things shouldn’t be able to manifest in here like that." I mean, Annabelle is literally alive and well in this bubble, so the Web doesn't seem to have problems here.

SALESA: "Very well. In that case, we shall leave it to be. It’s hardly valuable, and it’s probably best not to upset whatever it might be involved with. Besides, I have no secrets to hide." Ehhhh, I found a very good reason to "If you got nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" on Reddit. It's "I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgement and intentions are."

Haha, Martin stammering when Salesa says he reminds him of Leitner XD

SALESA: "It’s an odd situation, but not a complicated one. Shortly after I decided to stay here, she arrived. Wandered in from the chaos out there, and told me she was going to stay with me. I didn’t get this far by pitting myself against The Web, so I welcomed her in." JON: "And…?" SALESA: "And sometimes she cooks." Lol XD Also, I think Salesa is right in this case. He's no match against the Web. So better just go with the flow.

SALESA: "You are, of course, welcome to stay as long as you like." I love Salesa so much!

JON: [Compellingly] "Tell me what happened." SALESA: "No." JON: "I – uh… W-What?" [DEEP CHUCKLES FROM SALESA] SALESA: "The look on your face! Look, he’s so confused!" [MARTIN LAUGHS A BIT TOO] JON: "Martin!" MARTIN: "Sorry. Sorry. Y-You did look kind of funny. It was l-l-l-like you were flunking an exam or something." Aw man, Jon sounds so betrayed, lol! It is super funny, though xD And just an episode ago Jon was delighted about not Knowing anything about this place. So why stop at Knowing?

SALESA: "Yes! Exactly that! Your powers won’t work here, Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London." Distributed by Rusty Quill and li- Ahhh... So why does Salesa know Jon's catchphrase? That means at some point he must have heard tapes of him... And knowing he's with the one who set all those tapes up, it's likely it was here at Upton House.

SALESA: "So what’s it like out there? I assume the Archivist must be rather a powerful position, since you seem to be travelling through it pretty freely." JON: "It’s… uh… um…" MARTIN: "Jon?" JON: "Sorry I just, er… Hmm." The Archives inaccessable at the moment xD

SALESA: "I have spent the last decade preparing for this to happen." And we actually have seen this in MAG 45. The antique syringe. Salesa bought it. And after it was gone from the lab, things started happening there. So that syringe was probably to the Corruption what's the camera with the broken lens to the Eye. And I say Eye, because I think the camera only completely blocks out the Eye. And since the whole apocalypse is ruled by the Eye, it creates this safety bubble. Annabelle, who according to her in MAG 197 is only kept alive by the Web, is fine here. And Salesa mentions a "insect thing, a creature of the Crawling Rot" made it here (I'm guessing this means the bubble) later in this episode. Plus, after all, cameras are an Eye thing.

SALESA: "You are right, to a point. I would welcome a return to the real world. Ha! To be the only man to weather the greatest disaster in history of reality utterly unharmed." Already a hint that this is not just a blip nobody will remember. These people are aware of what's happening to them. And without actually turning back time, everyone will still remember what happened to them...

MARTIN: "F-F-For what it’s worth, I’d also quite like to know how this all happened." SALESA: "Fine, I’ll tell you how it happened. But you must sit quietly while I tell you." No one escapes Martin's charm^^

SALESA: "When I say I was one of his assistants, you know exactly the kind of education that would be. Terrifying, fascinating, misguided. The man was a genius and an idiot." Leitner seemed to be pretty reckless when it came to his assistants. Salesa seemed to be super protective of his crew. I wonder if this has a correlation. Salesa seeing how Leitner treats his people and thinking "I'm going to be better!" (It's usually the reaction I have to being mistreated. I don't want to continue this madness.)

SALESA: "To tell you the truth, I got a real kick out of playing my role. To think of myself as a purveyor of curses, walking softly through the most dangerous edges of reality so that the rich and arrogant could buy their own doom." Have I mentioned that I love Salesa? XD

On my first listen when Salesa mentioned the camera, I remembered that one being mentioned before. I just couldn't remember what statement it was xD

SALESA: "One that through some quirk had the ability to hide you from the Powers." Yeah, ah, again, this sounds a bit strange. One could argue it hides you from all Fears and they still can occasionally stumbled upon this by accident... Then why would Annabelle be able to still access the Web, but Jon not the Eye?

SALESA: "It hid me from The Eye, which, in the new order of reality, also protects where I am from the hellscape all around us." Yeah that makes more sense.

I know, there are posts out there about how Jon and Martin should steal the camera and confront Elias with it. And I could imagine this working with the dream logic. The Pupil of the Eye distributes all the Fear. When this collapses, the whole system could cease to work. But the problem about the fix-its is the Web. It would have immediately intervened.

SALESA: "Let us relax, and talk and drink. And not worry about who might be… listening." I love how this sounds like a 4th wall break! And, in a way, it's meant to be like that. We listening to the tapes after they arrived here, I mean.

MARTIN: "Yeah, but if, if you’re that connected, that dependent, what happens if we actually, y’know, do manage to –" JON: "We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I just need us to be moving on." That hum from Martin after Jon's reply. He is not happy at all about this...

ANNABELLE: "Don’t worry, Martin. We’ll meet again. Hopefully when you’re feeling a little bit more… open-minded." Mhm, it will be exactly like this. There were just a bit more things happening necessary to get Martin to that point.

JON: "I guess so. It’s, er… It’s gone. Like a dream. What was it like?" MARTIN: "… Nice. It was… It was really nice." Can't have shit in the apocalypse!! For both, Jon is robbed of the happy memories and for Martin they turn bittersweet, knowing Jon doesn’t remember anything of it.

@a-mag-a-day

[spacedemodulator]

MAG 181, Ignorance

In my memory of my first listen, I thought this was two or three episodes, but it's only one. Maybe I conflated the end of 180 into an episode of its own.

I feel like Jon's fading away within Upton House, and his loss of memory upon leaving, are more evidence for the idea that The Eye is wearing him like a suit, and his personality just happens to be part of the outfit.

I love how Salesa's plan to beat the apocalypse* relies on story/dream logic. "The guy who sells you the thing that wrecks your life always gets away clean, eh?"

I love Jon and Martin's desperate need to sleep when they first arrived, and I think more time could have been spent on this. The Fears keep you awake and alive and afraid, you don't need food or sleep - but a psychological debt is clearly building up over time.

In my own life some of the most anxious and afraid moments have involved sleep deprivation, to the point now that I'm genuinely afraid of it and how it will make me feel. I would be terrified of leaving the sanctuary where I can actually sleep. But maybe exploring that in detail would have broken Sims' desire to avoid directly exploiting personal trauma.

* I originally typed "apocopolypse."

@a-mag-a-day

[corybiit]

Why is Salesa my new gay uncle icon??

[amee-racle-ofmyown]

rare and elusive happy/excited Archivist🥺

[oaxleaf]

mag 181 - ignorance

i've always had the attitude that, if you're good enough, you deserve to gloat a little. and honestly, salesa totally does. like, yeah, it's probably got a significant part to do with the web, but i can still respect that he seems to be the only person to have been able to try and do this whole 'work with the entities without being affiliated with any of them' thing and no die a horrible, messy death

i've said this before, but i should probably hate him. he's exactly the type of character that usually gets on my nerves - self-congratulatory and has very little care for who he hurts - but honestly, he's just written as too charming. i also, simontaneously, really like characters who are smart enough to know to what extent to get involved in shit. there's few things more frustrating than someone who's far to proud to see that they're headed towards being killed

annabelle's great too. the show in general is really good at making characters that are, despite having really unlikable traits and doing a lot of awful things, just very charming and likable. helen is yet another example. i don't really think annabelle does anything too despicable, either. i get how she could be very frustrating if you met her, but that's sort of the web's whole thing. the only way to really overpower it is to let it control you and not worry too much about it

[themagnustournament]

Redemption Round 2 - Match 61

Upon the Stair, another gone too soon, earned 164 votes in Round Two and 417 total! Ignorance and the Upton House Interlude left Round One with 92 votes.

MAG 085 - Upon the Stair | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Statement of an unknown figure, regarding an encounter they may or may not have had in their home.

MAG 181 - Ignorance | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Moments of preparation and recuperation. Audio recorded by the Archivist, in situ.