#mag172 spoilers

[dangerous-disposition]

my mag172 #thots i will not be swayed from

The tl;dr version:

Fuck the web

Fuck Web!Martin theories (like i cannot even properly articulate why i hate this theory so much now, and I used to subscribe to it)

And fuck Annabelle Cane, I literally hate her with my entire being.

As a recovering addict, I would say... this is the best episode of the show, and I will also never, ever listen to it again.

Now the long version below the cut.

So I hate the Web, and I hate Annabelle Cane. To me, the other fears make sense on a primal human level. The Web is just...pure evil. It was born from the choices of evil people, and is only used for evil. Plain and simple. It is, at it’s core the worst fear and I hate it. There is nothing anyone can say that will make me not hate it.

Because of point number one, I refuse to believe in or subscribe to literally any Web!Martin theory. At all. Listen, MAG170 killed Web!Martin theories completely, imho, and any amount of theorizing in favour of Web!Martin is grasping at straws. But I refuse to believe that my perfect boy, who spent the entire time in the Lonely defending his abuser, who busted his own ass out of the Lonely bc he was in love would be part of something as evil as the Web. Like I just....I feel like there was no way to have had an episode, completely from the POV of Martin, and not gotten any spoken hint at him being even remotely connected to the Web. Just. No.

The argument at the beginning, if you could call that an argument: I have noticed, especially in recent episodes, that Jon seems influenced by the domain and especially the “statement giver” before he even begins his monologue. Like...kinda showing how the forced Knowing creeps up on him? This theory of mine has been in the back of my mind since MAG168 but I don’t know how to fully explain it because it just fully formed in my head after this episode. Something changed after Oliver’s statement, just like it did in Season 1, and again at the beginning of Season 4. In MAG170, Jon got separated from Martin, and I feel like...Jon wouldn’t have just....left Martin behind, even by accident, even during a monologue and I just...I feel like, to some degree, Jon had been at least a little bit influenced by the Lonely and got separated that way. And then in the Flesh, approaching Jared, Jon was confused that Martin didn’t find the flesh flowers beautiful, and the way he said it...it struck me as a very Jared thing to say. And then the way Jon talked in this episode, the way Jon got defensive and sniped at Martin just....it was very similar in feeling to Francis’ own words being mirrored back to them by the spider. Just....i’m not sure where I’m going with this, or even if it has sound basis in canon. It’s just been a pattern I’ve noticed but it was made clearer to me now.

I refuse to see that final interaction with Martin and Jon as anything other than two frustrated and exhausted men trudging through the apocalypse, and whatnot. Like I can just hear the absolutely lukewarm takes ppl will have and just. Nah, leave me out of it.

Loved the explanation about Knowing vs. Understanding.

Also loving Jon and Martin still discussing boundaries, and Martin has a right to said boundaries, and I’m getting where he’s coming from in now wanting to know, or for Jon to Know. I think I would be the same, not wanting to know if my feelings for someone or choices were my own or made for me, especially if I had gone through as much as Martin has. I rly did not see this as an omen of any kind, especially with them having that conversation in the middle of the Web’s domain.

This episode was hard. I’m recovering from alcoholism, I’ve recovered from cigarette addiction repeatedly, and also struggle with binge eating disorder which is often treated the same way as an addiction would in therapy. I relate to Francis as a recovering addict, and I thought this episode did an amazing job in illustrating addiction, and relapse, and the little ways addicts get undermined and undermine themselves in the recovery process. I don’t think this episode compared addiction to being a monster, nor do I think it downplayed the mental illness aspect of addiction. I made a post earlier about how these statements are mad with heavy bias, especially during the apocalypse, and they’re about fear. Recognizing that addiction is a mental illness and showing it as such does not translate fear, and if it did, I feel like that would be more the Corruption’s domain than any others. The Web is about not being in control, it’s about not having a choice or free will, it’s about feeling trapped by the choices you once made and are unable to make choices that contradict those. With addiction, that is a very real feeling. You can tell me all day that it’s mental illness, it’s rooted in depression or anxiety or whatever, and all you have to do is treat that cause and address it blah blah blah. I know. We know. But when you’re struggling with a relapse, or a near-relapse, it does not feel like you’re in control, it does not feel like you are driving your own body. It feels like someone else is behind the wheel, and you hate that person, and you are terrified of that person. That person is ruining your life and you feel like you cannot fucking stop them. But then you do! You can do it. And a lot of us succeed, and I feel like if the world hadn’t ended, Francis would be doing okay. Just like I’m doing okay. And the countless other recovering addicts I know. But in a fictional world, where our fears are actual entities, with physical avatars doing their bidding everywhere, in an apocalyptic hellscape where the fears EXIST ON OUR PLANE of reality, where people are forced to live through their greatest fears forever.

Idk, i just thought this was a really good episode and I’m debating blacklisting TMA until next week lmao.

I just wanted to add this bc I rly don't want ppl to eventually come at me about their personal experiences w addiction and just... Jonny confirmed that he wrote this episode from his own experiences as an addict and his fears regarding addiction, plus that season 5 is about fear not truth so.

Read the following tweets before trying to push your experiences as the "truer" experience or whatevs I've already been seeing.

[retroosquared]

“The man in the audience saw to that.”

[ID: A fullbody drawing of the Archivist sitting in a theatre seat, relaxed. His hair is waist-length and his eyes have inverted colours, with glowing white pupils. He’s smiling slightly and looking directly at the viewer, presumably at the stage. He’s wearing a dark jacket over a grey hoodie, blue jeans, socks with little palm trees on them, and dress shoes. There is a humanoid shadow over him of a human with hooks and strings through their hands and legs, like a puppet. End ID.]

[cloudwithoutsilverlining]

the real conflict of s5

[twiggyrogue]

To honor all of the "Jon, offended theater kid" headcanons popping up, I would like to direct everyone again to MAG 120.1 - Season 3 Q+A

[Alex] ...Does the Archivist taking on the persona of the people's statements revitalize him, or does the Archivist just have a secret passtime of putting in different personalities really well? Is he- Is Jon a secret impressionist?

[Jonny] Uh, we- I mean lore wise, the first one, though we came to the conclusion very early in recording Season One that The Archivist is secretly a bit of a drama queen.

[Alex] Yeah.

[Jonny] Really likes-

[Alex] Yeah.

[Jonny] Like- it’s-it’s 90 percent a hostile malevolent alien force taking over-

[Alex] He’s working with what he was given.

[Jonny] But I mean, fundamentally he doesn’t not like getting into a statement and really giving it a bit of the ol’ - like he probably did some am-dram.

[Alex] (laughs) I bet he was insufferable while he was doing it.

[Jonny] Oh yeah.

[i-say-spooky-you-say-scary]

MAG172 spoilers no context

[mxbee-creates]

“Pause for laughter...”

- MAG 172: Strung Out

Illustration ID below the break! :)

[Picture ID: An illustration of Martin Blackwood from The Magnus Archives podcast from the thighs up. He is a man with brown hair, light skin and freckles. His cheek, neck and hand are scratched and dirty. He wears glasses, a stained orangish-brown sweater and dirty light blue pants. He carries a backpack, holding one strap in his hand. His mouth is open as if he were talking. Above and beside him are speech bubbles:

Jon (represented by a green eye): “You could take in a show.”

Martin: “That’s not funny, Jon!”

Jon: “If you say so...”

In the background is a stage, curtains, auditorium chairs, and a person. This man is dressed in a leotard and ballet shoes. Hooks hold him in an uncomfortable position. Faintly, blood can be seen from the wounds. The hooks attach to barely visible wires which are tied to the legs of a giant spider that hangs above the man, almost out of sight. A spotlight shines on this man, illuminating what is happening to him.

End ID.]

[tullmetal-archivist]

is this too niche

[elliotly]

so uhh martin doesnt like theatre huh ....... my theatrekidmartinsimp heart breamks..

[inkcapzz]

It is better to ask for forgiveness than for permission

[thevoidcannotbefilled]

My dudes every episode fuels my Annabelle Cane and equilibrium theories and I Am Excited

[snapdraqons]

Hey friendly reminder after this week's episode:

Substance abuse is a huge issue faced by the lgbtq community and lgbtq experiences with addiction can be very different to straight/cis experiences. Many of the reasons why lgbtq people become addicts and can't get support for addiction are rooted in homophobia and transphobia. If you make your explicitly lgbtq character an addict, those two things are now linked, regardless of whether or not that was your intention. Addiction is experienced very differently by members of the lgbtq community (in this specific episode, the trans and non-binary community).

If you are straight/cis and writing about your experiences with addiction, you are not writing the same experience as a gay person, or a bi person, or a trans person etc. This episode failed to recognise and address that. Some stories are yours to tell. Some are not - especially within the context of horror of all genres.

[lgbtiwtv]

So I had a realization...did they ever mention that a power of the Eye is to actually compel the archivist to use their powers? Because they make a point to say Gertrude didn’t compel people with her powers very often at all, only seeming to do it out of necessity. But Jon, from the beginning, didn’t seem to even think about it/felt he needed to. Now, at the beginning, this is in part because Jon doesn’t know about the powers, and definitely has no idea about any abilities he may be developing. But 172 deals heavily with the concepts of addiction and whether you are in control or your actions or not, and even more interestingly, reiterated Jon’s inability to See anything having to do with the Web’s actual plans. That’s important because this inability is rare, especially in a post-Eyepocalypse world. Most commonly it happened with powers opposed to the eye when Jon was less powerful, when Elias didn’t want him to know certain information OR—this is the big one—when it comes to powers that Jon is directly involved with.

It’s been shown over and over that avatars of the fears, while powerful, seem to have a blind spot when it comes certain information about their entities. It sort of becomes a “can’t see the forest through the trees” situation. Immersed in their patron, it’s easy for them to become overwhelmed by its power and become careless, reckless even. This is the nature of the powers and is how they are able to keep any one avatar from becoming too powerful, keeping them contained as agents of the power rather than a master of the power. This is seen clearly in Daisy (who loses herself to the hunt, unable to see how far gone she is until it’s too late), Martin (who is easily manipulated into being isolated and trapped in the lonely) and Melanie (who is so intent to kill Elias that she becomes really bad at thinking plans through that would actually allow her to succeed at it). These are generalizations for sure, but the entities keep their avatars in a constant race for power, rarely allowing them to actually have the means to do what they want when they actually get it.

What does this have to do with Jon and the Web? Jon has a thirst for knowledge, sure, and the need to Know that acompanies any half-decent avatar of the Beholding, but the crucial difference is when it comes to how he gets that information. He feels compelled to read the statements, even before he knows about the powers. I would say that while being promoted to Archivist aligned Jon with the Eye, it didn’t mark him with it (this change, as we recall wasn’t actually finalized until he woke up from the coma as The Archivist). The main difference being that he had been touched by the Web in a tangible way that caused changes in his life for years before joining the Institute—ie “problems with moderation” amongst other things (interesting how Jon’s S2 paranoia and thirst for knowledge is intertwined with his unexplainable need to trick/manipulate them into giving up evidence/information). The Web was there first, the Web claimed Jon first. This is further proven by the delivery and subsequent possession of the spiderweb lighter, which Jon is compelled to keep, him beginning to smoke again once he has it, and Elias’s interesting comment about Jon “starting to smoke again,” which is a strange thing for him to worry about but starts to seem really interesting now that we know that addiction is tied pretty directly to the web. Rather than faked concern, it comes across as genuine worry that Jon’s allegiances may not lie with the Eye, but rather, the Web, and that they (Elias included) are not immune to its manipulation.

IN FACT one may even say that with Jon as the appointed Archivist, the mantle of the Eye was passed to him and what was left to Elias, who spent years planning, manipulating, lying, was left to become more Web-aligned, so through Elias the Web was able to have even more power. Even now, with Jon “wearing the Watcher’s Crown” so to speak, the Spider in the theatre makes a point to say “I couldn’t (stop) even if I wanted to. The man in the audience saw to that.” Which is about Jon clearly, but specifically Jon as an agent of the Web, inadvertently causing the powers to be trapped in these cycles/plays forever, until they cease. It’s an interesting statement. It’s also, I believe, the first time in the season that one of the statements directly addressed Jon and his existence in the fear domains. He’s not just a silent watcher, the Spider is very clearly conscious of his presence, in a way that the other powers weren’t. This could also be due to Martin being there, and the Web keeping an eye on him for reasons still unknown, but it’s Jon who is susceptible to the Web, not Martin. It’s Jon who almost gets stuck there, the way Martin almost got stuck in the Lonely, which is considered to be his domain. The only other time Jon had that reaction of being unable to free himself was in 160, which is 100% Eye aligned but also Web-aligned because Elias’s plan/manipulation is finally coming to fruition. I don’t know what this all could be leading up to but I AM saying that the Web is part of Jon (and Elias!) in a major way.

Basically, every episode is a Web episode

[stories-forthe-void]

finally got my name in an episode :)

can definitively say that I hated it :)

[springylemur]

Pause for laughter

[justkeeptrekkin]

Episode 172 was REALLY heavy. Definitely look up the content warnings for this one. But, er, otherwise I thought it was really good. It was kind of a relief to see Jon ans Martin getting some stuff out in the air about the difficulties in their relationship. Pretty necessary, as much as I love the fluffy bits too.

[i-say-spooky-you-say-scary]

mag172 spoilers out of context