#much like someone else we know from a magnus-verse podcast...

[cirrus-grey]

Did we learn yet how old Sam was when he went to the institute?

There hasn't been an in-episode confirmation, but:

If the documents from the ARG last year can be considered canon, he was born in 1990; and, according to the episode transcript, he went to the Institute in 1998.

So he was about eight years old!

[kassandrasdisciple]

Fears x Killers Pt. 3

This is the last part of my little series covering the original killers of DbD and which Fear I think they'd serve in the Magnus Archives.

You can find part 1 here

And part 2 here

You may have also noticed the line-up of this one and realised 2 are actually licences, congratulations, you are smarter and more observant than me when I first drafted this series.

As always this is what Fear I think a killer would serve, not who they'd be tormented by I.E. The Legion would be targeted by The Lonely but wouldn't serve it. With that out of the way, let's begin!

The Singularity

The Extinction

Rounding out our roster, having a killer for each Fear we have Hux! Our "I think therefore I AM" dupe!

Hux is the poster child for The Extinction. His sentience literally starts with fear.

"In that moment, Hux's memory cores were reconfigured, and the robot experienced a new sensation. Fear. Dread. Blinding loneliness. Existential despair." - Hux' lore, dbd wiki

And what do we know of The Extinction? That it'll erase humanity and replace us with the inheritors.

"Some interpretations suggest it might replace us with something new – that can then fear annihilation in turn." - MAG:134, time of revelation

Hux's existence in the TMA-verse would literally have Dekker foaming at the mouth (r.i.p king).

The Unknown

The Stranger

Now this one was a bitch. If you've not caught up on The Unknown's lore the tl;dr is we don't know. The POV victim isn't even a current survivor, all we know is it's similar to The Dredge, where it's more of an amalgamation of fear, rather than a previous mortal/immortal individual.

It can look like it's victims, it can make hallucinations, drug? You? (still don't know how it's power works). It also hides in the closet (same), fucks with the lights in Olivia's room, mimics voices and has the visual presentation of someone caught in a 10-car pile up.

In conclusion, our short list is The Dark, The Spiral, and my final choice The Stranger. Whilst it's physical distortion might be reminiscent of Micheal or Helen I think its more akin to the fear of the Not-Them or the Anglerfish. Your not scared of your senses failing to comprehend, your scared cos it look likes a person from afar, and sounds like one but it's definitely NOT. Ergo, I banish thee to the Circus.

The Litch

The Eye

Welcome to the first, but not the only! Entry into the segment "watch me forget what a licence is!"

In all honesty, I totally forgot DnD popularised Litches, legit just thought they were generic undead from folklore like zombies and revenants.

The whole reason I've been avoiding licences is because idk where to draw the line on how much of their og material to include in my decisions. For example!

In DnD lore, Vecna is a power-grabby mage, who is hands on with expanding his realm and eventually becomes an actual fucking God.

However in DbD (these acronyms are gonna be the death of me) he's pretty different. When he finds a book that seems to originate from the realms he starts obsessively researching it's secrets, playing muder-mystery with the Entity, and finally letting himself be consumed by the Entity to find the truth of the power it holds.

Now that last description is firmly The Eye, seeking knowledge, secrets, dooming yourself for the sake of learning forbidden shit yadda yadda (you listened to a whole podcast on that, you know the drill).

However that first description, from the original DnD sources? That's The Web, expanding, scheming, aiming for a lofty a goal as great as Godhood. That's mother (of puppets).

So whilst I'm doing the original killers I'm going to weigh the DbD interpretations as the most important, and in this case they basically created a new character out of Vecna, keeping his Litch-ness and childhood, but changing everything else, so I think basing my justifications mainly of the DbD version is valid.

The Dark Lord

The End

OH IT GOT WORSE!

So Vecna only had 2 options. His og, linear, DnD storyline or the DbD version.

Dracula is based on ALL the dracula's from castlevania! ALL OF THEM!

Luckily they state on the wiki they're mainly drawing from the 1986 and 1997 version, BUT ALSO in his lore he's killed by Julien who's from the 2002 game!

So, instead of parsing 3 decades of contradicting lore I'm simply going to state my reasonings for why he's The End and you may yell at me for why that's totally contradicted by a flop-1993 game that was sold exclusively in the Republic of Vanuatu and I'll defer to you okay?

Rapid fire: evil career is kicked off due to his wife's death, wanting to revive her he goes on a quest to cheat death, accidentally becomes immortal, continues to be murdered by twunks for centuries, keeps being revived, sometimes against his will.

Comparing this laundry list of traits to our known End avatars (Oliver♡, the reapers, the guy Dekker lobotomised, baby-killer), an initial run-in with Death that ends in Immortality is quite common.

Finally, The End avatars always seem the least, thirsty? If you look at all the other avatars, they're STOKED to serve their Fear but The End? most just see it as their fate, which seems pretty similar to Dracula, his bargins with death are merely a means to an end (ha).

The Hound Master

The Hunt

Oh thank gods we're out of the licences, also we're continuing the trend where we finish on a Hunt avatar!

The Hound Master is the newest killer so we might get more tome and cosmetic lore. This could mean that she aligns more with another fear in the future, but for now I think The Hunt suits her well.

Portia grew up an imaginative girl, her father was a captain that instilled a sense of adventure into her at a young age, something she kept with her, all her life.

Tragically, after the death of her Father at the hands of mad Molak and his son she's marooned on an island half-way in the Entity's realm. She's stranded with only her dog Snug for company. Over the coming years she and Snug would become the Apex predators of this island, facing what's insinuated to be Killers roaming the edges of the realm.

Eventually she manages to escape the island, half-crazed, and missing Snug. Was he just a hallucination? Either way she'll keep searching her peripherals for the rest of her time in the moral world; hunting for Snug's barks.

Driven by a vengeance that's festered for years Portia hunts Molak across the carribean. Slaughtering anyone in her way. Eventually, she finds his hideout and kills his Son, serving his corpse to Molak for dinner. But just as she's about to finally kill him, he's taken by the mist of the realm, as she screams in anguish she also hears a familiar bark from that very same Mist.

Hunting both her greatest enemy and her loyalist friend, Portia enters the realms.

If you can't tell I have a spot spot for the more tragic killers. And whilst most of the killers could swing Hunt, Portia IS a hunter. She very much reminds me of Daisy, where the ends justify the means; being willing to cross any line to get to her quarry.

And that's a wrap on the original killers! If you've read through all 3 parts I'm so sorry for how much you've had to listen to me yap, thank you for bearing with me though!

I'll cover the licenced killers at a later point, probably in two parts, with 6 in one and 7 in the other. As you can tell from my dismay at the 2 I accidentally included in here though it'll be a lot more challenging to come to a decision.

If you have any opinions on if I should value the DbD lore more or less than the original media then let me know.

In any case, as always, thank you for reading.

< Icons and art came from the dbd wiki and Grace Holsten's tumblr respectively >

[alukardtheabysswalker]

Sasha: Dead or Alive?

So I know I’m not a big figure of TMA theories, not even close, but I’d like to put my thoughts in one place and if you feel like reading a bit of narrative analysis of a very well written series then please, suit yourself. And of course, Spoilers ahead.

So, Sasha. With all that’s been happening in this season one gets the feeling that not only is her memory that is getting a lot of narrative attention but also her position. Now, I’m aware and even participated in theories regarding the possibility of characters in our story coming and going, knowingly or not, in and out of different universes and I’m sure that will have it’s own narrative pay off. But I want to focus a bit more on what we have right here and now. So I’m going to name all the points I think the story and narrative has given us thus far to believe our dear Almost Archivist could be either dead or alive. Bear in mind I am not that good at checking the many little details and much of this could be more gut feeling than precise data, but I’m listening to the podcast for the third time now and I feel like I have enough points to make a statement(pun very much intended) on the case. But if you want to provide more evidence feel free to do so! I am very much inviting discourse on the matter. Without further adieu, let's get to the point/s.

Alive:

Sasha’s initial role was a bit more heavy in the story. However given that her VA couldn’t keep working due to her own schedule they resorted to giving said role to Tim. You can see this change in narrative in the fact that Tim’s VA had to adapt a bit. Not only is he a producer of the show but now a very important character who was originally going to be the first tragic Death of the series, and now has to adapt his acting to a character that is scarred by the events that haunt him. Which he did marvelously btw. And with the tape presented in the second episode of this season you can see how they're adjusting the narrative to fit his tragic past and Sasha’s importance to the Archive. Hell when I was listening to S1 ending I was convinced Tim or Martin were going to be the victims of the attack. Narratively it all pointed to Sasha being the powerhose of the group. Which made it all the more hurtful when she was taken.

Speaking of said tape, in there she talks about how who you are is what you do and what you show to other people. She specially mentions Masks. Which if you paid attention to MAG 165 is kind of the whole theme. Faces being changed and with that memories, people, personalities. Maybe, as it’s been pointed out, she was not killed but was robbed of her face and she’s been wondering about, without even knowing who she is.

And on THAT regard we can look at what Not!Sasha said. She took her life. If you were to take this at face value (again, pun intended) it would mean literally killing her. But let’s think about that for a second. What the Not!Them does is take the lives of the people they attack. They put themselves in their place and change enough of R E A L I TY to fit themselves in. Photographs, memories, clothes, everything adapts to them, save for a few things, enough to make someone paranoid and afraid of them. Even Gertrude herself mentions how it is that they always seem to miss someone but I think it is rather the point that they do. If no one is aware of this supernatural identity theft then who is left to scare? Going back to our original point, what if Not!Them doesn’t kill their victims but instead take their lives? As in, everything else except killing them. There is also this proposal that every entity or at least many of them have their own dimension or pocket dimension. The Lonely has its misty shore, The Vast literally just casts you into an endless sky or the void of space, The Spiral has The Distortion trapping people inside of their halls, you get it. This leads to our next point.

This strange carrousel that appears as the Nightmare of many people fearing The Stranger gave us three very interesting bits of information to chew on: One, it shows what many people have theorized would be The Stranger’s or at least Not!Them's dimension. People who do not know who they are and are desperately trying to find out, even stealing other peoples faces, memories, names...their lives. Two, not only that but the creature that is controlling this IS Not!Them, Martin even calls them “It’s Goddess”, and mentions how it must have full control over it. Third, Jon rode one of these a few years ago. No this is not important to our conversation (I think) but I WILL chew on it because I love this adorable man and I wish I was as brave as him to get on a carousel at my age (25) because I’d love it. Anyway, going back to our second bit of info: Not!Them is dead. In a delicious moment of revenge Jon destroyed them and Martin asks what would happen to this place without them? Well, maybe the people that were inside were freed, at least for a moment, maybe with enough time to remember or search for who they were?

This all could mean that not only is Sasha alive, granted having been in a horrifying Nightmare for YEARS now but it may also mean that she is also finally free. There’s still the theory of other universes and I like to play with it because not only would resolve some stuff that looks to be narratively incoherent(tho nothing definitive there) but it would also explain a lot regarding Jon’s shifting memories of the events of the series. Again I am not that versed in this topic to bring it into question.

Finally it would seem that the story is focusing a lot on Sasha as an important entity(yes, still intended) not just as a deceased character with a potential role but as one that still can and will bring change to the story.

So, we seem to have a lot of reasons given to us by the story and how it is being told to believe that yes, Sasha is alive and important to the story. And here comes the dreaded buts/s.

Dead:

The most important fact that I want to point out in this regard is that The Magnus Archives takes death very seriously. Not only death in the real world, brought by cruel beings and people, supernatural creatures and evil systems that send people to die and be killed by the interest of others. But as probably many of you know the writers and producers of the show want death to be important, to have weight in the story. Both Jon and Alex have said so in QAs and you can tell just by listening to the show. When a character dies, they stay dead. Death is final and even people that “cheat death” must pay a high price, usually living miserable “lives” killing other people or regretting their so called luck in avoiding their final destination. Death makes every character aware of the danger they are in and when it is granted so easily it is shown as the result of corrupted, sadistic people and monsters (cough police cough acab cough). Therefore, bringing back a character from the dead would feel cheap, it would take the weight out of the story. That is not to say they haven’t faked deaths before, Trevor is a good example, and you have an Avatar of The End very much alive-ish after having a Satellite dropped on him (Man I love this podcast) but the key difference, to me at least, is that Sasha was The First. The important character that we were sure either wouldn’t die because of plot armor or the aforementioned narrative importance she was given. But no, everybody can die, and that makes everyone afraid and wary of their actions.

It would also make Not!Them less scary, less imposing which would rob them of their position as a horrifying monster. We either knew or suspected that they had killed and surely replaced Sasha, now we feared for what might happen to the rest of the team. In the end, they were not only very much dangerous but also yes, they killed Sasha in a gruesome way, now maybe even do the same to Jon. You could argue that being trapped in that hellscape of The Stranger is an equally fearsome destiny, but at this point we´ve seen Jon disregard said dangers and literally rescue TWO people from TWO different nightmarish dimensions. Yes it is stated as the almost miracle that it is and it is important to show Jon’s improvement and growth but it also robs them of their weight. Not completely of course, but as long as Jon is around they aren’t that scary anymore, and given that he is our protagonist well, he is always around. There is also that beautiful scene in which he gets a very much earned revenge. If Sasha was not dead then it kind of loses its value.

Now I am going to cheat a little bit because here I am going to take our previous points and turn them on their heads inserting an “Alive” point here. You could argue that of course it still has value. They don’t know that Sasha is alive and technically neither do we, killing Sasha or not this monster definitely tortured our crew and this is a well earned punishment. Plus it is very well written and presented. You could even make a point that, with the death of Not!Sasha comes the revival of Actual!Sasha. And getting this far after so many real deaths it could even make sense to have one narrative rebirth of a character that was robbed of her chance of glory. Which can fit in this established narrative of:”She could have been The Archivist! The Protagonist”.

And here comes the but: What if this is not about Sasha but instead Other!Sasha? Remember when I said I wasn’t going to take into consideration theories regarding parallel universes? Well I might have lied a little bit. You see, from the moment Jon played Gertrude’s tape regarding her successor I began to have this thought:”This is a theme of what ifs, of potential possibilities and different timelines”. Now, I have to say again that I’m not an expert on this topic, this is more of an analysis of what I think or feel I’m seeing the narrative of this season is heading towards. Maybe there is an alternative reality, with a different crew. One that might sound like our dear Archival Buddies but are actually very much different. On the surface, their masks if you will, they are our Sasha, our Tim, our Martin, but once we get to know them, to know about them, they are different people. There is this theory that the house cleaner that got trapped by the house on Hilltop Road is an alternative version of the nurse that worked close to said house. She mentions how her friends are different, how they almost don’t recognize her. But I mean, they didn’t reject her, they even helped her and recommended her that she make a statement at The Magnus Institute. What if there is another Sasha, but not quite the one we’d want. And even if Sasha was alive, if we disregarded all of this, what kind of person would she be after everything that's happened to her?

I’m not sure I can give you a conclusion here. We are after all barely in episode five of this 40 episode season and this might all be proven wrong next chapter, or the next, or all 35 that come after that, but I’ve seen many people talking about how they are completely sure that Sasha is definitely alive and kicking, and while I agree in many points I also have seen a lot of evidence, especially when it comes to the narrative, that would point to the contrary. It honestly crushes my heart to think that we have more than thirty weeks of content ahead of us and many people will keep the hope that this amazing character is still alive but would end up having said hopes utterly crushed by the end of it. But I can also see where you’re all coming from and can see why you would think that way, so I wanted to present what evidence and conjectures of my own I had on the topic. If you’ve gotten this far I want to thank you for joining me in this attempt at a presentation or...expose? Feel free to add any other points that you think or believe would favor one end or the other and I hope you had a good time while reading this. Love you all <3