#spoiler: It's not desolation

[cabinette]

MY SHAYLAAAAAAA

[vickozone]

Are these YOUR avatars?

[ian0key]

TMA ART (HeadCanons/FanCast) P.1

my headcanon of some TMA characters, there are also some Fan cast for reference.

Ah-...

TMA FAN CAST-> Part 2 , Part 3

TMA AU -> Part 1(Desolation!Tim) -> End!Sasha

FAN ART->->-> JONATHAN SIMS

[brookie9001]

There was something in their faces, though, a vicious hunger that I knew mirrored my own.

Who else has been keeping up with the The Magnus Protocol? I'm loving seeing how many other people are getting into it and all the creators making cool TMA/TMAGP content. One such person is @ghostcat-cosplays (they/them) who also dragged me into it, amongst other things 😂 Still love these Agnes shots they we even got published last year!

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - Scala ad Caelum

[theboombutton]

The interesting thing about tmagp episode 9 is that, from one perspective, it's about a pair of dice that kill you if you roll a crit fail. And in TMA that would be very End-coded. Games of chance were End-coded, and death is obviously The End. Open and shut case.

Except it's not, here. The statement giver had never seen anyone roll a 2 before he ran into Gary in that coffee shop, even after thousands of rolls. That's not an End artifact. Those dice are going out of their way not to kill anyone, save those who try to part with them.

The compulsion to roll feels like the Web, but is it? Certainly games of chance can become addicting, but I don't think that's the whole story. The Web is about the fear of the loss of control, yes, but it's also about something else controlling you instead. Here that something else is an embodiment of "random" chance - although again, it's not properly-random, not even pseudorandom. I have thoughts on that but they're best addressed further on.

Weirdly, of all the manifestations of Fear from TMA, this statement seems most akin to Jude Perry's - rolling the dice with other people's lives and fortunes, for the thrill of sometimes devastating them.

Which brings me back to the possibility of AU Fears.

In the Protocolverse, why shouldn't there be a Fear associated with chance and luck and fate and misfortune that happens for no good reason? A fear of lacking control and losing everything, without anyone else necessarily having that control.

This is where the way the dice are rigged becomes possibly meaningful. Their outcomes aren't random - they're what humans expect random to look like. They operate according to the gambler's fallacy, where the longer a chain of bad luck you have the more you're due for a good roll, and vice versa. Snake eyes aren't just a normal outcome of the 1-in-36 chance of rolling 2d6 - they're reserved for when someone is cursed with truly rotten luck. Notably that isn't true of boxcars: those just happen sometimes, without prerequisite.

Logically, a Fear of Misfortune wouldn't operate on the actual rules of probability, would it? It would be shaped by the superstitions of those that feared it.

(Also, I hope this statement puts the "they're not fears they're desires!" theory to bed. This guy didn't want the dice, and didn't especially want to roll them, but seemed compelled to anyway.)

[whimsickool]

RATING THE ENTITIES ON HOW FUN THEY'D BE AT MONOPOLY:

1.  The Flesh - 1/10, wont stop trying to use severed body parts as its player token, houses, and hotels. This would be fine if they werent so fresh and thus staining the board. Brought meatloaf and refused to specify what meat was actually involved. We agreed to order pizza instead.

2. The Desolation - 4/10, is a sore loser and barely wants to play as intended. It mostly keeps trying to flip the damn board and when finally realizing its temper tantrum won't work, they just give all their assets to one player to tilt the game unfavorably like a dick.

3. The Lonely - 5/10, didn't show up on time, didn't play, and mostly sat on the couch for all of game night watching reruns of Golden Girls. This is due to the lonely feeling one gets when realizing you'll never have friends like The Golden Girls. They still get a point for watching though.

4. The Dark - 2/10, at first they just kept flipping off the lights which made it hard to play but when The Desolation suggested candles (the only helpful thing they did all evening) The Dark responded by leaking dark water all over which got the money and chance/community cards wet.

5. The Spiral - 6/10, just enjoyed going around and around and around on the board, sorta played? Mostly lied about how much money they had or owed or what chance/community card they pulled. This was because, "math is for losers." Thus, they did whatever they could to quickly get back to going around and around the board.

6. The Vast - 4/10, played the game, didnt perform any antics, but they kept pointing out their vast amount of wealth  after getting hotels on the first row. Points lost for being a prick.  I will say, from time to time, I would get the over whelming feeling that I was falling. This wasn't a large issue until it happened to The Spiral and suddenly no one can seem to find the bathroom in petty revenge.

7. The Slaughter - 0/10, killed the pizza man. This provided two major headaches: a deadbody to deal with and the pizza being ruined from being dropped. Luckily, The Flesh found use for the dead body. As for dinner, we resorted to just munching on the snacks. Also, its really uncomfortable being threatened whenever they happen to land on your property and owe you rent.

8. The Corruption - 3/10, always brings rotten snacks covered in mold. Uses live bugs for pieces which aside from being gross is just not effective cause they dont stay still. How can I recall that their property has three houses when the peices are crawling on my wall? I also just think it is common courtesy to shower before coming over to game night.

9. The Hunt - 8/10, overly competitive but focused on the game and largely helped wrangle the others. Did keep making references to Wolf of Wall Street though which got old quick. It is worth mentioning that they also talked alot about their various hunting trips and buddies which was fine at first until they started describing a recent hunt that I think may have been my coworker who went missing last week.

10. The Eye - 2/10, cheater. Fucking. Cheater. I didn't even know you could cheat that many ways in Monopoly. Also they brought the lead pipe from a Cluedo board as their game piece and kept giggling when I asked why. Further, it is rude to pressure a trade deal by use of blackmailing. Had a lengthy argument about how technically you dont have to draw from the top of the Chance and Community Chest pile

11. The Buried - 8/10, dirt everywhere and I can't be certain but I think they made my chairs smaller? Maybe it was the table? I felt far too close to everyone. I will say they did mostly play the game but you will feel buried beneath your debt after landing on their property which... now that i think about it.. why was their rent so high? That can't be right..

12. The Web - 7/10, much like insects spiders are NOT a suitable game piece. Didn't technically cheat but managed to get ridiculous trade deals from everyone, especially The Spiral. The Desolation gave all their assests to The Eye to screw over The Web but.. to be honest the game is still going and I.. is it possible to have a stalemate in monopoly?

13. The End - 9/10, played the game but kept saying we should up the stakes by having losers die. I explained that this was the sort of game where if it goes on long enough, death is actually the preferred alternative. They understood and got really quiet for awhile. I think they are to blame for why I'm up past my bedtime. I'm growing afraid they'll all still be playing by next week.

14. The Stranger - 6/10, tried to pretend they were my mom. I know they arent my mom. So they taunted me bu saying they were my dad. This was effective as I don't know my dad. Asshole move. Also, would not stop commenting how dry my skin looked. Other than that, yeah actually played the game!

15. The Extinction - 0/10, when it was finally time for everyone to leave we all learned why Extinction had not shown up. Bad news, the outside world has been nuked. The good news is that I don't think I have to pay rent anymore. Or go to work. Oh god. What do I do about groceries?

[gideonysis]

Missing them! Very much!

[lucabyte]

hello

is this how your peopls work. i am obsessed with your comics and the panel layout and the way they react to eachother and sdgafkhgfdhsagfha s i very desperately need to have a grasp on how you see them in their dynamic and interacting and i feel like i don't know as much about how isabeau and loop be interacting but i am so so so so SO curious as to how that goes and how they feel about eachother pre-"i'm a former siffrin" and post-"ok you know who i am"

oh hell yeah a diagram we love a diagram

but yeah i'd say you've gotten my interpretation of the dynamic down pretty solid??

in general i think my instinct with loop-isabeau interactions is a lot tamer/calmer than others ive seen, my reasoning for why being hmm... i think i can note my core 'things im keeping in mind from the text' here

isabeau's line in act 6 remarking that loop seemed 'shy'. for all of loop's bravado @ siffrin (and thus the player's pov), they are still siffrin, so while it can be easy to percieve them as this loud bombastic personality-- there is this textual reminder that them acting this way is probably due in part to being up against siffrin, someone who won't speak unless spoken to (and thus loop takes the initiative, and is also presumably reveling a bit in making them uncomfortable and annoyed, inkeeping with their self-hatred and self-flaggellation) this to me reads as a reminder that they'd probably retreat into their shell hard when presented with other people- the party included. so even if i can see them trying to undermine their relationships with others, i think it's probably more on the insidious 'insulting siffrin to make the party protective of them' side, because that also feeds into 'proving' that the party only cares about one siffrin and that loop can be replaced. meanwhile isabeau has shown that, even with a vicious jealous streak, he can mostly keep a lid on it. he's the most emotionally intelligent of the group, and would probably be able to suss out loop's self-harm-via-getting-people-pissed-off-at-them gambit relatively simply given how obvious it is. also isabeau is not immune to insecurity-- and would probably let loop take some precidence over their relationship with siffrin because 'well i cant compete with the guy who actually went through All Of The Timeloop With Them.' because like... damn how are you supposed to do that. loop understands their pain better than isa ever could, and it would show in their fucked up unspoken understanding of each other (because how is Isa to know thats because theyre the same guy, and not just because the timeloop traumabonded the fuckers baddddly. which it also did.).

timeloop stressful as fuck. absolutely has both of them on tenterhooks the whole time. we visibly see how it affects siffrin (despondance & mania & aggression), and we see SAPfrin be very. very very despondant. so it would seem to me that loop is basically in a perpetual state of mania, given how sif's internal monologue begins to resemble their way of speaking (with the tee hees and such) when they are clearly broaching into manic states. one can assume that if you take loop out of the Torment Nexus, while they probably wouldn't faire well, all of the tension and pressure that's holding them up would collapse, likely putting them more depressive again by default? Of note, whenever i write loop's dialogue (which im told i do well? i will be honest i kind of feel like that's far too high praise.) i initially write it as very blunt and pissed off-- and will afterwards go back in and Maybe change wording to be more 'silly', but mostly i just add tildes~, italics, exclamation points and laughter to the pissed off dialogue without changing the actual content of it?

loop likes their friends! They are fucked up in the head about it (badly!!!) but they like their friends! They still care a lot, and can barely even hide it a little bit with their aloofness in game. it feels redundant to even try pointing out where they slip up because its everywhereee. They de-person their Actors because theyre the same lines over and over and over, but you see in SAP alone how any break from the script makes them overwhelmed with emotion, and how devastated they are if that deviation occurs a second time and becomes predictable (dying to the king after triggering the requisites for the true end, forcing you to go through it again). BUT!! You take their friends out of the timeloop and let them be New Unpredictable People again? I genuinely find it hard to believe mx siffrin "i love my friends so much id explode the world about it" nolastname would be able to see that and just go "nope im emotionally disconnected i can keep being a bitch to these guys forever". like no theyre gonna slip into being at least neutral no matter what. even if it's in a quiet depressive state when the mania wears off.

my biggest deviation from frequently observed fandom things here i think: i think loop doesn't actually believe that ISAT!Party are 'replacements'. they rarely if ever word a sentiment like this. this is something the fandom goes for because the horror of being replaced wholesale probably WOULD make it easier to cope if you considered those people to Not Be Your Real Friends. But loops WHOLE act 6 spiel? 'THEY WERE MINE FIRST. I LOVED THEM'? (paraphrased) they obviously desperately want to be with them again, and know they're the same people. The Fighter/Defender discrepancy clue is mostly metatext here-- since Loop never acknowledges the defender title-- just calling ISAT!Isa Fighter-- because they are the same guy. Your Fighter. They even call them Fighter in the "You got memory of X, your Fighter will now..." dialogues! Which are practically system dialogues! So. they see these isabeaus as the same. And while I would not put it past them to come up with the "they are different, my party is Dead" thing to Cope... I do think it is a delusion, plain and simple, and that I think any post-knowing-the-truth party would probably shut down weird rituals ive seen the fandom propose (often in a cute way??? it makes me feel insane?? like the concept of loop 'memorialising' their 'dead' family is not cute its nuts. they are being nuts. its like actively feeding into an extremely maladaptive coping mechanism. sorry this is like a massive sidebar but like. Yes i do think this is something loop might do if left unchecked. but it should not be presented as sane or rational? it outright undermines the themes of the game to treat the concept of 'Loop's party' being 'dead' as 'True'?? There's like several points in the game where Loop and Siffrin express that things that happened in the loops Still Happened even if the party dont recall it-- which is why their actions-- being cruel or doing 'experiments' still hold weight and can be Wrong. That it's tragic that the party will never remember but that their forgetting is NOT a pass to do whatever with no consequnce (experiment, bad touch, etc). It follows that by Nixing all of "loop's party", treating them as seperate, in some way implies loop's memories are Lesser and what they did "doesn't matter as much", which is antithetical on account of being contradictory to however you take the stated theme. PLUS... The game and Paratext are clear that there is One Timeline. SAP is in the same contiguous space as ISAT-- it is effectively just that on the loop between SAP and ISAT that we the audience dont see-- loop ate that star and when the loop restarted there were two of them. for all intents and purposes one can intuit that Loop 0 of isat and SAPfrin's first loop are legitimately identical from sif's POV, as Loop does not reveal themselves until Loop 1. BUT YEAH GIANT SIDEBAR OVER. THIS WHOLE READ OF THE TEXT INFORMS MY THOUGHTS RE: ISALOOP AND RELATED CONCEPTS VERY GREATLY)

jesus christ i wrote a lot in the above um. sorry. i dont know if its intelligable. uh. good luck?

im also on team 'orrery book and sif's thoughts about it belie a real deep-seated brainworm' re: their response to a Cautionary Tale About How You Will Inevitably Kill Your Double seemingly being "Nah, we'd be besties."... like. i do think it is. funny. and not particularly Unbased. Given how they are. For siffrin and loop to specifically be compelled by how they are the same guy. And i think that there's a lot to be mined from 'Both of them are convinced that the party knowing who loop is would fuck up everything badly, so they're going to great lengths to conseal this' played in tandem with '... they are like. very much explicitly doing things together that are directly related to a feeling of shared ownership over siffrin's body and form & the fact they are The Same Guy'. like it is a hysterical setup to me and i think is only added to when you have to put Isabeau in the middle of this polycule also. With the few exceptions of times ive drawn stuff specifically hinging on characters Knowing Who Loop Is (which is like. all bonnie-centric stuff so far? i think?), i take a lot of care to try and make their exchanges Vague as if they are worried about being overheard or saying something that's too much of a smoking gun. But also it's really god damn funny to think about how concerning some of those things could sound the vaguer you make them. Remember that above all i live and die by The Bit. (... as do they.) ie basically because im powered by The Bit thats why i focus more on the sloop side because its like. actively Funnier and more drama filled. or at least presents oppertunities for such. i feel like on isabeaus side here its kinda frequently like

yknow ? (oh god my formatting is broken now) . i DO very much think it can become like. niceys. of course. i think they can just be normal fucking throuple eventually (though if i'm going that goddamn far into the future u may as well partycule the fuckers 2 me. by the time theyve solved whatever the fuck you call pre-reveal isiloops i think odile has gotten involved at the very least. but this is why i mostly keep myself to the realm of 'the mostly immediate post-game conflict' stuff since i think all these characters leave off the end of the game with such solid springboards for arcs set up (clearly intentionally) that the infinite realm of possibilities opens up too wide for me to be comfortable with.) anyway i keep thinking about the tragicomedy of isabeau finally finding an "in" to nurture a friendly bond with loop by comisserating and steeling themselves for changing again even though it feels like a betrayal of their previous actions/beliefs and how fucking funny the idea of 'loop reveal but theyre like 2 weeks into using she/they' is. just like you get all the way through the horrors of 'oh jesus christ the timeloop was even worse than we thought it was' but now '.. d. do you still . what pronouns do you want?' is tacked onto the end. Sorry did you hear something . must've been the wind. anyway . this ask is a fucking mess i hope its readable like at all . can you tell ive been brainscramblied for six weeks

TL;DR:

yeaghj you got it. its not like im doing anything revolutionary im just trying to stick as close as i can do what i percieve the characterisation is in canon & thus generally dont tie down any of my fanwork to specific post-canon-plot-concepts. its all just nebulous extrapolation set 'pretty close to the end of the game because i think these characters are going to grow and change extremely rapidly once the game is over given how they're all intentionally poised for character arcs when the game ends'. but also you should put isabeau in the worst social bind of all time with two of the most mentally unwell BPD OCD havers youve ever seen and let him try to figure out the balance of 'be gentle' and 'treat them like the almost-30-year-old adult they literally are' while he also balances his own set of entire life changes it'll be fine he'll be fine (someone should probably check on him)

[siriuslydumb]

THE PICTURES

THE DISTORTION

THE FIRE

THE PARANOIA

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

[iseathegalaxy]

rewatched the hobbit trilogy (i love it, fight me) and no-one will ever convince me there's no romantic subtext between bilbo and thorin (intended or not)

because how can you look at me straight in the eye and tell me there isn't something more than friendship when thorin, in the middle of having dragon fever and being completely consumed by the treasure that sorrounds him, doesn't trust any of his brothers, his kin, the dwarves he has always been with but he trusts bilbo, only him, the stranger he just met and didn't even like at first and who he told he was a burden and no help and should go back home

how can you look at me straight in the eye and claim there's just a friendship when, again, in the middle of this all-consuming trance thorin is in because of the piles of gold he still gifts bilbo a mithril mailchain to protect him, all while mistrusting everyone else

how can you look at me straight in the eye and utter that there's nothing there when it doesn't even cross thorin's mind that the one that has the arkenstone could be bilbo but immediately thinks of everyone else

how can you look at me straight in the eye and declare they just share a mission when bilbo is the only one there with him in death (not blaming the others for their absence, merely pointing out a creative decision) and thorin asks for forgiveness and they both share this very intimate last moment

and how can you look at me straight in the eye and speak that there is nothing romantic in bilbo's words when, after balin says thorin will pass into legend, he replies that "to [bilbo] he was never that, he was... to [bilbo]... he was..." and he cannot bring himself to finish the sentence! all while balin is smiling knowingly at him!

be it either because it was on purpose or just another side effect of men refusing to write fully fledge female characters (or a female character at all) and therefore giving the men the kind of deep, complex, incredibly intricate relationships the world refuses to acknowledge for anyone but straight couples, we'll never know, but they're there and oh god, do they make me cry when they end like this one does

[cabinette]

some avatar archivist team explorations... sasha here is actually the only normal one lmao. i'll draw my stranger version at some point but maybe when I have more spoons

[vickozone]

Audio. Opperior. Vigilo.

A list of The 14 Fears + Extinction [this was a school project]

(It got a little messed up. Oh well)

[ian0key]

TMA AU ( TimSasha Lives) P.1

Desolation!Tim / & / P.2 -> END!SASHA??

( Fancast -> Manny Jacinto) -> FIRST DESING

P.3 -> S3 final

P.4 -> Jon's kidnapping

P.5 -> GERYYY

P.6 -> Eye-apocalypse

So.... I created an au in which Tim and Sasha survived their respective deaths, but with big consequences.

They turnerd into fears avatars.

Tim became part of desolation after the circus explosion.

He ended up in coma for 4 months, bc at first he refused to be one of the monsters who killed his brother.

But he stayed for Sasha.

Unlike Jon, his body suffered many more damage, doctors said he would definitely die from his wounds, but he didn't.

An extra detail that I would like to add, is that after waking up, someone (Anabelle) sends to him a prosthetic mask, which was clearly inspired by the circus.

Tim set it on fire.

I will publish the design and history of Sasha later, (which gives more context to Tim's history)

(Also,many of his wounds are recovering little by little, thanks to his regeneration and surgeries.)

Extra: ->->-> JONATHAN SIMS

[readingslime]

Spoilers for gtn and the first bit of htn

this is so fucked up... Like she said “I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it.” but she can't actually die because of her responsibilities. And her guilt. So she did the next best thing and killed herself off without killing herself in the most compartmentalizing harrowhark way so she can call herself dead... Like gideon... Dead and gone like a relief but still continuing on just enough to complete her responsibilities... Even the things she actually wanted to do like be a lyctor, gain knowledge, be alive to see the body come back, she's treating like burdensome things that she doesn't want to stick around to see and do with her own eyes. Like this isn't an act of being reborn and living without the painful truth of what she did, she's literally through this letter treating herself like a puppet, planning to manipulate her future self like she once did gideon, just live by the guidelines and don't ask any questions somehow knowing that even her future self would be so weird and fucked up and self hating that she would go through with it

like there is no hope for this future version of harrowhark. That's not in her plans at all

[lavender-wiitch]

don’t have the words to elaborate it so well rn but it’s so ironic that the cult of the lightless flame relied so much on their hope on agnes, their hope that their ritual would succeed, the hope that their sacrifices would pay off. they clung to that almost desperately, whilst the desolation is about the loss of that and having nothing left. in a way they ended up like their victims because this is what they cared about and they lost it. they lost whilst clinging to the thing they swore to take from everyone and everything, and got surprised that bit them in the ass.

i know this is more complicated and more related to fear of loss, and that rituals wouldn’t work either way — plus this is me at 3AM thinking about this — but still. i still like thinking about the ironic tragedy of their entire concept. it’s personally fascinating. idk