#the tma characters had their turn

[pmpknsoup]

controversial tmagp take incoming...i actually really dont want the story to start focusing on jmart. i like the little nods to them, but i really do hope they dont show up in canon as like. Characters. i enjoy them haunting the narrative or whatever the phrase is, but their ending was satisfying to me, and im honestly enjoying protocol as its own entity, of sorts. if that makes sense? i want to learn about alice, sam, celia, gwen, lena, colin, and all these new antagonists. i dont want to learn More about jon sims and martin blackwood, unless its relevant to the protocol canon. if that makes sense?? i hope that makes sense

[apothecaryofthedamned]

i like Gerard Keay a normal amount

[morning-softness]

[Image Description: Martin Blackwood and Jonathan Sims sit together on a couch. Martin’s hands rest in his lap. He gazes fondly down at Jon, who is leaning against his side. Jon is curled up under a blanket, with ear defenders on his ears, and his eyes are closed as if he is asleep. Rain pours down outside, visible through a window next to the couch. Martin is depicted as a tall, fat man with pale skin, freckles, blue eyes, and short, wavy, blond hair. He is wearing round, black-framed glasses, an orange and yellow jumper, and blue jeans. Jon is depicted as a short, thin man with medium brown skin and long, curly, greying dark hair. He is wearing rectangular, silver-framed glasses. End Description.]

Once again excited to be participating in the Rusty Quill Big Bang run by @pilesofnonsense ! This is my second piece (1st piece here) for the fic Fraying at the Seams written by starrynightsky03 on ao3.

[beeapocalypse]

haunted once more by a dumb character idea

[devotedlystrangewizard]

black sails is still so insane like yeah! here you go! fun pirate show! heres the utter torment that is being queer in this time period. heres several episodes setting up an m - f - m love triangle before they reveal it was far FAR more complicated than that. here are lesbians. everyone fucking sucks. have fun

[asyipyip]

hold on everyone shut up im getting super emotional about jonathan sims

[ghosty-schnibibit]

can my dreams please stop turning me into jon bc whenever they do martin is also there and i wake up sad that i'm not boyfriends with fictional character martin blackwood in real life

[amelie-isnt-french]

I just wanna dump s1 Jon in the depths of 2010s fandom tumblr and watch him struggle sksksksk

magnus archives april fool's episode and it opens with "statement of Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way regarding her time at Hogwarts. Statement begins. My name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks

[zoomclown]

thinking about Jonathan Sims and Samama Khalid.

Thinking about how, by all laws of Horror Story Trope, Jon should not be the protagonist. If I'd never heard of tma and you showed me a lineup of the archives crew and asked me to guess who died first I would have pointed to Jon. He's the paranoid professor archetype. The one who dies discovering some crucial bit of information at the beginning to push the plot forward. He's unfriendly, cowardly, insecure, and makes other people do his investigation for him for all of season 1. He doesn't do anything even remotely heroic until the second half of the show. He has no interest in romance for the first half of the show. The audience wasn't even aware Jon had a dark past until he starts telling us about A Guest for Mr. Spider. But he is *Chosen.* Despite the fact that he has no actual qualities of a hero, he's chosen as the eyes special boy. Over the course of the show he starts to become more and more like an actual protagonist. He starts trying to save the world, resist the eye, all that jazz. For one reason or another, being the Archivist turns Jonathan "definition of a side character" Sims into the main character.

Then we have Sam. Sam starts acting like a horror/mystery protagonist almost immediately. He is young, charming, has a mysterious past (that we are made aware of pretty much right away) and a curiosity that causes him to frequently put himself personally in the path of The Horrors. He pokes around where he doesn't belong and looks for clues. He's the center of an office love triangle for goodness sake. He has a strong sense of duty to others and will put himself in harms way to protect those he loves. He exudes main character energy. He has everything a horror protagonist needs to push the plot along. But Sam wasn't *Chosen.* Despite being exactly the person you'd expect the plot to follow. And I can't help but wonder if, in the same way that the narrative made Jon important, it's going to make Sam unimportant. Irrelevant. If, with his rejection from The Magnus Institute, Sam is going to disappear completely. Become a mystery.

Because at the end of the day, so much of your life, your impact on the world, your relevance, has absolutely nothing to do with you. So much of it has everything to do with those in power, and whether they decide you're important.

It all comes down to your own rotten luck.

[orchidbreezefc]

ok. years have passed and we've had some distance, so i'm finally gonna take the leap of faith that tma fandom is finally ready to hear me on this. let's talk about tannins.

161 was the first tma episode i heard on early release, and i felt the bit where martin declines wine and cites tannins was pretty obvious in its implications. cool, got it, say no more.

imagine my surprise when i was one of maybe three people i saw read between the lines there, in a fandom famous for red stringing--a fandom that immediately caught the much less obvious thread of ignition sources in the same episode. i'll spell it out: alcohol is an issue for martin.

maybe it just felt obvious because addiction is a pet issue for me--as it is for jonny, who has said everything he writes is filtered through a lens of addiction. i don't know if that's due to his own experience or a loved one's, and i won't speculate; i also don't know if martin personally struggled with drinking or just avoids it for fear he would, but alcohol would fit what we know of his family. his dad walking out and his mum spiralling into bitter wallowing and verbal abuse? i'd bet one or both of them drank, yeah.

on a basic level martin tries to decline alcohol, and that alone should have raised eyebrows given what we know of martin and, again, a fandom that dissects everything. we already knew martin "K" blackwood lied about his personal life and his family in particular, especially pre-canon, which is when this flashback took place. i was shocked that everyone took his flimsy excuse at face value with no further questions.

and the excuse is flimsy. martin turns down wine by--nervously--exclaiming tannins are "a proven headache trigger!" which sounds like trivia from a magazine cover and not the words of someone who actually has headaches--and it hasn't come up before or since. jon, confused, points out that tea, a drink martin consumes to a degree that is memetic both in- and out-of-universe, also contains tannins, and martin squawks a panicked, "what?!"

if tannins are enough of a concern for martin that he knew they're in wine and so avoids it, why didn't he know they're in his drink of choice? why does he still drink tea at the time of canon, and why doesn't he struggle with constant headaches from consuming 'a proven headache trigger' day in and day out? why, indeed, would someone avoid wine and not tea?

when sasha insists martin drink he caves and agrees to 'just a drop'. i imagine him pouring it in a plant, which admittedly he could have done if tannins really were the issue. i will say that i, for one, would be less likely to falsely agree to something that makes me physically ill than to a private issue that i'd rather not be pressed on any further. this scene also establishes martin's birthday was an ice cream party instead of the more traditional visit to a pub.

also, this scene was in the first episode of the final season, as one of three flashbacks that could have been to any pre-canon event in the archives. prime narrative real estate. not really time one would waste on establishing the important character context that martin has... headaches. which never comes up before or after, even regarding the week he spent in spiral town. but you know what is pretty crucial character background...?

it felt like a no-brainer, and yet all i saw was h/c fluff about jon attending to martin's headaches. and i hate feeling bitter about disability representation. i want folks with chronic headaches to feel seen and have fluffy escapist fantasies. i don't want to be mad about people portraying a character with a disability. but, guys? you got the wrong disability. jonny sent a clear message, and it went over fandom's head.

[theboombutton]

Ok so Alex was the main writer for this casement, and obviously he knew we would latch on to incidental characters that seem a lot like Jon and Martin.

The questions I have are: first, whether it was a prank on TMA fans; and second, if it's not a prank, what he intended to convey by including them. Alex doesn't seem like the kind of guy to leave jmart fan service for its own sake; if those are truly alternate Jon and Martin, I suspect they're there for a story or setting reason.

Was it a prank?

I'm inclined to answer no. Darrien didn't just describe them, he wondered aloud while recounting his story if what happened to him also happened to them. That's not out of the question for prank red-string-bait, but the more you harp on incidental characters that seem like Jon and Martin, the more plausible it becomes that they are. People red-stringing over things that the author draws a circle around and writes "look at this!" next to isn't funny - it's just analysis.

Prank is still on the table, but it's not my preferred explanation.

If they are alternate Jon & Martin, what does their presence here imply?

One thing it probably implies is that we're dealing with more than one alternate universe here.

So far we've only had evidence of two: the Protocolverse, and Celia's home universe. We're reasonably sure that Celia's home universe is the Archiverse, because the character voiced by Lowri in TMA only took the name Celia after she lost her memories in the Eyepocalypse. And if Darrien comes from a universe where Martin worked reception at a therapist's office and Jon was a client, then he didn't come from the Archiverse. He came through from another, until-now-unknown-to-us universe.

Wild speculation ahead

Turn back now if you only want thoughts that are well-evidenced

There's also another possibility we could stack on top of the implication of a third universe. This is primarily supported by Doylist reasoning, rather than in-universe evidence.

Alex wrote ?Jon and ?Martin in close proximity to Darrien's universe shift. He brought attention to the fact that Darrien didn't recognize either of them - ?Martin being a new hire, and ?Jon being a new-enough face to be worth pondering. This would imply it was fairly likely ?Jon and ?Martin's first meeting - likely even their first time being in a room together. And Alex, through Darrien, further invited us to wonder if ?Jon and ?Martin had been pulled across universes as well.

Is it possible that the universe shift happened because of Therapyverse's Jon and Martin being in close proximity at the time?

Jon and Martin are apparently cosmically important in at least the Protocolverse, given that they manifested as two of FR3-D1's voices. What if something in the Protocolverse is pulling in Jons and Martins from other universes? It might be easier or more efficient to find or to pull them when they cross paths, and Darrien just got schlurped up with them this time.

Who would be interested in collecting alternate Jons and Martins? I can think of a few possibilities:

The Fears. They've got Jon and Martin reading case files, maybe they need more Jon & Martin to make FR3-D1 go.

The OIAR. Lena said some entities are benevolent, most aren't, and they're trying to maintain a balance. If Jon and Martin are their "benevolent entities," then maybe they think pulling additional copies into their universe's fear-space strengthens them. Maybe they're even right.

The Magnus Institute itself. It was still around at the time of Darrien's shift, given that the case is from the Institute's files. Jonah Magnus may have figured out (or found out) that Jon and Martin had something to do with his ascension in another universe, and started abducting alternate versions of them as part of his research.

Maybe Chester and Norris started talking a year ago because someone or something finally pulled enough Jons and Martins (and J2s?) into an extradimensional JMalgamation to give them the necessary power.

Maybe Darrien got spat out practically starved to death because he couldn't feed on fear, nor were there versions of himself that could that he could amalgamate with.

And who the fuck is the second J?

[kitsuna21]

and the crowd goes wild ‼️📢📢📢

Hey does anyone want to see a picture of Timothy Stoker holding up my pfp guy

[anouchard]

how did you get into the magnus archives? like how did you discover it since you were a fan before you got cast?

have your opinions on the podcast (like fav character, headcanons, etc) changed since getting cast?

anyways thanks if you do answer!!! you do such an amazing job as gwen in tmp and it’s truly a delight every time we get to hear from the fandoms favourite character!!!

Hiya!

So, during lockdown I started a TTRPG campaign with friends from uni, college, drama school ... you name it. Just a random bunch of people who liked the idea.

Around October/November 2020, one of them recommended Magnus. They're a massive horror nerd, and I was not into horror at that point (or so I thought, like a FOOL.), but I liked the sound of it and decided to give it a go. I listened to the first two episodes and only broke off because I was about to go and play D&D, and from that moment I was in love - with Magnus, with horror, with voice acting, the whole lot. I said "God, I don't care if I have to work awful jobs for 6.5 days a week - just let me spend the remaining half day working on a show like that" (touch wood, I haven't needed to keep that promise yet ...).

Anyway, time went on, friend and I were on the phone to each other sobbing over the finale (I had liveblogged every episode with them), and that was that. A week later I finished my MA, started working day jobs, and had already e-mailed RQ after being encouraged by my old improv teacher whose name I had heard in the credits a few times (thank you, Ian ❤️).

Three years on and here we are! Madness.

Anyway, I'm not sure how much my opinions have changed as I haven't re-listened since I was cast (except to the odd old favourite). I think it would feel strange to do so now - so much has happened and changed in my life both personally and professionally, and I also listened to TMA at such a distinct moment in time. I always loved the Archivist, Jonah, and the whole concept of the Eye, as well as the Leitner storyline in S2 (possibly my favourite series).

Right, that's turned into another essay. Thank you so much for such kind words - I fully expected everyone to loathe Gwen, so this has all been something of a surprise. Still, I suppose there's still time yet ... 😊

[gammija]

im so excited that ink5oul had no idea what they were turning into, no idea of the bigger meaning of it all, didn't consciously choose this, even as they are clearly not a great person.

one of the weaker parts of tma imo (quite minor, but still) is how Jon seems to be unique among the other Avatars we meet - they're all gleefully evil. only our main characters are afforded the benefit of reluctance in their becoming. Which isnt necessarily a contradiction in the show, but it doesnt quite flow as nicely into the s5 case that there was never a dividing line between 'victim' and 'evil avatar', they were all varying degrees of complicit. In hindsight that can be explained because most avatars Jon met‚ Elias placed in his path. so it benefitted him to have them be antagonistic, and he mightve picked them for that reason

But i always wanted to see more uncertain avatars like Jon (and Martin and Melanie and Daisy to lesser extents) out in the wild so im v glad that Protocol seems to be going more in that direction with Ink5oul and Needles!

[nausikaaa]

i find the switch from tape recorders in the magnus archives to cameras and phones in the magnus protocol so good.

in tma whenever characters made plans or acted in secret, the tape recorder would be found and turned off/smashed. almost everyone agreed that they were listening, even if they didn't know who was listening. we only ever caught glimpses of what was going on outside of statements; taking down Elias at the end of season 3, for example, was planned, but we didn't get to hear it because they turned off the tapes.

but meanwhile in tmagp, we have Sam realising that he's being spied on, but he thinks it's just around the computers. so we hear his whole conspiracy, which he wants to keep secret, because we can hear into the breakroom. only Colin is wary of mobile phones. Sam is onto us, but his guard isn't as up as it needs to be.

in a way, we're seeing much more. so the suspense and surprises have to come less from being kept in the dark by the characters, and more from the characters truly knowing as little as we do. we only know as much as Colin, and we barely hear from him.

we thought we had things figured out, we got comfortable, but now we've arrived in this new world where the rules (and fears) have changed, and we're fighting to keep up.

[jouxlskaard]

Strap in, fuckers. This is a long one.

I've seen a lot of discourse and discussion recently about why TMAGP isn't resonating with listeners as much as TMA did, with a lot of people pointing towards the infrequent structure of each episode and the lack of subtlety that TMA had once excelled in. And while both of these are true, I think the main culprit that has caused these problems for listeners is one thing: the pacing.

TMAGP is only going to be 60 (Edit: 90) episodes long, compared with TMA's absolute behemoth of 200. When I'd found out about this, I'd assumed that it meant TMAGP would have a much smaller story - not having to establish as much information as TMA did, and allowing the story to have lower stakes as a result. This certainly wasn't a bad thing, as many sequels that have tried to one-up their predecessors have gone disastrously wrong, but I knew that the structure would be different to TMA as a result.

However, from the 12 episodes that we've seen so far, it appears that TMAGP is going to have similar levels of stakes to TMA - not the same stakes, of course, but they'll likely be on close to equal footing. This means that TMAGP has to establish the same amount of information to listeners with significantly less time to do it in, and the pacing has to speed up to adhere to that. In the first 12 episodes of TMA, we had established one possible recurring statement character (Gerry), a disturbing worm woman (Prentiss), and the fact that Jon doesn't like his assistant and refuses to believe any of the statements. In the first 12 episodes of TMAGP, we've established every important protagonist and what they sound like, two recurring statement characters (Bonzo and Ink5oul) with one that has already physically appeared, much of Sam's backstory and his ties to the Magnus Institute and the fact that something is deeply wrong with their workplace. That is a big difference.

This difference in pacing is what I believe is turning listeners away from what they'd originally enjoyed about TMA, because there's no longer that warm, comforting atmosphere when you listen to it. Its sound isn't designed to come from a tape recorder and a tape recorder only anymore; it's no longer a sit-down and listen to the Archivist tell you spooky stories for 20 minutes anymore; and, like I mentioned earlier, the structure is no longer the same throughout each episode. The horror anthology aspect, whilst still being there, has now taken a back-burner to the metanarrative because so much has to be established in so little time. To many, that's a bad thing. They listened to the original because they liked the statements, and the little things connecting them hinted to a much larger story at play. When this story was revealed, we got to see Jonny Sims and his brilliant prose at its best, because there was no longer anything to hide and the statements were in their purest forms - no longer having to establish information to the audience, and simply basking in the fear.

I'm sure we'll get to see the same thing in TMAGP once the narrative reaches that point, but the current pacing has uprooted a lot of listeners' expectations for the show. I'm going to listen to the entire thing, personally; yeah, it's different, and it doesn't deliver the same vibes and comfort as TMA did, and I probably won't be able to fall asleep whilst relistening to the more obscure episodes like I could before, but in a frankly disturbing way, I'm still fascinated with what Jonny, Alex and the other writers have created. This type of horror is the only kind that I genuinely enjoy, and I'm excited to see what direction Protocol goes in.

Edit: I feel like I should clarify that I don't see this comparison as something that takes away from TMAGP. Alex has said that it's going to be different from the get-go, and I do think that comparing it to TMA is an exercise in futility to an extent. I just wanted to talk about the shows together because I feel like they complement one another, and the narrative beats that I've talked about are less to do with TMA on its own and more to do with general narrative structure. We have buildup, payoff and pacing no matter what show it is, because that's what makes a story. I think TMAGP could be taken a little bit like Deltarune in terms of its relation to the original source material: separate entities with some overlap in character and themes. At the end of the day, it's still early days for the show and this entire spiel could just end up gathering dust - I just think it's a cool thing to think about, and it gives me an excuse to infodump about how pacing can affect a narrative and the audience's response to it.

I wrote this while my cat was laying on me. Have a picture as a reward for reading this whole thing.