#unpopular tma opinions

[thunderandsage]

my unpopular opinion about tmagp

so we’re twenty episodes into TMAGP, and while i definitely am enjoying it, i think that the reasons why it’s so popular are actually what are preventing me from taking it from “casual listening” to “i love this piece of media”? like i know this may be an unpopular opinion but bear with me

like with TMA, i love the ambience of dread, the obsessive search for knowledge, the small details coming together into a horrifying picture—in short, i appreciate it as a piece of horror media and the way that it functions as thus. my beginning forays into tumblr happened around the same time as i got into the proverbial meat of the podcast, but the thing is, the TMA fandom here is very much based on the characters, and that’s fine—i like this abt tumblr actually—it’s just that in this case, the horror aspect wasn’t in the main focus so much as the interpersonal relationships, whereas while i do like the characters, i tend to view them more dispassionately as vehicles for the themes of the stories

so, TMAGP comes along and while i knew it would of course be different from TMA, the direction that this shift seems to be is more to the interpersonal connections—aka, the stuff the fanbase likes. much more time is dedicated to the characters and their dynamics, and even the antagonist/possible avatar characters are showing up and becoming distinct personalities at a faster rate than in TMA (where this was more of a slow crawl with scattered details). basically, TMAGP is more heavy on the aspects that were fan-favorites in the TMA fandom. the statements themselves are still interesting, but i feel that they don’t have the same oomf as they do in TMA

in short, TMAGP feels closer to the fan interpretations of TMA, and while i understand how many people like this, in my personal opinion i feel that this detracts from the appeal of the universe and concepts

[magpod-confessions]

i’ve seen people question the amount of asks that are negative towards tmagp, and i’d just like to point out that like 98% of the fan base is actively enjoying it. there’s thousands of happy listeners out there. and this is a space for unpopular opinions and confessions. so if a handful of people are feeling underwhelmed yeah it makes a lot of sense that they’d flock here to admit it.

i’m not offering an opinion of whether tmagp is good or not i’m just trying to point out that the anons who dislike it are a very small percentage and there are significantly more people who are enjoying it, and therefore don’t feel the need to send anonymous asks just saying “i enjoy this.”

.

[hot-take-tournament]

HOT TAKE TOURNAMENT!

PRELIMINARY #279

Submission 120

"Dear TMA fandom. The Corruption is more than just fear of bugs."

https://the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/The_Corruption

It literally lists on the wiki that:

"It is linked to feelings of disgust and revulsion, as well as fear of corruption, disease, and filth. It manifests as mould, bugs, rot, decay, and infection. Elements of The Corruption also show themes of love and companionship with unhealthy boundaries, where several of its victims find comfort in its manifestations, growing fond of company others find vile. The Corruption seems to specifically target people who are considered "toxic" by others as avatars."

It's not just bugs. It's corruption, rot, infection, disease, toxic relationships, unhealthy attachments, and feelings of disgust and revulsion.

IT'S MORE THAN JUST BUGS!!!!!

MOD DISCLAIMER (IF YOU'RE UNFAMILIAR WITH TMA):

I literally don't know anything about The Magnus Archives, or that "the Corruption" existed before today, so this was hard to make a 'No' option for.

But for what it's worth, from an outsider's perspective, reading that Wiki page alone made me assume it was extremely bug themed, with the disease and filth stuff being added as an afterthought, not the other way around. It crawls and burrows under your skin, characters turn INTO bugs, and the 'obssessive love' thing which is so prevalent (referred to here as love/companionship) also feels like a Hive Mind vibe to me.

So, if you're wondering how this could be a hot take even with a direct quote, that might be part of it.

Anyway, propaganda is always encouraged!

And remember to reblog this poll to let the Corruption spread further! Trust me, it's better this way... let yourself slip into its loving embrace...

[fullmoonandstar]

Same with other depictions that are not *the* fanon but this one is the most hated

[goldenhawk-k]

Tumblr really is the best site to experience the tma fandom bc it’s all “oh look at my silly little blorbo these are my headcanons” “I like your headcanons here’s mine for your blorbo!!” While tma tiktok is literally “since we’re getting tma2 I have to confess something. I hated Jon and Martin and Tim and Basira and all of season 5 and Elias and Peter Lukas and jmart and—”

[stealerofthe2ndbraincell]

R.I.P. Annabelle Cane and Hezekiah Wakely.

You both would have loved Hollow Knight's Deepnest. :(((

[mwagneto]

my take on the rq thing is that like. ok first of all i dont rly care about this beyond making this post so if you're gonna get mad and argue don't waste your energy but anyway even if the whole "they're exclusively doing it for money" thing is true so what. like okay people need money to live. like for this post let's assume the rumour that they made shitty financial decisions and now they need to fire people and resurrect their most successful work to get money is true - okay. and? if people enjoy the content what does it matter? like they're not d*sney it's not like they're trying to be millionaires they're trying to save their company from exploding. and boycotting them won't fix anything or get people rehired. you know what will? actually engaging with their content even more, whether it be the stuff you're worried will get cancelled or whatever new tma shit they're trying to push

[a-passing-storm]

I just finished Episode 160 of The Magnus Archives!!!

[malachiwardyt]

Hello again, podcast side of Tumblr.

I'm back with a new video about The Magnus Archives, specifically going over my viewers' hot takes about the series. I talk about TMA a LOT, so I figured it might be nice to give other people an opportunity to talk about it. Also, controversial opinions are always fun.

As for the art, I did a lot of monster design in October as a fun way to get back into a genre of art I hadn't covered in a while, and this is an expansion of that idea. The character pictured here is an omen of death, inspired by Banshees, Will o' the Wisps, and la Llorona, which I haven't actually given a proper name to, so if y'all have any ideas, feel free to share them.

As for the background, I went with a bit of swampy atmosphere, with dark green water and trees barely visible in the dark. Given that the character is composed almost entirely of black smoke or fog, having her spread out over the water felt right. I also have a lifelong fear of water, so it felt like the right place to put a depiction of Death.

I'll do a bigger post at some point explaining all of the detail work that went into the character, probably along with some concept sketches or something. Did notice that I forgot a detail, though, while going back over the speedpaint in the finished video, which would have served to make her a little more solid looking.

Anyways, that's the hot takes video! I'll be trying to finish the Malevolent script soon so that we can have that video, though the latest episode HAS given me a new scene to draw. Feel free to let me know what you think of the video or the art and, as always, good night, Tumblr people!

[levaagrace]

Part of me wants to bitch about the Magnus Archives cause that’s what I do when I’m tired and stressed. Another part of me wants to start a fight with people about the Magnus Archives cause that’s what I do when I’m tired and stressed. I’m tired and stressed. Someone come fight me.

[valtsv]

potentially unpopular opinion but to me the tma episode where jon goes into the coffin to rescue daisy is the best in terms of character study and character relationship development. like not a single other moment in the show flayed me raw and left me undone like jon and daisy's conversation trapped forever deep below creation with seemingly no way out; two characters who feared and hated each other and themselves finally being able to be honest about that with each other, and realizing that despite every awful thing that has happened between them it's still a relief that neither one of them is suffocating beneath the weight of it all alone in the dark anymore. and then, knowing all that, still choosing to return to face the world again together even though it would be easier to stay where they are.

[witchinatree]

unpopular opinion maybe but sam has been pissing me off lately

i think it started with him laughing in gwen's face about the bonzo thing and (as far as we know) not apologizing???

it's like he only thinks supernatural things can happen to HIM. sam wtf why are you gatekeeping the horrors??

he also only ever listens to celia, alice indulged his magnus thing as long as she could but realized shit was getting dangerous and wanted to protect him

alice is also flawed (jealousy is a bad color on you babe but i forgive you) but like everyone is?? and sam is just dismissing her every word because of it??

he doesn't have to follow her advice but could he at least let her speak??? i hate how dismissive he is, even celia listens to alice more than him

and in episode 24, his "well what can i do about that" mentality was sooooo irritating

he said it twice, when alice said gwen wasn't okay, and when alice said the tape recorder thing was hunting them

1. gwen not being okay could be something you at least pretend to give a shit about, like seriously. everyone tolerates your childhood rejection trauma and you don't bother batting an eye as gwen crumbles? jesus man

and 2. why is it only something 'crazy' when it's not you saying it sam? he expects everyone to believe the evil about the magnus institute (with honestly no evidence? i think we gloss over how little ties the institute actually has rn because we listened to tma) and dismisses alice's concerns that they're all going to die

i don't hate sam by any means (disregard previous discord statements ❤️ i was a lil upset) but he has been seriously upsetting me

also if there's anything i forgot um my bad i'm just oh so sleepy

[thermodynamic-comedian]

ooh unpopular tma opinion time? here's my big one: daisy should not be butch idc. normally i want more butch characters always but with daisy personally it rubs me the wrong way like just say you think butches are violent lmaoo... why are you hc'ing Miss Police Brutality as butch... literally 80% of the female cast is more butch coded than daisy (she is one of the only female characters to openly want to be perceived as feminine, or did we all forget that she goes by daisy because it 'sounds soft'???) is but you barely ever see any of them portrayed that way. sigh. anyway in my heart of hearts daisy is a femme with long blonde hair who is, in fact, a lesbian, but is so deep in comphet that she literally never realizes it throughout the entire podcast and dies 100% believing herself to be a straight woman. trust me i know her personally

YES YES YES. ohh my god so much of the magpod fandom in general has a completely and utterly broken butchdar. not me tho. i know exactly who is and isn't butch. due to my butchness

[ceaselessims]

maybe unpopular opinion but i'm still not too into the sam/celia dynamic 🫣 like im not invested in their romance for the most part.

idk i feel like sam has more chemistry with alice than celia (not that i want sam and alice to be together, just they have a more interesting chemistry as characters).

i think my issue is that i wish Celia was able to be her own character without a romance plot in the first season. We hardly knew her in TMA and so far I feel like we still don't know much about her. like i need it to be revealed that celia has some sort of master plan or something bc she's kind of flat. she had some really good bits early on, but she's kind of teetered off outside of name dropping TMA characters.

[magpod-confessions]

i keep seeing people being surprised or saddened by the frequency at which certain opinions appear in the asks this blog gets. like jmart or tmagp criticism, for example. and i just wanted to point out that this is a space where unpopular opinions are concentrated pretty heavily, and feel free to correct me if i’m wrong but i think that’s partially what it was made for? so if you go out into the wider tma fandom you’re not really going to run into these takes very often, because they are very much the least popular outlook. the fandom as a whole is probably like 94% jmart/tmagp enjoyers, but that other 6% flocks here specifically. so if you choose to look at what that concentrated 6% is saying, there’s probably going to be a lot of repetition and criticism/opinions that most people are naturally going to disagree with.

what i’m trying to say is the anons who send in asks here are very much a skewed sample group, and only looking at the opinions they share is going to present a very biased set of data. the wider fandom does not hold these opinions, you’re just looking at the specific corner of people who do.

.

[ollieofthebeholder]

I realize this is going to be a very unpopular opinion, but: I don't think Chester and Norris are Jon and Martin. Not from the original TMA, anyway.

In the first place, there's been so much emphasis put on the fact that you don't have to listen to TMA to get TMAGP that I feel like hinging a major plot twist on...something you'd have had to listen to the entirety of TMA to fully understand would be kind of unfair. And they've been calling it a "side-quel", not a "sequel". Besides, the whole beauty of MAG 200 was the ambiguity of the ending, and I can't see Jonny or Alex being keen to give a definite answer now. As they've said, "the text is the text".

In universe, the timing doesn't add up, either. The Eyepocalypse began October of 2018, and while obviously time didn't mean anything after that, I think Jonny said he'd envisioned it as being six to eight months between MAG 160 and MAG 200. Something like that. Either way, we're talking 2019 sometime that...whatever happened, happened. Alice said the voices only started "about a year ago", and the time stamps on the forum thread from TMAGP 001 were all dated 2022. Even if that was a thread that just got locked a couple hours before Chester read it to Sam, it still means the talking started around 2021 at the earliest. You could make an argument that they needed time to recover even a little of themselves, but two years?

I think it's more likely that they were someone involved in The Magnus Institute of this world. That maybe they were part of some study and...didn't come out of it well. That something happened to them relatively recently and they're trying to reach out to someone who can help them, who can fix it.

I dunno. I guess we'll find out. I just feel like it's too early to pin any one theory down as confirmed, and I am worried that if too many older fans get too hung up on the idea of it being JMart - of this being "somewhere else" - and then it turns out not to be them at all, there's going to be a massive fandom outcry about something that never existed outside of people's heads.