#upon the stair tma

[ruler-of-turtle-kind]

Man, this episode is very dissociative.

#tma reactions #episode 85 #upon the stair tma #season 3

[shh-the-artist-is-sleeping]

MAG 85 - Upon the Stair

I started this a year ago, and I finally decided to finish it.

The poem used in the episode is Antagonish by Hughes Mearne

#the magnus archives #the magnus archive fanart #tma #tma fanart #magnus pod #mag 85 #upon the stair #horror podcast #horror #rusty quill #art #my art #artists on tumblr #artwork #digital art #comic #fan comic #fanart #jonny sims

[mag200]

MAG85: Upon the Stair

watercolor & ink // kofi

#my art #a statement a day #tma #the magnus archives #the spiral #tma art #watercolor and ink #mixed media #horror art #mag85 #upon the stair #truly one of thee episodes of all time i love this statement so much

[kat-and-their-cats]

Day 12 of my favourite Avatar polls, each poll will run for 1 week and will release daily in alphabetical order of entities.

Please repost for larger sample size.

#the magnus archives #tma #tma poll #michael shelley #the distortion #helen richardson #gabriel #the man upon the stair #michael distortion #helen distortion #the spiral #spiral avatars

[6-and-7]

TMA Tarot 8 of Cups - MAG 85: Upon the Stair

#art #fan art #my art #the magnus archives #tarot #tma tarot #the spiral #mag 085 #upon the stair

[ratpyramid]

Hey, I'm sorry about your boyfriend. Yeah, as he was going up the stair he met a man who wasn't there. And he wasn't there again today. And I am so sorry about this but how he wishes he'd go away.

#the magnus archives memes #tma #magnus archives #magpod #mag 85 #upon the stair

[ptr-sqloint]

#the man upon the stair #:) #tma #mag 85 #my art #fanart #i loathe drawing stairs but this was for a good cause

[swordsonnet]

really enjoyed the statement (or casement, or whatever we're calling them now) this week! felt very different from what jonny would write, but it's cool to see a guest writer bringing their own unique style to the project

#i was initially a bit skeptical about the amount of guest writers they were bringing in for protocol #because i've gotten very attached to jonny's writing #but maybe it's time to incorporate some fresh ideas. and i really liked this one #i don't think i've read/heard anything else by this episode's writer but maybe i should check out his other works #i'm always a sucker for mindfucky horror stories where not even the narrator is fully aware of what's going on #i guess 'upon the stair' would be the closest tma statement in tone and style but 'putting down roots' was still very much its own thing #which i appreciate #tmagp #tmagp spoilers #the magnus protocol #the magnus protocol spoilers #tmagp 3

[dragonduck-art]

"Antigonish" - TMA e85

(click on images for better quality)

#art #my art #digital art #tma spoilers #tma #tma fanart #the magnus archives #antigonish #upon a stair #tw horror #tw eye strain #tw eye contact

[themagnustournament]

Round Two Part Eight - Match 61

Oh, hello, Elias -- Can I call you Elias? It’s a Spiral showdown today with the introduction of Another Twist! Another Twist is up against Upon the Stair, which is coming in with 253 votes!

MAG 101 - Another Twist | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Statement of Michael, regarding himself.

MAG 085 - Upon the Stair | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Statement of an unknown figure, regarding an encounter they may or may not have had in their home.

#the magnus archives #the magnus tournament #tma #mag 101 #mag 101 another twist #another twist #michael distortion #michael shelley #michael #the distortion #nikola orsinov #the spiral #spiral #helen distortion #helen richardson #mag 085 #mag 85 #mag 085 upon the stair #mag 85 upon the stair #upon the stair #round two #round two part eight

[nerdypixel]

#tma #the magnus archives #the distortion #the spiral #michael distortion #helen distortion #tma gabriel #the man upon the stairs

[owlbee-writing]

Shout out to the guy from MAG 85 who became an abstract concept (with murderous intent)

#i want to be him #no life plan just being a concept and not existing by the stairs #seems relaxing #tma #the magnus archives #magnus archives #mag 85 #upon the stair #spiral #the spiral #spiral aligned

[toottootyass]

MAG 85 "upon the stair"

#tma #the magnus archive fanart #the magnus archives #mag 85 #upon the stairs #jon archivist #mag fanart #tma podcast #podcast fanart #art #artists on tumblr #illustration #drawing #fanart #my art #sketchbook #monochrome #pen art #horror podcast

[earthpit]

it’s crazy, i’ve known you for so long now… i love you always

LITERALLY it’s been so long ????????? 🕺🕺🕺🕺remmeber whej we were two guys in a rock tumbler

#I SAW. a video about someone getting a tape recorder for Christmas bc they wanted to record tma episodes on it #and like AAAAA that’s so fucking awesome imagine finding a tape player in an antique store and pressing play and it’s like. upon the stairs

[stormofstarlight]

Sitting through all the spooky episodes so I can get to the next Mike Crew ep

#virgil.txt #tma liveblog #upon the stair is gonna freak me out so bad #i just wanna get to the next episode w my boi

[go-to-the-mirror]

Dearest @a-mag-a-day,

Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to do my MAG 81 post (personal issues), but I'll probably do that on the day of MAG 197, because. yk.

However, I can do my little reaction to MAG 85. Enjoy!

This episode was really, really cool to me on my first listen. Spooky!

At night, I sometimes find myself reciting Antigonish to myself, which spooks me out quite a bit, and by spooks me out I mean I convince myself that if I finish it, I will become like the man in this episode and not exist but somehow still be (not) there. Similarly, I sometimes believe that opening the door at night (see A Sturdy Lock)  and opening my eyes without licking the air first (see The Mandela Catalogue) will kill me. When I'm left alone to my own devices I can get quite paranoid, and my newfound love for horror is absolutely not helping :D

The introduction of The Man Who Wasn't There is so cool. Describing all the things that weren't, so you get an idea of what is would be. It's so confusing and I don't know how to imagine it in my head. Should I imagine him as how he is described as not being? It's an empty staircase with someone not on it. No one is on the staircase. Someone is not on the staircase. AA it's really cool! And confusing! I love the spiral sososo much.

In the poem, I had always imagined a translucent figure, absent in life and body, but visible. But I couldn't see this man. Obviously I couldn't. I couldn't see him or hear him or speak to him. Because... there was nobody there. The staircase was empty, as he stretched his arm to gesture me closer.

Firstly, this is a really cool bit of the statement, describing while being unable to describe. Sort of like that post about gothic horror and eldritch/cosmic horror, describing the manor in great detail while being incapable of describing what lurks behind (”the stairs were real. he wasn’t there but the stairs were”), but not because it is incomprehensible in this case, but because it does not exist to be described. Secondly, while I was typing I realized that a lot of The Spiral statements are quite dreamlike in tone, and similarly follow dreamlike logic, as do a lot of episodes, but it feels far more... odd in the spiral ones, far more like a dream, at least to me. Then, in the Eyepocolypse, the whole world follows that logic, and far more of the statements are in that dreamlike tone, which of course could just be because the world has been twisted by The Fear(s) and nothing has any meaning besides what they want to have meaning, but -- or even in addition -- it could also be because Jon is quote “marked very deeply by The Spiral”, and the world was transformed because of his fears and his marks, so that could be why season 5 is more dreamlike and nonsensical but in a spiral-y way. Ah, the true joys of a mag a day, coming up with little theories like this :3

Why does this imply that the statement giver has his bedroom on the ground floor? Because he went down the corkscrew, not up. Unless the spiral was also messing with the up and down part, and he had to walk down the stairs to get to his bedroom upstairs. That seems about right.

Anyway, I love how the statement giver made a choice, he chose to shout at the man and beg him to go away, and that was when he started to stop existing. He became an avatar -- as much as something that is not there can become anything -- because of his own explicit choices. Did he know what these choices would lead to? No. Does that matter? No. The choice matters, not the intentions behind it. The road to becoming an avatar is not paved with good or bad intention, it is made of choices. Poorly understood, hastily made, unfair choices. 

As he wasn’t there, I have no way of telling how many teeth were on show when he smiled at me.

I just really like the above line.

I find it interesting how the statement giver’s words when he tells of how people forgot him seem nonchalant, but his tone -- keep in mind I’m not extremally good at tone of voice -- sounds bitter and upset. Was he upset when people started forgetting him, but lost that pain when he stopped being? Was he upset as he gave the statement? Was he never upset at all? These are interesting questions I’m having.

My mother’s eyes were bloodshot, and I could see them unfocus when they tried to look at me. She dabbed a napkin at her mouth and asked me where her son was. I asked her what his name had been. She didn’t know. She dabbed her mouth again and the napkin came away bloody.

I may just be being transgender on main -- and so what if I am, I can and have accidentally made everything in this bloody podcast a queer allegory /hyp -- but I really like this line. I have so many thoughts on names and identity in The Magnus Archives, from this statement, to Jon slowly beginning to call himself “The Archivist”, to Michael and Helen’s differences when it comes to names and identity as The Distortion, and more. Something about names tying you to humanity and personhood.

The whole parents section is really spooky. In addition to the name part, I loved the part with the statement giver taking his father up the stairs, and how his father’s corpse got up and left with his mother. Don’t really have much to say about it other than it’s really spooky and I loved it.

I watched the realization on his face that, in reality, whoever he was, he had died decades before. And he was now in reality. He tried to scream, but his throat decomposed around the noise, cutting it short with a slough of rotten flesh and collapsing, brittle bone. And as I stared from the empty spiral staircase, I wanted to laugh right back at him.

I really love the description of the man decomposing right as he stands, it’s just so cool. Puts me in mind of Mother Gothel at the end of Tangled, but with more rotting. I love the rotting. I also like how confusing it is, were there two of him? Did he die in reality as he stopped existing? I also had a thought about how there was no escape, once he made his choice to become an avatar -- however unwanted and unknown the consequences were -- he couldn’t go back without dying. This theme continues in later episodes, as you very well know.

I- I don’t want to take you up the spiral staircase, so you should try to leave. I don’t want to, but it’s my nature now, and you can’t fight what you are.

I Have So Very Many Thoughts About This and I’m really trying to keep the incoherent ramblings to a minimum, because when I can word things I’m actually quite good at explaining myself, at least I think so, but I don’t exactly know how to explain it, but I can try. Immediately, his puts me in mind of Jon and Martin’s conversation in episode 188, about Helen.

MARTIN Huh. She couldn’t help what she was, I guess.

ARCHIVIST She didn’t even try.

But more than that, it’s a lot of the themes in the later seasons -- quite honestly even back in season 1 with Jane Prentiss. How much of you is left after you become an Avatar? How much are you responsible for your actions? How much can you control? I will most likely have similar things to say when we get to Another Twist.

I saw a post once, tumblr user annabelle--cane either reblogged it or posted it, saying -- to paraphrase -- that a statement should be able to end with a mic drop, and let me say, this statement definitely fits the bill. I love the reprise of the poem, slightly altered for the circumstances, as an ending, it’s a really great ending, it gives me chills!

Now, onto the post statement stuff. I believe that Elias sent this statement to Jon to mayhaps make him think about what he is becoming and cause him to seek out more avatars for advice -- if the statement luring him towards Jude Perry didn’t work just because of the prospect of more information into the Unknowing, the Lightless Flame, and the burning of Gwydir forest. I’m not entirely sure on this, but it makes sense to me.

I have very many feelings -- as stated above -- about monsterhood, personhood, choice, and becoming a fear entity avatar, but unfortunately it’s getting late, and I’d like to get this post out today.

I forgot this episode was the one where Georgie was on a date with her Hungarian mountain man, I love Jon and Georgie’s dynamic, I’m smiling ear to ear. What a lovely ending, for a moment we can pretend that The Magnus Archives isn’t a horror tragedy! 

In conclusion, MAG 85 - Upon The Stair is one of my favourite episodes of The Magnus Archives because of the dreamlike tone, the very odd story it’s telling, the themes of monsterhood and choice, and because Georgie Barker and Jonathan Sims interact and are happy in it. That last part is half a joke. I have very many thoughts about it, and I hope you enjoyed reading about them.

Yours truly,

landscaping-your-mind.

#The Magnus Archives #tma meta #the magnus archives meta #tma #MAG 85 #MAG 85 - Upon The Stair #tma spoilers #a mag a day #jonathan sims #jonah magnus #jongeorgie #landscaping your mind chapter one