plasticstrawsmuggler

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

Hi I went backpacking during the weekend (and wish to return to the backcountry but that's not the point of this) and I am now somewhat convinced that humans going backpacking is like the equivalent of doing breed-specific exercise with dogs

#me roughly 15 minutes after getting home: I regret returning to civilization #backpacking #hiking #human evolution #shitpost #Like okay you wake up at dawn walk around all day eat and go to bed at sunset #humans were pursuit hunters so walking all day was kind of our entire thing

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

*walks up to a couple* so which one of you provides heart wrenching fic ideas and which one brings them to life?

#wlw post #wlw #gay #queer #lgbtq #writing as a form of flirting

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

Every so often one of the kids I work with says something that makes me pause and wonder how old they think I am

#One of them was shocked that I knew what snapchat was?

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

Going feral waiting for the TMAGP hiatus to end

#chewing on the bars of my enclosure #tmagp #tmagp podcast #the magnus archives #tma #the magnus protocol

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

I know he’s kind of a polarizing character, but I have to say, Elias Bouchard truly is Iconic. When you hear the twist of “the boring middle manager was actually secretly an evil eldritch monster the whole time!” you sort of assume that the boring middle manager persona was just a facade, but no, he really does seem to just enjoy dull administrative work. He’s both exactly as boring as he seems on the surface and profoundly fucked up in ways you couldn’t imagine. He’s practically omniscient and playing 4-D chess with everyone, but he responds to even slight hiccups in his elaborate scheme with acts of extreme violence. He beats an old man to death with a metal pipe and when someone brings it up later he goes, “Yeah I may have overreacted there.” His employees are constantly trying to murder him. He broke out of prison just so he could give a dramatic monologue. He had a weird gay thing going on with seemingly every man he met in the past 200 years. He loves scheduling.

#tma #the magnus archives #elias bouchard #jonah magnus #tma spoilers

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

Peak nerdiness is a group of 15 college students fangirling over a scientific research library

#college #evolutionary ecology #It's a fun class #I've definitely found my people #We were doing an overnight research project #Super fun except it rained the entire time #We only caught 2 kangaroo rats and 2 side blotched lizards

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

Willing to bet that the Horror at the end of this episode is one of our lovely friend shaped Horrors and not a new one

#I want it to be the Archivist #I think it'd be so interesting if Jon and Martin's voices were trapped in the computers and not their bodies #Could also be annabelle #anabelle cane #the magnus archives #tma #the magnus protocol #jonathan sims #jon sims #martin blackwood #martin k blackwood #tmagp spoilers #tmagp #tmagp podcast #tmagp 10

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

The way my calc 2 professor schedules shit on Thursdays is so infuriating because it means I have to decided between listening to TMAGP directly before a quiz/exam/getting exam scores back and thinking about it for the entirety of said thing or waiting to listen to it until after class (and thinking about it for the entirety of the Activity of the Day) and hoping I'm not so emotionally ruined by this stupid class that I miss details

#the magnus archives #tma #the magnus protocol #college #college shit #tmagp podcast #tmagp

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

Shout out to MAGP 9 for shocking me out of a panic attack when Jon said "Statement follows" instead of "Statement begins"

#the magnus archives #tma #the magnus protocol #tmagp spoilers #tmagp podcast #I was literally sobbing over my failed calc 2 exam and he said that I went “Fucking what?”

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

yeah so Tim why do you just have zip ties

#magnuspod #the magnus archives #jonmartin #jmart #tma #the magnus archive fanart #the magnus pod

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

magnus parallels....save me magnus parallels.....

#the magnus protocol #tmagp fanart #tmagp #jonathan sims #chester tmagp #the magnus archives #tma #tmagp spoilers

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

OChem got canceled today and I have??? SO MUCH FREE TIME???

#Time to watch criminal minds and continue writing a fanfic in an attempt to flirt

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

Why the FUCK did no one tell me that these new meds would make my ADHD worse???

#chronically ill #chronically ill shit #Why do i have to choose between living with no pain and living with a semifunctional brain #adhd #note to self: meds that affect hormone levels will fuck up your adhd #No wonder I've been having such a hard time getting dressed #or focusing on my homework

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

"the magnus protocol had a whole ARG beforehand? what?"

yes! it did!

"oh so I need to have participated in this whole big thing to actually understand the podcast?"

not at all! from the official post-mortem put out by RQ, "while the ARG was not something that was necessary to participate in to understand the magnus protocol, it was designed to contain a wealth of background story and context that would enrich any player's listening experience."

"a wealth of background context that would enrich my listening experience 👀👀👀 how can I learn about this?"

SO glad you asked. sadly, many of the materials made for the arg have been taken down since the game ended 😔 (ex., the official OIAR, magnus institute, and bonzoland websites. though @strangehauntsuk is still up!), so we're a bit low on primary sources, but in terms of learning about what happened:

for a starting point, I would really recommend this video by @pinkelotjeart

it's super accessible, it was made in real time as the game progressed and follows the solving and revelation of clues as they happened, it hits all the major points of the mystery and moments of community insanity while eliding some of the nitty gritty puzzle grinding, 10/10 would recommend.

here's the official summary put out by RQ, and I'd recommend reading through this once you've already gotten a basic handle on the flow of the story and the basic connections between major clues and events. it's got some fun behind-the-scenes info and lays out the thought process behind the puzzles in simple terms

here's the full masterdoc of all puzzles and resolutions put together in the statement remains discord server. masterdoc my absolute BELOVED, masterdoc my bethrothed, masterdoc my soul mate. I'd recommend this as a second port of call after the above video as it either contains all details about the puzzles or links to other expanded docs that do.

here's the narrative summary doc that lays out all the plot and lore discovered in three pages of plain prose. if you just want to get to the good bits as fast as you can and get blasted directly in the face by contextless lore bombs, this is the doc for you. if you don't want to start with the video, I'd say this is another good entry point.

once you've got the lay of the land, some of the game materials that I found particularly interesting include:

the in-universe east germany expat usenet forum, with all content translated into english. most of it is irrelevant space filler with occasional extremely sus lore, but I still found it fun to read through. love to soak in some fictional forum drama.

chdb.xlsx, the spreadsheet of the names of all the children the protocol 'verse magnus institute was studying/experimenting on. EDIT: here is a version of the sheet without any annotations and with all of the names in their original order, kudos to @theboombutton for catching that the commonly shared copy had the order swapped around.

klaus.xls, a (very corrupted) spreadsheet with what looks like the classifications of a bunch of old OIAR cases.

EDIT: have a few more saved materials from the game that I forgot to include.

an in-universe audio ad to apply to the OIAR that ran before archives episodes and kicked off the whole game.

an in-universe video ad to apply to the OIAR, this one is an official upload that's still up from the game itself. you can subscribe to the OIAR's official youtube channel today, if you so chose.

the robo-voicemail greeting from the OIAR's phone line.

once you start poking around in these documents, you'll find a bunch of links to others with further information, the materials I've included here just contain what I feel to be the most relevant details to getting a broad feel for the whole game. once again, huge shout out to the statement remains server, I was barely in there as the ARG was in progress and only ducked my head in every so often to find links like these. true mvps of the fandom.

#tmagp #tma

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

True love is picking a specific font so the person you're writing for can read it

#she's dyslexic and my love language is writing shit #wlw #gay #queer #lgbtq #lesbian

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

It fit too well to not do that

#the magnus archives #tmagp #the magnus protocol

[plasticstrawsmuggler]

Reasons why Jon Archivist is truly a character of all time:

Had the police called on him several times when he was a young child

Keeps his rib and the ashes of the season one antagonist next to his stationary drawer

Promised he wouldn’t get lost in tunnels and then immediately got lost in aforementioned tunnels

Has no clue what a joke is

Learned how remarkably easy it is to buy an ax in central London

Had to have two separate interventions

Told people his place of employment before traumatising them for life

The first character he ever said ‘I love you’ to is a cat

Allegedly participated in amdram

Watches documentaries and collects some kind of weird shit (my headcanon is Soviet Union postcards) when he’s not being a paranoid mess

Canonically looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks

Knows nothing about library science

Fell head over heels for a man that he hated until he learned he lied on his resumé

Has been referred to as Jesus or Jesus-adjacent at least twice

Asexual icon

Knows what a meme is and said “LOL” in the first episode

Rode on a merry-go-round sometime during his university days because he was in a weird place emotionally

Died for our Jonathan Sins

Is probably a computer now playing minesweeper with his boyfriend and evil 200+ year old boss

#jonathan sims #jon sims #the archivist #the magnus archives #tma spoilers #tmagp #the magnus protocol #the magnus protocol spoilers #I relate to Jon so much that it's probably concerning #To quote myself “I should probably talk to my therapist about how many fictional autistic men I relate to” #I love that sad wet cat man