#Elias meta

[dissolving-mansion]

Obviously, criticizing Elias for being a capitalist and a corporate CEO is silly because he is neither of those things ('vibes' are not admissible in court) but there is a lot to be said about intellectual elitism and academic gatekeeping. About how this man knows exactly what is wrong with the world and priotises his own wellbeing over that of everyone else. Clearly he never took an ethics in industry class at university.

#The last line is /hj but I don't think they made you take those in the 1800s #elias bouchard #jonah magnus #tma #I need to shut up about this dead podcast #tma meta #kind of #Jonah meta #Elias meta #Jonahlias #Jonahlias meta #Too many options fie his name!!!!

[hezekiahwakely]

I don't think we talk enough about how Elias set Jon up so that everybody in the archives would hate him. It's that classic upper management move. Mr. Bouchard is the real problem, he's the one actually calling the shots, but he offloads all of his attention and expectations onto Jon and forces him to play the messenger, who is then expected to tread the line between pleasing the other employees and the big boss. Jon is an example of middle management getting crucified from both sides; from their peers who can't trust them, and the exec who's thrown them to the wolves

I was just thinking about how much Melanie in particular blames Jon for everything that happened in MAG 123. This has to be partially due to how Elias prominently favored Jon in front of the others (despite Jon not wanting ANYTHING to do with it) and how that seemed to make him aligned with Elias in their eyes. Elias had to have known how this would affect Jon, and he did it deliberately to drive a wedge between them and his precious Archivist, who he needed to keep isolated and friendless so he could get his marks.

#we need more capitalist metas of tmas plot in general tbh #tma #the magnus archives #mag 123 #Jonathan sims #elias bouchard #melanie king #tma meta #i feel like ive seen similar posts bringing this up before but its been a while and its still worth saying

[fruitageoforanges]

elia martell character of all time because she was playing the game of thrones AND WINNING — survived aerys, set up an alternate court on dragonstone, universally beloved even by most of robert’s anti-targ regime, was probably at least angling to get rid of aerys — but the literal song of ice and fire was being written around her and well. you can’t outrun your inevitable doom.

like. that’s elia’s tragedy, and what makes me so insane about her. she was in the wrong story. she was playing the game of court politics but ended up yoked to 300 years of targaryen collapse and dynastic rot instead. there’s nothing i love more than characters doing their best with the pieces they can see on the board, while the fact slowly dawns on them that the board is in the process of being swallowed by an eldritch monster.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #elia martell #this is why elia & rhaegar as a marriage is so compelling to me #they’re playing the complete opposite games #esp if you think they liked each other enough to make it work #which it seems like they did #but the dissonance must’ve been a gaping hole in their marriage #just generally — she comes from one of the few decently affectionate and healthy families #he comes from the horror show that is aerys’ nuclear family #and they have vastly different priorities #i wonder when the penny dropped for her #because i think she was certainly extremely sharp #how early she realised the depth of the shit she was in #and how late she realised it was inescapable

[thermodynamic-comedian]

i wanna talk about tma characters and the concept of a facade. because i have a lot of thoughts.

so most people understand how ironic it is to characterize martin blackwood as a soft boy that can do no wrong, because one of the most interesting parts of his character is how much of a subversion of that trope he is. he's manipulating people by acting like that. this is addressed in the canon. he wants everyone to like him, and he knows he'll almost always get what he wants if he puts up this facade.

something people talk about a bit less, but is still equally canon, is that gertrude robinson was doing basically the same thing. pretending to be just a boring old woman, when she's actually extremely clever and ruthless. she plays into everyone's pre-existing biases and assumptions masterfully to hide just how competent she really is. she knows exactly what she's doing, and she's willing to sacrifice anything and anyone for the sake of her self-appointed mission. characterizing her as a grandmother figure is the funniest form of irony to me.

but do you know who isn't putting up a facade? do you know who isn't changing their behavior to affect your idea of them?

the older avatars.

peter lukas isn't pretending to be passive-aggressive and overly cheery, he just kind of...is. why would he ever bother putting up a facade? he doesn't want people to like him. his authentic self is this talkative yet asocial man, who specifically aims to be awkward and unlikeable.

people say that simon fairchild's polite and carefree demeanor is an act, but i really don't think that's true either. i guess i might see it differently because i personally resonate the most with the vast out of all the fears, but i really think that a lot of that behavior makes perfect sense for his character. he doesn't think that anything in life matters. his personality reflects the lightness and carefree nature of that mindset. he just doesn't care. he does everything for fun. he's not pretending to be anything he isn't.

this could be me reaching, but honestly, i don't think even jonah magnus is putting up that much of a facade. he's lying, sure. he's manipulating people, obviously. but he's not changing his behavior in order to do that. even in mag 160, there's no big, henry mildmay-esque "dropping of the act" when he has his monologue. if you look at his behavior as elias bouchard, it's exactly the same as the little bits of him that we get to see in s5. the elias whose last words are "good luck" is the exact same elias as the one who always greeted basira with "hello, detective".

humans put up an act. monsters don't bother to.

#now that last part kinda contradicts my other interpretation #but im not gonna get into all that (<- girl who's praying for someone to ask her to get into all that) #not in this post. but a girl can dream #the magnus archives #tma #tma analysis #tma meta #martin blackwood #gertrude robinson #peter lukas #simon fairchild #jonah magnus #elias bouchard #tma spoilers #mag 160

[the-magpie-archives]

As anyone who's ever listened to the magnus archives knows, the characters are viscerally and entirely captivating. This sounds like an exaggeration, but it's impossible to not fall in love with at least one of them.

I think this lies in the intense humanity of each of them. Their reactions are so real, their emotions so tangible. Hearing Martin sob when verbally attacked by Elias, Jon yelling in anger when he doesn't understand something, or Sasha whimpering her explanations during prentiss' attack; these are all such relatable reactions, and make the characters extraordinarily easy to sympathise with.

This also goes a long way in making the horror that much more powerful. It's a bitter reminder that horrible things happen to people exactly like you. It puts me in mind of the quote "The moment you die will feel exactly like this one."

Your life could be this awful; you've simply skirted around the terror.

#What is horror but a reflection of the possibilities of life? Is it a mercy to avoid them or does someone else simply suffer instead? #I try not to be existential about tma challege: impossible. #It's just such a beautiful and intricate storyline entirely based on humanity and a lack thereof it's just unparalleled!! #tma #the magnus archives #the magnus institute #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #sasha james #elias bouchard #tma meta #tw existentialism

[its-your-mind]

*deep breath in*

the fears 👏 have always 👏 been (in one way or another) 👏 parallel 👏 to 👏 desire 👏

let me explain.

so many of the statements given by actual avatars center around some sort of need that was met by their entity. Lots of them even had a positive relationship with the fear that drove them.

Jane Prentiss is an excellent example - the Corruption has always been about a form of toxic and possessive love, but she personally has a deep desire to be “fully consumed by what loves her,” and finds a perverse joy and relief at allowing herself to be a home

Jude Perry is another - she fucking loved watching people’s lives be utterly destroyed. The Desolation only offered her a power of destruction on a grander scale, and then gave her a more intense rush of joy as she did its work. When she tells Jon that he needs to feed the Eye before it feeds on him, it’s almost as an afterthought; she was happily feeding the Desolation long before it burned her into a new existence.

Simon Fairchild. Every time that old loose bag of bones wanders into the picture, he is having a fucking EXCELLENT time playing with the Vast. He loves showing people their own insignificance, and he loves luring them into situations where he can throw them into the void as he smiles and waves.

Peter Lukas (hell, the whole Lukas family (except Evan. RIP Evan.)) hated. people. all he wanted was for them all to go away, to leave him alone. The Lonely only fulfilled that desire.

Daisy, Trevor, and Julia, all devoted to hunting those things they deemed monstrous.

Melanie, holding tight to that bullet in her leg because on some level, she wanted it. It felt good, it felt right, it felt like it fit right alongside the anger and spite that drove her to success.

Annabelle Cane first encountered the Web when she was a child, running away from home in order to tug on her parents’ heartstrings in just the right way to have them wrapped around her little finger. Later on she volunteered to be the subject of an ESP study. Hell, she’s the one who dangled the “Is it really You that wants this?” question over Jon’s head in S4.

And that brings us to Jon, beloved Jarchivist, the Voice that Opened the Door. Ever since he was a child targeted by the Web, he was looking for answers. He joined the Magnus Institute’s Research Department looking for them, he stalked his coworkers in search for them, he broke into Gertrude’s flat and laptop out of desperation for them. And when he realized that all he had to do was Ask to get truthful answers to his questions? It was only natural for him to jump at that opportunity.

Elias told S3 Jon that he did want this, that he chose it, that at every crossroads he kept pushing onwards, and the inner turmoil that caused was one of the focal points for Jon’s character through the rest of the podcast.

There’s a certain line of thinking in many circles about the power of the Devil: he’s not able to create anything new. All he’s able to do is twist and warp that which was already present, making it something ugly and profane while still maintaining the facade of something desirable.

Jon didn’t choose the Eye. But he did wander into its realm of power, exhibiting exactly the qualities it was most capable of hijacking and warping to its own ends. Jon didn’t choose the Apocalypse. But Jonah picked at him little by little, pointing him towards each Fear individually. Jon didn’t want to release the Fears. But the Web tugged on his strings just so and laid a pretty trail for him to follow until he reached its desired conclusion.

Jon didn’t choose ultimate power, or omniscience, or even his own role as Head Archivist. But he said “yes” to the right (wrong?) orders and kept on pushing for the right (wrong?) answers. He wanted to succeed at the work he had been assigned. He wanted to protect his friends. He wanted to rescue them when they were lost. He wanted to prevent the apocalypse, to save the world. He wanted to know why he was still alive, when so many had died right in front of him.

The Great Wheel of Evil Color that is the Entities might not fit as neatly into categories in this universe - maybe there was no Robert Smirke trying to impose strict categories on emotional experiences, or maybe the ways they manifest in the world has turned on its head (goodness knows many of them have been showcased and blended in some very fun and new and horrifying ways so far) - but their fundamental foundations seem to be the same. Hell, in episode one we learned that there had been enough individual incidents to create a distinction between “dolls, watching” and “dolls, human skin.”

Smirke’s Fourteen isn’t going to be relevant as common parlance, RQ said that already, but I don’t think that means the Fears themselves (and their Dream Logic-based rules) are different - I think it means that the levels of understanding, language used, and personal connections among people “in the know” are going to be entirely unfamiliar

#tma #tmagp #the magnus protocol #tmagp meta #tmagp analysis #the entities #robert smirke #smirke's fourteen #mind write a meta post that doesn’t turn into a fucking essay challenge #I literally thought about citing my episode sources here but decided that would get too FUCKING long. #anyway I’m pulling mostly from Gerry’s statement (111) and #and the Big Elias Group Confrontation (92) #and Annabelle’s statement (147) #and then finale - 196 / 197 / 200 #there are other little lines that I grabbed - tbh feel free to ask about anything I’ve said bc I feel like I’m ready to defend a thesis #I’ve been thinking about this on and off for a few weeks since the desire thing started going around #I have an obsession with Themes as they relate to Worldbuilding and now I have subjected you all to it as well #I am serious tho if anyone wants me to pull the specific parts I’m talking about (whether cuz you have Questions or you wanna ref them too) #lmk #my hyperfocus on silly media brain might as well come in useful somehow #aight peace ✌️

[they-call-me-haiku]

A lot of people have been saying that they get Elias/Jonah vibes from Lena or Gwen. But you know who actually reminds me of Elias? Alice.

“Record and study, not interfere or contain” sounds familiar, does it not? Whenever Sam tries to talk about the entries, Alice just tells him not to think too much about it, and just do his job. Of course, she doesn't even tell him to record or study, but that's because their job is literally just to sort the entries and file them away, not to look into it. They're not working in an archive that studies the supernatural, they're just in a boring office job (or so it seems).

Also, this line in particular stood out to me. Of course, it sounds like her classic dry humor and a jab at government jobs. But.. molding someone into something that serves a larger power? Sounds very familiar.

(definitely a reach from my part, but sshh let me theorize)

Think about it. Elias was super nonchalant about what was happening in the archives at the beginning. He didn't seem completely skeptical or in denial about what was going on; he just didn't seem to care too much about it. It seemed like he knew a lot more than he was letting on, and he did.

And that's what Alice seems like to me too. So far, she plays a very neutral role in the narrative. She's just there to make sarcastic remarks and jokes, and to occassionally remind Sam not to get too curious about the entries.

Sure, Elias was not as peppy or friendly as Alice but their roles in the plot seem very similar right now. Alice could be one of the good guys (though, judging by how TMA went, i'm assuming there isn't a clear divide between the good guys and the bad guys in TMAGP either) but I just get an uneasy feeling about her.

There are already quite a few theories about her trying to isolate Sam from Colin (who is the one other person who seems to smell something suspicious) and preventing Sam from trying to find out more about the entries. I can't help but feel like Alice plays a bigger role in all of this. There must be a reason why she's the only employee who has stayed in OIAR for this long.

#the magnus protocol #samama khalid #tmagp #tmagp spoilers #tmagp alice #alice dyer #tmagp alice dyer #tmagp theory #tmagp meta #tmagp theories #tma #the magnus archives #tma elias #tma elias bouchard #elias bouchard #jonah magnus #tma jonah #tma jonah magnus #the magpod #magpod #magnus archives #the magnus institute #magnus protocol #magnus pod #magnus podcast #podcast #horror podcast #tma podcast #tmagp podcast #tmagp posting

[sarcasticsra]

Clawing my face off at the meta of the last ep

Impulse and hyper vigilance hooking up so he’s aware of the danger but not too frozen by paranoia to act

Attention standing up against confusion to reprioritize what’s important and lock away unchecked ambition

Pleasure starting to realize that doing the right thing can feel good! But still being tempted by greed

Conscience finally having some power to direct the brain!

(Hopefully culminating in Elias’ realization that each function of the brain can be both rewarding and helpful when implemented in a healthy manner and destructive and isolating when implemented in an unhealthy manner…)

Everything about this season is incredible

#dimension 20 #mentopolis #trapp was so right when he talked about the meta of their actions and what it means for elias #it’s so fucking good #i love it so muuuuuch #elias you got this my dude #you’re doing amazing sweetie #this season might count as a form of therapy

[blousemouse]

So funny to me how most tma avatars have like cool entity-themed ways to murder people like mike with throwing ppl off buildings, Jane filling people with bugs, etc… but all the eye people just straight up murder people. The eye murders are all so physical for some reason!

Like tim blowing up the unknowing, Martin stabbing, Elias with his gun and notorious brutal pipe murder, Gertrude literally chopping Jan kilbride into pieces and… so many more things tbh that woman was brutal. Idk just funny to me that the beholding’s avatars (or servants or whatever) are humanized more than any other entity bc they’re the main characters but when they kill they do it SO brutally

#tma #the magnus archives #tma relisten #tim stoker #jane prentiss #martin blackwood #gertrude robinson #elias bouchard #jonathan sims #jonah magnus #mike crew #jude perry #tma entities #tma the beholding #tma the eye #meta

[eliias-bouchard]

everyone posting about how theyd be immune to elias' trauma beam does not understand how it works

it is, by nature, something you don't already know. you can't know if you're immune to it or not because you cannot predict what it would or wouldn't be.

it taps into the unwanted / fearful knowledge aspect of the eye. if elias had just hit melanie with her dad's deterioration from dementia, sure that'd hurt, but it wouldn't be as effective as what he actually did, because she didn't actually know how he died. she knew how bad he was getting, and that was painful for her, but she's probably grieved plenty!

it's specifically the intersection of the painful nature of the knowledge, and the sudden, forceful recognition that she's been wrong this entire time. she probably hinged a lot on the idea that her dad died peacefully in his sleep. it's unfortunate she didn't get to say goodbye, but at least he didn't suffer.

except he really suffered, and she had no idea.

and martin, too - the nature of what elias told him is such that martin never could've known. his mum got rid of pictures of his dad, didn't talk about him. martin, too, probably hinged a lot on his dad! maybe his dad would come back to help, maybe if his dad came back his mum would get better, his dad probably cares about him, etc. and his mum is sick - he can make as many excuses for her behaviour as he like. he never has to face the truth.

anyway tldr you wouldn't be immune to the trauma beam because you dont even know what youd get trauma beamed with

#tma #elias bouchard #tma spoilers #tma elias #elias tma #the magnus archives #tma s3 #tma s3 spoilers #tma meta

[hieronymph]

Had to see another post in Elia Martell tag about how Elia is a silent victim and how we don't know if she was really angry or upset with Rhaegar's infidelity.

A woman who was a Princess of a progressive kingdom which values women for being more than child incubators

Had to move to a racist court to marry a man who was delusional and who forced her to become a broodmare and got her pregnant in quick succession even after she was bedridden

Had to deal with said husband being a deadbeat father who didn't protect her and their daughter from his racist father and stayed silent

Was kept as a hostage by her racist FIL so he can blackmail and extort from her brother to send her kingdom's men to fight and die in a war that wasn't theirs

This definitely sounds like something a woman from a progressive nation, who is ridiculed and treated with distrust for her race, would be ok with. Right?

There are so many blanks in the books about so many things yet we all come up with detailed and nuanced theories to

fill those blanks.

Yet, some of yall can't fill the very simple gaps left about Elia's response to her husband's infidelity, disrespect and forced impregnation.

You operate under this belief that GRRM didn't mention that she wasn't upset so of course, she wasn't angry at Rhaegar or his actions.

Sure that is exactly the way to digest whatever content GRRM writes.

Are yall deliberately this obtuse?

Please get out of Elia Martell tags with such shit takes.

#princess elia martell #elia martell #elia martell deserved better #asoiaf #asoiafwomensource #asoiaf meta #asoiaf thoughts #anti rhaegar targaryen #princess of dorne #dorne kingdom

[remarcely]

Elias Hodge hadn't raised his tone nor hand in anger for many years. He'd paid for it when he was a child and the wrong lesson had been learnt.

Still, as he stood on shaky legs, splinters of glass latched onto his skin like leeches, and a dull pain throbbing from his head, he couldn't squash down the feeling any longer.

They'd tried to kill him. They'd taken his work and butchered it, turning his machine into a weapon. He'd tried to use his words and take the peaceful path, but Mr Henry didn't care enough to listen.

He was the calmest he's ever been, chest slowly rising and falling with steady breaths, and yet fury surged through his blood. Elias shifted his grip on the grappling hook in hand, the cool metal soothing against his palm.

Gobstopper Industries was going to burn down, past their foundations, and they'd practically handed Elias the match.

#elias hodge #dropout tv #dimension 20 #brennan lee mulligan #d20 mentopolis #mentopolis #mentopolis meta #mentopolis spoilers #dimension 20 mentopolis #i dont know what you'd really class this post as #narration maybe? #this boy's got years of repressed anger bottled up inside and he's about to snap #so relatable

[avatorofthelonely]

Classism, Privilege, & TMA (synopsis)

Here’s a little content analysis for ya’ll because I think ya’ll missed some of the bigger points of tma.

It is absolutely a commentary on privilege and classism. Point blank.

There’s a reason all the major families that play a role in trying to bring about an apocalypse or have otherwise dedicated their entire blood lines to a specific entity are implicitly white and explicitly aristocratic and extremely privileged.

That includes Jonah, Peter, Simon, etc.

This is also made apparent with Leitner who — although wasn’t evil — did try to contain and control the books related to the entities. This is clear commentary on his old money and privilege and how that translated to his over inflated sense of importance and ability.

Mary Kaey is explicitly attempting to glorify her GERMAN heritage in order to hoist her own bloodline up in the esoteric community — other than saying it directly, JS cannot get more explicit about what that is about.

Just about every other avatar simply did not choose to become an avatar and often become one because of either the mistakes or desires of the aristocratic avatars (the most prominent case of this being Jonah with Jon).

JS even says that the changed world was meant to explore the horrors of our reality.

Both Selesa and Annabelle (canonically poc) fuck off on their own because of what can be summarized as “fucking with the entities too hard is rich white people shit”

This is also why I like the interpretation of Jon being Indian (which this post is getting long so I’ll summarize this) because it creates a much more fascinating interpretation on the intersection of race and classism in modern England that dates back to colonialism.

#leave any further in my inbox I will not respond on this post #I like the villains but if you respond with a defense of any of them in this context simply don’t #jonathan sims #tma jon #jon sims #tma elias #elias bouchard #tma jonah magnus #tma #the magnus archives #jonah magnus #jurgen leitner #simon fairchild #annabelle cane #peter lukas #tma meta

[goodoldfashionednerd]

Elias Mannix is such a tragic character, when you think about it. He was doomed from the start. Either he accepts to go with the time loop and

a) has a shitty childhood (shitty to the point of not thinking anyone ever loved him and to the point of accepting to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives to feel that love he was promised)

b) has to go through with the killing of hundreds of thousands of people! And I know future!Elias doesn't really show any remorse about it, but it has to fuck up a person. Especially when his decision was made pretty spontaneously in the moment, without really thinking about the consequences (I personally think that he wouldn't have done it if he had taken the time to breath, calm down and think about it). And especially knowing most of these people didn't just die at the time of the explosion, but had to suffer a slow and painful death, that Elias probably heard about/saw pictures of on TV. We don't see him as a young adult, but those years must have been tough.

c) has to make sure his childhood is shitty so that he can keep existing, and become his own abuser!!

His only other option is to not do any of that, choose to not make the bomb explode, to do the right thing, and what does he get for that? Nothing! He stops existing!! And it's not just as if he dies, he will never have existed, no one will know he ever existed, no one will remember him! Can you imagine that??

His own life is dependant on a cycle of abuse and death he created himself and it's SO. SAD.

#i've seen a lot of posts pointing out how awful and how much of a hypocrite he is #and those posts are right #but i think people mostly think of adult!elias when they talk about him #and i just can't get the 15 year old who didn't ask for any of this out of my head #his life is so fucking sad #bodies #bodies 2023 #bodies netflix #bodies meta #? i guess? #please watch this show it's SO GOOD

[thermodynamic-comedian]

have u ever considered that jonah magnus spent his life and more chasing divinity with the same desperation that jon rejected it with.

#he was honestly so strong to not have despised jon for that #tma #the magnus archives #jonah magnus #elias bouchard #tma spoilers #jonathan sims #tma meta #tma analysis

[canonicallyanxious]

i'm stupid so i absolutely did not put together Conrad Schintz as "conscience" until i saw someone in the tag point this out but now that it's in my dumb brain i can't stop thinking about it. Alex's choice to portray Conrad as this softspoken never speaks up but still has to do Something boy who is kind and thoughtful to a fault. pitch perfect character choices!!! but also this tiny quiet boy somehow being pegged by the heads of the city as the BIGGEST DISTRACTION to the big guy's goals and ambitions!! and then his choice of the important article to pay attention to being the culmination of Elias' months and months of research - specifically for the goal of, as Conrad put it, getting it before the "big wigs" could get to it. WHAT is Elias Hodge DOING for Gobstopper Industries??????

#sarah.txt #dimension 20 #mentopolis #d20 spoilers #d20 meta #story meta #kind of????? this isn't really meta just me going WHAT is going on and being too dumb to figure it out skdnfskdfnsd #god these fucking world building choices though. #cortisol being the main hormone available legally and one of its functions is to regulate stress response. #the city is on strict pleasure/love lockdown until elias gets a raise. #his conscience is a tiny little boy who no one ever listens to but still somehow managed to shake up the whole city w one small choice. #logic is the mayor!!! ambition is the DA!!!!! #all of these small things that tell us SO MUCH about who elias hodge is as a person without ever even meeting the big guy!!!!!! #Brennan how much fucking WORK did you put into this world building i'm SCREAMING!!!!!