#OLD tma spoilers but my friend just started listening. So. No content for them >:)

[pinkpuffballdude]

👀 what's your interpretation of Hastur and the King in Yellow?

OKAY SO we're gonna start at the beginning. Malevolent. I started listening at the recommendation of one of my friends, and very thoroughly enjoyed myself right up until Yellow was introduced and he stressed me out soso bad. however I loved the concept, and the atmosphere, and kept thinking idly about how someone could act differently from Arthur in the same or similar circumstances. this combined with my theoretical Calamity character, a time traveling historian, into Jacqueline Little, member of the Temporal Historians Society and current resident of 1934 ish.

but why does this matter. WELL if this was discord I'd spoiler this rn however it's not so I'll just say MALEVOLENT SPOILERS and continue. the King in Yellow features heavily in this podcast, due to the fact that John is a leetl piece of him, fractured off and possessing his own free will now (good for him). but I don't know Anything about the cthulhu mythos, and any characterization I'd make would be based entirely on the podcast I'm already lowkey ripping off, which I'm deeply uncomfortable with. I decide to go and read The Source Material, finding that Lovecraft didn't even come up with Hastur, or the King in Yellow! Lovecraft got both names from Robert Chambers, author of the book The King in Yellow, about a (fictional) play by the same name, and he got the name Hastur (and Carcosa and a couple others) from a collection of short stories, including Haïta the Shepherd. first I read the Dunwich Horror, to get a feel for the vibe, then I decided I wanted Hastur Exclusive Content and read Haïta the Shepherd, and am now most of the way through the King in Yellow (book).

something interesting I found is that neither Lovecraft nor Chambers ever tried to combine Hastur and the King in Yellow in any of their works- Chambers simply used Hastur as a fun cool name, and the King as a fleshed out character of his own, and Lovecraft just had them next to each other in a list of Spooky Dudes. Admittedly Lovecraft also had Hastur's followers hunting the Mi-Go, and an association with the Yellow Sign, which might be where people made the connection later on? but within Their Own Works there is nothing indicating that those are two names for the same entity. THAT was put forward by a completely different guy decades later, about the same time people started associating Old Ones with elements and shit and that sounds boring so I'm ignoring it. TMA did a good job categorizing horror without detracting from it- these people did not.

I essentially made a list of everything I associate with Hastur and the King, seperately, and came to the conclusion that they are 1) brothers of a kind 2) part of Carcosa/straight up Carcosa 3) the same person born twice. they look very similar and end up having similar goals, but Hastur is the country while the King is the ruler. when Carcosa the island does something, they act as one. they are one. when the land revolts against the king, Hastur attacks his brother. when the king is cruel to his subjects, the King in Yellow acts accordingly. they essentially act as physical metaphors for the state of the nation, and their personalities fit. Hastur tends to be more nuturing than the King, while the King cares more about control and getting people to do what he wants, by whatever means necessary.

I'd also like to mention that Hastur is the name of a lake in the King in Yellow (book/play), which is why Hastur is a manifestation of the land itself. he's also the lake at the same time, and possibly the moons though I think they share custody of the stars and suns.

#THANK YOU FRIEND #true story #asked #the king in yellow (play) #temporal historians society #I'm having a lot of fun rn thankuuuu SO much for letting me talk about this #I do refer to them as brothers here but that's like. brothers in the way you have sister cities. they're not related they're Related #if any of this doesn't make sense uh. I'm sorry feel free to ask more questions #TO BE CLEAR the King in Yellow is also the literal ruler of Carcosa and Hastur is akin to its steward. there is not a seperate king #but when you're talking about 'oh Carcosa did this Carcosa did that' it's them. they did it.

[infinitefinalsweek]

[image ID: The silhouettes of two boys, Danny and Tim Stoker. They’re walking through tall brown grass towards a series of rough shapes, which together make up a circus tent covered in black and red stars. Behind the circus tent we can see a dark purple sky, filled with both stars and blurry white shapes. End Image ID.]

ITS STOKER WEEK BOYS. Today’s prompt is past/future, but you can go check out @stoker-week for the full list of prompts. Tim Stoker lives in my head rent-free.

I had to really mess around to get this to look like I wanted it to, but I think I like how it turned out!

#Stoker week 2021 #Wait #It might be #Stokerweek2021 #i will check in a minute #Anyway #tma #Tim stoker #tma spoilers #OLD tma spoilers but my friend just started listening. So. No content for them >:)

[archived-lara]

So you know how you have other things you’re supposed to be doing but your mind is just too stuck on the latest tma ep? Yeah, that. 

This was supposed to be a short but angsty lonely eyes fic. but it turned into “this is how I imagine Elias is doing lately” with some lonely eyes.

(1.8k words, spoilers up to 168)

There is a room, on top of the tower that all who looks upon it knows the name of, the Panopticon, the stronghold of the Eye. You can see it from anywhere. It’s only fair as it sees you and it knows you so deeply no matter what other kinds of horrors are surrounding you in this new world that those who has enough consciousness left to think calls hell, you can feel its gaze if only you can pay enough attention to it.  

There is a room on top of this tower. It is almost a glass orb, if you have enough breath left in you, you may laugh at the fact that it looks very much like an eyeball. An outside observer could never see through it but in this snow globe, right in the center there is a throne. A touch dramatic, yes. But so is the man sitting on it. The throne seems to spin at his will so whenever he wishes to direct his physical body to a direction, it will. He turns to the general direction of the places he watches. There is no need for it. As most of the time the man sees not through his own eyes, but all other eyes. Be it the ones up in the sky or the ones inside your own skull. But like it was stated above, this man loves the drama.

His name is Jonah Magnus. Or was. The names stop mattering to him the first time his eyes were in someone else's skull. He was Jonah, Richard, James and many more he doesn’t even bother to remember these days. People called him Elias Bouchard the last time it mattered so if you’re in search of a name for him, that will do.

He sits in his throne and watches the horrors of this new world he brought along in a childish glee. Finally. He did it. Took over 200 years but he finally succeeded. The world is his to watch and See, forever and ever. He is the king, he won. He paid some prices, yes. But what are they compared to an infinity of being the king?

He does need to adapt into the world too though. As he finds himself falling into old, unnecessary habits. For the first 2 weeks he found himself wondering down into a bedroom of all things, getting ready to go to bed after hours and hours of watching people suffer, only to realize he has no need for sleep anymore. His hand still unconsciously reaches for one of his pens to spin between his fingers as he watches, only to notice there is no desk there. He finds himself craving some wine in the evenings, despite the fact that there are no evenings and he doesn’t need anything to eat or drink. After some days of stopping doing something he doesn’t need to, he reasons with himself. He is the king, isn’t he? He might not need to do it but he can surely do these things out of pleasure. And week 1 of the new world, even though time means little to the world, ends with its new king dragging his desk up to the Panopticon. So what if he redid his last report with a glass of wine? He can do whatever he wants. The world is still suffering, he can take a break from watching it.

---

There are many domains of the fears in this world. And Elias can look at any of them whenever he wishes. Sometimes he checks his old acquaintances, Simon Fairchild seems to find a way to have fun even though his domain keeps changing. Sometimes it’s an ocean, sometimes an endless fall, even a roller-coaster or two in between. Jude Perry burns and destroys as she pleases, Helen has her fun. The Archive seems to be gone on a trip with his partner, maybe to look for their friends, Elias doesn’t care. He doesn’t like looking at them much and it is as much about the headache he gets as it is about the heaviness he feels on his chest, but Elias will ignore it. There is one place he refuses to look. And it is not because he can’t, he can! He just chooses not to. The Lonely has avatars too, and many domains over the face of the earth. There even is one quite close to the Panopticon. So close that he doesn’t need to summon any of the Eye’s powers to see it. He can just turn his head to the direction and look out of the never-ending glass of the globe that surrounds him. An area of seemingly infinite fog, somehow he never lets the throne turn that way.  

There is no avatar there, nor are there any people. Elias had planned to give it to someone. Close but with just enough distance that they could try to ignore each other if they wished. But he made his choice. Elias kept reminding himself that. He told him to leave, if only he had left in anger, run off to the Tundra as he always did. But Elias pushed too much, made him want to fight him more than ever. And the one time he actually tried to stand his ground... No. Elias made his choice, and Peter made his own. There is nothing to change it. The fog is empty. He is the king now. He doesn’t need to dwell on the past.

Elias gave up on counting any days. There was no sun to set or rise so what even would be a day. He sat and watched as Simon put some poor souls to a rocket, getting ready to switch his domain to a reflection of stars. Then suddenly his gaze seemed to pull him to a domain of the End.

Yet here he is, in his tower designed by a past lover, sipping his wine, twirling his pen, on his throne. Alone. He can feel he is feeding the Lonely, even if just a small bit. He can make it stop. But he doesn’t want to. Having the faint fog around him, the cold air. Over the years it has become too much of a familiarity, it is like how he wants his desk to be there. His heart breaks a little. If you’re wearing the crown, you need to pay the price.  

---

“Report to prevent future deaths.

This report is being sent to:

The Great Eye that watches all who linger in terror and gorges itself on the sufferings of those under its unrelenting, stuporous gaze.”

“Huh, a direct call to the Eye. A report. This sounds delightful.” Elias can always catch the next time Simon tries a new trick.

“I am Oliver Banks, sometimes known as Antonio Blake or Dr Thomas Pritchard. I serve The Coming End That Waits For All and will not be ignored.”

“My my, isn’t this daring? You certainly managed to catch my attention Mr. Banks, let's hear your report.” Paper work had always been a favorite of Elias’, it was a shame he didn’t get to do any new ones, so he was very excited for this.

“Time walks forward with her but she has not the strength to stop it.”

Something in this sentence bothers Elias. He can’t pinpoint it exactly but ignores it as he does not want to miss the rest of this report. It clicks as he lets the thought go. Time? What does that have to do with anything? But what comes next is too interesting to let him linger on it further.

“The souls trapped within this transformed world are the only ones who will ever be here, and the presence of the Termination of All requires that- ultimately, that is what will happen.”

No, Elias thinks. He feels sick for the first time since this all started.

“When this happens, the Great Powers themselves will also fade and die, withering away into nothingness and releasing this reality from their grip.”

Elias was furious. “No! This was supposed to be infinite! I won! Everything is as it should be! It can’t end.” He wanted to look away. But the spell of a statement made no exceptions.

“Even if such a fate could be avoided, as it comes closer and the other Entities grow in their awareness of their own end, the grotesque ripples of their own impossible panic shall glut and feed my master, gorging it to the point where- perhaps it will even surpass the Watcher in prominence.”

Elias threw the paperweight on his desk to the vague direction where the Archive spew out the horrible words of someone else. Had the glass that surrounds the room been normal, it would shatter into a thousand shards. The paperweight however was a gift he received around the time the Insititute opened so it had no trouble shattering. A piece with a single flower rolled over to his feet, but his eyes were elsewhere.

“All things end, and every step you take, whatever direction you may choose, only brings you closer to it.”

When the report ended Elias pulled his gaze far from it. He wanted to hit something. He yelled at his god instead. “It was supposed to be my infinite victory!” Bam, there goes the pencil case from Rayner. Followed closely by all the files Elias brought up to distract himself. “I played your games! I fed you, I made your ultimate goal into reality! I lost and sacrificed everything- everyone! Just for it to have an end? What kind of twisted joke is this?!” there were tears of anger falling from Elias’ face. “I let go of my identity, became someone else every few decades. Just so I could win! So the clock ticking wouldn’t mean anything anymore!”. The broken pieces of the drawers and their contents littered the floor. With little else to break, Elias seem to lose all his strength and let himself fall to the ground. His eyes fell to the papers. His old notes surrounding him.

Call Peter about the funding meeting. 

It has been a while... Maybe take the box from the safe before the meeting?

His yells turned into a whisper. “I let them all die. I let him die. And for what? How much time do I really have? Who do I have?”

The victory sure is Lonely isn’t it?

For a moment he felt the fog get thicker. He let it surround him. Elias turned to the area with the fog that wasn’t really under the Lonely’s power for the first time. If he listened hard enough, he imagined he could hear his laughter. He closed his eyes. And he pretended the impossible breeze smelled like the sea as it gently dried his tear streaked cheeks.

#the box is the box with their wedding rings (if that wasn't clear) #and the desk is from his office he dragged it up by himself #did i make his throne basically a spinny office chair? yes #lonely eyes #the magnus archives #tma spoilers #MAG 168 #even tho it's not exactly about the ep it is heavily based on its events so... #my post #this probably has so much grammer mistakes but i can't be bothered to check atm #if i didn't post this now i probably never would so... #fic

[eliasbouchardisarobloxthot]

chapter 1 of an au i am writing

this is jokingly titled “power of friendship au” in my doc, but that’s essentially it - tim, sasha, and jon (for now) team up while they’re all still interns to befriend all of the creatures they meet!  the timeline is obviously a bit different from tma canon, but it will still be mostly non-spoiler. this chapter in particular has only mid-early season one spoilers, so you all should be fine! as usual, under the cut...

"We are not supposed to be doing this," Tim hissed, but he made no move to run.

Jon wasn’t listening. The box of cigarettes in his hand was nearly crushed, but he stood his ground as they made their way to Old Fishmarket Close.

"Do you really think we're gonna—" Sasha's voice wavered. "I mean, the file in Gertrude's office said it’s not—it isn’t always there, right?”

“We’re going to find it,” he said resolutely. The hills were high, higher than any of them had expected, but they managed to make their way up to the alleyway that was listed on the map.

It was dark out. Jon convinced them all earlier that day to come with him and help after they left for the night, and Tim was doing a very bad job of hiding the fact that it made him incredibly nervous to be out this late. The streets were nearly empty—at nine o’clock on a Tuesday evening, no one was going to be out and about.

A quiet voice echoed from in the alleyway—”Can I have a cigarette?”

Sasha screamed. In her haste to wrap herself around Tim for safety, she nearly hit him in the face. Somehow, though, Jon stood his ground.

“You can have a cigarette if you come out of the alleyway. We know what you are. We just want to talk.” He set the pack of cigarettes down just a bit out of reach, then sat down in front of the alley with his legs crossed. “We can wait here all night.”

“Wait, what? Maybe you can, but some of us have work tomorrow. Or have you forgotten about our literal job? The one we met at? Earth to Jon, but we do still have to work. In the twenty minutes it took us to get here, capitalism as an institution has not yet been overthrown.”

“Shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.” Jon sat there staring at the alleyway. “Come out of the alley now, please.”

His stare was incredibly intense, seeming to cut through the darkness obscuring the figure and illuminate the alley. As they sat there in the alley, a voice that was most certainly not the one from before—and was also certainly not human—echoed out from the alley.

“Fine.”

“Come out where I can see you,” Jon said. 

The vaguely human silhouette in the alley warped and twisted, changing from human to inhuman in barely a second. It skulked out of the alley, sitting down across from Jonathan.

He could see how from certain angles it could maybe look sort of human. If it tried. It reminded him of one of those optical illusion sculptures in museums—from one angle, it looked like a giraffe, from the other two elephants. Except from one angle, this thing was human, and from the other… well, most definitely not.

“Do you have a name?” Jon asked. Somewhere, quiet static hummed. 

“No,” it said. “You call me the Anglerfish, though.”

“Do you want a name?”

“Maybe. If you pick a good one.” 

“Louis,” Tim said.

“Felix,” Sasha said at the same time.

“No,” the Anglerfish said, decisively.

“You’re a fish, right? What if we just call you Ariel?” Sasha tilted her head to one side, thinking hard. “You look like an Ariel.”

“Ariel as in The Tempest?” Jon asked, looking confused. “I mean, sure, the water reference is there—”

“Ariel as in The Little Mermaid, you fucking idiot,” Tim said with a sigh that could have shaken the city down. 

“Never seen it.”

“What’s a mermaid?” the Anglerfish asked, testing the word out in its human voice. 

“Oh my god. Firstly, your name is Ariel now.” Tim pointed at the Anglerfish. “Secondly, you get a pass for not knowing because you’re a spooky monster thing. Thirdly, Jon, how have you not seen The Little Mermaid? Did you just straight-up not have a childhood?”

Jon didn’t reply.

“So we’re going to my apartment and renting it off Netflix and—I can’t believe I’m having a slumber party! I’m not a kid anymore… but it’s necessary. Objectively speaking.” Sasha looped her arm through Jon’s, pulling him to his feet. 

“Are we sure this is necessary?”

“Yes,” Sasha said, glaring at Tim. “I think I actually have some microwave popcorn we can make, do a full movie night.” 

Jon sighed, following Sasha as best he could.

“What’s a movie?” Ariel asked quickly. “What are those?”

“You have a lot to learn,” Sasha said, with a wide grin. “But if you like it here and want to talk about it more, then… well, you can just chill with us!”

—

“What did you say your name was again?”

“Patel? Amy Patel?”

“Alright, Amy, and do you think you can tell me some more about how this all happened? I know you gave your statement to Gertrude already, but—”

“Oh, no, it’s no trouble,” Amy said, gesturing into her flat. “I moved, but I still have my address down if you want me to give it to you. And, er, the flat that used to be Graham’s, I can get you that address too if you need it.”

Sasha shook her head. “You don’t have to give us all that. Just by letting us in you’re doing enough already.” 

Amy smiled in that bemused sort of way that older adults tended to smile at younger ones, with a look in her eyes that said something like “who are these little children and why are they trying to be professional around me?” 

“We should—I should have introduced myself.” Jon gestured to Tim and Sasha. “That’s Tim Stoker, this is Sasha James, and I’m Jonathan Sims—we work with the Magnus Institute, under the head archivist. We’re only interns, though.”

“I’d noticed,” she said. “Come on, sit down. I’ll put on some tea if you’d like?”

“Tea would be lovely,” Sasha said before the others could interject. “Now, can you tell us a bit more about your experience with Graham?”

“Oh, well, where to begin,” Amy said, pouring milk into a saucepan on the stove. “I mean, I’ve told you basically everything in my statement already. You contacted me saying there was an update a while back, but honestly I’d almost forgotten about it. The whole thing. It was a few years ago now, so… yeah.”

“Alright. Um. Do you—can you tell us anything about what you do now? Like, the sorts of jobs you’ve been doing, or—”

“Yeah, uh… yeah. Like I said in my statement, I do statistical analysis mostly. Been taking a few more classes sort of in the field of criminal studies—” she waved her hand— “all that sort of stuff. I actually did take a liking to it, might try working with that sort of stuff in the near future. I’m already looking for applications."

"That's very interesting, Amy," Jon said, fidgeting with the packet of cigarettes in his pocket. 

"It really is," she said as she strained the chai, setting four mugs on the table and sitting down next to them. 

Jonathan had taken the box of cigarettes out, and was now shaking them absentmindedly a few centimeters away from his face as he thought.

"Oh, can you not smoke in here?" Amy asked quickly. "It's just—my landlord hates when people smoke inside, we have an area over outside for it—"

"I don't smoke," Jon said, looking somewhat confused. Sasha took the cigarettes from,him and put them in her pocket.

"They're for our friend Ariel, Jon just carries them for it."

"It?" Amy looked more confused than ever.

"She eats them," Tim explained. "And she told us to call her 'she' in front of other people, Sasha."

By this point, Amy had taken a long drink of chai.

"You kids work with monsters. Right? All those things in the statements. Other people have to have given statements, there's got to be some others that are true."

Jon nodded solemnly. "We've been looking into other cases with provable aspects—yours does, by the way, we know yours is at least partially true." 

"How comforting," Amy said with a wry smile.

“And… well, this is going to sound very bad, but I would prefer it if Tim stopped sleeping with people to get information.”

“Hey! That was one time!” 

Amy laughed. “So you’re asking me to help you get information. Right?”

Jon nodded, having started to fidget with the cuffs of his shirt once Sasha had taken away the cigarette box. 

“I mean, I do have access to quite a few databases. If you wanted my help, though, you’ll have to promise something.” It sounded like she was talking to some unruly teenagers. 

“Certainly.” He tried to look as professional as possible.

“Please just take care of yourselves,” Amy said with a sigh. “You guys are just kids and you’re running yourselves into the ground, and you’re putting so much work into this—I’m scared you’re going to either get hurt by one of these things or hurt yourselves trying to befriend them.” 

“I—” Jon tugged at the button on his sleeve for a moment. “I understand where you’re coming from here, I really do, but there’s, there’s just so many and I want to give them a chance. Because we still have to—if there’s any chance they’re a good person, deep down, I want to help them.”

Amy sighed, leaning back in her chair. “If you’re serious about this—”

“We are,” Sasha said quickly. 

“Then I’ll help you.” She picked up a pad of paper sitting on the table and scribbled something on it in smooth, curling handwriting. “That’s my phone number for my work phone, just call it if you need anything. I usually have it on me.”

She thought for a moment. “Give me a sec. You’ll want this.” 

Leaving Jon, Tim, and Martin alone at the table, she walked into her bedroom and returned carrying what appeared to be a very old, very worn-out three-ring notebook. There were dividers of various colors separating things, a bookmark that was just a piece of ribbon stapled into the spine, and a label on the front that read “MONSTERS”. 

Jon flipped through it quickly, looking through the sections. The dividers were labeled with different numbers, and at the front was a table of contents with each number labeled with a small explanation of each different number. 

“This is incredible, Amy,” he said, turning the pages reverently. “There’s so much detail here—this could be more than we have at the Institute, really.”

“Well, I have had a bit of help,” she said amusedly. Opening up the cover, she moved her hand over something inside and set it down on the table. As she did, the inside cover was revealed.

“Is that skin?” Tim asked, looking disgusted. “Ew.”

“What, am I too gross for you?” a voice suddenly said. Sitting on Amy’s sofa was a man who looked to be about Tim’s age, with his hair long and poorly dyed black. All of his joints were tattooed with tiny open eyes, and he wore dark eye makeup in circles around his eyes that trailed down his face. The clothes he wore were ripped and tattered, but it was obvious that they had at one point been a t-shirt for a band, a leather jacket, and a pair of dark jeans. 

He was also hovering several feet in the air.

“Nice to meet you, everyone,” he said with a grin. “I’m Gerard Keay, and I used to work for your boss.” 

Jon stood there open-mouthed for a few moments. “Sorry, what?”

“I used to work for Gertrude. That’s your boss, right? She still there?”

“Yeah, she’s still there. Uh, just—you’re a ghost, aren’t you.” 

“Yep,” he said, leaning back to hover above the couch with his hands behind his head. “They taking the book with them, Amy?”

“I think so. Because, well, they’re—I think they’re more able to investigate these things than I am.”

“Shame,” Gerard said with a sigh, pushing off the wall and sighing. “You were cool. Plus you didn’t mind if I listened to music on your phone while you worked.”

“You can still see me sometimes,” Amy said with a laugh. “Not like I’m dead. And besides, that wouldn’t really be too much of a problem, would it?”

Gerard rolled his eyes. He very pointedly turned away from Amy and looked at the interns, hovering in a cross-legged position in the air. “Well. My life is in your hands now. I mean, not really life exactly, I’m still dead, but my existence is in your hands. Don’t fuck it up.”

“We won’t,” Tim said. 

“Well. This has certainly been informative.” Amy moved closer to the door. “Thank you for giving me Graham’s old notebook, and for a very interesting discussion. I assume I’ll be hearing from you shortly?”

“Yes. I think we’ll start at the beginning? What’s the oldest entry you have in this book?”

“That’d be… the one right at the start of section three for distorted reality. He likes to hang out in graveyards, you’ll probably be able to find him pretty quickly. Blond hair that’s all long and frazzled-looking, tall, kind of thin—if you see him in a reflection or through glass he looks tall, unnaturally tall, and his hands look all gross and creepy.” She shuddered, moving to open the door. “You still have my number?”

“Yep.” Sasha held up the page. 

“It’s really been lovely,” Jon said. “Thank you.” 

“No problem at all,” Amy said. “I’ll see you all soon.”

thats all folks! thank you so much for reading it. i may upload chapter 2 soon, but that is it for now!!

#text #fanfiction #original work

[definitely-not-an-alb]

I think the best thing about TMA for me until now is that it’s the first time I’ve actually gotten into one of those unspoilable fandoms myself. Like that’s the main reason I started it, people kept reblogging stuff about it onto my dash and I was always like ‘??? this makes NO SENSE but it sounds rad and like ya’ll are having FUN and I appreciate that’.

LIke I’m generally the kind of person who does not give a single fuck about spoilers, in fact, I appreciate spoilers. Like I don’t care about A:EG AT ALL right now, and I’ll actually write to a friend who saw it today and ask her to spoil it so that I can have like, emotions about this and enjoy watching it once I get my hands on it. And I only ever got into Hannibal because I read a misfiled fic that spoiled me for every single plot twist of the show. There’s some fandoms I’ve never consumed any canon of, I just exist on the branches of them, consuming fancontent and getting the same kind of enjoyment out of them as out of my main fandoms. So I’m a weirdo and I start 90% of my fandoms because someone ‘spoils’ me for them. 

So not only do I Not Get Spoilerculture, it’s actively detrimental to my enjoyment of media.

But. There’s those fandoms. The ones that make no goddamn sense. I love them.

The SCP-Foundation was prolly the first time I experienced this with, but that one has the added bonus of literally never stopping it’s bullshit. Like you can’t get ‘into’ it, I feel like, it’s too much content, and to disjointed. There’s no canon, there’s not even several main narratives, it’s just An Organically Grown Purposeful Mess hive-minding it’s way, and on top of that it has like seventhousand different internal (some defunct now) subcultures and occasionally you find a relict from the 4chan days (the true horror of the archives). It’s a mess, I’ll never understand it’s writhing, weird mass and I love it.

Homestuck. I have no fucking clue what the fuck Homestuck is (a comic? a webseries? an eldritch abomination beaming content into it’s follower’s brains?) or what it’s about and there seems to be like 100 years worth of canon and it’s own language and logic and I have no intention of ever reading it, because otherwise I might understand the nonsense that crosses my dash and where would be the fun in that. Please, for the love of god, don’t explain homestuck to me, because that’s literally the only way you could make it boring to me.

Animorphs, is kind of the same, though I might actually read it at some point. With that one it’s more like ‘I know the themes, but I can’t name a single character or plot event and I have no idea what those words mean, I only understand the abstract interpretion at the end of your essay’. It’s fuckign great. Please don’t explain Animorphs to me.

And gonna be honest, TMA is kind of like that. Like I’ve seen stuff about it, and I mean text posts and character studies and explenations of plot points ffs, cross my dash for month now, and I’ve read them. And they sound rad but I honestly don’t understand a word? And that’s great!

It’s like, I see the words and I see the letters and they make sense individually, but then I read, and they do not make sense together. I should know what this means, but I do not. But it’s also not nothing, it’s not meaningless babble; it’s something, and there are people, somewhere, who know how to understand this, somehow.

I’m at around episode 40 now, and it’s like, with the very first episode, i picked up this threat and started unraveling it. With every episode, those jumbled words look more and more like the stories and explanations I know them to be. And it’s exilerating, way more then it is scary, to reach out into that darkness and grasp that line of explanation and follow it, episode by episode. I don’t know any of the deep lore yet, but I’ll get there. Let me know, let me be part of this shared hallucination that is Fandom.

Old Wierd Fiction, your Lovecraft and whatnot, always had this problem, I think, that the people writing the stories wouldn’t have picked up the threat. Their horror is less of the things out there, and more of watching their friends pick up the threat, watching them start unraveling it and wandering away from them. They, the writers, and you, the reader, they assure you, are not like that. They are Sensible, the Right Kind of People, who wouldn’t do this out of their free will. They only come into contact with the strange and dangerous through accident, or the choice of others (misguided idiots). They’d never pick up the book, never read the words they can’t understand, never talk to those people (the Wrong Kind of People). They don’t listen to the sounds in the darkness, they don’t find the other half of those barely eligible notes, they don’t ask the people talking weirdly like that and they mind their own, respectable business. They wouldn’t do this, they are the sensible ones, right?

I’ve never been very good at being the Right Kind of People, not in who I am, and not in who I am, and I have very little aspiration, if any, to be. And I think I’m not a very Sensible Person either.

I’m not stupid, of course, I wouldn’t open the obviously creepy door and wouldn’t touch the definitely cursed amulet and wouldn’t read the barely legible, antique book I found that says ‘Here Be Demons’ in Latin.

But I am, in the end, not very sensible. I lay awake at night not saying ‘that was just my birds.’ but ‘Was that my birds?’. I name the things in my nightmares (what a stupid thing to do, don’t.). I go digging for the rest of what those people are talking about, those barely legible posts on a website.

And in the end, this is save, right? It’s just fiction. There’s worse ways to fill this want-to-know-want-to-dream-awake-want-want, like a cult or something, right? It’s a podcast, some transcripts - I can always stop listening.

#TMA #not fic #idk what I'm doing here #meta #? I guess? #I DO in fact name the things in my nightmares #I would advice against it #please leave me alone scary horse lady