#TMA critical

[apocalypticsinn]

JonElias shippers... I won't ever build a house in your neighborhood, but I WILL drive down your streets as a scenic path through the bustling city when I need a breath of fresh air. I'll have a drink with you on your porch or take up your offer of sleeping in your guest room for a night or two because I firmly believe in the opinion that y'all understood Elias' character and this series better than everyone else.

#jonelias #you guys just. you get it. you just GET it. #also like I don't ship it but holy shit do I see the FUCKING appeal. Oohooo. It's so terrible I do enjoy it. like a shot of vodka. #tma critical

[elias-rights]

Forever angry at S5 granting Jonah neither dignity at the expense of humanity nor compassion at the expense of control.

#mine #tma critical #tma s5 #jonah magnus #him

[thedevilscarnival]

and with the magnus protocol dropping, the jonah magnus tag becomes 25% more unbearable. rest in peace king wish that your showrunners actually respected you and didn't drag your crusty corpse into a computer to get that sweet sweet ad revenue

#korro.txt #tma critical #tma #jonah magnus #being jonah fan and looking into the tag is just: #elias post. elias post. homophobic joke. elias post. elias post. one singular regency jonah post. elias post. #i suffer every day.

[arthurtaylorlester]

whispers into your inbox "jmart was the worst thing that could have happened in tma; it wrecked Jon's character and is the most transparent 'how do we not have our mc become suicidal?' I have ever seen. TMA then falls into the hole of the only important or good enough relationships being romantic, discarding previous character development to throw everything into romance solves all ~ ♡ I hate it and I hate how much Jon is woobified and infantilized in the fandom to drool over Martin and I hate how everyone acts like their relationship is good, when I think either of them with 5 years of a normal life would realize how awful the relationship was for both of them." Anyway lol I expect no response or post of this I am just being spicey on anon

oh anon you thought i was gonna see a take like this and not post it?

i need you to out yourself to me because goddamn this is an interesting take!

look, i love jmart, but even with 5 seasons of development they still somehow managed to feel rushed?

i disagree in that their relationship being unhealthy is a bad thing for them, because like the appeal of podcasts for me is the fucked up relationships. fucked up characters = fucked up relationships, yknow? like john and arthur from malevolent, normally, they'd hate each other without much of a second thought, but that's not the point, they love each other despite that, and that kind of extends to jmart for me.

i also totally agree with the fandom criticism, woobifying jon is like the only tma content i see on twt and it is soooooo annoying.

my personal qualms with tma however is in part the lore decisions and how the fandom treats the lore (and also the whole podcast).

s1 is easily the best season, mostly because you have no fucking idea what's going on, but after s2 things really start feeling like they're being drawn out, at least to me? like i think season 3-4 couldve been one thing, and um. season 5 is fun if you like jmart and the eye ig. i know most of this is a gross oversimplification (not forgetting yall basira&daisy fans) but after the core cast of season 1-2 i could not really get the other characters being fundamental in the story (not georgie. i love georgie)

don't get me wrong, the not-sasha arc was amazing! but after tim died, and martin fucked off for most of a season being sad, i was a bit bored. the buried isnt interesting to me sorry.

and also they under-utilize basically every fear, including the eye, and the one that upsets me the most is the stranger. oh what is it? circus and clowns ig. LIKE OPEN UP YOUR EYES THE WORLD IS OPEN TO YOU THE UNCANNY VALLEY AS SO MANY NICHES PLEASE

and by the end of the show, it just feels like they keep rotating the same 3 fears, and the others just kind fade into the bg

and then there's the fandom. i'm sorry but some of you guys act like tma is the end-all-be-all of fiction horror podcasts. when it's just not. sorry, but the magnus archives, after s1, just isnt scary. you know what's going on, the fears! which are neatly tied into these categories of oddities!

and the show explicitly states that the 14 fears categorization is arbitrary and that they all bleed into one another, but the fandom just. ignores that? like i've heard so many people go to other podcasts and say ''oh x is so eye avatar-coded!!'' and then x just has some vague eye symbolism that isnt even the point (this is about arthur lester)

and like i don't understand how tma manages to be the most mainstream fiction podcast nowadays, when welcome to night vale is right there ! and yes, i am implying that wtnv is objectively better than tma, because wtnv despite running for 12 goddamn years has never bored me with an episode, and it has roughly the same amounts of episodes! they both have similar formats that could repetitive quick (radio show vs statements) and even though i'd say statements have more creative freedom, wtnv still manages to not be boring. this might also just be a fact of better and more varied authors but hey, this is just my opinion

i want it to be clear that i'm not trying to start discourse, i still like tma! the fanartists are some of the most talented artists i've seen, and the fics are just aughhhhhhhhhhhh /pos

#podcasts fandoms have next to no discourse but that also doesnt leave room for criticism #tma critical #<- just in case #2 magnus 2 arch-ives #!! red !! #anon #red replies #sorry to anon if you didnt want this to be public i needed to rant about the tma-glorification #i did listen to all of tma in 2 weeks but um that may have something to do with it #fandom critical #discourse #<- not really tho this is just my opinion

[teamfortresstwo]

Genuinely insane how Jon had more chemistry with literally every character BUT the one he ended up being with

#anti jm #jm negative #discourse #jm critical #^everyone who follows me and doesn’t want to see posts like this please block these tags cause I don’t want to bother you with it #tma critical

[ichabodcranemills]

Honestly, there are zero reasons as to why Jon and Martin would end up somewhere else together other than not wanting to give a completely gloom ending to jmart shippers (boring). Jon was stabbed, Martin wasn’t. Jon was the tether, Martin wasn’t. Jon was fully imbued with Eye’s power, Martin wasn’t.

Assuming Jon wouldn’t die “somewhere else”, which there’s no reason for, why would they have gone to the same place unless you get to travel with your stabber?

And in that case… d’you know who also got stabbed and whose stabber was right there? 😃

#I’m just saying that if you assume a jmart somewhere else scenario you have to embrace the fact that Jonah is also there #there’s no reason as to why Jon would survive and make the trip and Jonah wouldn’t #or if it’s an after death scenario… no reason for Martin to die and make the trip #tma critical #Jonelias #I guess

[lemonhemlock]

i am way too late for any of this, but i felt like ranting a little (a lot) over tma, so here it goes.

i actually really, really liked the dreamlike quality of the S5 statements. i think they're some of jonny's best work. so evocative and just beautifully written, the feeling of horror so prevalent, so delicate, so entrapping. i would listen to them absolutely enthralled. what a submersive experience. so on that front, 100% would recommend.

the problems i have are mainly with the meta-plot. certainly, personal preferences and biases come into play here, bc i despise jonmartin with the fire of a thousand suns and would have loved a jonelias corruption narrative, but, i feel that, in his quest to appease the j-mart shippers, jonny sacrificed a lot of his story's integrity. also, i have no way of verifying this, but it also felt like he inserted his own biases in a way that wasn't necessarily productive.

ultimately, i feel like he disrespected his main antagonists and that essentially translated into a sort of irreverence towards his own story. elias was easily his most dramatic and interesting villain (regardless of what he originally intended for him, it's how he developed throughout the story & i think there is a certain honesty in a writer acknowledging and respecting that), stole every scene he was in, yet after his great villain reveal in S4, he is absolutely absent throughout his entire apocalypse. it creates a lack of catharsis that i find bothersome. his death is way too easy. yet when he finally appears in MAG 193, it is glorious. he is terrifyingly in the throws of religious ecstasy as the eye's pupil. such an interesting idea! so little it was developed though bc jonny for some reason doesn't like elias.

there's this entire commentary about how elias is really just there to be eye's pupil until jon takes over from him, bc it's jon the eye truly desires. as if after faithfully serving the beholding for two centuries and bringing about his ritual, the eye would just disregard elias and actually be interested in the one person who is unwilling to play ball. please be serious. not saying that jon can't be the eye's "special little boy" or whatever, but the nerfing of elias/jonah borderlines on petulant. ofc, jonny is the author and you cannot begrudge a man for writing whatever he wants, but, as a listener, i have to say it feels very unsatisfying whenever authorial biases directly affect the storyline. very deus-ex-machina. very unearned.

i also have a problem with how the eye was ultimately handled and, once again, nerfed. the introduction of this element in relation to the beholding, that it sees but does not understand, felt very trite to me. it was added as a way to de-power the eye and elevate the web. but how could it even be true in the context of the entity conceptualization? the reason scopophobia is a thing is because people fear someone is behind the watching. what they fear is judgment or someone keeping tabs on them and using that information to harm them in some way. that requires intelligence, a capacity to distinguish between the harmless and the incriminatory, a propensity for casting moral judgment, of holding people accountable, of assigning blame, of discovering people's deepest, darkest secrets, of weaponizing shame. no one is afraid of a crow or a cat staring back at them, because, while those are also living beings, they lack the higher intelligence that creates the context necessary for scopophobia. so how can the eye not possess intelligence? apparently it doesn't, because jonny decided he didn't like the eye and the spider was oh-so-cooler instead.

but that only lead to the spider being way too overpowered than it should have been. as the so-called brain of the operation, the web really manifests a lot of faults that could have been exploited, yet the character never do, because the web needs to be true It Girl for some reason. this all feels very childish. the web's motivations do not work in-universe. we are often told it doesn't have a ritual because it is content with playing its games of manipulation within the world as it currently is. and that honestly seemed a rather fair assessment to make, but later proved to be a red herring, because it was the web that was actually behind the eye's own ritual.

i have several gripes with this. 1. if the spider is so smart, why doesn't it/can't it have its own ritual and re-shape the world according to its own preferences? why does it have to piggyback on the eye's grind? 2. the spider's big plan seems to be bringing about the eyepocalypse just to convince the characters to let the fears out into the metaverse so it can start again. because, as it turns out, the eyepocalypse isn't really it's preferred state of being? it was the status-quo after all? the web DID prefer the world as it was, because it allowed it to thrive off manipulation and puppeteering, things it can't really engage in as much as it would like, since now everyone is trapped inside various fear domains. so, why-oh-why, not just leave the world as is? why even bring about an apocalypse in the first place if your intention is to always inhabit a apocalypse-less place?

i felt like this was such a plot-hole of an explanation the way it was presented. the web's greatest flaw was that it loved intricate plots so much there was a real danger of over-complicating its own plans and failing to see the forest from the trees, so to speak. the eye could have been used not to boggle down on meaningless details and ramifications, but to get a better sense of the bigger picture, something the web could very well lose sight of (pun intended). so the web's "plan" could have been ultimately rendered meaningless, because instead of choosing the simplistic, straightforward, occam's razor solution (no apocalypse, just thrive off the world as it is), it chose the overly complicated path that placed it in a situation it didn't thrive in (eyepocalypse) and made it even more complicated to get out of in the first place. it basically surrendered its destiny into the hands of people who had zero reasons to act sympathetic and could have very well chosen to destroy the entire world, fears included. and yet i am supposed to be in awe of the web's great intelligence and buy into the whole dumb eye propaganda?

many things have already been said about the moral dilemma at the end of S5 and my take on that is that jon was right. it was the merciful and just solution to prevent other people from other universes from suffering at the hands of fear entities. but i will be indulgent and account that it is a difficult choice to make for anyone, since human beings are so survivalist in nature and the choice to just make the fears someone else's problem in the hopes of their plans maybe getting foiled more effectively by others is tantalizing. who knows what any of us would have chosen had we been in their situation? perpetuating the horrors on someone else just so you could get reprieve is so cravenly but it's human and i get it. however, by no means is this a happy ending the way it was framed by the narrative. what melanie, georgie, basira and martin did was horrible and evil, but it is never acknowledged in that way. the least jonny could have done is have jon resist martin's selfish decision and have martin genuinely kill him. but, no, martin gets his romantic send-off together with jon, with the open possibility that they get transported to another world where they could start over. melanie, georgie and basira get to start a new life in the entity-less world, after contributing almost nothing. the worst characters get to live & they're validated in their awful behaviour.

however. i do feel like there were other ways to resolve the eyepocalypse without resorting to a horrible sophie's choice in the first place, but that would require a more extensive endgame re-write.

#i also think that the ending was peddled like a tragedy just bc jon & martin didn't live #but imo the ending was pretty horror-like to begin with #the fears escape into the multi-verse and get to terrorize a new set of people! #also if you ask me the fact that melanie/georgie/basira live is a tragedy in and of itself #but ofc the narrative frames it as a good thing #the magnus archives #elias bourchard #the archivist #anti jonmartin #jonelias #putting this in the tag bc that would have been the superior plot line #the beholding #the eye #here i am running my mouth off again #tma critical #magnus critical

[ashesoriley]

The really annoying thing about Martin in season 5 is he seemed perfectly happy letting Jon be a monster but only when it benefited him. Every time else he was annoyed or angry. He was so hypocritical. It felt like he was using him almost

#anti jonmartin #the magnus archives #tma #anti martin #tma critical #anti jm

[twomystdunstans]

As per your recent post, may I ask why the whole Magnus protocol thing pisses you off? No obligation to answer, just wondering.

Yo! Ummmm. Hmm. It's mostly from a personal perspective/my opinion/feelings on TMA?

I really did like how the story ended, I thought it wrapped up well, the thought that we didn't KNOW what happened in the aftermath or what happened to jmart & Co definitively, felt really fitting and a nice full circle close on the story as a whole. It ended where it should've and I was really satisfied with that. It had told its story and that was it. Part of TMA (the whole thing you could argue) is the fear of the Unknown so like. Idk it felt fitting.

Around the same time it was ending/s5 there was kind of a big boom in the Fandom, and there was a lot of new fans who binged the whole of 5 seasons in like. A week or two and then wanted, understandably, more?

I don't really have sources to back me up I'm just speaking from personal experience talking w people who I've recommended the show to post-finale and who listened to it post-finale, and this isn't to be gate keepy or try and bash newer fans like. It's a good show I'm glad that people are still discovering it. Etc etc etc whatever.

Its of my PERSONAL OPINION. that continuing the story that TMA told is a disservice to the story itself. I have a post here that I made back when it was announced that kinda explains a little bit better.

I don't mean to accuse anyone working in it or listening to it of like. Being a cashgrab or pandering to fans or anything like that, I'm just personally dissatisfied and a little disappointed about it.

Im just not excited, I'm sure it'll be good? Johnny Sims has a style of writing horror I'm a huge fan of, im sure everyone who worked on it worked hard and im sure they all did an incredible job and I'll probably. Listen to it someday? Im just. Dreading it. Idk. I'll probably ramble jn the tags a little more and be more incoherent but like. Eh. Not excited, seems stupid. Sorry.

TL;DR it's of my opinion that TMA didn't need a continuation, had a good ending for the story it was telling, and tmagp is a disservice to that story. Whatever.

#There's also the like. This isn't what you asked but like while I am a HUGE fan of TMA I'm real. critical of it #I also. Hm. don't particularly like what it's done to the audio drama space and particularly the horror genre as a whole. #The euhhhh. How do I put this #There's been a recent. Uhhh. Whenever there's a new (horror) audio drama that's come out there's been need for a jmart dynamic #Does that. can anyone hear me. Sammy 🫵 Sammy knows what I'm talking about. #Red valley malevolent etc etc I'm sure there's others #TMA IS VERY GOOD AS A STANDALONE WORK. ITS AWESOME HOW BIG IT GOT. HOWEVER. TH HORRORS #Dude should I main tag this. Nah #tma critical #I don't wanna get yelled at but also. #tmagp #lol #NOW KM SCARED. SORRY. I DONT LIKE IT. SEEMS BAD. #Dude I'm gonna get fuckin cancelled. #Asks #Anon

[cyanidecrystal]

The worst feeling is shipping something for 4 seasons straight only to find out you hate it when it becomes canon.

Yes this is about TMA. I know nobody else thinks this. I think I might be some insane outlier but god... break up or something idk. I wanna enjoy this show again.

:((( I love this show. Could someone brainwash me into understanding this ship?

#tma critical #unhinged thoughts #Jonmartin critical

[aethersspacetime]

There haven’t been many times that I’ve wanted to beat a character to death with my bare hands in a non gay way (don’t ask) but Martin Blackwood sure is at the top of that list.

#anti martin blackwood #the magnus archives #anti jonmartin #tma critical #tma negative #Tma #imma sleep now

[nonbinaryeye]

Since it's popular now to share your opinion on what Rusty Quill is doing...

My theory or maybe more like wishful thinking is bonus content of more statements. You know leaving the plot be as it is but releasing some regular statements that happened at some point, giving maybe a tiny bit more lore about entities but not doing anything with status quo.

As much as I would be intrigued to get alternative ending or something Gertrude era related... It will not go well. These things never go well...

#I am very sceptical to this... #One of the thing I appreciated the most about tma is Jonny being strictly set on the number of season from the beginning #magnus archives #tma critical #magnus archives sequel #mEye post

[elias-rights]

As someone who just finished TMA for the first time and loves Elias more than most other characters, going through your tags and seeing the posts and reblogs is very...nice. I'm gonna pretend what I just listened to didn't happen and go back to shipping Jon and Elias as I have been lol

I like to pretend that the podcast ended on episode 160. A few unanswered questions, but it delivers on all the main ones in a thematically coherent way and goes out with a bang.

#answered ask #anonymous #tma critical

[thedevilscarnival]

i literally don’t even like jonelias that much i purely enjoy it out of spite because i hate jonmartin so fucking much. season 5 ruined any good will with that pairing i had so now i look at the pathetic archivist man and go king if you’re gonna get pressured into killing people when you don’t want to at least be pressured by the guy whose open about his intentions

#korro.txt #tma critical #jonmartin is way . WAY more fucked up than what fans and canon want to believe it is #martin!!! does not care about jon as a person!!! he encourages him to STARVE HIMSELF TO DEATH to cling to his '''''humanity''''' like WHAT #they're not fluffy they're not healthy martin encourages jon to kill a man because he's jelous STOP PRETENDING THEY'RE COUPLES GOALS #jonmartin is Fine if you embrace them being traumabonded and explore the weird and strange dynamics they have. but people don't #anyway i think jon should team up with elias and have a joker moment he deserves it #tma #jonelias #jm critical

[teamfortresstwo]

I feel like Martin could’ve been a really interesting character in tma but so much of the content about him is about jmart and being like “oh he’s so nice!”. Character who should be put on a high up shelf for a tiny bit while the fandom considers it a little maybe. He has a bunch of moments I really liked but I’m not a huge fan of the interpretations most people have.

I got somewhat more rambly than usual and most of my mutuals probs don’t want to see this so:

YEAH SO TRUE!! He is literally so compelling in s4!! There is so much to like about him!! There’s so much I want to know more about and an arc I wish so badly that he’d had!!!…..

But then he just. Kinda didn’t? Like they put a bunch of cool ideas for him on the table then pushed them all off in s5 by giving him nothing to do except nag at Jon which did nothing but make him sound really annoying. Plus like…. He was framed more righteously than before y’know? Like the narrative was leaning into those ‘cute little UwU bean’ interpretations and it just came across as so…. !!!! Like!! Annabelle Cane literally talks about how good of a web avatar he would make so why didn’t we spend ANY of s5 exploring that!! Why did we barely get to explore him at all outside of like 2 lonely based episodes!! Why is everyone convinced that he’s both super smart AND the epitome of moral righteousness!! We’ve only seen him be manipulative once (which lead do the end of the world) and then got a whole bunch of lip service about it and we were straight up told that a lot of his fluffier qualities are a straight up lie!! And nothing interesting comes of this AUGHHHH!!

Sorry for rambling a bit, I just remembered how much wasted potential Martin had and it hurt.

#Martin negative #TMA critical #like I literally loved all the s5 statements that were focused on him why couldn’t the rest of his cha #characterization in s5 been like that aughhhh. #me bwood I love you but I hate you but I love you #Please explore him. if you’re going to have JM then at least use it to explore their characters a bit more like it could be so interesting #it canonically *is* interesting it’s just also framed as the most boring and flat thing by the narrative #which is also how I feel about s5 Martin #TMA negative #anti TMA #anti Martin #Martin critical #discourse #fandom critical #trying to tag everything I can think of so nobody who doesn’t want to see this does

[transarchivist]

thinking about tma s5 now that its been a while.. i havent relistened to it but lookingback at it. it was a mixed bag for me. disclaimer that i am very easily entertained. i liked the statements much more than the plot. the statements really dug in with that sort of.. like sick fascination element, scratching that sort of itch, at a much higher average than the other seasons.

the plot was the weakest out of all the seasons though. s1-4 were structured around the whole.. chekov's gun + putting all the little pieces together. s5 largely just.. dropped that. and that element was honestly the best part of the show's plot (for me). the feeling of "wait- i recognize that name!" and such was great!

the red herring of the extinction was a huge let down for me personally bc i love the extinction statements

idk. overall mixed opinions. i liked the statements iliked the creativity of the different fearscapes. was meh on the plot - it was entertaining but not.. memorable.

#a large portionof why i like horror is that it can scratch the 'holy shit thats fucked up. what happens next' itch yknow? #and like deep analysis and stuff doesnt really come naturally to me (especially in longform media) . so like i love reading that stuff but #i am mainly here for the 'oh shit!' factor of it all #tp be competely frank. i do not remember a lot of s5's plot #uhh what to tag this as. #tma critical #tma #cae speaks