#Thinking about listening to it after tma

[wolfythewitch]

Im literally foaming at the mouth rn you should listen to malevolent. The MC is significantly less jesus-looking but I believe you can change that

Your belief in me means a lot

#the dumb smart friend #Thinking about listening to it after tma #the audio of the first ep didnt click with me last time but maybe its different now

[rauchendesgnu]

I see a lot of interpretations where the tapes are the thing that anchored Jon enough to find a way out of the Buried, which is not a bad theory, especially considering the Web's involvement in making Jon the perfect Archivist.

But. I don't really see a lot of interpretations where it's just Martin. We already know that Martin is Jon's reason for staying (more or less) sane during the apocalypse. Fuck the tape recorders and tapes. It's not them that anchors Jon, it's the intention behind Martin's actions. After being rejected by him, after having got used to the isolation of the Lonely, the fact that Martin notices and abandons, just for a moment, his plan to think of Jon instead, to choose Jon, is what allows Jon to come back.

(I know he's doing the entire thing to keep Jon safe, but Jon doesn't know that. And Martin actively taking a step against his plan is what then allows Jon to find his way back)

#the magnus archives #tma theory #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #idk perhaps lots of people have said this already but i think about it a lot #what can i say #i am after all still a romantic at heart (despite all the angst and torture and horror i enjoy reading and writing and listening to) #the buried

[warren-keplers-funk-band]

you know, uh, sometimes the sound design in fiction podcasts is a little too good

i should not have been eating when i started The Picnic

#red valley #red valley podcast #i always always think about that tma q&a #that was like oh we iMPLy characters are kissing #instead of adding kissing sounds #'cuz no one wants to hear that' #and i listened to juno steel murderous mask like immediately after that #and LAUGHED #but this #this is a whole 'nother realm of uh. asmr #he was jam

[mongeese]

It should be a national holiday when the podcast I like releases a new episode

#i just want to listen to and then thoroughly analyze the new silt verses episode but NO I have to be in CLASS #fucked up #tsv #throwback to me skipping class after the tma finale dropped bc i couldn't think about anything else. normalgirl behavior

[myketheartista]

sooo red valley so far is a married guy who i KNOW hates his job, got wrapped up in some conspiracy shit with another guy who loves said conspiracy shit, and then they proceed to go on a road trip together to the location where the conspiracy shit occurred/probably is still occurring.

yeah, i think my favorite part is how quickly Warren succumbed to whatever the hell is going on in the tapes Gordon has been giving him and how absolutely stupid Gordon is when speaking to Warren. they are the epitome of bros sitting 5 feet apart in a hot tub. i love them.

#myke speaks #red valley #i wanted to start listening since i saw someone suggest it after listening to tma #gordon is the archivist jon could never be #and by that i mean he’s way too invested and has a childlike curiosity for the awful experiments going on LMAO #but he also records everything and i think that’s cute of him KFJSKD #he literally just. gets excited over anything. and it’s cute to hear him talk about stuff with Warren #i will always remember him saying presentation is important to him as he proceeded to use the laboratory ambience of one of the tapes #just to set the mood as he explained what was going to happen and then Warren interrupted him and he got his timing off #they’re. so so good

[coolmariadotcom]

#tma #the magnus archives #im curious! #Because I think it handles serious topics well and in a fun eerie way but it's so not scary #I was literally baffled AFTER I listened to its entirety and started looking into it further #to read that it's a horror show #??? #Even though if i think about it further I don't know which genre it would fit into if not anything thats horror adjacent #u know like the stories that are fun spoopy

[gammija]

It's 'missing the RQ discord early-access channel' hours, those are the people who I'd rlly like to discuss [redacted] with

#but alas #because idk what to think! #Of course i miss jon and martin but theyve had their ending so that cant be it. i dont allow it #either theyre dead or theyre happy in a fluff au #and the other characters... they're fun but they're not main characters #not to mention that Jonny said that íf they were gonna do a sequel. itd be about new characters. #but if its about new characters in a world after the horrors #then is that even still 'the magnus archives'??? #tma #joos yaps #jonny has to be involved too otherwise its not tma at all #biggest wish: a prequel about Gertrudes time as archivist. THAT id rlly want to listen to #but then wouldn't the hint have said 'tma0' or 'tma-1'... #And such a big part of tmas success is the depth of the slowly unfolding mysteries #but it's all unfolded already #so what now?

[mississpissi]

i got so caught up in thinking about these new characters in the magnus protocol that i forgot the teaser was a recording of martin… hmm… how is he going to tie into this? and more importantly- it’s still called the magnus protocol- how does jonah fit into it all ??

#im actually way more excited about this after today #i’m glad it’s new characters and the premise sounds really interesting #i’m excited to see how they pull it all off #and new voice actors !! they’re much more experienced and have a further reach with this project so i’m excited about that! #but yeah i’m curious who is going to be showing up again and in what context… #is this an alternate reality? is it a different perspective on dealing with the fears in the same reality #i can’t wait to see it all play out and actually be a part of it live this time #it hasn’t even been 6 months since i finished tma HAHA #i’m almost done with my latest wtnv relisten and then i think i’ll listen to tma again #tma

[i-am-not-a-who-i-am-a-what]

behold, the first corner of the panopticon~!

got about a fourth of the way done mining out the massive pit underneath the ocean monument i'm turning into the institute so i decided to start construction to make sure all the proportions were right and it looks like they are! i'm super happy with it so far ^u^

ignore all the ugly scaffolding and temporary spawn-proofing slabs and torches lol

#minecraft #dig dig dig... #if you're wondering how long this is taking me uh... #i had already drained the monument and a perimeter but i started on the hole after the ttmap kickstarter stream in 2022 #blaming the rq team playing mc on there for the inspo lol #this is in my main world that i've been on since 2020 and listened to all of tma in (and every subsequent relisten lol) #so i've got netherite tools and beacons which is making it go quicker than you'd think - this fourth only took a week irl #the full plan is to have the institute above the panopticon below and farther below that the tunnels and the archives #there's also plans for a spiderweb to hold the institute up + an eye atop the tower + potentially a mural running along the seawall #but right now we're still in the 'digging a several million block hole' stage so i can worry about that later #i've got the whole tower planed in creative and the top looks like a crown and has tons of sculk it's going to look awesome #posting this right before i go to bed but i may rb it again in the morning lol goodnight everyone

[siren-of-agony]

Finally coming back to this blog at the same time as falling back into a magnus archives hyper focus def does not influence my relistening experience at all

#The way the just #All have some not good times #Really does hit all the right spots #I've stumbled upon a cosplayer on tiktok who has just the right mixture of sad puppy eyes and unhinged revenge vibes for Jon and #Whenever I've finally managed to stop my relisten at like 3 am I just watch those videos I am #Fully getting lost in that shit #Also since I'm already rambling in the tags #The twins are both daisy basira coded and breekon and hope coded #Except of course that breekon and hope like the circus #Also if you know tma I can recommend thinking about which fears your characters would be avatars of #And which would terrify them the most #The twins are actually so hard for that #I think they would both be most afraid of hunt and Stranger #And Alba would prob be an avatar of the lonely which. Mood #And Nero either spiral or end #I think #.... Anyways I hope after this tag rant I got finally enough of my thoughts out to sleep #I have exactly one friend who I managed to make her listen to it and while we do talk about it a ton I am having the thoughts™️ #Rotating sad Jon in my head for hours putting daisy and basira in a snowglobe in my mind yknow the deal

[unusualshrimp]

hm i think i will just Not listen to tma 2 or engage with news about it and wait to see what people are posting. and ONLY listen if the posts are mostly positive/reassuring

#i think. i need to trust my instincts more when it comes to this #tbh it reminds me of wwdits with the Colin dying episode and how i stopped liking the show after that #but with the new season i though Hm what if i was overreacting. it could be better now #- and then it wasn't. I judged it correctly and it's just not a show that cares much about its side characters #which isn't a Bad thing‚ just. not to my taste #anyway that's unrelated but im trying to say that i should trust my feelings about media more. #rn i have a giant alarm in my head going ''tma is going to get Hunger Games Movie'd'' #and im going to listen to it. this feels Wrong it's like resurrecting someone yknow #++ the way jonny seemed Done with tma in the post s5 QnA and his complete radio silence now..... doesn't bode well #also. they dropped the tma 2 news literally the day of his new book release??? #which doesn't really mean anything tbh but i think that was a bit. Strange.

[asexualastarion]

Honestly tma should’ve ended after season four like I feel like SEEING the fear apocalypse made it super underwhelming

#like if it had just ended with ‘I open the door’??? badass ending. completely up to the listener what happens after. #sorry saw a post about over explaining horror that was made unrebloggable and have to get my feelings out somehow #I’m pretty neutral on the ‘explaining the fears’ thing bc on one hand yeah the monster of the week with some red string connections for the #theorists was a fun format! where if you were Deep in the show you’d be able to make connections but if you weren’t super paying attention #it wouldn’t take away from the experience. however I do think the fears as a concept are fun and I have autism categorization brain #so it scratches an itch. I think either way on that I’m neutral. however. while I liked some aspects of s5. I think the apocalypse was #underwhelming. there were some cool episodes but overall it wouldve been cooler to just end the show after I open the door imo #also I hated the twist that it was all the web. or at least I hated the direct confirmation of it. #also I do think they over explained the over explaining. like revealing the fears is one thing but the show got way too complicated #like I was a HUGE tma fan but even I had no idea what they were talking about sometimes. maybe that’s just me

[scary-senpai]

Saw this on reddit and sorta thought of you, I kinda want to hear your thoughts on this theory because I think it's pretty neat:

Ooh! Thank you so much for sharing this with me, Thoughtful & Cherished Internet Stranger! That’s an interesting theory, for sure, and I had some fun thinking about it... haha, I’ll be honest, you did inspire a headcanon where Saitama, Garou, and Genos are all kids on the playground acting out the most amazing fight they can come up with and Saitama tells Genos he has to play dead for the whole scene because “you already got to fight Garou, now it’s my turn, and you keep interrupting my imagination with your stupid facts!” Anyway, it was the bit of levity I needed before getting my heart ripped to bits again. So, thank you for that--you were an unexpected muse!

While I am holding out that we’ll get a cheeky, in-canon explanation for the re-draws (it’s on my bingo sheet!)--or maybe Murata/ONE will eventually spill the tea on what exactly happened with this panel--I’m hesitant to say that the past few chapters have taken place in Garou’s imagination. If Garou happens to be thinking aloud, he’s painting an awfully specific picture full of characters that definitely exist outside his imagination (like God and Blast) , even though Garou hasn’t met them yet. Garou would also be telling a story that relies on information he doesn’t have (the way God operations, and that Genos is Saitama’s disciple). It’s implied that in Garou’s heart of hearts, he understands that his quest for ultimate evil is destined to fail (and possibly a thinly-veiled suicide mission), but the last couple of chapters portray an exceedingly specific type of failure through a series of complicated & unfortunate events. I realize this ask came in before the latest chapter dropped, but if all this were happening in Garou’s imagination, then I’d also expect him to be less surprised to suddenly find himself in outer space.

...I could imagine Saitama telling this story to Garou, though. Like, perhaps he’s eaten the weird pickled egg things in the upper left and he’s just spent the last couple of chapters tripping balls as Garou morphs into his Final Form, which is Mom Friend :-/

In any case, Garou doesn’t look like he’s ready to talk in this panel. There’s no indication that you asked me this question because I majored in feelings Social Work/Psych, but I’m going to get up on my little mental health soapbox anyway, because if I’m out here voluntarily writing entire thesis statements for serotonin Fanciful Internet Points, I may as well slip in something that is actually true and helpful so I feel better when my predictions go horribly wrong.... anyway, what we’re learning now is that talk-therapy is actually counter-indicated for some folks, particularly people that have experienced trauma (like Garou has). This is because when you recall a painful / unpleasant memory, the same neurological channels activate as when you initially experienced that thing, meaning that you’re literally reliving that moment--in which case, you tend to trigger a fight-or-flight response, or shut down.

That’s what I see when I look at this panel--a person who is so overwhelmed their body has shut down to protect them from the pain that’s coming. I think Saitama might have had better luck just lying down beside Garou in the water as a silent-but-comforting presence rather than planting him on one side of a table and asking him to share. I understand the rationale (visually being equal, the metaphor of coming together and seeing each other face to face) but that setup of having someone staring at you while you try to bare your soul can actually be super uncomfortable/intimidating. There’s a reason “this character turned their face away” or “they turned aside” is such a powerful and significant action when you encounter this in a story/stage direction/shot. It’s a moment when a character hides/shields themselves or their companion from an unpleasant truth. For better or worse, there’s some agency in having the freedom to move your body that way. And if you notice Garou’s posture from the start of his interactions with Saitama, Garou almost never faces Saitama directly—Saitama stands wide open but Garou keeps his body angles to the side (like he’s halfway towards a fighting stance)—essentially making himself smaller, ostensibly so there’s less of him to hit, even early on in the scene when he dismisses Saitama as a non threatening, low ranking hero.

All that being said, I do understand the appeal of this theory. I want everybody to come home in one piece after having learned a valuable lesson about friendship/teamwork/etc. But that’s kind of the rub, and one of the reasons why these sort of plot twists are inadvisable: when something happens in a character’s imagination, there are no stakes and no risk. It’s hard for a general audience to get invested in the journey when a narrative is framed that way--and it’s also harder for a character to learn from scenarios they’ve independently fabricated… because if they had that kind of foresight, they generally have all the knowledge they need to be successful, and since plots usually hinge heavily on character growth, a character knowing all there is to know about their situation usually signals the end of the story.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are exceptions to everything—I, for one, would love to know how much forethought Garou put into this whole ultimate evil thing, but I’d be content to know what he daydreams about, and since you planted that idea in my brain I’ve had a little fun imagining how one might implement that. But while there are no hard-set rules to storytelling--only tools--this kind of plot twist feels like something that would get nixed by an editor/producer/other commercial stakeholders because it is generally regarded as heavy-handed, if not cliché.

BUT. I do think we’ll get some sort of battle that takes place in Garou’s mindscape--a bit like Mob Psycho (Mob vs. Minori)--confirming his demons and making better choices to come through to the end. I suspect that’s separate from the Saitama battle. While I’m sure Blast has a cure for Garou (assuming Saitama doesn’t punch the Devil out of him, first), it seems like part of Garou’s battle needs to come from harnessing his own willpower and fully committing to his “true self” (if there even is such a thing--as humans, we’re all just a mess of ever-changing electrified brain meat)... since temptation (to inflict pain on others, to obtain power) got him into this mess, it follows that resisting temptation would get him out of it.

So, thank you so much for the ask! I really enjoyed thinking about this, and I hope that doesn’t come across as disheartening or anything :-/ I have been very, very wrong about things before, especially the Magnus Archives! I am actually a fan of stories that frame low-stakes situations in high-stakes ways while still encouraging character growth! I’m thinking of Community, where the episodes lovingly and expertly spoof things Mad Max or Spaghetti Westerns through a campus-wide game of “The Floor is Lava” or “Paintball,” respectively. Even if the setup is clown-shoes, the character’s emotions are usually real and that’s what really carries the plot through. In “The Floor is Lava” episode, Abed tries to prolong the game forever because he knows that when it ends, his best friend Troy will be leaving community college to go on his next adventure. The ending is Abed and Troy coming to terms with that, and it does actually make me tear up when I watch it... or here’s another classic Troy and Abed moment where the writers mash up the traditional zombie movie (“Troy! Be the first Black man to make it to the end!”) and splice it with a heartfelt star wars moment (“Abed, I love you.” “I know”) and even though (in theory) it’s a moment of life-or-death self-sacrifice, we just know and trust that everything will turn out okay.

so yeah, if we did have this as a plot twist, then I think ONE/Murata are one of the few folks I’d trust to pull it off in a satisfying way. ONE, in particular, is a breaker of tropes and for sure, this arc has taken us to some wild and unexpected places, so, who knows?

#one punch man #opm #spoilers #opm manga #manga spoilers #opm spoilers #all the spoilers #meta #garou #saitama #i think i could have lived through being wrong about tma #but i was so sure #and i started listening +4 years after it ended #super late to the party #i don't' even have the benefit of other new fans to be wrong *with* #my lizard brain still thinks somebody is grading me on all of these. #oy vey

[katealot]

.

#TMA is making me go literally insane #i’m receding back into the days right after i finished my first listen through #i CANNOT stop thinking about it #i CANNOT stop analyzing myself and my own fears in the context of this world #i AM putting blank russian nesting dolls in my amazon cart because I have the desire to paint all the fears on them #and i AM apparently most susceptible to the lonely #reletively breakthrough discovery

[iintervallum]

the way alice dyer has such a hold on me I'm still thinking about different headcanons for her ahhh

I've doodled her a lot too trying to figure out her design, when i finally have free time I'll unleash my different oiar crew designs because i have many ideas for them all

i do hope this time there's no "locked in" designs for the characters because seeing peoples widely differing designs is a lot of fun!

#i detest “everyone agrees with this fanon” type of thinking #don't get me wrong i love the headcanons of Jon being poc but tbh it's done in a very white way lol #too many times I've seen what is essentially a white guy with a tan--some of you are very guilty of this #Jon as a whole-alongside most of the main archive cast except basira are not written aracially tbh #they still just read as white(which in and of itself is not bad) trying to claim otherwise though is silly #and rusty quill is still on thin ice to me i don't exactly trust them considering their track record of having racism in their work #they're doing better these days so they have improved but I'm still wary tbh #i really don't like how after that one article people jumped to defend them #I've read it and we can argue about it being inflammatory but to outright deny any misconduct is absurd #like the transcripts situation? the cancelling of their original shows? the whole discord mismanagement? #they're not perfect i know and i still enjoy the shows they make despite knowing this #but i will never defend them just because i appreciate their work--indie companies are still companies at the end of the day #aster.txt #tmagp #aster listens to tma

[kribus]

I actually like how after every episode of tmagp some tma-listeners analyse statements like sommelier when he talks about some rich wine like hmmm this one is clearly the lonely with a slight hint of the stranger and maybe notes of the spiral and I think I can sense some desolation in here

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #the magnus archives #tma #tma spoilers #you can describe literally anything using tma entities and it is beautiful