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#also while doing this i got another tma themed idea
inky-goddess · 2 years
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Just spend about an hour of my day making tma entity themed flight rising dragons using the prediction thing
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The eye
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The Corruption
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The Burried
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The Dark
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The Desolation
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The End
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The Flesh
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The Hunt
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The Lonely
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The Slaughter
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The Stranger
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The Vast
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The Web
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The Spiral
AGAIN I MADE THESE IN FLIGHT RISING. I DID NOT DRAW THESE.
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a-dumbass-jester · 4 months
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Witch’s heart x The Magnus archives au!!!
Claire - Vast
Ashe - Spiral
Wilardo - End/Hunt
Sirius - Eye
Noel - Flesh
Charlotte - Slaughter
Zizel - Stranger
Lime - Desolation
Rouge - Web
!!Also quick disclaimer it’s been a hot minute since I’ve been into wh so some things might be incorrect!!
First off idk if this is just wh but with the entities of if it’s entirely tma’s world. It’s probably going to be the first tho
Also all the demons are human(or at least used to be)
Also for non tma meowtuals here is a chart of the entities and here is a video essays for them(it’s unfinished, there’s still two entities to cover) i also linked the wiki pages for the entities mentioned, if anyone is interested (I’d recommend listening to the actual thing but if you don’t wanna watch 200 episodes to understand this, here you go)
- Vast!claire was actually the second to last one I came up with. If Wilardo’s still immortal/ 500 years old she realizes that in a few hundred years no one will remember her and that she doesn’t matter in the big picture. And while initially it scares her later she instead finds comfort in it. She becomes a lot like Simon. Becoming a very “live in the moment” kind of person. “I don’t matter in the long run why not have some fun”. I can also she her having fun with the falling thing. There’s a hc I remember seeing for the vast avatars (specifically Simon) where their eyes changed depending on the sky. Claire already has blue eyes, just add clouds or stars!!
- Spiral!Ashe because they have a lot if similar themes. Spiraling mental health, hallucinations, fake friends, manipulation. I can see him trying to bring his family back and accidentally sacrificing himself to it instead. Also it’s avatars are typically very tall and thin(and colorful). I also like the idea of Ashe being a surreally tall, thin and colorful hallucinatory headache. The spiral has a fake place called “Sannikov Land” and I can imagine him saying he’s from there
- End/Hunt!Wilardo. Idk witch one to pick so I’ll explore both. The end is mainly if he’s still immortal. If he is, he finds comfort in it and that the end will take all eventually. It might be centuries but it will take him and he will finally get to rest. I also rlly like him with the ends powers. Like the dreams of peoples deaths, THE ROOTS (That show how people DIE!!!)
For the hunt, it’s mainly if gramps is alive (and their both mortal) mainly because I’m assigning them to Julia and Trevor. At some point them meet probably dealing with the end or another entity and end up sticking with each other in a similar was Julia and Trevor did (idk how they met I just assume that’s what happened), and both of them end up becoming part of the hunt
- Eye!Sirius, idk how he got marked but I assume maybe messing with Dorothy’s stuff or a leitner. I think the wanting to know, see and understand thing fits with Sirius very well. I can see him using it to call bs on some stuff Ashe says. Like going back to “Sannikov Land”, Ashe says he’s from there and Sirius is like “no your not. That’s not a real place.”
- Flesh!Noel is the last and most difficult one I came up with. It’s also a bit weak but it fits the best. Originally I chose it because of the flesh monster he becomes. But the rest of it kinda fits as well. The flesh is strongly associated with dysphoria, and even if you don’t hc him as trans that would still be a lot of dysphoria he would of had as a kid. I also rlly like Noel having a more animalistic fear. He became an avatar when he was cursed in cannon
- Slaughter!Charlotte. It seems a bit easy giving the war criminal the war and (sudden) violence one but anyway. She’s probably still (mostly) human. just a bit more (openly) violent, and quick to do so. The slaughter is also strongly associated with music, specifically air(?) instruments so I like to picture her walking onto a battlefield (especially no man’s land) in an actual war/military uniform playing the flute or something.
- Stranger!Zizel. This one was kinda a bias because the stranger’s my favorite(and I love Zizel) but I also LOVE uncanny valley doll Zizel. Idk if she was ever human because the stranger seems to prefer manifestations over human avatars. And either would work so idk. I feel like it adds to the lack of identity tbh. But anyways uncanny valley doll Zizel <3<3
- Desolation!Lime. This one was probably one of, it not the easiest to assign. From the fire themes, to the destruction of others and their lives. I can see her with a similar role to Jude Perry. She encounters the cult of the lightless flame sometime in her 20s (specifically 25 because that’s when she becomes a demon in cannon) and falling in love with their beliefs. I can see Lime following Jude’s story in general. She joins the lightless flame in the 80s/90s and after becoming an avatar she becomes made of wax. I like to imagine her and Sirius as that one scene where Jude and Jon meet. They make a deal where Lime would tell Sirius (pre eye) something important but they have to shake hands, lime, made of wax, burns his hand.
I can also see Matty being part of the lightless flame. Like the burning down Ashes house and destroying his life is something they would do
- Web!Rouge. I feel like control theming fits well with Rouge. If anyone were to create structured plans on how things could go I feel like I would be her. The web also has stong themes of addiction, puppets, and that your actions aren’t rlly yours, which I can see fitting. I also rlly like a spider like Rouge. Like her with multiple spider like eyes and arms. The web is also called “the mother of puppets” which I can see fitting her. I also sometimes see people draw her with a web on her jacket so
Other side stuff (world building kinda)
I’m rlly glad I assigned Web and Desolation to Rouge and Lime because their known to not get along. They constantly clash because of the Web’s intricate plans and the Desolation’s destructive chaos
I feel like do to how close Noel is with Rouge, he was also marked by the web. Not a very strong mark but still a mark.
Dorothy plays a similar role to Gertrude because she deserves to be an absolute badass. She’s spent a good majority of her life fighting the entities, stoping rituals, etc.
Fiona and Sirius’s parents were still accused of being “witchs” and burned but this time the main motivator was that Nicholas would accuse people of serving an entity
Speaking of Fiona Elford I’m giving her Fiona Law’s role because they share a name
(Also I would link Fiona Law’s wiki page but she doesn’t have one apparently)
Fiona would pass out when she got scared which helped her survive against the entities. She would be unconscious so they couldn’t feed off of her fear, and left her alone
Giving more to the role Gramps is going to play, Trevor is a vampire hunter, so Gramps would probably take that role, and and fell victim to the hunt first and later finds Wilardo.
That’s basically it!!
I don’t have much for plot. It’s jut wh characters in tma so I assume it’s like just that plot
Wait actually they still meet in the mansion but it’s connected to the entities
There’s no murder or timelines but it was genuinely the rain!
The entities mess with them for a bit and are let out a bit later either before the change or as it’s happening
The five of them wonder a apocalyptic world where the entities have taken over (and maybe meet the “demons” again)
That’s genuinely it!!! If anyone has any ideas, please say something, I’d love to talk more about this
Thank you for reading!!
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grimaussiewitch · 2 years
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So I’ve got a friend group that wants to play dnd and our dm wants to create a TMA themed game. He’s created the mechanics for the classes that are basically multi classed warlocks. (Eg the hunt has a lot of ranger abilities and the desolation is a glass canon)
So I’ve been a beta reader for him to look over anything if it sounds confusing, missing somethings, spelling/grammar and making sure the abilities are clear. For example, I wanted to make sure that the ability drown doesn’t mean the player could just waterboard someone over and over again as long as that enemy fails their saving throws.
Now months and months ago is when the idea of the campaign arise and my good friend the dm told me and another friend what scares him in regards to some of us as players.
Me: I will figure out how to break the game through logic and game mechanics.
Friend A: will figure out how to break the game but through creativity and less on bending the rules, just doing whatever
Friend B: a bloody wild card, he doesn’t know what runs through her head
So I’ve come to a realisation that yes, he was very right. Why? When looking into the abilities and spells, I was quick to ask questions on how many times you can do this.
But the funny thing is is that he has an extra rule, that is he will let you push yourself. So you have me asking stuff like “how many times can I use this ability or how many spell slots will we have?” And him responding with “fuck around and find out”
I’m not 100% sure if this rule will be put in (double checking with all of the players) but theoretically if you didn’t have any spell slots, you can still cast a spell but there will be consequences. Like a first level spell might make you gain a level of exhaustion or have the spell back fire on you. While at higher levels it gets worse…
This man knows that I will break the game through logic and now has put risk onto the table. The evil genius…
Also sucks I can’t say anything about my character on here because I know at lest ONE player follows me on here; mr will-break-the-game-through-creativity
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straighttma · 3 years
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So if we're gonna really het up tma to the worst degree we gotta change some fundamentals.
1. Melanie is not an avatar of the slaughter anymore. She's an avatar of the desolation now because in het media, woman who can physically destroy you = evil and bad. So, to keep her a hero but still able to have her anger infantilized and made the butt of a joke, she now has desolation fire powers because women always get relegated to mental abilities unless they're an NLOG or a hot villain lady. As Melanie will be seen as a "raging feminist" trope, but not an NLOG, she's also going to get powers of destruction to illustrate that "feminism has come too far" as well as so the men can be like, "Jeez, sweetheart, don't get so heated," *canned laughtrack*
2. Jo(H)n is an avatar of the hunt. In het media the eye would be too wimpy, it's the nerd that gets shoved in the lockers by the other entities. And since protagonists in these sort of bad media need to be mega jocks, what's the most jock entity? The flesh, but here the flesh becomes a ham-fisted allegory for fat people, so the next most jock while still maintaining the pretense of investigative work, is the hunt. Also when Elias says that they're all bound to the eye now, JoHn is the one to find the solution but only has to gouge out one eye to sever his connection so that he gets to wear a badass eye patch like solid snake. 
3. Martin is an avatar of the flesh. As I said before, the flesh is now a hamfisted allegory for fat people, so obviously that's the only entity they can be associated with because that's the only personality trait fat characters can have in het media. However, I could also see the corruption in this hell form TMA takes as Jane Prentiss and him enter a very unhealthy relationship that's played like George Costanza's engagement in Seinfeld only ending when Prentiss is struck down by JoHn because he has to do all the cool things, he's the protagonist. So probably he'd start with connections to the corruption but end up an avatar of the flesh.
4. After the Unknowing Tim comes back as an avatar of the stranger. Does this conflict with literally everything his character has established with him becoming aligned with the entity that killed his brother and Sasha? Yes. Does character integrity matter in het media? No. So he comes back slinging quips and one-liners because in het media the stranger would be portrayed as a cross between the web and the spiral. Plus Tim, as the token gay rep, would use the stranger's shapeshifting abilities to be a predatory (tm) gay until they confront him on it and it turns out that this is just how his powers are manifesting and then they say that it's making him a monster and kill him again, this time for permanent. It's bury your gays, but worse.
5. Daisy is an avatar of the lonely. Because in het media, the reason she'd be so aggressive would be tied into her being deeply lonely and unable to find a man to love her. This is the only character depth she gets for the entirety of this series. But, then, after Prentiss is killed, her and Martin end up together, because they are both deeply lonely and unlovable by conventional standards. And through a man's love, she is able to control her avatar powers, conquer her fear, and feel fulfilled. It's awful.
6. Basira is an avatar of the eye. Being smart is her only personality trait and no, we are just gonna ignore the Eye's ties to a surveillance state, we will not discuss those implications at Moldy Pencil. She is relegated to a background character whose only trait is being smart but not smarter than JoHn and most of the villains, because that would imply a female character is essential and can't be arbitrarily killed off. Anyways, her family is a bad racist terrorist trope and are a part of a cult dedicated to the slaughter that is bad in both idea and execution. That's the only story she gets and in the end she realizes that her family is bad and takes off her hijab as a symbol of cutting ties with them. It's awful, moving on.
7. Georgie is a buried avatar. First off, she's a main love interest, so her power's can't be gross, that crosses off the corruption. Second off, the reasoning is because she feels buried under Melanie's fame and feels like she can't get out from her shadow, like she's drowning in it, she's given depth, because, again, main love interest for JoHn and also it relates to hating another woman so it's fine in het media. Anyways, much like how Daisy gets fixed by falling in love with Martin, Georgie is fixed by falling in love with and having a kid with JoHn.
8. Sasha. Okay so she gets fridged by becoming Not!Sasha, but she's actually not dead. She's trapped in the table. When the table is destroyed, it doesn't free notthem, it does destroy it and frees the people who were replaced. During her imprisonment in the table realm, Sasha became a web avatar! And now she's got a sexy spider theme to her and she becomes a bit of a femme fatale. Having been an NLOG prior to being tabled, Sasha is allowed to be physically powerful but, no woman is allowed to be sexually liberated. Her and JoHn fuck repeatedly until he realizes that she's manipulating him from his pure Christian path, it is then that it's revealed that JoHn is not only going to be an avatar for the hunt, but HE is going to be the extinction. JoHn denies this vehemently and starts to avoid Sasha.
As the season five opens JoHn realizes Sasha was right, he is the extinction. So he heroically has avatars of all of the entities come together to kill him in order to prevent that from happening, (the guy from the squirm episode is the new main corruption avatar after Prentiss died). He is killed, but then resurrected but not as an avatar of the extinction, no, the extinction's been killed from him so he's fine now. However, on the closing shot to the season five it zooms in to Georgie's stomach, implying that the kid she's carrying is going to be the extinction because they were conceived when JoHn was going to be the extinction, meaning that it will live on in the kid.
tl;dr: JoHn is a hunt avatar but is also supposed to be the extinction; Martin is now a flesh avatar with corruption ties; Tim becomes a stranger avatar; Melanie becomes a desolation avatar; Daisy becomes a lonely avatar; Basira becomes an eye avatar; Georgie is a buried avatar; and Sasha didn't die and became a web avatar; also JoHn and Georgie's unborn kid is the extinction!
Holy shit this was awful to write and I'm sorry you have to look at this. This just started with me thinking "Straight!JoHn wouldn't be an avatar of the Eye, he'd be an avatar of the Hunt" and then it spiraled from there. Sorry for how long and painful it is.
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On Tragedy vs. Bad Endings
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[Image ID: user @frostyfrogz​ replied to your post “my mag171 #thots: I fully agree with. I love jonmartin I want nothing but the best for them. I know my answer today was an obvious twisting of dialogue but its just frustrating sometimes because it seems like people dont understand some sort of tragedy will indeed happen. I have never and will never suggest that something will happen to Jon and Martin’s relationship I’ve just been saying the shows not going to end well no matter what.]
So I have a lot of thoughts about this very subject, and too much for the replies on my post, so allow me to try to articulate what I mean, and what a lot of us mean when we say “it does not make sense for either Jon or Martin to turn evil in the end,” even in a show that has been advertised from day one as a tragedy.
First of all, no one thinks this is going to end happy. The few who do are usually unaware that this show is billed as a tragedy, and are quick to be corrected. I didn’t know it was a tragedy until I was on season 3 and someone told me. It’s overall just best to assume that the OP knows it’s not going to be a happy ending, because “reminding” people or “explaining” to people that the ending is going to be sad is a fast way from people to get annoyed and defensive.
Anyway! It appears, above all, that people have either fundamentally different ideas of what a tragedy is or accomplishes, or that people have a fundamentally flawed understanding of tragedy and it’s place as a narrative device/theme.
My thoughts are that tragedies hurt, and tragedies can be devastating, but they have to have a message and they should not be cruel to the audience.
A cruel ending would involve leading the audience to believe one thing for the entire book, show, movie, podcast, what have you, just to rip it away at the last minute like a big “fuck you” to the audience. Those sorts of endings are inherently mocking of the audience, and ultimately disrespectful. The only people in the audience that “benefit” from this sort of writing are the cynics who spent the entire show talking down to everyone for seeing the silver lining in the impending tragedy, even if, up until the finale, the silver lining was always part of the narrative. Like it took actual twisting and outright ignoring of the narrative as it’s written to be cynical and sceptical all the way until the end.
That is, plain and simple, bad writing. Jonny Sims is not a bad writer.
Now tragedies often have “happy endings,” they just also have an element of sadness colouring that ending. A good, tragic ending should, in my opinion, feel bittersweet. We should see it coming, we should know it will hurt, but it should be for the greater good and should further the narrative that has been told from the beginning.
I said a few weeks ago that a tragic ending without a silver lining is just torture porn, and I stand by it.
Now, if Jon or Martin are revealed to be Actually Evil in the end, where is the silver lining in that? What narrative has even possibly hinted at this outcome, without putting on cynic glasses?
Every single plot point and plot “twist” in TMA has been clearly detailed, never relegated to pure subtext that you would have to comb through a single interraction and analyzing the tone in which it was said (which could easily be actor shortcomings or error). They have always been obvious, at least in hindsight. This is why, for a while, I subscribed to the Web!Martin theory, but due to recent episodes I’m more inclined to believe those “obvious things” were red herrings.
Throughout The Magnus Archives, the common theme in every. Single. Season finale is that “we are stronger together.” What do I mean by that? Well, here’s the general idea:
Season 1: The one time someone gets separated by the group for any significant length of time, like I mean the main group, she gets killed by the NotThem and replaced.
Season 2: Jon is alone, due to his intense paranoia and his reluctance to reach out for help. This leads to a disastrous series of events that leaves him a suspect of murder, and his friends even more doubtful of his character.
Season 3: In the episode just before they deal with the Unknowing, Jon literally says that isolation was his downfall, and he was going to work on trusting his friends more. When they got separated during the Unknowing, things went to shit. When they found each other again, they were able to rally and they “succeeded.” Conversely, they are also teamed up with Melanie and Martin who hung back to bring down Elias. They were successful, working as teams on separate objectives, etc.
Season 4: This is, by far, their most “successful” feats while simultaneously their least. The whole season was again showing the downfalls of isolation. In the season finale, Jon has Basira and Daisy’s help, and while bolstering himself with their strength, and the strength in his conviction to save Martin to be with Martin, Jon was successful in stopping Peter Lukas and saving Martin. Conversely, Martin and Jon’s isolation in Scotland could be, theoretically, implicated in how Jonah Magnus was able to succeed in the end like that.
Now evidence of this same train of thought in season 5? Jon literally says it: Gertrude would not have done well in this post-apocalyptic world, because she had no friendships, no anchors, no reason to stay human. And then Jon says “you are my reason” to Martin.
It is in the text of the story that the only way to succeed, or win, or survive, is through trust, friendship, and love. One of the main factors in so many of the statements, on why the statement givers succumbed to the fear in their story, for even a moment, had to do with very little personal ties to anyone else. Many of the statements feature isolation and, as Jon put it, “lack of corroboration.” On the flipside, many of the statements that ended with the statement giver escaping successfully, and surviving long enough to be reached out to for follow-up questions, involved them having close personal ties to someone else that kept them safe, somehow. Like the girl from Italy; remembering her mom saved her from the Lonely. Or, more ridiculously, the guy and his dog that escaped the spiral because he was so distracted by his dog and had to be home for dinner. In MAG170, it was Martin’s love for Jon, and his trust in the love from Jon and his friends, that saved him from the Lonely again. Jon’s incredible amount of love, and respect, and trust in his friends is what’s kept him from becoming another Jared Hopworth or Jude Perry. In MAG155, Cost of Living, he expresses open disgust in how that particular avatar of The End justified her actions, killing and killing and killing again because she viewed herself as more worthy of life than that person. In that same episode, he talks of not blinding himself because he hopes to use his powers to protect his friends, that without them they’re too vulnerable. Honestly, this is the same reason Peter Lukas is unsuccessful, because Martin only helped him at all to protect his friends. The fact that he didn’t see his failure coming was hilarious.
Gerry said in Family Business that there is no “entities of love”, and that might be true, but love and trust is literally what saves you from fear. How many of us deal with things that are scary in our lives, if only because we have some level of trust in the people or things around us. How many of us have been brought out of a panic attack by someone we love and trust?
So all of this has been presented to us, over and over and over again, which is what I, and others, mean when we say “it does not make sense for one of them to be evil.” That’s what we mean when we say “it would be Bad Writing to make one of them evil in the end.” The entire show has driven home the message that we need love, we need personal connections to survive fear. To rip that away from the main characters at the last minute and call it “tragedy” would be a spit in the face of every single listener who took the story at face value, without picking it apart and reading lines out of context. And Jonny Sims and Alex J. Newall have both said they hate lazy writing.
Now, none of the JonMartin fans I follow are deluding themselves to think this show will have a happy ending outside of very self-indulgent fix-it au fanfics.
The way I see this going down is that Jon and Martin will figure out how to put the world back to the way it was, but Jon will not be able to be part of the new world with Martin. That’s the tragedy; that the world gets saved, and Jon helps save it, but he doesn’t get to benefit from his efforts in any way. The tragedy is Jon loves Martin so much, and they deserve their happy ending, but they don’t get it. But, they still saved the world so others can have their happy endings.
Idk about you, but between the “Jon turns evil in the end” and “Jon stays good and sacrifices himself to save the world” endings, only one of them has me in tears right now as I type this out, and it’s not the former.
I’m not against sad endings,I’m against bad endings that punish the audience for having even a bittersweet hope. I’m against sad endings that are just sad for the sake of being sad, with zero pay-off or reason to happen, especially when those endings throw out 5 years of hard work.
And hey, I might just be forced to eat my words in the end, but not before I fly all the way to England and make Jonny Sims eat a knuckle sandwich.
This was a lot longer than I meant for it to be, but I just have a lot of feelings.
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ieattaperecorders · 3 years
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As TMA keeps bringing up possible ways the story could end and knocking them down, I thought - what the hell, I’m going to make a huge list of all the endings I can think of and how likely they seem at this point. I’m constantly doing this in my head anyway, might as well type it all out.
There’s two columns as far as I’m concerned. One is “fate of world,” the other is “fate of Jon and Martin.” So I’ve got a list for each.
(I am also interested in the fates of the other characters, but at this point I think Melanie and Georgie’s fate is likely to be whatever “fate of world” is, and that Basira is either going to be in the same boat or die as part of her character arc.)
Fate of the World:
Entities are destroyed/banished, world goes back to normal but without monsters anymore.
Not impossible, but I have doubts. If the world is truly fixed, it will probably mean the characters successfully and heroically sacrificed themselves to save everyone and . . . that just doesn’t feel like the story Jonny Sims is telling, not to me at least. But I could be wrong.
Entities are destroyed, world is scarred in some way. (i.e., torture stops but all the nightmare domains are still there, no one can feel fear anymore, mass trauma/death, etc.)
Interesting to think about, not sure where they’d go with this one. Entities are sent back to being “just outside our universe,” world becomes what it was before the apocalypse. Possible. A return to the status quo before the entire podcast started would hammer in the theme of “the evil system is overwhelming and can’t be easily changed.” Though I would wager that the events of the story are ultimately going to change something for the world, even if (probably) it’s for the worse. No change to the world at all, it stays exactly as it is. Seems unlikely purely because I think if Jonny Sims was going to do this he’d have ended the series on MAG 160. “The apocalyptic scenario that we doubted could change really won’t change” isn’t nearly as strong a blow as “the most terrifying apocalypse possible is happening” as an ending. The world is freed from the Entities, but at the cost of allowing them to spread to other worlds. I wouldn’t be surprised if this option is at least presented. The “save your world at the cost of others” scenario does sound like a choice that could be put in front of our characters. It’s hard to imagine them knowingly taking this option, but who knows? The world remains as it is, and the Entities spread to other worlds.
Honestly this feels like the most likely scenario to me now, probably a result of the main characters trying to do something good.
The world remains as it is, but Jon takes over and shifts the fear around.
Seriously doubt this one, they brought it up and dismissed it pretty hard. I can’t see Jon doing it if Martin is alive, and if he dies I think Jon would be more likely to do something self-obliterating. The only scenario where I could see this would be “Martin dies and Jon gives up on trying or caring about anything, resigns himself to accepting the evil system as inescapable.” Which would certainly be tragic, (and depressing!) but doesn’t seem likely to me.
Jon takes over and is able to meaningfully change the world from its current state.
Even less likely than the above scenario.
The world can’t be fixed, so it’s utterly destroyed/mercy killed.
It could be seen as a better option than the others that are available, but that assumes it’s even possible.
We get the time travel ending after all, but only as an endless inescapable cycle that the characters can’t change.
*throws up hands* I don’t know I’m just spitballing now.
Fate of Jon and Martin:
They die together or meet a fate worse than death together, saving the world.
Possible, but I already expressed my doubts about a successful “save everyone through self-sacrifice” ending.
Jon dies saving the world, Martin lives and is sad/Martin dies saving the world, Jon either dies without the Eye or lives on having lost his consciousness or memory or identity.
See above.
They save the world without dying. Without the Eye, Jon either dies and Martin mourns or he loses himself and Martin takes care of him.
See above, also they talked about this and accepted the possibility together so it ain’t gonna be that.
They die together or meet a fate worse than death together, making things worse in the process.
Seems more likely than them dying to make things better, honestly.
They die together or meet a fate worse than death together, making things slightly better or giving the world a minor reprieve, but ultimately not saving anyone, aka the Bifrost Incident ending. (Or they die together mercy killing the world.)
Honestly this has seemed like a significant possibility to me for a while, but who knows??
Martin dies or meets some horrific fate, pushing Jon to some extreme act (or just letting him crumble into despair.)
Seems way less likely now than it did before MAG 196! Feels like if this was the route Jonny Sims was going to go, he’d have done the Spiders Martin ending, but could still be possible.
The world stays the same and Martin asks Jon to kill him. Jon either agrees and falls into despair or refuses and we’re left with a big “now what”?
Depressing! I hate it!! :D But who knows!!?
The world stays the same, Martin and Jon both change their minds and decide to just rule their domains so that they can both live and be with each other on some level.
Very unlikely given their character arcs.
Jon dies/is irretrievably trapped without the world changing. Martin is alive, unable to die, and forced to resign himself to living off the suffering of those in his domain.
Certainly tragic and depressing, but feels extremely unlikely after Quiet.
Jon dies/is irretrievably trapped without the world changing. Martin somehow figures out a way to fix/improve things. He either dies/has a fate worse than death in the process, or lives and is sad.
Putting the fate of everything in Martin’s hands could pay off the “you have to make a proper choice” idea, but for now I have no idea what he could do.
The world stays fucked but they escape to another dimension where they can be happy but have to live with the guilt of abandoning everything.
Doubt they’d be this lucky, tbh.
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clarionglass · 2 years
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tagged by @gentlemancrow, thanks for the tag! :)
1. Why did you choose your url? i think i chose this back in the heady days of uh. year 8 or 9? for my old ff dot net account and/or deviantart, and it’s just stuck ever since! it was back in my skulduggery pleasant fandom days, and the concept of chosen names has always struck me as pretty cool, so i was messing around with picking one, and clarion glass stuck! it’s been my username for literally everything for years now, and clarion/clari has become the name i respond to on the internet :)
2. Any side blogs? yes but also no? i have three, technically, but none are active anymore. one was set up for a creative project for my greek and roman mythology unit in third year (i was blogging as ariadne, it was a fun time :) ), i’m not gonna give the url to that one because it’s entirely defunct @honestoperarecaps was set up as a study tool for my opera unit bc i thought i’d remember things better if i vented about the operas i had to watch in a mildly humorous way. it worked, but i only had the time and energy for one post :’) if you want to read my vent about don giovanni act one then click on over i guess :P and lastly is the good old school of music quotebook! it’s password locked bc it was just for me and my mates to put up the weird quotes that people said around the department (it was back before the SoM had a name change and became “the con,” so that dates it), and my god there were many. damn, i need to have a reread through those :) @bejewelled2deluxe that was a good time :D
3. How long have you been on tumblr? a while and a half! i think i got it in about 2014 or 15, but i lurked on my mates’ blogs from about 2012 without actually getting an account. so i lived through superwholock, but vicariously :’)
4. Do you have a queue tag? ha ha ha ha ha ask another question (i do not. i post 50 things at once or nothing at all.)
5. Why did you start your blog in the first place? like i said before, i was a lurker for a good few years before i caved! i’m a fandom nerd, as well as a sucker for a good meme, and the communities that my friends were in seemed pretty chill. i knew for ages i was gonna get a tumblr, but i just didn’t want to distract myself during Important School Times (i was entirely correct in thinking it’d be a black hole for all my time :’) )
6. Why did you choose your icon/pfp? oh man, there’s a q! i’d done a few drawings from the queen’s thief series about the time i signed up (if you haven’t read it go read it, it’s Fantastic), so i nicked a headshot off one of them bc she looks vaguely slightly like me :P this one is the queen of eddis! such a good character, i love her to pieces :)
7. Why did you choose your header? it doesn’t come up in my blog theme on pc so i forget what it is..... is it the lantern tree? it was just a cool pic, i love lanterns in trees yo blog title i definitely know where that came from, as does anybody who knows me in person,,,, it’s a tempo direction off a piece of music by That Goddamn Dude, and it just clicked with me
8. What’s your post with the most notes? my crocheted tiny martin photoset :)
9. How many mutuals do you have? no idea, my love, absolutely none
10. How many followers do you have? uh 184 apparently but i do need to do a weed for porn bots :/ if you’re part of the 184 and you’re not a porn bot and i don’t know you irl then hello! i don’t know where you’ve come from (tbh it’s probably the chatfic now i think about it) but you are very welcome, and i hope you’re not too put off by my extremely sporadic posting!
11. How many people do you follow? uh. 70. i have a very,,,, curated,,,, dash experience. :|
12. Have you ever made a shitpost? not really? i’ve shat out some odd thoughts on tma, if that counts :P
13. How often do you use Tumblr each day? i like to scroll to the end of my dash (hence the answer to q11 lol), and i get bored easily, so i often scroll through on my breaks and in the morning when i wake up :) that said, i only reblog stuff when i’m on my laptop bc i like to tag ramble and that’s just too much effort on my phone
14. Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? hell no, i’m very conflict averse plus who the hell is going to fight with me? i’m the smallest of small fry :P
15. How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts? i ignore them bc i do not need to be guilted into reblogging things tyvm (((:
16. Do you like tag games? for sure! i always take approx 2390358 years to respond to them but they’re cool as hell, plus i like being thought of :)
17. Do you like ask games? ditto the previous :)
18. Which of your mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous? i’m mutuals with a few Fandom People, but idk if anyone’s like. big famous? and i’m pretty sure nobody who’s big famous follows me back lol i just like to stick to my small corner of the internet :) if i’m wrong that’s rad as hell tho!
19. Do you have a crush on a mutual? nah but i love y’all as friends!
this is the tag part! which i hate doing! if you see this on your dash consider yourself tagged if you want to do it :) @idris-the-potterhead if you need to take a break from lab work then go for it :)
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i think a lot about music because i have a million writing playlists. even if they’re barely to the left of a theme i’ve already got a playlist for, if it’s not the Specific Feel i’m going for then i’ll make a new playlist that likely has most of the songs on other playlists i’ve made BUT
the reason i say this is because I have The Amazing Devil on most of my writing playlists because one, they’re great and i love them and two, some of the songs seem to fit like,,, really well for a lot of my TMA fic? and just for TMA in general?
Like, ‘The Rockrose and the Thistle’ really has some vibes to it that kind of feel like Jon pulling Martin from the lonely. 
And I find you all unwoven Trying desperately to sew I know the kindest thing Is to leave you alone
When your seams have come unknitted And you cry out to the sky I've run out of my words, my song Just let me die, me die
Right there, it sounds like Martin being thrown into the lonely. He played Peter, sure, but not without putting himself in danger. When I hear the line ‘Trying desperately to sew’ it sounds like Martin’s attempts from before, trying to keep things together while he watches everything around him turn to chaos. While he watches people he loves hurt and die - we all talk about Jon’s desperate attempts to save those with mixed success. But Martin was reaching another kind of desperation. Where Jon was trying to help by making choices with worse and worse consequences and trying to make things better through action, Martin was kind of forced to sit in the inaction.
(And also the ‘I know the kindest thing is to leave you alone’ sounds to me, like Jon reluctantly giving Martin the space he asks for sometimes, partly because Jon feels like everyone who gets too close to him will die even though he doesn’t want to leave Martin alone)
Which makes me think about how the Eye can feed on people’s fear of suffering and only being watched and the fear of having to watch someone suffer and not be able to help but i’m getting off topic
Specifically here I think about how the Lonely is very similar to depression and suicide; Martin is cast into the Lonely and he’s so tired. He’s so goddamn tired, hence the last two lines in the above section but then
I wake and hear you calling And up those cliffs I climb And I find you with a thimble weeping May I, I ask, may I? And you gently gift it to me
Cos you've no clue how to sew And I know the kindest thing I pray to god it's the kindest thing I know the kindest thing Is to never leave you alone
This might seem obvious or not at all a hot take, but these two stanzas make me think of Jon reaching out to Martin. I’d argue that Jon barely knows how to sew himself to stay in theme with the metaphor, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to at least try, and it’s the last stanza that really gets me.
Because Jon might Know everything but some things are still kind of out of reach for him. He’s kind of pulling a hail mary (i have no idea if that’s how the phrase works but bear with me here) by throwing himself into the lonely to save Martin. He’s well aware of the fact that if he can’t get Martin out, then he’s not leaving, but he knows what waits for them outside of the lonely. It’s a rock and a hard place, but he’s not leaving Martin there, alone.
He prays to god that it’s the kindest thing to save him when everyone else he’s tried to save has suffered greatly and/or died as a result. But he won’t leave Martin alone.
This might not be at all what the singers intended with this song, but to me it speaks a kind of devotion when everything has gone to hell. We’re all wrecks and we don’t know if what we’re doing will mean anything at all in the end, but we hope that even helping someone sew themselves up a little might mean something and now i’m emotional, thank you for coming to my ted talk
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vfdarkness · 4 years
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Love AVFD, the season finale was amazing and I can't wait to see what you do in season 2! I'm curious, what are some of your favorite horror podcasts?
Thank you! 
I’ll answer - at the same time - I’ll give the caveat that I’m less inspired by other horror podcasts for AVFD and more so by horror and other sorts of fiction (magical realism, weird fiction, surrealism) in other mediums. I might make a follow up post to this one in the future and list out a few books and authors that’ve been especially influential for the show. 
For podcasts though - 
Welcome to Night Vale was what got me to listen to modern fiction podcasts. It’s not horror per se, but walks a strange line that I appreciate and the single narrator radio host format is inspiring for those of us too poor to put on larger productions. I heard the show while living in Chicago back in 2013. At the time I tried doing a Twilight Zone-esque podcast called The Night NeverEnding (you can’t find it online anywhere anymore) but I was doing everything myself and the writing and narration quality just weren’t there.
I am in Eskew - I really love this show. It plays with so many themes and things that I’m also attracted to. After I’d been writing NoSleep stories for awhile and wanted to do something more, I heard this show, and again thought about making a podcast. So Night Vale and Eskew are probably the two biggest influences on AVFD coming into existence.
The Black Tapes - great production, exceptionally well acted, and some individual episodes and ideas that carry across the series are excellent. I feel this show has gotten enough praise elsewhere though that I don’t need to write further about it. 
Nightlight - I only started listening to this one recently, but it’s wonderful. Really well written stories, great narration. In particular, the last two episodes as I write this have been really good - if you’re looking for a jumping off point. Back in their first season they narrated a story by W.E.B. Dubois that’s just amazing. I had no idea Dubois wrote fiction. The story’s called The Comet - about NYC being destroyed and the only two people left are a poor black man and a wealthy white woman. This was decades before The Twilight Zone but it’s that same sort of story - using speculative fiction to smuggle in social commentary. 
The Magnus Archives - shortly into our series people told me our show reminded them of TMA. I’d not heard it before. I’ve since listened to the first several episodes, but stopped shortly into the first season - not even ten episodes in if I recall. It’s fantastic, I love it. But as I was writing the first mirror leeches story initially the second part of that story ended in an identical manner to a story TMA did. I didn’t want to be influenced to do - or not to do - stories based on another show so I didn’t want to listen further. I’ve had second thoughts on this though. Especially since I feel the world, direction, and mythology of AVFD is established enough in my head that it can’t be further influenced by other series.
Old Gods of Appalachia -  another exceptionally well-written story with phenomenal narration. I didn’t get very far into the first season for the same reason I didn’t listen much to TMA. I’ll probably listen further to this one too soon though.
Nocturnal Transmissions - I have to mention Kristin’s other podcast. He’s the best narrator in the business and he curates incredible stories. When I was contributed stories for NoSleep I got asked a dozen or so times to have my writings used by Youtube narrators and various podcasts. Most of these weren’t bad - but you could tell it was just someone doing it for a hobby. Kristin’s show is as professional as it gets - in terms of production value and his talent as a narrator. He asked to narrate a story I wrote - a quick, silly thing about a guy being upset that his neighbor is just a giant spider in a trenchcoat and no one seems to notice. Several months later, I was thinking of starting an audiodrama of some kind. I really liked the idea of a parapsychologist (Peter Venkman’s job in Ghostbusters) having Frasier Crane’s radio psychiatry job. I pitched him that and so we made AVFD.
Wolverine: The Long Night - Not horror, but I have to mention this. It’s written by Ben Percy who taught me creative writing in college. He had a huge impact on me. At that time, at the university, I was being led astray by the rest of the English dept - told that you couldn’t write speculative fiction stories - horror or weird fiction - and get taken seriously. If you weren’t writing about married couples having passive aggressive arguments where nothing really happens - then you weren’t writing “literature”. Not so in Percy’s class. He had us read Jorge Luis Borges, Angela Carter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joyce Carol Oates - authors celebrated across the globe as literary yet they wrote amazing mythic, strange, horrific tales. He had us read an anthology of stories put out by McSweeny’s where literary authors wrote speculative fiction - showing how to use literary techniques to write genre lit. Today, in 2020, that all might read as obvious - of course you can write literary speculative fiction. I’m 37. I was in college in the early 2000s. It was far less obvious then. Anyway, a lot of the best advice I got on writing came from him. A lot of authors who’ve influenced my writing - I was introduced to in his class. And when I went to create AVFD - I felt confident I could write in the audiodrama because I was taught by someone who’d already written a breakout series in the medium.
And finally I should mention The Storage Papers and Weeping Cedars. The first is about Jeremey, who purchases an abandoned storage space that’s filled with files on strange and horrific things happening in San Diego. It’s a really well-produced single narrator show. And Weeping Cedars is more in line with The Black Tapes in terms of medium - a journalist doing an audio documentary. in this case about a small upstate New York town. The show unfolds very slowly - like a long Stephen King novel. I recommend them both. 
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transarchivist · 4 years
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Do you have any podcast recommendations? I've listened to tma, wolf359, the penumbra podcast, and like...half of night vale. You seem like you'd know some good ones!
!!!
I Am In Eskew is an absolute all-time favorite of mine! It’s very firmly horror, but not tragedy. Think… WTNV but 1. on a personal scale, 2. actually terrifying, and 3. not benign. It follows David Ward, inhabitant of the city Eskew, as he chronicles some of the terrifying stuff that happens to him. Eventually, we hear from Riyo Dulae, a private investigator who’s been pulled into Eskew’s orbit. It uses place-as-horror in an astonishing way! It’s a finished product with 30 episodes and the ending is honestly amazing. I’ve listened to it several times. It’s very good. Listen to it. Please.
This got long, so the rest of the recommendations are under the cut, and in no particular order! (Eskew is absolutely my top recommendation lol) Particularly sad endings and ongoing series are specified.
Janus Descending is a finished and relatively short sci-fi horror series. It follows two xenoarcheologists (archeologists for aliens) as they inspect the site of an abandoned alien civilization. It’s told in inverse chronological order, alternating between Chel and Peter’s perspectives. Chel’s is chronological, while Peter’s is backwards. It’s an amazing format and keeps you suspended in the mystery up until the very end! It is a tragedy, though, and has a sad ending.
ars PARADOXICA is an audio drama about time-travel and the Cold War. The synopsis is this: scientist Sally Grissom accidentally creates time travel, is transported back to the Cold War, and is entwined with a clandestine branch of the US government. It’s 3 seasons long- and I will say that if you’re not good with differentiating voices I recommend either listening to it without stopping for a long period and/or reading along to transcripts. The plot is intricate but engaging and the large cast of characters each has their own unique personality. Plus: canon ace main character (as in she says she’s asexual! in canon!), a Jewish lesbian semi-main character, a mlm (bi?) man of color side-character, and several other characters of color.
Mabel is an ongoing horror podcast with elements of fae/fairy lore and the place-as-horror theme. It’s not as outright horror as TMA, Eskew, or Janus Descending, it’s much more atmospheric? It’s several seasons in, with the next season currently in production. It follows Anna Limon, who is an in-home caretaker, trying to contact Mabel Martin, the granddaughter of the woman Anna is caring for. It has lots of wlw, lots of moral ambiguity, beautiful prose, and lots and lots of fae. 
Zero Hours is a 7 episode long anthology series by the creators of Wolf 359. Each episode deals with “the end of the world - or at least something that feels like the end of the world.” There’s 99-year intervals between episode and it starts in the past and ends in the far future. It’s honestly stunning and was well worth listening to in it’s entirety when it dropped (and subsequently staying up past midnight). 
The Bright Sessions is… kinda urban fantasy? The official synopsis is that TBS is a “science fiction podcast that follows a group of therapy patients. But these are not your typical patients - each has a unique supernatural ability. The show documents their struggles and discoveries as well as the motivations of their mysterious therapist, Dr. Bright.” (I tried explaining but was having a tricky time) The characters are amazingly written and unique. (And no, it doesn’t fall into the “evil therapist” idea, in case you were worried) One of the main characters is gay (and it isn’t a throwaway line). It has good and realistic representation of mental illnesses: a main character as a panic/anxiety disorder, another has PTSD, another has depression, and so on. The main show is finished but there’s a spin off that’s being made. Specifically happy ending!
Alice Isn’t Dead is a horror podcast by the creators of Night Vale. It follows Keisha, a trucker, who is looking for her wife, Alice. Keisha encounters many strange things as she drives back and forth across America, including murderous almost-human monsters, places that are stuck out of time, and a nation spanning conspiracy. It encompasses the whole… atmosphere of middle-of-nowhere America perfectly. It’s a complete story with a novel form (haven’t had the pleasure of reading it, though). Main character is wlw, and Alice is not dead.
Limetown is a horror podcast. It follows reporter Lia Haddock as she investigates the mystery of Limetown- a town in Tennessee where over 300 people disappeared overnight, never to be heard from again. It’s finished…? I think the podcast is finished but a book and a Facebook miniseries are in development? Anyways. Sad ending. I loved the first season a lot, the second season is good too though!
The Adventure Zone isn’t an audio drama, instead it’s an actual-play show of Dungeons and Dragons (and D&D like systems). The McElroy brothers and their dad host it, and are frankly absolutely hilarious. TAZ: Balance is the first season and starts as a classic d&d game but turns into an amazing and heart wrenching story with beautiful prose and music. And also 69 jokes. TAZ:B is honestly one of the most emotionally impacting stories I’ve ever heard. It has an amazingly happy and hopeful ending. Includes: casual lgbt rep and a late game but major character is a trans woman! I’ve heard good things about the recently finished season TAZ: Amnesty, although I haven’t finished it. There’s a new season, TAZ: Graduation, that started recently, and I’ve enjoyed the handful of episodes I’ve listened to! Currently ongoing, but tragic endings aren’t something that’s expected.
I haven’t finished/caught up with these, but I’ve enjoyed them: Sayer (sci-fi. think menacing capitalist Night Vale in space, heard s3/s4 are really good), The Bridge (horror, alternate modern day. follows a watchpost on a bridge that crosses the Atlantic), The Orbiting Human Circus (from the people at WTNV. surreal fiction. hard to explain). I feel like there’s more but I can’t remember any atm. 
I’m also gonna point you towards @theradioghost‘s blog and her podcast recs tag. Her taste is amazing and I haven’t disliked a single show I’ve tried. (Also, check out her show, Midnight Radio! It’s the next thing on my to-listen list.)
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intoxicatiing · 4 years
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ooc been talking about ruby’s TMA verse for a while now but I think i have it figured out enough that I can put it out there yaaay
But essentially she’s an avatar of the web who lures people -- especially men she takes a personal disliking to -- in to shadows and/or her manor home and then kills them to serve the entity. She never stops smiling, and it’s unsettling once you know to look for it, but it’s subtle at first especially when she’s acting mostly human. background below
EVerything up to her meeting Luken remains the same -- she grew up on a farm just south of paris with her family, and is the only one to have survived the fire that destroyed her home. She went to paris in search of her grandmother, only to find out Helene is dead and now she’s on her own. After a few years on the streets, she meets Massu Luken, who takes her in. 
Things diverge here. Luken isn’t quite an avatar of the web, but he certainly serves its purposes, drawing people in and manipulating them into doing what he wants. He collected books, artefacts, and even people etc, and of course Ruby was his favorite possession.
Ruby worked as a lure for him in a sense. She would help put some of his more nervous guests at ease before guiding them into the shadows and ultimately to their deaths. At one point, she loses some control and bites Luken’s fingers off, leading him to lock her in a room full of spiders and their webs. During this time she becomes an avatar of the web, though I haven’t worked out the full details.
Regardless, she emerges and kills luken herself before becoming a metaphorical spider, living in Luken’s manor home in england and going out to lure people -- men especially -- into the shadows to kill them one way or another. She’s got fairly pale skin with a “spiderweb of veins” visible just beneath, and she literally never stops smiling. It’s a running theme throghout the story that I may or may not be turning into a statement 
she also, I think, likes to occasionally make herself home at the institute because she still has many aspects of her original personality intact, including her love for knowledge. (”I suspect,” she said, “that if the web hadn’t gotten me first, your dear Jonah would have loved to get his hands on me.”). She likes to cause trouble and make the researchers uncomfortable but she also can be genuinely helpful at times, offering them tea that she doesn’t drink, or finding a census book they need. She’s not an employee of the institute, and comes and goes as she pleases, but from what I can tell the web has a certain want to protect the institute, so there’s no issue in her eyes to helping it out here and there aka I am just really enjyoing the idea of them being unwilling friends to this chaotic whateverthefuck she is like
Jon: I am literally begging you to stop putting spiderwebs in my desk drawers
ruby, who just handed him an envelope of contacts for the latest statement: I physically cannot :)
(Narrator voice. She physically can, whenever she chooses.)
or like with Martin
Martin: this is horrible, I hate recording statements 
Ruby, handing him a cup of tea and sitting down with her own: Found a new tea shop down the street if you want some
Martin: ???? Uh. Ok. Can you even drink tea?
Ruby: No :)
and she still has like a full emotional range of emotions but she sure doesn’t express them outside of :)
and ofc I’ll be updating is the further into the podcast I get, i’m just at episode 90 now, but!! i’m getting through it and LOVING it
EDIT I’m about to hit episode 150 and her story is mostly the same. I want to emphasize that she does have something of a life, collecting books and walking around and shopping. She’s got lots of money from Luken’s estate, and doesn’t hesitate to spend it. she only needs to eat once every three or four weeks, which means for the most part she’s a slightly uncanny, beautiful woman living her life.
she also just happens to be evil and feel little remorse for what she does.
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pricklyest · 4 years
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okay under a cut because it’s probably long but I’m out of the bath and here’s those tma themed asks
The Eye: If you were an avatar of any entity, which one would it be?
there are so many possible answers to this like wow but I’m caught between the eye because I am Thirsty for knowledge 1000% of the time if someone is talking about something with another person and I am near the conversation but not involved you can bet I’m trying to figure out what’s going on and if I know either of the people I will almost definitely ask what’s going on and be intrusive as hell because I have no self restraint; and the lonely because like I am a very alone person but in the words of my fav jamilah woods I’m not lonely, I’m alone and I feel like that is a very peter lukas vibe, yknow? he enjoys being alone? also I too am a sailor and I would like to mysteriously hang out on my ship in the ocean surrounded by fog with no other human being for miles.
The Spiral: Are you good at math?
listen, I spend all of my free time listening to calculus the musical and if you asked me to I would probably rewrite every song I have ever listened to to be about mathematics. in another universe I am probably a math major and in this universe I am deeply, deeply in love with every single second of martin gardner’s work. 
but also no I am not good at math because nobody is good at math, ask any math major and they will tell you we are all terrible at math. engineers (of which I am one) think they’re good at math but they are wrong. that’s how you know I’m meant to be a math major. I know that I’m bad at math. no one can ever be good at math. 
anyway in case anyone ever was wondering my favorite number is euler’s number and I almost named my animal crossing new horizons island eigen as in eigenvectors/values because I am a huge fucking nerd. 
The End: What would you do with your time if you never died?
literally study every single thing I ever could. like. why would the cullens repeat high school over and over again where you’re just relearning the same shit and not just like. major in every single thing a person could possibly major in. that’s just like. the thing to do. 
The Stranger: Are you normally a fan of horror?
not really, but it’s growing on me? I’m like really into psychological horror type stuff and obviously the line between scifi and fantasy and horror is not really a line and especially like things like black mirror that’s scifi gone Wrong is very specifically my jam? but like classic horror stuff has not historically been my thing but like I said. it’s growing on me. 
The Lonely: Name a few of your friends and your favorite things about them.
listen. I don’t have any friends. I mean I do, I am literally snapchatting w merle rn but like. I don’t know how to publicly say words about my friends. I don’t know my friends? I know the feelings that I have in relation to them? 
god, that sounds. enormously self centered and like. really rude. that is not in any way true. okay let’s try this again. 
[redacted]
okay I got waylaid for like 40min doing this writing about my friends and what’s actually going to happen is tomorrow I am going to go back to what I was writing and finish it because I actually do want to sit down and appreciate my friends? because that is a thing everyone should do and also I specifically v much need to because I am not good at feeling close to people so I intentionally downplay how important relationships are to me and that’s objectively Bad and we need to stop doing that. 
what I mean to say in the mean time is that I love my friends and here I will put some of their names so they know they are loved and they are in order of how long I’ve known them so no one feels bad about whatever other order they might be in: alex amy musa carter emma lexi quinn kara merle jasper 
wow I stopped to look at something on my phone and came across the phone number of someone I used to go sailing with who’s dead now and I cried a little bit so that’s something. 
The Desolation: Have you ever been in love?
yes. we’re not going to to talk about that. 
The Slaughter: What kind of music do you like?
what a vague and unanswerable question. idk get some idea of some of my music tastes but definitely not all of them via the post I made a little bit ago with songs that start with the letters in my url. 
The Vast: Can you swim?
yes, but not particularly well. I mean. I’m a sailor. I swim well enough. but like my mom’s side of the family is a lot of competitive swimmers and I’m definitely not one of them. 
The Buried: How do you do in large crowds?
I like the idea of crowds and anonymity and being alone while surrounded but I also get anxious and claustrophobic feeling and I am glad I have a service animal trained in blocking. 
The Dark: Dark colors or pastels?
dark colors bc I am goth
The Corruption: Do you kill bugs?
sometimes yes sometimes I put them outside. depends on the bug. spiders I leave alone unless they’re right by my bed. centipedes get killed on sight. 
The Web: Are you any good at lying?
I don’t think so but I also don’t lie v often and when I do it’s usually to my mother about school.
The Flesh: Are you flexible?
I am somewhat hypermobile but not particularly flexible. whatever that means. 
The Hunt: Would you be a monster hunter?
I have a high pain tolerance, which is a plus, but I am also v chronic pain and so like I would be able to hunt monsters one night but then spend the next three days in bed, so like. probably not. 
The Extinction: Would you survive the apocalypse?
oh god, no. I’m disabled. 
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theunwrittenman · 4 years
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A Magnus Archives Playlist
Inspired in part by @kimabutch and their fandom playlist project, I decided that I’d try to make a playlist with one song for each of the entities and after a LOT OF sifting through my collection it’s finally done! 
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0HD8N3pqvKc7KckCx2yxIn
If you’re interested in which song is related to which or my overall thoughts or methodologies, feel free to click below 
So when I started this project, I set myself the limits that the songs had to a) already be in my collection b) all generally fit in the same genre c) should be new songs from lesser known or less currently popular bands so that the palylist could serve as an introdction d) no repeat bands . I have a lot of southern gothic and swing music that’d fit different entities but I wanted the list to be cohesive. I might create another playlist with those songs in a sort of “acoustic remix” at a later date, depending on how this one is received. I also could have pumped this full of Lemon Demon, but that’d be cheating.  
The Eye- Fear & Delight: Early on when constructing the playlist it was obvious that since I was choosing the songs out of my own collection, I’d be making a showcase of what each of the fears mean to me, and what I find appealing about them. It follows then that the first song in the playlist is both the central theme of The Magnus Archives and the feeling which most resounds with me: the manic desire to know, no matter the danger or cost. A song about a headlong charge the horrifying and the unknown couldn’t be more on the nose.  
The Corruption-Feather, Fur & Fin: It’s tough to find upbeat songs about bugs and rot, but I recalled an old “earworm” of mine happened to be about pollution and it fit perfectly.  
The Buried- Repeat After Me: Playing with the buried’s dual theme of restraint and comfort, I thought a song about religious conformity was the best fit. This also starts a mini-arc over the next three songs where I (completely accidentally) relate coming into contact with the Entities to escaping from Plato’s cave. 
The Dark- Dr. Sunshine is Dead: From the conformity and mental constriction of Repeat after me, our doubt and frustration leads to bold and heretical new thoughts. Obedience has been replaced with a self-sufficient blind faith, and the Avatar can escape from the constraints of normalcy to seek the exit of the cave. 
The Vast- Always Ascending: While the falling titan might not be MY patron, I’ve always been in awe of the world from a bird’s eye view and so the vast’s song on this playlist might be a bit more positive than some others. Here we ascend from the cave full of the promise of more knowledge and the exultant feeling of leaving reality behind. 
The Spiral-House of Glass: This is pretty much a Michael theme song more than any of my own ideas about the Spiral tbh. Having communed with their patron the Avatar has lost all tether on the normal world and becomes increasingly unstable. 
The Lonely-Everything is Going Great: Now we get personal. I’ve struggled with depression for most of my life, and it’s taken a lot of different forms. In my late 20s as I pulled myself out of the pit and finally reconnected with people it shifted into a desire to sacrifice myself for the convenience and approval of others .I found this song around the same time I saw a post “ you’re so traumatized you think not taking up space in people’s lives is a redeeming feature” and the two have been forever linked in my mind.  
The Stranger- I Want to be You: Growing up neruodivergent I always had the impression that I was wrong, that I was unwanted, and that I wasn’t really human. I envied people who were beloved for their talents and I wished I could emulate them. Needless to say the Stranger’s joyful jig of alienation held a lot of appeal and thanks to that it’s tied with the Eye for personal patron status. 
The Web-Know my Name: Another character song, the incidious influence of the spider creeps in everywhere, and the slightest bit of contact can get you stuck. ALSO, I’ll take any excuse to put SATE on a playlist, they’re rad as hell. 
The Desolation-Take me Home: I think this song speaks for itself, burning yourself out for a triumphant moment is totally within the lightless flame’s wheelhouse and I think that a brush with the sublime and destruction can sometimes go hand in hand. 
The Hunt -Howl:  Its a song that’s got big sexy werewolf energy, what’s not to love? Also check out the music video 
The Slaughter-Mary: Second of what I like to call the “Blood,Meat, and Sharp Things” trinity of Terrors, differentiating between the three of them musically was quite difficult. I decided to eventually go with thes three because they communicated the three differing factors of the entities chase and pursuit/banality to violence/hunger and its relation with the human body. 
The Flesh-The Devil in Camp: I know it might be considered cheating to use a song from a Donner party concept album when there was a TMA episode specifically about those sort of circumstances, but this is too much of a bop to resist. You should also check out the band if the idea of a “Donner party concept album” appeals to you, they do not disappoint. 
The End-Hazy Shade of Winter: It’s only right that the end come at the end of the 14, so why not have the lead singer of everyone’s favorite emo band sing a song about reminiscence and finality. 
The Extinction- The Church of the Technochrist: Blasphemies of blasphemies, a 15th song? Well the extinction is ALL ABOUT upsetting the natural order of things, and a song about overcoming mortal fears by embracing the inhuman future I think is the perfect anthem for the Millennial™ entity. 
Thanks for joining me on this musical journey and listening to my rantings, if you have comments, feel free to post them below!
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