#mag 184

[a-mag-meme-a-day]

Meme for @a-mag-a-day Day 191

MAG 184 - Like Ants

#a mag meme a day #the magnus archives #mag 184

[go-to-the-mirror]

The room was unrecognisable when I returned. There was a shape on the bed, where Harriet had laid, but it wasn’t her anymore. I could barely make out anything even remotely human in the pile of pitted and warped flesh that now remained. The bed itself was slick and shiny with a dark fluid that dripped off the hanging sheets and onto the floor. But what truly repulsed me, what made me flee as I did, was what moved and squirmed on all of it. They covered every surface: the floor, the bed, what used to be Harriet, even the ceiling. A thick, moving carpet of pale, writhing worms.

(MAG 6 - Squirm)

Finally, I found myself standing over the mass of pitted and hollow skin that was once a man. He shuddered violently as the gas engulfed him, and then lay still.

(MAG 26 - A Distortion)

I have read many statements now by those who are changing, who are becoming – something else, and few if any of them seem... entirely rational. Entirely the people that they were before.[…] Then again, I suppose I’m hardly in the best position to judge. Perhaps to anyone listening to these tapes I sound remarkably similar to Hezekiah. Or to Manuela. Or to Jane.

(MAG 152 - A Gravedigger’s Envy)

JORDAN: You turned me into what? A torturer?

ARCHIVIST: Yes.

[…]

JORDAN: I don’t... I don’t know how to be this. I don’t want to scare people.

ARCHIVIST: No. But you’ll learn.

[Beat.]

JORDAN: Am I still me?

ARCHIVIST: I don’t know how to answer that.

(MAG 184 - Like Ants)

I’ve seen what Jon did in MAG 184 being compared to Jonah Magnus, obviously. I’ve compared it to Jonah Magnus, it makes sense. I’ve also seen it compared to what Jon did to Melanie, which makes sense, though I don’t tend to do that myself. I haven’t seen it compared to what Jane Prentiss did, which is interesting, because Jon compares himself to Jane, he does that, he’s been doing it since season 1, thank you deluxe transcripts for ruining my life.

Jane Prentiss turns people into avatars. Jane Prentiss was the first avatar Jon — knowingly — encountered. Really don’t think Jonah Magnus counts. I have a lot of feelings on how Jane and Jon turn people into avatars, on how it’s a reflection of what’s happened to them, especially Jon. How with Jordan there’s this choice that isn’t even a choice at all, that’s basically the same choice given to Jon and Jane alike.

I have lots of feelings on how Jon parallels Jane in the later seasons. And about that relating to the cycle of violence and becoming a fear entity avatar as an allegory for trauma.

#jane prentiss #jordan kennedy #jonathan sims #tma #tma meta #the magnus archives #the magnus archives meta #mag 6 #mag 26 #mag 152 #mag 184 #worms #feeling emotionsssss #landscaping your mind chapter one #to post or to queue? #… #post. #also no im never shutting up about becoming a fear entity avatar as an allegory for trauma. NEVER #lives in my mind rent free sings to me tells me that i am a home tells me that i can be fully consumed by what loves me— #it’s like? #SORRY I JUST GOT AN IDEA FOR A META TAG #landscaping your mind is garbage and here’s why #yes. YES! that’s gonna be my new writing fun little analysis tag #fuckin love that

[a-mag-a-day]

This episode really is one of the ones that shows who Jon is as a character at this point (esp. in terms of his flaws).

It's just so important to understanding Jon that we hear two separate people suffering in the ant domain but he only chooses the one he (barely) knows to 'save' by turning him into a Watcher. It's a perfect summary of how Jon sees the world in really personal terms.

It also showcases his tendency to act on what he thinks the right thing to do is, regardless of what anyone else has to say on things. He just does it. (Heck, Martin's only seen him smite before. He doesn't even know what Jon's doing until he's finished but Jon won't pause to explain when Martin questions it). Jordan Kennedy has about as much choice in his new role as Jon did.

And it's all written very sympathetically. We understand why Jon does this and how his character progressed to this point. It's just a brilliant summary of how he is now and into the endgame - setting up the finale by demonstrating that he really couldn't have made another choice without changing a lot about himself to get there if this is how he acts in 184. This is Jon at his most Jon.

Wonder how Jordan Kennedy fared after all was said and done?

#submission #tma meta #mag 184 #tma spoilers

[roguecanoe]

Mag 184: Like Ants

#inktober #the magnus archives #tma #mag 184 #like ants #tw bugs #tw ants #tw scopophobia #hope you enjoyed #ye!

[ratpyramid]

Jordan Kennedy:

#the magnus archives memes #the magnus archives #tma #tma memes #mag 184 #like ants #mag 184 like ants #jordan kennedy #the corruption

[burninginthegymplplinko]

MAG 184 - Like Ants

doodle 184/200; days left - 17/110 1/128

sorry this one's so rushed but i had to improvise. i wanted to take a pic of Jordan in an anthill but for some reason all our ants died??? :(( idk there were just dead bodies on top and it seemed kinda insensitive to take a pic with them. i dont know what happened though :(( ( !!! what if it was the leitner i showed them (・_・;) )

speaking of insect though, today i found a wasp inside so i took her out, but on my way back i found a stag beetle on the pavement and while i was trying to pick him up the wasp found me again and stung me >:(( this is what i get for helping.

this is the best pic i got with the remaining few ants :(((

#tma #the magnus archives #jordan kennedy #tma 184 #mag 184 #fun fact n.2 today: jordan is glued to the background with honey. #tma s5

[penisgeneticist]

#tma #mag 184 #jonmartin #live slug reaction

[themagnustournament]

Round One Part Four - Match 34

The sky ate her son. The sky. Ate. Her son. But I do understand the call of Tim Ledsam.

MAG 021 - Freefall | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Statement of Moira Kelly, regarding the disappearance of her son Robert.

MAG 184 - Like Ants | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

An examination of hive mentality. Recorded by the Archivist in situ.

#the magnus archives #the magnus tournament #tma #mag 021 #mag 21 #mag 021 freefall #mag 21 freefall #freefall #moira kelly #robert kelly #simon fairchild #the vast #vast #mag 184 #mag 184 like ants #like ants #jordan kennedy #the corruption #corruption #round one #round one part four

[disacurveball]

[THERE IS A SIBILANT BUZZ, SIMILAR TO THAT OF INSECT WINGS, AS JORDAN TALKS.]

#tw bugs #tw ants #the corruption #TMA #the Magnus archives #the magnus institute #magpod #jordan kennedy #tma entities #tma corruption #mag 184 #the magnus archive fanart #TMA fanart

[lycanlovingvampyre]

MAG 184 Relisten

Activity on my first listen: cutting the jasmine in my garden.

"Though one could pluck a numeral from the air and add some zeros, place a figure on how many tiny, twitching things exist within these tunnels, it cannot be comprehended. Not truly." NOT REA- oh wait, false alarm xD Is that the sophisticated version of not really? Not truly?

"A trillion. An octillion. A quindecillion." I googled that, I wanted to know if this is real or made-up words xD So a quindecillion is a number equal to 1 followed by 48 zeros! Now I wonder, to what extent do we have names for numbers that high? Okay, so I googled further, and this is actually hilarious! Check this out, Wikipedia entry to Googolplex: "In 1920, Edward Kasner's nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, coined the term googol, which is 10^100, and then proposed the further term googolplex to be 'one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired'".

It's cool that this domain has (at least) two victims with very different understanding of what they are afraid of. One being hurt and the other one hurting others.

JON: "Don’t like ants?" MARTIN: "Obviously not. No-one likes ants, Jon." JON: "As the embodiment of all knowledge, I am not entirely sure that’s true but… okay." Yep, there are people who like ants. Friends of mine have a pet ant colony.

JON: "No, John Amherst was encased in concrete, and shrivelled away to nothing after just a few years." I already talked about this in S4, but this could be seen as another confirmation that spreading fear is indeed necessary for an Avatar's survival. So Daisy would have literally starved to death. Old written statements probably also wouldn't have sustained Jon forever. We know from MAG 155 that the fears will find ways to force you into doing more and more damage.

JON: "It’s the ants." Finally we see animals! They always had a place in the fear ecosystem, as Jon has called it, and this one and the thing about a domain for cats are the only examples we have... The way good cows blew up I would have somehow expected a secret cow level to make an appearance...

MARTIN: "I sometimes forget that most of the people we know are avatars." Hm, super sad. They were in so deep, it probably would actually have been dangerous for outsiders to hang with them much. And then of course there are the non-Avatars, who didn't make it. Sasha. Tim.

JON: "Ceaseless Watcher, look upon this man –" MARTIN: "Jon…" JON: "– subsumed by terror and gripped with swarming fear. Gaze into him, through him… And out of him." MARTIN: "What does that mean?" JON: "Make him a vessel of your hunger, staring out and harvesting with a thousand, thousand, thousand, tiny, eager, eyes." MARTIN: "Hang on…" Martin's comments as he slowly realizes what Jon's doing here are so funny XD

JORDAN: "What did you do to me? I feel…" JON: "Better?" JORDAN: "Sick." Jon's hope to have finally done something good is so audible in this. And it's getting smashed in an instant. Can't have shit in the apocalypse...

JORDAN: "What did you do to me?" JON: "I helped you." JORDAN: "Helped me? I don’t feel right, I, I just – Ah! No I don’t – argh! I don’t want this!" The insistent tone Jon uses here. He desperately wants to do something, just a tiny bit of good.

JORDAN: "No, I don’t – I didn’t ask for this!" :( Just like Jon... Jon never wanted this and he probably feels terrible to have done this to someone else now.

JORDAN: "I don’t… I don’t know how to be this. I don’t want to scare people." JON: "No. But you’ll learn." JORDAN: "… Am I still me?" JON: "I don’t know how to answer that." And more and more heart-wrenching parallels...

JORDAN: "The ants… If I told them to attack you. Could they?" JON: "… No. Nothing can really touch us anymore." God, and then this... Actively antagonizing Jon for what he's done... After a few breather episodes this one’s back to being a punch to the gut.

@a-mag-a-day

#a-mag-a-day #mag 184 #tma #tma spoilers

[dspd]

**Martin & Jon, trekking across fear landscape #??????**

Martin: dinner parties, babe. Dinner parties.

Jon: I don't want a party full of other Avatars

#mag 184 #the magnus archives #tma #martin blackwood #priorities

[go-to-the-mirror]

In MAG 32, Jane Prentiss describes the love she feels towards The Hive/Corruption as “[a] deeper, more primal love. A need as much as a feeling. Love that consumes you in all ways.”

In MAG 153, the dog that the cult finds is called Agape, which is named after one of the Ancient Greek words for love, as well as a Christian concept, I believe derived from this. It means charity, and sacrifice, and the love of and for God. Love that is sacrificial, “transcends and persists regardless of circumstance.”

“Love that consumes you in all ways,” sacrificial, primal love that is there, will always be there, The Corruption is a reading of that, in a way, especially in MAG 32, 153, and 184.

With Jane Prentiss, she gives herself fully to the Hive, sacrifices herself for it, feels called to it regardless of her fear for it.

The cult in MAG 153 is… well, there’s quite literally worshipping the eleven chains, it’s a whole thing, and when Barbara is told to leave the cult, she’s told that she isn’t worthy of the love of what was worshipped as a god.

In MAG 184, Leto is… he’s so much larger, so much more powerful than the ants, even as they destroy him — which, wow, isn’t that something — and his love for them, even as he inadvertently gets them killed, could it not be seen as a god’s love for their people? I may be reaching a bit here, but I mean, join me in thinking about it.

#DEFINITELY reaching but idk i had a thought #mag 32 #mag 153 #mag 184 #tma #tma meta #the corruption #i do have good thoughts on the corruption tho that’s just always a standard #landscaping your mind chapter one #landscaping your mind is garbage and here’s why

[a-mag-a-day]

inseticide tim my beloved :)

Alternate universe Gunpowder Tim beloved <3

#a mag a day #tma #the magnus archives #episode asks #mod ashes #mag 184 #arqueervist

[hellenic-whore]

I drew Jordan Kennedy,Season 5.

He brings me joy and I love him.

Spoilers for episode 184

#the corruption #the eye #tma #tma spoilers #tma fanart #jordan kennedy #mag 184 #tma 184 #gay #art #artists on tumblr #the magnus archives #me #ugh he’s hot

[oaxleaf]

mag 184 - like ants

i have zero concept of scale or numbers. like, to the point that i've embarrased myself with how bad my estimates at distances or weights or amounts are. something being at such a scale that it's uncountable isn't really scary to me, because my brain can't really process amounts over, let's say, a couple hundred or so

still, the point of it is that whole infinite, eternal collective that the corruption is so fond of. there's a lot of vast and buried elements to this one, but really it's all about community. just being completely, utterly immersed by something, and endless mass with centre or distinction. the subflavour of the desire to be fully surounded by love and being a piece of a whole that runs like a through-line in corruption statements is really fascinating, and the whole concept works really well with bugs specifically. how many of us look at these small things and look at them as living, individual creatures? when they're in a mass, do we ever really look at them as distinct animals making up a crowd, or just pieces of one large collective?

there's is also the eternal question of whether it is better to suffer at the hands of others or to make those hands yours. given the choice, nobody would want to be a victim, but what when the only other option is being the perpetrator? the modern world only really allows you to be the oppressed or the oppressor. you can't really cut yourself off from that larger system, and whilst you can be both you can't be neither. most of us don't even really get a choice in where we're placed on that scale. but would we, if we did, decide to take that step upwards on the social ladder? even if that means we have to press down on those we were once part of?

#tma #a mag a day #mag 184

[mamahersh]

I have been left on a cliffhanger, and now I understand in some small measure how people felt in the gap between MAG 185 and 186. What a great cliffhanger tho, with Jon phasing out and Martin nodding along till he realizes he's alone and the tape ends.

Quick commentary tho on the actual content of today's three eps: 

I find that most statements in S5 this far have generally fallen in one if two categories: the ones that are there for the "message" and the ones to help push along elements of the plot. Generally there wasn't much overlap in the first half of the season, but now that we're pushing into the endgame there's def some more overlap occurring. Admittedly MAG 183 (Monument) falls more into the former than the latter category but we do get the introduction of Martin's "personal journey" plot arc leading up to the entrance of London. But more to the point, I enjoyed Monument in part because having gone through a Bachelor's degree in Physics at a smaller state University, you tend to bump into at least one or two of the type of people that were stuck in the Monument. Admittedly, none of the professors I knew were ever that cartoonishly prideful, but there was always that one female Dr. who would give out reprimands if she was ever addressed as anything else if you messed up more than once. But also not to say that professors and doctors who are that cartoonishly prideful don't exist, just means I was lucky enough to have never met them while I was in school. I will say, seemed a *bit* sexist to imply all the academically prideful wankers in the tower were all men, but I get it; most people who go to those lengths for their academic careers generally *are* men and particularly those who would fear being so very very wrong... Well I get. I don't agree, but I get it.

Now that I've alienated my audience, MAG 184 (Like Ants) is almost serendipitous in relation to MAG a day: two Corruption statements in one day? what’re the odds? But in any case, this was a great set up for revealing Jon's other major power relating to other people in the apocalypse... Upgrading people from Watched to Watcher. You may ask, "if Jon's trying to be better, why would he curse someone to Avatarhood?" Well for a lot reasons, most of which he explains in the episode, but I think a reason that was too... Basic? To be spoken would be he was curious to see what would happen exactly and wanted to give the gift to someone he cared about personally. Listen, this man has been asking questions since we met him and after he Became it got 10 times worse. Even in the Apocalypse he's been asking questions it's just now he has instant access to all the answers that the Eye has. So do you really think Jon, if given the choice between less guilt and getting his questions answered, would ever actually choose "less guilt"? Thank for listening to my TED talk.

Gosh, I loved though how *finally* Martin seems to be realizing at least a little where Jon's coming from. Yeah yeah, unlawful detainment, Jonny feeling the need to apologize for it getting too real... Listen it's appreciated but hilariously enough it was a "bit too real" with war flashback central back in 163. Anyways, back in topic, 185 was great because Martin finally connects the dots on why Jon isn't smiting everything he sees and why he hasn't been raising everyone they bump into to Avatarhood. Why the domains perpetuate even without a guiding hand and what happens when they are *truly* removed of their foundational fear.

But what interests me more is how Martin tries to decide whether the inspector should be "lifted up". Martin has always tried to make the world a better place after the end, and it's interesting that he seems to think that that means people should strive to be better people to do so. Not happier, not necessarily less Fearful, but going ever towards a world where Love outweighs Fear as a grand whole. So when given the choice of potentially lessening one man's suffering but forcing him to instead subsist on the suffering of others, he asks Jon whether the man would enjoy that new existence of living on other people's suffering? Jon basically says yes, based on the man's previous behaviour and outlook before the apocalypse, he more than likely would, and so Martin judges the man and tells Jon to leave him. So instead of lessening the man's suffering but ultimately encouraging him to be a worse person by "rewarding" his previous bad behavior and allowing him to feel good about hurting other people; Martin chooses to keep that man in suffering so that when him and Jon eventually save the world, he can come out of it potentially having realized that what he had been doing was wrong because had had suffered like that himself.

Martin, in this choice, has learned that him and Jon have basically been given the power of deities: to judge if someone is worthy of less suffering, and then to make it so they have greater responsibility, if a similarly miserable existence. Martin has made the choice that he would rather people do not live if they are to subsist off the suffering of others, particularly if they enjoy it. And if I've heard the rumors about the next episode correctly, Martin will discuss with himself the full implications of his world view to their logical conclusion and I actually can't wait to discuss it.

EDIT: I revised the MAG 184 section a bit because I had forgotten (somehow) that Timothy Hodge and Jordan Kennedy were two very different people lmfaooooo.

#the magnus archives liveblog #the magnus archives #tma #mag 183 #mag 184 #mag 185 #Martin Blackwood #jon sims #martin #long post #we have a doosy today boys and girls #jonny gets so close to christian discourse in this set #its almost frustrating how close he gets to having a character admit there are absolute moral Truths out there #and then side stepping it entirely #Martin has such a character arc in this season and for some reason it makes me want to strnagle something