#the jonny sims extended universe

[serenfire]

jonny's sharing non-canon elements of the magnus institute on stream. his and sasha's contributions include there's a cafeteria that is only ever half full and that the only type of cake they EVER SERVE is battenburg cake

#THESE ARE IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO TMA CANON #jonathan sims #tma #the magnus archives #the jonny sims extended twitch universe

[rosy-cheekx]

“You’re such a dork.” for the emotional writing prompts! I don't know anything about critical role, really, so for TMA :)

I spy, with my little eye, Bryce’s attempts to shove her own interests into her fics. Anyways, I am an American in college so I was basing this on my own experiences oops. Enjoy!

Date night was Wednesday evenings. Jon and Martin both found it preferable for a variety of reasons; it was the most likely nights for happy hours at the pubs in town, guaranteeing a cheap drink, and keeping to a weekday night minimized the chance of Jon seeing one of his students out. He hated seeing his students. Not that he hated them of course, he really rather liked them…not that they would ever know that. Being a professor, of parapsychology of all things, was rather rewarding. He knew the content inside and out (it felt good, using the mark of The Eye to actively work against it, to pass along information instead of consuming). And they didn’t seem to mind him either.

That was the thing about university students. They really didn’t care about who he was or where he came from. The fact that he was a scrawny, scarred Englishman in a lecture hall in Scotland didn’t matter to them. In the classroom, all they cared was whether he taught the material well (he did) and was kind to those with late assignments (he was. He had been a university student once too; he remembered the anxiety and depression that took him and his mates in waves). He was a good professor; Jon knew that objectively in the marks his students received. But in the subjective? His student had decided they liked him.

This had dawned on him at the end of his first semester; when he was inundated with emails of sincere thank-you for a great semester, for being such a helpful teacher, for taking the time to help review, et cetera. Martin had grinned at him, poking a tongue out his mouth and making some remark about teacher’s pets coming full circle (Jon was never a teacher’s pet though. He had always asked too many questions. He welcomed those questions with open arms now, to be the teacher he hadn’t had.)

The next semester it had been more obvious that students liked him now that he knew where to look. It was in the open “good-mornings” and questions about his weekend plans, and in the fact that he had the best attendance records of his department. It was in the way they asked genuine questions about his material and the waitlists miles long to get into his sections. Later on, it was in the gentle ribbings about his looking tired and the grey hairs even as they celebrated his fortieth birthday with him, bringing in cupcakes and sneaking in between lectures to decorate his office and the sincere questions over his scars, his life, his relationship with Martin (his introductory lecture always featured Martin and Her Regency, their thick orange tabby). To make eight wonderful semesters short, he was familiar with his students, and they weren’t afraid to be familiar back. Which was wonderful in the classroom and all, but not when he was trying have a relaxing evening with his husband.

Which brings them back to Wednesdays. Wednesdays were the days least likely to have students out in town, he had learned from Dr. Kerrigan, the positive psych professor, because Thirsty Thursdays started off the weekend’s partying and drinking for the undergraduates. Wednesday was the day students, in theory, buckled down to finish homework and give themselves a free weekend.

So here they were, Martin in a collared shirt, printed with tiny flowers, and jeans, hair bleached white from the Lonely and curling softly at his temples; Jon in a slouchy ribbed turtleneck and high-waisted pants, his own thick curls half-piled atop his head. Jon was listening intently as Martin spoke animatedly, talking about his own day as a guidance counselor at the local primary school.

“…and I swear Jon, if it wasn’t bad enough that Kimmy has decided never to speak to Lawrence again, now Lawrence has confided in me that he is positively in love with her.”

“Did he say that verbatim? In love, I mean.”

“I mean, no, but he said he was willing to give her all his Squishmallows for a playdate. Squishmallows. That’s real eight-year-old commitment, right there.”

Jon barked out a laugh and put on a puppy-eyed expression, grinning all the while. “Martin Blackwood, do you hereby take Jonathan Sim’s stuffed animals, to have and to ho-”

A gentle swat to the knee with Martin’s shoe cut Jon off. “Oi! Respect my children. They may be fools but its not their faults their brains aren’t developed yet. And yes, I know, ‘they’re not developed ‘til twenty-five and you can argue that your students’ brains aren’t developed either.’ But it’s different. They’re babies.”

“And I’m the All-Knowing One,” Jon mused thoughtfully around a forkful of food, earning him another love-filled kick.

“Speaking of,” Martin pointed to Jon with his glass, eyeing him deliberately. “Midterms next week, yeah? How do you think it’ll go?”

Jon shrugged, scratching at the back of his neck. “Alright, I hope. First exam went well but could’ve been better. I’m worried about Avonni, honestly, he’s nodded off a few times in class and I’m not confident he has someone to get the material from.”

“He has you.” A pointed, snow-white eyebrow.

“Right, but sometimes students don’t want to ask for notes because they think I’ll say no. Maybe I should email him. Speaking of email! Did I tell you what Suzanne sent out?”

“Oh no, what?”

They carried on like this through their meal and into dessert, and not for the first time Jon was struck by the sheer normalcy of it all. His greatest concerns were Suzanne’s passive-aggressive emails and his students, not the inevitable destruction of reality as they knew it to be. They were scarred, inside and out, everyone who had escaped The Magnus Institute was, but they were safe and free and happy. In defiance of everything that had happened to and because of them.

“Dr. Sims!”

Uh oh. Spoke too soon.

Bite of lava cake halfway to his mouth, Jon squeezed his eyes shut, rolling his eyes back in his head and willing there to be another professor with the surname Sims in the restaurant. When he opened his eyes, Martin was valiantly trying to suppress a smile as he eyed something, someone, over his head. Jon twisted awkwardly in his seat to see—

“Parker. What a surprise.” His voice was warm but carefully measured, and the dark-skinned boy waved, shit-eating grin on his face. “I have told you that you can call me Jon.”

“Yeah, I know, but you earned that doctorate! And “Doctor Jon” sounds awful, like you should have your own show or something.”

He hadn’t earned that doctorate, actually, but Martin’s expertise in lying and the disastrous apocalypse that had left everyone disoriented meant it had been easy to exaggerate some of Jon’s CV and manufacture a fake diploma.

“I do have my own show. Monday and Wednesday mornings, where I teach a bunch of caffeinated undergrads parapsychology,” Jon replied easily. “You’re welcome to tune in.” He liked Parker; he was a bit of a class clown, liked to ask off-topic questions or pretend to sneak a look at Jon’s answer sheets, but he was sharp and knew his stuff. Jon respected that. He reminded Jon of someone he dearly missed.

But Parker had already turned his attention to Martin, who was watching the interaction with mirth in his eyes. “Hello sir! I’m Parker McMichael, Jon’s favorite student.” Martin shook the extended hand and nodded in mock seriousness.

“Of course. Pleasure to finally meet you. Are you the one with the essay on ESP or the one on psychokinesis?”

“Neither,” Parker shook his head proudly, short dreads swaying gently with the movement. “The Validity and Continuity of Near-Death Experiences,” he made a mock marquee with his hands, arching curved fingers to indicate the title hanging in the air. “Researching any consistencies in near-death experiences stories, whether they’re legitimate, and what they mean if they are. But-” Parker shook his head and turned his attention back to Jon. “That’s not why I’m interrupting.” He took his phone out of pocket idly as he spoke. “I’m afraid I’ve come to settle a dispute among the 11 a.m. section.”

Oh no.

The Ceaseless Watcher whispered to him, unbidden, the dispute in question. Jon generally knew how to suppress the powers, and they were weaker than they had been, once upon a time, but when he’s caught off guard with the desire to know, to Know, it could still overtake him.

“This you?” A blurry screenshot of a Youtube video is shoved under his nose, a part of a text chain titled Sim’s Spoopy Spirits, captioned by many text bubbles expressing disbelief and objections and a variety of emojis. Jon took the phone and examined it, the truth already sure in his chest. Yes, that was him, dressed in his Jonny d’Ville costume, eyeliner streaked and eyes closed, mid-ballad. God, he wished he could be rid of those Youtube videos.

Jon’s gaping silence must have been enough of an answer for Parker because he whooped a little too loudly for the restaurant they were in and pumped his fist to his chest before typing very quickly on his phone. “I knew it! Take that Sabina,” he was mumbling to himself, lost in his texts for a moment.

Martin took the opportunity to clear his throat. “Sorry, uh, no one’s asked so I will. How did you know to look for him-us-here?” Jon frowned, He hadn’t thought about that.

“Oh, a couple of my mates work here and mentioned seeing Dr. Sims and his husband here a lot on Wednesdays and I dunno about you so much, but Dr. Sims is pretty habitual. Figured it was as good a guess as any. Some things can’t wait til Monday.”

“..an email. Parker. You could’ve sent me an email.” Fingers ran over scarred face, as if he could wipe the irritation (and Martin’s poorly-hidden laugh) from existence.

“But then I couldn’t do this.” His phone was back up again, level with his own face and he twisted so both his own and Jon’s faces were in the shot. “I’m here at 7:02 pm on Wednesday the 26, here to make a very important announcement,” Parker spoke to the camera with confidence. “Dr. Sims just confirmed to me that he is the one, the only, Jonny d’Ville.” Parker held the camera to Jon’s voice. “Anything to say to your adoring fans?”

Jon sighed and tugged on an errant curl. “Don’t forget, reading due Monday.” He wasn’t genuinely upset with Parker, just filled with fond embarrassment.

Parker sent the video off and clapped the back of Jon’s chair. “Well, Dr. D’Ville, its been a pleasure. Everyone’s really excited to get a confirmation on your status of coolest teacher. Any plans for the evening?”

Jon sighed through his lower lip, stray curls framing his scalp flying upward in the sudden burst of wind. “Watching a documentary and trying to forget—wait. What?”

“Oh yeah no, everyone thinks it’s badass. You’ve got a super nice voice and the stories you told were really interesting, if a little buckwild.”

Jon felt his cheeks flush and Martin grinned slyly at him from across the table. “Y-Yes. I guess we were rather good.”

Parker gave his farewells and Jon’s shoulders sagged (he had immediately righted his posture on seeing Parker, his grandmother’s voice in his ear reminding him of his manners), turning his full attention back to his husband. Martin had maintained that grin and was eyeing him intensely, like he expected Jon to say something.

“What, Martin?”

“God, you’re such a dork.” The words were soft, expression fond, and Jon could feel the radiation of unadulterated love Martin gave off in his smile, the one only ever used for Jon. “You really love your students, don’t you? You know how much they love you, right?”

Jon grumbled, but he couldn’t quite sweep the smile off his face either as their waiter made his way over with their check.

“No comment. But we are switching to Tuesday date nights.”

#tma #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #prompts #date night #jmart #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #fanfic to a tea

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

The mechanisms as teachers (not that any of them should be allowed around children for an extended period of time)

Jonny - Physics, this is mainly because Jonny Sims reminds me of my physics teacher, but I think he would traumatize at least one kid by talking about the universe. I don’t know how, but it seems like something he would do.

Ivy - She would be an English teacher who goes way to in-depth about the book the class is readying and facts about the author that aren’t really relevant.

Tim - He would be a history teacher, he just gives off that vibe.

Ashes - Chemistry, you can set stuff on fire in chemistry.

Nastya - Computer science + an engineering elective.

Raphaella - Biology or general sciences.

Brian - He would either be a really chill math teacher or a very weird launguages teacher.

Marius - The nurse who fixes every problem with an ice pack, but will let you sleep in his office if you have a headache or are just having a bad day.

Toy Soldier - Gym teacher, but one of the nice ones that students actually like.

#i dont know where this came from #please add you oppinoins #the mechanisms #the toy soldier #jonny d'ville #ashes o'reilly #nastya rasputina #marius von raum #raphaella la cognizi #ivy alexandria #drumbot brian #gunpowder tim

[danathebestintern]

Okay I'm gonna have a shot at explaining this.

My hyperfixations.

Sander sides > marvel > brother introduces me to Ragnorok (swedish netflix show, would recommend!) > introduces me to The Mechanisms.

Sander sides > I find out I'm gay and my friend introduces me to WTNV (the book, neither of us knew there was an Extended universe) because I have the same name as this 'background character' who is also gay > years pass and I somehow listen to the podcast but only realise they're the same thing as the book around ep 60 > I listen to TMA > Jonny Sims be in the Mechanisms > The Mechanisms.

Sander sides > Sea Shanties > The Mechanisms.

Sander sides always leads to the Mechanisms.

#tss #sander sides #the Mechanisms #tma #mag #Ragnorok #ragnorok #wtnv

[heretherebegaydragons]

Hi, yes, hello, I am absolutely desperate for a TMA book. There is just so much potential and it could be so beautiful and I just have a lot of thoughts. Here’s the different directions I have thought it could be taken in:

-          The statements as a collection of short stories (cool, but not my favorite)

-          A novel or a collection of short stories that we don’t hear in the podcast, like Gerry and Gertrude monster-hunting, Georgie and Melanie trying to build a life after the apocalypse, the fates of the avatars after the apocalypse, the life of Jonah Magnus or anything else like that (awesome, 10/10 would read, but not very likely)

-          In-universe non-fiction about the fears and stuff (so amazing, so much potential, I am in love already)

-          Out-of-universe nonfiction with timeline, character profiles and an index of the fears (we have the wiki for this. Wasted potential)

Of these, I like the in-universe non-fiction best, and I have some thoughts about what it could include:

-          An index of the fears complete with manifestations, quotes from the podcast, precautions that can be taken, warning signs to look out for and the like

-          A bit like Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, but about existential dread

-          A pro- and/or epilogue written by Jon and/or Martin, implying that they ended up in our world

-          This could either be warning the reader that this is of course just fiction, don’t worry, or warning them that this is real and it’s coming for you. Take precautions.

-          A timeline of sorts, explaining how it went wrong in their world so it doesn’t happen here

-          It would be glorious if Jonny wrote this irl and Jon wrote it in-universe, so the author-name on the spine was Jonathan Sims, then the shared name would finally do something good

-          Small anecdotes of Jon and Martin’s life Somewhere Else (here) woven into it

-          It would have to be explicitly marketed as non-canonical though, no point in ruining that beautifully ambiguous ending

-          It could also be a collection of the statements with a pro- and/or epilogue as mentioned and framing it as Jon and Martin telling the stories of their world so people can learn from it

-          Perhaps with some of the events that happened in real time in the podcast (the Prentiss attack, when the not-sasha got free from the table, the unknowing and the like) added in statement form, indicating that they wrote them down for the sake of completeness

 No matter what kind of book it would be, I also have thoughts on the design:

-          The cover should be black, with the picture beneath on the front, and the green lines extending out and wrapping around the entire book

-          If we’re really extra, it should be black leather with those bumps on the spine

-          It could have a from the library of Jurgen Leitner bookplate(!)

 So yeah. I have a desperate need for something like this, and if it is ever made, which I am still holding out hope for, I will spend whatever amount of money I must to get it.

Please, Jonny or Alex or whoever, I can’t be this obsessed with a story and not have it on my bookshelf!

#tma #the magnus archives #tma book #I am begging you I need this in my life

[totopopopo]

Things I have been called in the tags of my Jesus uquiz:

- the weird Jesus uquiz lesbian

- a few variations of lesbian (honorific)

- a distinguished dame

- unnecessarily cruel to Jonny Sims

- an obvious fan of the Jonny Sims Extended Universe (which i do take umbrage at because I only ever mention members of the mechanisms so like that’s one single band and not even Jonny Sims centric but okay)

- someone’s new best friend

- many variations of the Jesus person / the Jesus lesbian

- heterosexual

[nox-scrie]

The Burning Devil

TMA5 Countdown- Day 1, The Corruption and The Vast

So... the trailer dropped yesterday and this fanfic is NOT really true to the canon universe but I don't really care (as Jonny doesn't care about me or my feelings). Also it's not corrected so I'm sowwy for this @pilesofnonsense . Hope y'all like it though!!

Content Warnings: Burning, Loneliness, Cancer and some kind of Madness

Characters: Jon "Jarchivist" Sims, Martin "Too Pure 4 This" Blackwood, Jude Perry and some OCs

Fears: The Corruption, The Vast and some mentions of The Eye

Rating: Teen and Up Audience

Setting: ~a month after the ending of Season 4

Word Count: 3585

~~

The Burning Devil

The train almost reached London when the weird things started happening. Most of the passengers were asleep, the train having been going non-stop for the last 15 hours. Nobody even cared to look at the two men sitting in a bed together in a sleep  car, one of the two shaking so badly you couldn't focus on his shape and the other franatically searching for something in a backpack.

The first light bulb went out as easily as if you blew a candle. One of the men started nervously bitting his lip, before abandonind the bag and craddling the trembling man in his arms. A girl on a few beds away from them, headphones in her years and a book opened in her lap, sent a nasty look towards the non-functioning light, and then looked at the two men as if she knew they were looking at her. She didn't say anything though, other than smiling in an approving way.

Then, the whole train shook, as if it was passed by an electric wave. Now most of the passangers were awake, some screaming in distress, others just mumbling about the poor quality of transportation in England.  Nobody looked at the men that were hugging on the bed, and how something started... moving on one of their skin. A sigh escaped the trembling person as they started clinging to their lover's sweater.

"Martin." was all he said, and then the eyes that have appeared on his skin started blinking rapidly, chaotically, and Martin started feeling sick.

"I... I think I can find it, Jon. I really do. Just..."

"No. The girl. She has something to tell me."

Jon was looking down at the dirty bedsheets, rows of sweat covering his forehead, but the eyes kept staring at the girl with the headphones, who was now half out of her bed and walking the short distance towards them. Martin covered Jon's forearms with a blanket, but he could do anything about the eyes that appeared on his lovers' face and neck. He was hungry, and there was no other meal than information, trauma, pain and sorrow he needed right now.

"Hey... is your partner okay? It looks like-" and then she saw the eyes. The moment was imprinted on her face, which turned a ghostly white, her black eyes wide and mouth started opening to let out a scream.

"No." was all Jon said, looking at her with his own eyes, and the scream was stuck in the girl's throat. The eyes on Jon's skin started to shine, as if blazing from within. "Tell me... tell me your story."

A tape recorder appeared on his hand out of thin air, and Martin closed his eyes for a few seconds and signaled for the girl to have a seat on their bed. She did that, but Martin wasn't sure how much of that was her own will and how much The Eye's. He extended a hand though, and she looked at it, panicked, before looking at Martin once again and seeing.. something on his face that made her take his hand.

Nobody was paying attention to the two men and the girl that were sitting in a bed, prefering to watch the windows that were now cracked in shapes that perfectly resembled some eyes. Martin started feeling his heart pumping, fatigue overtaking his body, and he didn't look st Jon, he couldn't. Instead, he focused on the girl's face and clasped her hand with both of his.

Jon pressed play, and the eyes were rolling around and around on his skin, all kinds of colors and shapes, from white to blue to purple and yellow, from small to wide and enlongated. His voice was calm, collected, and it sent a chill down Martin's spine as he tightened his grip on the girl's hand. He hated the this, the fact that The Eye had so much control, the way it turned his lover into a puppet. Even though anger was building up inside his chest, he took a deep breath and focused on the story. There was nothing either of them could do now.

"Statement of... Alicia Jesper... regarding the last car race she ever took part in. Statement recorded directly from subject, the first of November, 2018. Statement begins."

There was a moment of silence, and the eyes focused on Alicia at once, burning on her. She let out a sigh, one of distress or fear or both, and she opened her mouth and started talking. The words were heavy, and being dragged out like this was like seeing someone be placed in a chair and given a handgun, so they can kill themselves before it gets worse for them. Martin felt his hands crushed by her, and he realized that maybe she was angry too. He hoped she was; anger is not hopelessness, he would know.

"I've always been interested in cars. Either in an aesthetic sort of way, or driving them, cars are a constant in my life more than anything else... or, they used to be, at least.

My first memory is me in the front seat, being held by my father. I remember how small my hands were on the steering wheel, and how he laughed, or caughed, because I was shaking and I thought that's what it felt like to drive on a bumpy road. I must have been around three or four years old then, and my father died when I was ten. Mom never recovered, and by the time I turned fourteen, sha has changed half a dozen of jobs and has given up entirely on at least trying to get better.

When she told me we had to sell the car to pay our rent, I revolted. It was not my fault that she couldn't get herself into psychiatric help, and neither was the car's. I told her, begged her, to try to get into therapy and finding a job, but she was hellbent. And that's how I got my first fake ID.

One of the upperclassmen, some person named Morgan Doe, was into this shady, movie-like, kind of bussines. They had a reputation for faking IDs and other documents, and getting their hands on everything you wanted for the right price. I took all of our economies, which were really not that many now that I think of it, and asked for a Graduation Certificate and a fake ID. They haven't even looked at me for more than three seconds, and nodded. In two weeks, I was a new person, Allison Jay, an 18 year old who was taking a gap year before going to the University of Manchester. I got a job of delivering pizza without even trying too hard.

Now I just had to learn how to drive. There are many... many Youtube tutorials and Wikihow articles that really do help, but I had to learn it on my own, my short body barely reaching the pedals. It was a long process, but luckily I haven't destroyed anything in the time I was learning, and the police never stopped my car, even as I knew I was not driving under the speed limit.

From then on, it was the time for jobs related to driving: I delivered pizza, drove people around, even signed up for Uber for a while. The tips were good, but I had to clean the backseat so often that the material started wearing off. All in all, throught high school my mom and I did great money wise. She was still a nasty thing, angry and... in pain all the time, but at least we had something to put on the table every day. And then she died too, and I was left with a three-room apartment and crappy car. I was finishing high school then, and after the graduation ceremony, I packed my things, burned up any remains of the name Alicia Jesper I could find, sold the apartment and the car and left.

My first sports car was won in a race. It was a lucky strike; I was with one of my friends, Mirabella Ashton, who's place I was crashing, and we thought it could be fun. We were both into driving, and my friend even participated in a few races, but I was a newbie. Still, when this drunk guy came to us and said that he will race for his car, my fingers started trembling and my brain was on fire, and before I knew what was happening, I said yes. My friend was pretty tipsy too, and they let me borrow their car as long as I get it back in one piece. I joked that they didn't even know me, but I was nervous anyway. I placed a few grans on the bet, almost all of the money I had left, got into my friends' car and tried to calm my heart. I looked at the other drivers, all of them young and overrexcited that they will compete against a drunk guy and a girl, and the anger that started in my heart was more powerful than any fuel you can lay your eyes on.

So I drove. And I won. I shared the profit after the first race with my friend, and with the rest of the money and the car, I left the city. And so my life of car racing started. It was not always illegal, but it was hard to make a name for yourself in a men's world, without college or relations to send you to the top. I lived the next decade in abandoned train stations and open fields, drank so much booze my blood turned to beer, and had the time of my life. It was last year, when the incident happened.

I was good at what I was doing. I was so good, people were started to call me The Burning Devil, and got out of my way when I came to the races. It's not a popular activity, with only a few true sponsors, and after I settled down I started to get to know most of the people that came to these events. It would have been surprising to not notice the new person who came in that awful day, all dressed in red leather and with ginger hair.

She said her name was Jude, not giving a last name too. She said she was a newbie, as if you couldn't see that from how she was too-casually leaned on her car. She said she wanted to race, and that she wanted to race me.

I laughed, a bitter sound, and told her I don't want to crush her dreams when they're still so young. She in retutn extended a hand towards me, a wide smile on her face, and told me that if I give her a chance I might just change my mind. I didn't laugh this time; there was something in her voice... it made me jump slightly, as if there was a small flame under my feet. She was the one who laughed, and got inside her car without wating for me to shake her hand.

I looked at my friends, at my family basically, the only people who have cared for me and helped me improve, and smiled an already winning smile. They cheered me, and Mirabella, who was staying at my place for the time being, gave me a kiss on the lips. We were kind of in a relationship at the time, but that didn't continue after the race.

It was an easy win. I had a decade of experience and a good car, way better than the one I won when I was eighteen. I looked over to the girl in red leather, and she was staring right back at me. As the signal that warned us to get ready was heard, she smiled at me, again. This time I felt the flame cover my arms, and I hissed. I remember thinking that I should not let her get in my head.

This race was held on a hill, as were most of the races sponsored by Simon Fairchild. We were supposed to ride from the bottom of it to the top and make an U-turn to get back to where we started. It was more complicated than one might think, having to control the car both as you drive on a diagonal line, and and as you turn on a small area of space. Yet, I've made this circuit for more than a dozen of times so I wasn't worrying.

It took me only three minutes to get ahead by a good few hundred of metres. I could barely see har car, as red as her clothes, in the rear view mirror, and laughed out loud, feeling one with the car, feeling so free and so present in the world... The top of the hill was right ahead, and I was already feeling the taste of the rum the others' were going to give me and the smell of Mirabella's skin when she hugged me. It will be amazing to see the girl in red red with anger.

I reached the top of the hill witht he right speed limit to make the turn. My hand was on the break, at ready, and just as I turned it it... wasn't moving. It was stuck. I frantically started moving the handle, the end of the cliff top approaching me hurriedly, and I just couldn't. I started unbuckling my seat belt, ready to jump out of the car, and then I saw the red car, right next to my window. With half a mind I thought about how could she have gotten there so fast, and then I started to notice the fire. Her whole car was ablaze. She was laughing, but I couldn't hear her, just watch the wicked way her lips moved, and then she waved at me and I noticed that.. her skin was dripping. Just like the wax of a candle. The last thing I remember before plumetting off the hill was that her eyes and hair have caught fire too, and that it was beautiful in it's horror.

And then the car plummeted off the cliff. My seat belt was off, and I frantically tried to open the door, but it was stuck too. I think I screamed, I must have screamed, waiting for my awful end. But I.. I didn't die. The car was falling at a constant speed, like a paper airplane, almost floating in the air. The sky above me was too bright, and the green of the hill was barely noticeable in my fall. I didn't move, out of terror that changing my position might cause the lose of balance the car has. So I just waited for my inevitable death.

It's a weird thing, knowing that you'll die in only a few minutes, and knowing how it will happen, but being useless as in making a change. I watched the sky above me, that burning blue, and thought of my father. He has died of lung cancer from working long hourse in a mine around my hometown. Mom passed away in a similar way, lung cancer, but it was a weird thing... she has never smoked, or been around so heavily polluted air as my father did.

As the car kept crashing, falling, floating, I felt it. I felt the air being stuck in my chest, and I started coughing. I couldn't breath. I couldn't open my mouth enough to get in some air, any air, I couldn't make my nose inhale, or my chest stop hurting, and my head started feeling heavy as I was coughing and falling and floating towards my own death. I felt blood vessels explode across my skin with ugly pops, my eyes glued shut, I felt hopeless and wished so, so, hard to just die already.

And then it stopped. The car was still floating at a constant speed, but the pain in my chest was no longer there. I could breath, and I did that for at least ten minutes before allowing myself to open my eyes. The sky was brighter than ever, and I hated it.

That's how I lived for what must have been three days. It was coughing fits and the impossibility to breath, it was me crying softly in the driver's seat, not caring about any kind of balance as I tried with all my might to open the door, any door, and kill myself to escape from that hell. The sky turned black when night begun, such as it did everyday, but even that was too bright, ablaze, mocking me in its freedom. I couldn't sleep. I didn't feel hunger, or thirst, either, I just sat there, watching, wishing to die, wishing for the coughing fits to stop, but none of my wishes came true.

When I felt something of that floating shift, I was just getting out of a coughing fit. This one was different than the others, blood having painted my hands now. That was the moment the car started falling.

It took only a few seconds. It took only a few seconds for it to get stuck in a tree around the other end of the hill, and for me to open the driver's door as if it was nothing. I fell on the ground and started running, expecting to be sore or hungry or in pain, at least, but I was feeling nothing. I ran and left my crashed car behind, as far away as I could. I needed to get on the road, to hitchhike to the city, and to make sure everyone knew I'm okay.

That's when I saw all the people gathered right where the race started, cheering for the girl in red so loudly I could hear it from almost a mile away. I stopped in my tracks; there was no way they could have been sitting there for three days, in exactly the same clothes. Uncertain, I walked towards them and saw the girl, Jude, with her arm around Mirabella's shoulder, saying something in her ear. She was not burned up. She was fine, her car was fine, her clothes were fine. I was not fine.

When Jude saw me, she smiled that wide, awful grin. I felt like I could cry, but I cried so much in the air that I don't think I'll be able to do it again. Jude thanked me for the race, and kissed Mirabella on the head. Her eyes were slightly unfocused, but she looked at me with an indescribable expression, before turning in Jude's embrace, away from me.

"And thanks for my prize, too." said Jude, barely above a whisper, as she turned towards the crowd with Mirabella. I could see that Mirabella's shirt had a hole on the shoulder where Jude's hand has been, a hole that looked as if it was burned in the material. It was the shape of the girl in red's hand.

I hitchhiked the way home. None of my friends offered me a ride."

Martin's hands were sore, and Allison's eyes were red, as if she has been crying. Jon no longer had the eyes covering his skin and he looked tired, not sick, as he looked before. The trembling stopped, and the windows were back in their original shape. Most of the passangers thought they must have imagined them breaking, or saw the branches of the trees in the pale moonlight hitting across the windows and thought they were cracks.

"Statement ends. Thank you... Alicia. "

"Do. Not. Call me. That." she extracted her hands from Martin's grip and formed a fist towards Jon, clutching her jaw. "I don't know what you just did, how you made me talk, but what I've been through has been hard enough without some creppy guy digging in my past and making me throw up all my trauma to be recorded on that stupid tape. Do you and your boyfriend get off on that?"

"It's really not like that Allison, we-" Martin started, but she extended her hand and made a fist of his sweater, threatening him now.

"Stop it. Stop it. This has been.. a very weird night. I will go back to sleep and when I wake up you two will not say a word to me ever again, not if you don't want me to call the cops. This night, this discussion, has not happened."

Jon let out a soft, unamused laugh, and nodded. Allison got up from the bed, clutching her hands around her neck, and started coughing. She returned to her bed with her back turned towards them, headphones in her ears, and did not move from that position.

"I hate when that you have to do that." Martin said, failing to hide the edge of his voice.

"I know. Me too. But it will be over soon, okay? It will be over soon."

They looked at each other and Jon sighed, placing a small kiss on Martin's forehead. He has been getting hungrier and hungrier in the past few days, but at noleast now they had a plan. Jon clutched the tape recorder in his hand and looked at the sky, the sky that was looking back at him, and hoped that their plan will work.

#TMA5 Countdown #tma 5 countdown #season 5 #jonmartin #jon sims #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jarchivist #the magnus archives #fanfiction #fanfic #ff #jude perry #the corruption #the vast #the eye #the change #martin deserves a prize for being such a supportive bf #also jon needs a hug #as always #my writing #lgbt #gay #lesbian too

[beholdingavatar]

But I’m Afraid You Absolutely Did Choose It

A Rumination on Fear, The Magnus Archives, and the Modern Queer Experience

***

Given the source material on which this draws, there is only one way this piece can open.

Statement begins.

I first listened to The Magnus Archives on the recommendation of the King Falls AM discord server. I’m hardly a horror fan - most horror movies make me want to throw up and then give me weeks worth of lasting nightmares - but the KFAM discord has yet to steer me wrong, so I took a chance. It was - so utterly worth it.

The Magnus Archives is a serial fiction podcast, centering around an institute for paranormal research, and particularly the archives. The series begins with the appointment of Jon Sims as the new head archivist after the brutal murder of his predecessor, Gertrude, and follows - at least for the first season - his attempts to digitize the archive. I suggest you read no further if you are interested and want to avoid spoilers, because the conceit of this piece concerns spoilers from season 2 onward.

The universe in which The Magnus Archives (hereafter TMA) operates is affected by eldritch fear entities, each with their own acolytes and servants, their own rituals to try and enter our world and rule it. I’m no stranger to fear. How could I be, with the world as it is? I’m queer, I’m autistic, I have non-citizen immigrant parents, I’m mixed race - that’s a veritable laundry list, in this day and age. And that’s without tagging on the healthy paranoia that’s developed as a result of years of having every authority figure, every person I considered a friend, pull the rug out from under me at some point or another. Usually, between the fear and the paranoia, the idea of using horror as an escape seems laughable. But there’s something about TMA that makes it different.

Maybe it’s the low, soothing, audiobook voice that Jon reads the statements in. Maybe it’s the fact that the theme music is so good. Maybe it’s relating to archival assistant Martin and his glaringly obvious crush on his boss, Jon. Maybe it’s Basira and Daisy. Maybe it is a lot of things. But the first season of TMA kept me listening, kept me waiting with bated breath for the final line of every episode, when Jon would reveal the creepiest shit to us as listeners. And after the meta plot reveal, the speed with which I listened almost doubled.

There are the fourteen fear entities in the TMA universe. Some of them are fundamentally terrifying to me, like The Buried (the fear of being buried alive, of being trapped), or The Flesh (which is almost exactly what it sounds like, and I will never forgive Jonny Sims and Alex Newall for imprinting in my brain the Foleys for a flesh pit). Some pose interesting frames through which to view myself - as someone perpetually othered due to being autistic, there’s something delightfully empowering about The Stranger (the fear of the outsider, the unknown, what doesn’t belong). Jon, Martin, Basira, Daisy, and Melanie, our core cast, work for another, The Beholding, which is far and away in my mind the most interesting of them all.

The Beholding is the Fear of being known. Not of having someone know of your general existence, but rather the fear of being utterly known, of having some other being know every inch of you, know your innermost thoughts and innermost fears, the things you would never say to anyone. I am utterly fascinated by the Beholding, for a number of reasons. The first is that I want Jon Sims’ job. I could write you a whole other essay on why I would make a fantastic Archivist, but that is not where I want to go here. No - I want to talk about the concept of Being Known.

I’m someone who doesn’t fit into the norm by any stretch of the imagination, due to a variety of parts of myself that I cannot change, all of which have neat little labels. The only problem with this is that as soon as I tell someone one of those labels, they feel entitled to all that there is of me associated with that label. The best example of this, for me, is being queer.

I’m a lesbian, technically. I’ve just never been overly fond of the term, for a whole variety of reasons, ranging from its use as a slur directed at me during my childhood, to some very complex family history I’d really rather not get into in an essay I’m going to put online eventually. Given this lack of fondness towards the term “lesbian”, I’ve gravitated towards other labels, and I’ve settled - after not very long, to be perfectly honest - on queer. Maybe that’s because I grew up around queer historians, who were rather formative, but that’s beside the point. I chose queer, the queer of “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”, and of “queer anger is queer power”, and of “not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you” because that was the person I knew myself to be.

Now, when I say I’m queer, its like whoever I’ve told feels like they can ask whatever question they want regarding my life and my identity, purely due to my use of the word. That’s not how it works. Or rather, that shouldn’t be how it works. What I have instead is the perpetual decision to make. Do I want to come out to this person? Can I deal with the questions right now? Are they the kind of person who I won’t mind knowing all of that? Maybe this is why The Beholding is so interesting to me on some level. Of all the Fears, it is the one I feel I contend with the most, the one that holds the most danger for me as a queer person.

The Fears exist as manifestations of common phobias - Jonny Sims, the creator and writer of TMA (not to be confused with the character he voices, Jon Sims, the Archivist), has confirmed as much in his season Q+As. But in seeing their presence in the world of TMA, seeing the ways that they affect those who interact with them - there’s a bizarre sense of comfort in it. Yes, says every statement Jon reads, there is a plausible reason for it all. They are swept up in the Knowing, in the Othering, there is something hovering that makes all the things you fear utterly legitimate, regardless of whatever else you might hear said. You are allowed to be afraid, there is reason, and there is reason that others will ignore, will overlook, but your fear? Your fear is valid. And, says everything that ever goes wrong in a TMA episode, more importantly, you are right to be afraid.

We, as queer people, so often end up being the keepers of the horror. We are left to remember our dead. We are left to fight battles everyone else has declared won. We are stuck in the trenches while the fronts move, trying to maintain a line without support. We scream until we are hoarse because we know from experience that “silence” is a word for gravestones, a word that leads to gravestones. We hold within our community memory, just now recouping the losses that are the consequences of silence by those in power, all the horrors that we have suffered, because no one else wants to remember them. We, as a community, Know.

So The Beholding is ours, twice over. We Know things otherwise forgotten, in the way of the avatars of the Fear, like Jon, and we are Known, and we fear that happening in ways that we cannot control. And if The Beholding is ours, then we also belong to it. We belong to The Beholding in the same way that the archival staff do. And if that is true, then it chose us. 

There is something glorious about the inexorability of joining the service of a Fear, for the sake of this extended metaphor that is really just me screaming into the void about the brilliance of Jonny Sims and my love for TMA. The Fear chooses you, and you are marked by it and bound by it. We have been marked by the fear of Knowing and of Being Known for as long as we have known who we are. It is the fear that we carry with us at all times. It has marked us. It is the Fear that drove me back into the closet for my time at high school in Virginia. It is the Fear that makes me scared for the lives of those I love. It is the Fear informed by the Knowing, by the statistics we see about suicides, about murders, about homelessness, about illness. It is our fear, as a community, as queer people in this modern world. We are afraid of the history we carry, of being silent, of not being heard, of being known too much in the wrong places, by the wrong people, at the wrong time.

I have a pair of earrings that are eyes - the symbol of The Beholding. I was gifted them long before I started listening to TMA, but now they have taken on a new meaning. I put them on any time I know I will have a tough day. I put them on when getting out of bed is a struggle. I put them on, because they belong to The Beholding, and I like to think of The Beholding as mine, as ours.

And if I’m wearing something of The Beholding, maybe it will listen to me. Maybe it will send my story on. Maybe someday, an Archivist will sit down with a tape recorder and commit this to magnetic tape, so that I am never completely silent, so that I can be Known in a way that I can control.

Statement ends. 

#The Magnus Archives #TMA #this is - long - and also kinda deep #and very philosophical #but I had to write it somewhere #and I'm just gonna yell it into this void

[withholdingfrombeholding]

[image id: screenshot of marinavermilion responding “TELL ME MORE ABOUT COMRADE PLEASE]

OF COURSE I WILL NEVER TURN DOWN AN OPPORTUNITY TO TALK ABOUT THIS DUMB NONEXISTENT CAT WHOM I LOVE

First off, thank you @marinavermilion for giving me an excuse to talk about Comrade, the cat I made up for my fic the stupidity of our existence (but he’s coming back, don’t worry)

So Comrade first came into being when I was talking with @tritonehorror about how, once Jon and Martin got their shit together, any cat they would get would have to have a title name in accordance with the naming conventions of Jonny Sims. From there it was us just sending increasingly obscure titles before, completely joking, I said what if he has no title, merely a fellow comrade. Well, the level up bot on the server thought it was a good time to level up, and so his name became canon. 

Of course I can’t do anything halfway so I then decided Comrade needed to have a specific description and, after more time than I care to admit scrolling though pictures of cats, I realized I already had a good image in my head for him. May I introduce my neighbor and best friend’s cat Eko:

[image id: black and white cat with green eyes lying on my stomach, reaching up with one paw and looking right into the camera]

He is very dumb and I love him as much as if he was my own, especially since I am very allergic to cats he’s as close as I’m ever getting to having a cat of my own. 

More fun facts about Comrade from the extended universe of this fic!

- He was named by Tim (as mentioned), but in this universe he survived the unknowing and his antagonistic relationship with Jon mellowed out to a friendship characterized by teasing and the mutual love of embarrassing each other - So early on post-Unknowing Jon mentions thinking about getting a cat and Tim immediately decides that he is going to bother Jon non-stop about how he’s “the best cat namer ever” and “if I’m going to nearly die for you and your Archives, the least you could do is let me name your cat” so Jon eventually gives in - Problem is, Tim doesn’t expect him to actually expect Jon to show up at his desk at the end of the work day and say “grab your coat we’re going to the shelter” - So now Tim is with Jon at the local shelter and Jon’s picked a cat out and oh shit he’s not prepared, he mentioned a cat with a title before right? - He panics and says “Comrade” (heavy Russian accent and all) and Jon just doesn’t question it and now his name is Comrade and Tim can’t decide who won that round - Also Jon always says Comrade in a heavy Russian accent and it’s a debate around the Archives if he’s doing it consciously or if it’s his Archivist powers - (It’s on purpose) - Martin is low-key waiting for the day when Jon is sleep-deprived enough that his Archivist powers think Comrade is Russian and starts to talk to him in fluent Russian without realising it

Thank you for putting up with my rambling about this cat that I have put more work into than the project I turned in this morning that was worth 30% of my lab grade. Have a bonus photo as a reward for making it to the end

[image id: same black and white cat, pushing up into my hand so that his eyes are all squinty and stretched out]

he did that to himself he’s so dumb i love him

#mere says stuff #comrade cat #i dont want to tag my yelling about jonmartins cat with main tags #but i might reblog it later with the tags when its not thursday

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘The Tale of the Field Hospital’ (S02E28) Analysis

A historical tale of disease and horror in a field hospital, and a few interesting new details about the tunnels below the Magnus Institute.  What’s not to love?  Come on in to hear my take on ‘The Tale of the Field Hospital’.

First, holy crap this narrator.  This is one of the best jobs Jonny Sims has done yet of capturing a personality through writing, and I found Joseph Russo equal parts hysterical and irritating.  The only character I can think of who tops him in terms of pure personality bleeding through the narrative is Jane Prentiss, and that’s saying something.

Interesting that he noted that so many statements got leaked in 1999.  While this does explain how other paranormal organizations know about and disdain the Magnus Institute (especially since even Russo admits that most of the leaked statements were lies or drug-induced), I’m more interested in who did it.  It had to have been someone with access to the archives, which immediately puts me in mind of Gertrude or Elias, unless Gertrude had unknown assistants at that time. Of course, this begs the question of why either of them would want to leak some of those statements.  Was there a goal in discrediting the Institute? Perhaps they’d been getting too much attention and needed to seem less credible?  In that case, I nominate Elias for having done the deed.

I also went into this episode expecting a Leitner episode (as per usual when we get an episode about a book), but I really wasn’t expecting the sudden reemergence of John Amhurst.  He’s gone from a creepy unexplained thing last season to a being of great interest this season.  We now know it’s likely he was probably repeatedly dying, coming back, and spreading pestilence at least in 1899 and 1902 (the years of the Second Boer War).

I was also not expecting this to be really the first episode to draw a deliberate parallel between real-world horrors and the horrors of the supernatural.  It was a subtle thing, but the thread between John Amhurst, monstrous being of pestilence and death, and Jeffrey Amherst, the (actual, historical) governor general of Quebec, and one of the earliest known users of biologic warfare was deeply disturbing.  Because while Amhurst spreading his disease amongst the soldiers of the Boer War, and bringing back all the pestilence in the concentration camps to visit upon the field hospital is vicious, it seems more understandable.  Amhurst’s very nature seems centered around disease and decay. But when humans inflict something like smallpox blankets on one another … there’s a horror to that that’s worse than a monster.  Because it’s us doing it to ourselves.  It’s one person looking at another group of people, some of whom are on the opposite side of a war, but most of whom are simply trying to get by, and killing them through confinement and illness.  It’s consigning an entire group of people to death, not based on nature or some ineffable supernatural drive, but the horror of expedience and apathy.  And the connection there between Amhurst and Amherst is one of the creepier ties I’ve seen yet from this show.

Kudos on the show for daring to go there, and for doing it with a lightness of touch that didn’t make any potential message seem preachy or overbearing.  It was a moment when I really had to think about the parallels, and how much more awful the real Amherst seems to me than the fictional Amhurst.

Let’s get back to the story itself.  There’s now some question about how closely tied Amhurst is to the Hive, or if we simply drew the parallel because he and Jane Prentiss seemed so similar.  Of course, there were always differences, but I chalked it up to the Hive needing different vessels for different things. Both were plague-bearers, but Prentiss seemed far more a shambling force of nature, while Amhurst seemed intelligent and deliberate.  Prentiss could barely speak by the end, while Amhurst seemed to have retained a degree of eloquence right up until he got torched in ‘Pest Control’.  So there’s no real answer to whether or not Amhurst is part of the Hive, or something else entirely.  It is well worth consideration, however.  

What we do know now without question is that he is a harbinger of illness.  Each of the soldiers who replaced him on the bed grew septic and died in hours, and one can assume something similar was happening in the nursing home in ‘Taken Ill’.  The fact that the nurse said “We’ve taken ill; we’ve passed away” also seems to echo the fact that Amhurst keeps dying and coming back.  What about the soldiers he infected?  Would they come back as well?  Or is it more like in ‘Squirm’, where Prentiss could infect someone, but they wouldn’t become a Hive so much as burst once the Hive reached a critical mass within them?

And of course, there’s the question of whether or not Amhurst is really dead.  We know that ‘Taken Ill’ happened in 2011, as did Amhurst’s apparent death by lighter in ‘Pest Control’.  Is that the end of Amhurst, as the incinerator apparently was with Prentiss, or will he come back again, being such a restless man?

What’s also interesting here is we have a direct crossover between Leitner (likely) and a major player in the supernatural ecosystem, John Amhurst.  We know that the book itself is infectious, and killed Russo within days of accidentally getting a papercut from it.  So it’s likely to possess at least part of the Hive’s power.  The question I have is how much power, if any, a book like that granted Leitner over the subject?  Would John Amhurst, for instance, have been subjugated in any way by the existence of this book, and its possession by Jurgen Leitner?  I previously speculated that Leitner was the Mommy Fortuna of the TMA universe, using his books to trap and hold supernatural beings, to have a mundane and powerless human granted dominion over beings far higher than him on the food-chain.  All we know of Amhurst in our current timeline, as I mentioned, happened in 2011, well after the apparent burning of the Leitner connected to him in 2003. Was John Amhurst bound to the book, only to be freed upon the burning of his book, or was he never particularly bound, and the book acted more as a mirror than a cage?

I really want to know how Leitner’s library functioned, and how it interacted on a larger scale with the supernatural ecosystem.  I’d also like to know what, or who, eventually got Leitner.

The Supplemental

So that hope that Sims would actually do the sensible thing and take a little field-trip with his assistants?  Yeah, that was obviously a pipe-dream.  I should have known, but I’m still dramatically unimpressed with his decision-making abilities.

What’s interesting is that Not-Sasha came for him, probably deliberately.  How did she know he was in the tunnels?  Was she waiting for him to go down?  If so, why did she follow and rescue him?  And what was it about the tunnels that allowed him to see through her deception for a second?  Is the thing in the tunnels able to work through him somehow to make him see what the Archives can only push him to be paranoid about?  Are they one in the same thing, but somehow the presence is more present in the tunnels?  Is the thing in the tunnels acting like a protector, sort of like the creature in the Alexandrian archive found in ‘Crusader’?  If that’s the case, does that indicate that deep at the bottom of Smirke’s impossible stairwell, someone has secreted a second archive, with all the things that previous archivists squirreled away, beyond even the reach of the Institute, just in case this current larger archive should be burned or otherwise destroyed?

The more we get to know the thing in the tunnels, the more I think it’s deliberately protective of Sims, and yet trying to guide him somewhere.  Things went wrong for him in ‘Too Deep’ only when he decided to take a random side-jog of his own.  And in this episode we see how rapidly Sims got lost, but was he truly lost?  Or was he instead being guided somewhere?

And if he was being guided somewhere, did Not-Sasha want to stop him getting there?

Either way, next time maybe he won’t be a colossal idiot and take Martin with him (Martin being the only one likely to be willing to accompany him down to the tunnels at this point).  We haven’t heard from Martin in a while, and I’m beginning to wonder what’s going on with him.  We have a far better accounting of Tim and even Not-Sasha right now.  Martin is keeping his head down, and I wonder if it’s deliberate.  Is Martin working on something we don’t know about, or is Sims simply not noticing him?

I’d like to see what would happen in the tunnels should Sims bring a friend along with him.  Would the tunnels exert the same effect over him, or would it hold off until he was alone again.  And if it did still exert its effect, would Sims’ bravery be bolstered enough by someone being with him to find whatever it is that the tunnels are hiding?

Conclusions

I always love a good historical story, and this one was particularly skin-crawling (pun intended). Bringing in the atrocities of the Boer War, as well as the atrocities visited on the Native Americans by Jeffrey Amherst, makes for some uncomfortable parallels between the supernatural forces, which we often treat as less malicious and more instinctual, and the human evils of deliberately infecting people with smallpox or other diseases to decimate a population.  It’s a very well done parallel, and only served to highlight to me how much more frightening people are than any monster.

This episode brought up a lot of questions about Amhurst, his connections to the Hive and to Leitner. It also brought up new questions about the tunnels under the Institute.  The more I hear, the more I’m hoping we have a proper multi-cast episode in them.  Even the brief snippet we got this week was properly chilling stuff, hearing Sims panic as he realizes that he’s lost and didn’t prepare for an extended stay (why the hell did you go down without preparing first, you idiot?).  I’d love to get more Tim and Martin down there (though it would be a hell of a thing convincing Tim to return) and their takes on the tunnels and the thing that lurks there.  The more it becomes clear that Sims is a fantastically unreliable narrator, the more I appreciate outside perspectives to either confirm or refute his observations.

#The Magnus Archives #analysis