2025-01-08 3:26:20 ¶ ●

# My Ranking On: How Good The Magnus Archive Character’s Are At Cooking

Gerard - Gerry has no idea what to do in front of a stove. No one has ever taught him to cook, and he doesn’t care enough to learn. He lives off microwavable mac and cheese cups and cheap fast food, which is just fine by him regardless of how concerned Gertrude is about his organs.

Daisy - Daisy could make…something with a stove. She just chooses not to because she doesn’t like cooking when microwavable meals are right there. Because of how little she cooks her skills are…rusty to say the least. She can make a half-decent grilled cheese though.

Gertrude - Gertrude can and the very rare occasion does make small meals like scrambled eggs. However, much like Gerard and Daisy, she prefers fast food and easy to make meals. In theory she could make a decent large meal if she had a recipe and some spare time to make mistakes, but in practice she never cooks.

John - John can and does make small meals. He’s never really liked cooking, but he does sometimes make a small plate of stir-fry or something. All things considered, his food’s pretty decent. It’s just not great because he rushes through the cooking process to get back to whatever he was doing. But, I mean, it’s edible.

Melanie - Melanie is a big “make a sandwich or throw some pasta on the stove and call it night” type of girl. She could make a good meal if she had a recipe, but cooking’s never really been her thing enough for her to put a ton of effort into the craft. However, if Georgie asked her to make her something you can bet that she could make a five star meal.

Basira - Basira cooks most nights and her food is consistently good. Daisy is over at her house a lot in the evenings hoping to get a meal and eat together.

Martin - Martin cooks almost every night. It’s one of his hobbies and he knows well what type of foods pair best with what after his research into what foods pair best with tea spiraled a bit. He can make a REALLY good comfort dish.

Elias - Elias cooks most night, and with all his years of being alive, that means he’s a pretty skilled in the art of making food. He either makes a full five star meal with an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert, or microwaves ramen noodles. There’s no middle ground.

Peter - Cooking is one of those hobbies that is significantly more enjoyable in solitude, so of course he loves it. He cooks multiple times nearly every day as it’s something for him to do that doesn’t involve other people. No one will ever taste his food, but man is it good.

Sasha - Sasha is a fantastic cook. She’s the CEO of finding a recipe online and then making it his own. She’s literally never made a bad dish in her entire life and she does brag to John about her ability not to burn things.

Tim - Tim is great at cooking on an instinctual level. He doesn’t even need to have a recipe to make a five star meal that will change the trajectory of his friends taste buds forever. It’s a gift…and a curse given how much the people around him hope he’ll bring food to every gathering.

2025-01-10 1:36:56 ¶ ●

I really like how realistic the relationships are in The Magnus Archives.

Being with Martin doesn’t make Jon suddenly love a form of writing that’s never really been his thing. He’s still his own person with his own opinions that have been formed outside his relationship.

However, he does appreciate poetry slightly more with Martin in his life. He can see more value in something now that someone he loves enjoys it, even if it still doesn’t speak to him on personal level.

And Martin accepts this about Jon. While he’d probably find it neat if Jon woke up one morning and randomly loved poetry, he accepts that John has his own tastes. He doesn’t try to change his mind or pressure him into liking something he doesn’t; he just accepts that his interests differ from his own, and that’s fine because love is there even if shared hobbies are not.

Anyway, I really liked Jon and Martin’s dynamic in season 5. They’re so sweet and yet so interesting at the same time.

2025-01-20 2:37:49 ¶ ●

# Magnus Archive Appearance Headcanons.

John - Every one of John’s features are downturned and sunken, making him look older, relentlessly tired, and kind of like a Tim Burton character. He has dark brown hair that almost looked black before he started greying, and the hazel eyes he once had were replaced with a bright, nearly unnatural green after the coma. He used to have a professional style, overdressing to the office everyday like he had a speech to give afterwards. Yet, that style rapidly degrades over the series, and by season 5 he’s wearing a hoodie and jogging pants that don’t even match. In the end, the only thing that stays the same with his appearance is a beauty mark sat beside his left eye. He used to think it didn’t suit him, but after everything, it seems weirdly fitting.

Martin - Martin has a soft face with features that make him look slightly younger than he is, adding to the first impression most people get that he’s a naturally welcoming. Granted, people also tend to think that because of his cozy-business casual style that makes him just look like the type person who likes to makes tea for others, but it’s mostly his friendly face. He has orange-red hair and dark blue eyes that are a shade uncomfortably close shade to Peter’s.

Tim - There’s not a feature on Tim’s face that doesn’t compliment the others. He looks like a carefully crafted doll, or a mannequin made of wax. He has pitch black hair and dark eyes that look like a starless night, features that contrast vividly with his colorful preppy-business casual style, and the bright tattoo of mountain on his wrist that he got with his brother in better days.

Sasha - Sasha’s features could be best described as “warm.” Her lips seem like they’re meant to be curled in a smile, her eyes seem like they’re supposed to have wrinkles in the corner from laughter, and her nose seems like it should be buried in a book. She has dark black hair and amber eyes that shine like the sun under light, and the dark freckles on her face stand out like stars on a canvas. Her vintage thrift-store style is just as cozy, making her look like a librarian from a children’s fantasy novel.

Melanie - Melanie’s features are intense. Her eyes are sharp like knives, and her lips naturally sit in a way that looks a bit like the start of a scowl. Granted, her punk style doesn’t make her look any less intimidating. Or her blue hair that is naturally pitch black underneath the dye. Or the slit in her eyebrow that she tells everyone was a style choice, but was really earned trying to pet a stray cat. Her only soft features are her brown eyes that are the same color as the bark of a tree.

Basira - All of Basira’s features are soft, from her soft heart-shaped face, to her naturally rosy cheeks, to her light brown almond eyes that seem meant to track a subject for miles. In fact, she even dresses like an investigator, having a business casual style that always makes her look ready for a low stakes-meeting with her boss, which is is unfortunately not the types of meetings she has, but, hey, dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

Daisy - All of Daisy’s features are strong, from her strong jaw line to her wide eyes that seem meant to be locked on her prey. She has dark blonde hair that’s the same color as the middle of a daisy, and green eyes that are the same color as grass on a spring day. She has a very athletically rugged style that always make her look ready for a run, or a bar brawl, at all times.

More Undercut

Peter - All of Peter’s features manage to be slightly unnerving. His eyes are just slightly too wide, his nose is just slightly too short, and his lips are just slightly too thin in a way that makes him look a bit…disconnected from being a person, despite the fact that on paper, he looks like your typical grandfather. He has dull grey hair and dark blue eyes that match the sea, and the formal-cozy style he has that ends him up in a lot of sweaters and turtle-necks doesn’t do anything to make him look younger. Nor does the thick beard that consumes his face like sea foam.

Elias - Elias has a sharp face with very mismatched features. None of them seem quite like they should be on the same face, and he almost looks like he was put together from a Picasso painting. He has dark green eyes and dark red hair that is usually slicked back in a way that suits his extremely professional style.

Gertrude - Gertrude has a very average and non-descriptive face. Not one of her features stand out, and it’s easy to forget what she looks like while you’re staring at her. She always thought that was a good thing since it lets her move under the radar more effectively, that is, until she started getting described as “the old women” due to her grey hair which is far more noticeable than her pale green eyes. She keeps her clothes just as non-descriptive, wearing only natural colors and plain styles that leave there with nothing to say.

Gerard - Gerard has a sharp face with distinctive features. He has upturned eyes and a long nose that takes up a large portion of his face, along with a very thin upper lip and a very thick lower lip. On the right side of his face, a few moles trail down near his check. His natural hair color is a little less distinctive than his face, being a chestnut brown that pairs well with his dark brown eyes that seem almost the same color as his dyed hair and gothic attire.

Michael Shelley - Michael has a sharp face that has even sharper features. He most resembles a fox, but his personality makes it easy to perceive his face as a bit softer than it is. He has golden blonde hair and light blue eyes that seem to illuminate under bright lights, features that don’t seem as notable as they should be compared to his bright, hippie, style. He also has a noticeable tooth gap.

2025-01-26 2:57:10 ¶ ●

One of my favorite things about The Magnus Archives is how we’re initially introduced to two characters: One who is an Archivist who is very scholarly, curious, and observant. And the other is a kind man who likes to make tea and is said by multiple people to have no survival instincts.

Then as the series goes on the kind man with “no survival instincts” is slowly reveled to be someone who is quite cunning and manipulative when he needs to be. He’s consistently shown to be one of the smartest characters in the series, and he pulls off some pretty impressive feats like playing Peter like a fiddle for the majority of season 4 and having enough foresight to put an end to the apocalypse in season 5.

Then there’s the Archivist. While he is very book smart, most of his street smart plans rely on ✨vibes✨ and the phrase “Gee. I sure hope this works!” He got lost in the tunnels where his boss was murdered. He has been kidnapped an unreasonable amount of times. He read a statement about a binding ritual trapping a creature to a table and decided to hit said table with an axe.

Martin and Jon are such good subversions of their character archetypes and it’s so fun to think about. Martin, who tends to be portrayed as the worst assistant in season 1, ends up making logical choices even when they contradict with what his heart/gut instinct wants. Meanwhile, Jon, who is first portrayed as this guy who is “logical to the point of skepticism,” ends up spending most of the series making choices with his heart and/or gut instinct. He’s not great at using his head when push comes to shove, but he’s usually trying to make the choice that feels right in the moment.

Jon and Martin’s growth throughout the series takes them in opposite directions that break their archetypes, and that makes the series so much more enjoyable to me. It wouldn’t be the same if Martin hadn’t burned the statements in front of Elias or if Jon hadn’t broken into Gertrude’s flat, and I do love how the “logical Archivist” is genuinely one of the most unhinged characters in the series by like… season 2.