(Peter Lukas: Elias can be quite… ‘protective’ of his people. - TMA 100)
Interpretation 1: Elias Bouchard is indeed protective of his people…because he has a vested interest in their remaining alive to give Statements about their experiences. The dead don’t usually give statements, although there are exceptions.
Interpretation 2: Elias does not like it when Peter specifically takes his employees to the Lonely, and is simply being incredibly petty. However, given that Peter says “That’s probably for the best,” I feel the implication here is that even if Brian had said yes, that he was an employee, Peter was going to send him on his Forsaken way anyway, despite knowing Elias wouldn’t like it. So, Peter is also incredibly petty.
Interpretation 3: Elias is not at all protective of the majority of his employees. However, compared with how Peter Lukas is with his own employees….
i think that the idea of a tma where there’s no apocalypse brewing would be so funny. like. jonah legitimately just wants to escape death and study the world around him as it changes.
is he still a very bad dude? yeah of course! dude kills people to steal their bodies and traps them in eternal employment contracts and watches everyone’s fear gleefully.
but it would be so funny if he’s just a bodystealing asshole from the eighteen hundreds who likes to do paperwork and drink wine and wants to get an archivist this time who actually. like. archives so that he can go find that one statement about joshua gillespie again easily and he can go home and read it over a glass of chardonnay. and then write papers about the taxonomy of fear and go to avatar cocktail parties and laugh
[ID: An 11-panel digital TMA comic focused on Jon, a thin, dark brown skinned person with greying curly black hair to his shoulders and dark brown eyes, and Martin, a fat, light-skinned person with freckles, red hair, and medium brown eyes. Both habitually wear glasses. The comic is overlaid with lyrics from Hozier’s Shrike.
Panel one: Martin stands by a bookcase, a statement in one hand, worriedly watching Jon, who is walking away with a suitcase in one hand and a boarding pass in the other. Text reads: “I couldn’t utter my love when it counted/Ah, but I’m singing like a bird about it now”.
Panel two: Jon, one hand reaching out, follows Martin into a darkened passageway. Martin is dressed in a three-piece suit with a tie pin in the shape of an anchor and coloured in a more washed-out palette. Jon’s hair is longer, he has more scars, and there are faint green eyes floating around him. Text reads: “I couldn’t whisper when you needed it shouted/Ah, but I’m singing like a bird about it now.”
Panels three and four: Panel three is a close-up of Jon accepting a plain white mug from Martin. Panel four is Martin and Jon sitting at a cafeteria table by a window on a clear day. Martin is gazing at Jon who is laughing, fiddling with a straw in one hand. Text reads: “The words hung above”
Panel five: Martin and Jon stand facing each other, both wearing sad expressions. Jon wears a duffel bag over one shoulder, the strap of which he is clasping with one hand. Behind them, Basira, Daisy, and Tim walk into a raging fire. Text reads: “But never would form”
Panel six: Jon and Martin lie dead in a field of grass. Jon’s regular scars are joined by extra bloodshot green eyeballs, but his expression is serene. Martin’s eyes are fixed vacantly ahead, and his shattered glasses stick into his head. There is a knife in Jon’s back and Martin’s right leg is bent at an odd angle, with bone and muscle exposed. Text reads: “Like a cry at the final breath that is drawn.”
Panel seven: Jon glares at Tim and Sasha who are leaning on a counter with their faces in their hands, looking admiringly at Martin who is sitting oblivious at a cafe table reading a book with a latte in front of him. A sign on the wall says The Serapeum Cafe. Text reads: “Remember me, love,”
Panels eight and nine: In panel eight, Martin, with longer hair, sits against a wall, one hand over his face, a tear rolling down his cheek. In panel nine, Jon leans over a balcony, smoking a cigarette. There is a cat sitting next to him.
Panel ten: Martin and Tim stand with beer bottles in their hands, Martin laughing and Tim singing. They have their arms around each other, and Tim’s other arm is around the shoulders of an unimpressed looking Jon. Behind them, a door bears a placard reading “Sasha James, Head Archivist”. Text reads: “When I’m reborn”
Panel eleven: Two images overlaid in alternating sections. One image is Jon and Martin’s kiss at the end of MAG 200, and the other is the two of them kissing in a field. Jon wears a deep red sherwani and Martin wears a blue three piece suit, a wedding ring visible on the fourth finger of his left hand. Text reads: “As a shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn.” End ID.]
y’all i am once again being very very normal and well-adjusted about them
I think Lonely avatars don’t necessarily have to be lonely people. In fact, I’m sure someone who isn’t lonely can actually, just by being happy, make others around them feel very lonely by comparison
Now I’m imagining a Breekon and Hope type of being that is just an overly happy couple that overshares and flaunts perfectly adequate pda, telling a story of how they met that is oddly similar to a circumstance the listener was in once but missed their chance, and leaves behind them a trail of sad and hopeful people who slowly fade away thinking about they could have had
so this is som kinda out there tma fanart ngl but i have a whole thing about it so
im muslim (ismaili) and i grew up not very religious but at my elementary school i took classes where we studied the overarching faith etc etc and long story short the visual imagery of the faith has always shaped my perceptions of divinity and what it means to have power. i also grew up around classic islamic fractals and architecture so that’s a big visual influence. im also inspired by modern muslim artists, especially shi’a artist nabi h. ali, who always brilliantly uses colour and composition and is just so Smart about everything in his art. while this painting is playing loosey goosey with the idea of being unable to behold a figure, obviously, i am still in love with the idea of beholding-avatar-basira being “unbeholdable” as a consequence of her power. this drawing is a pretty personal expression of how i perceive deities so. wee!
also the fractal on daisy’s back is a daisy fractal! so. also couldn’t resist putting in the evil eye bc Culture.
the day i don’t listen to the magnus archives episode 119 and go utterly out of my mind is the day i accept there’s definitely something wrong with me
the creepy circus music replacing the usual horror violins intro, setting the tone of the episode from the very start. the sound design. the abstraction of basic concepts and reality itself in a storytelling medium that heavily relies on those things to drive its narrative and help its listeners visualize and get invested in what’s happening. “i don’t understand” “and you never will again”. daisy’s VA’s voice acting as her character descends into rage-fuelled madness and becomes a bestial monster. “almost a shame you don’t know your own coffin. but you will. oh, you will.” basira reasoning her way out of literal eldritch mind scrambling. THE SOUND DESIGN. the shifting character perspectives that serve to both better illustrate what’s happening and make it even more confusing and disorienting. the weaponization of jon’s guilt at not being able to save the world from incomprehensible horrors against him. “jon, i don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can: i don’t forgive you. but thank you for this.” TIM :((((((((((((((( “you sound stressed. you know, i hear the great grimaldi’s in town. you should go see him. cheer yourself up.” “that’s. not. funny.”“i know.”
[ID: Image one is a full body digital portrait of Nikola Orsinov from TMA. She is a pale, hairless mannequin with articulated joints, overstated makeup, and bright blue eyes, sitting on an aerial hoop which is suspended from a length of wet intestine. She wears a stereotypical ringmaster’s outfit: a top hat, red coat and tails, bowtie, frilly white shirt, cummerbund, black trousers, and riding boots. She is pointing downward and her facial expression is neutral. She says “That’s not funny.” The background is a red-and-yellow stripy circus tent with bright stage lights.
Image two is a full body portrait of Tim Stoker. He is a slightly muscular light brown skinned person with short dark hair and dark eyes. He wears an orange short sleeved collared shirt and dark trousers and shoes. He is standing with his legs spread, his right hand clutching a fire axe and his left hand holding a remote detonator above his head, his thumb pressing its red button. He is smirking with determination and saying “I know.” Behind him, Jon is lying unconscious on the empty stage, his nose bloody and eye bruised. The background is the beginning of an explosion, small humanoid figures suspended in the smoke and flames. End ID.]
so i got to 119 in my relisten and could not help but listen to it twice in a row it’s the episode of all time <3
[ID: Digital art depicting Daisy and Basira from TMA after MAG 179. They are in a dark chamber filled with tombstone-shaped furnaces. Basira kneels in front of the furnaces. She is a medium brown skinned person with dark, greying, curly hair in an unruly bun. She’s wearing a green shirt, grey hoodie, and olive green overcoat with dark jeans. There is a look of horror on her face and tears stream from her eyes. She is clutching Daisy, a blonde, pale person with scars all over her flesh and two visible gunshot wounds. She is dead, and her head lolls backwards over Basira’s arm. End ID.]
soooo @anoett-dreamer and i did an art trade (their part here!!) and they requested something to do with daisy and basira/episode 179. so i spoke to the authority on these matters @call-of-the-ocean who gave me the heartbreaking idea of daisy transforming back into human form after her death, meaning basira can’t do her usual of closing her eyes to an unpleasant truth.
hello thank u i laughed v hard at that tag and i said to myself “wow this would be a fun little animation project to do slowly over time as a break between my other art pieces!” as i proceeded to spend my entire friday evening on it
[ID: Four gifs directly following when Jon brings forth the apocalypse. Jon is lying face down on the floor in the safe house. He’s in the living room as he’s next to a fireplace and an armchair. Outside the window, cartoony tentacles and snapping jaws wave in the distance against a green, apocalyptic sky. Jon raises his arm and points, starting with a shaky “I–”. The scene changes to show the cottage in the Scottish highlands amidst a nightmare landscape of green fire, tentacles, and other monsters. Several giant eyes look in random directions in the sky. Jon’s dialogue continues, with “–close the door…” The eyes freeze and the pupils shrink in fear and realization, and all at once the apocalypse reverses. The dark green sky wipes away to reveal a peachy sunset, the tentacles and monsters disappear with it, and the eyes collapse to a point and vanish with a pop. In the final panel, the tiny figures of Jon and Martin celebrate outside as “Apocalypse Averted” is written across the sky in white text.]
OH this is such a good one because I have such a strong opinion on these re: Jon and Georgie
So I think, from her perspective, Georgie was entirely within her rights to do and say what she did to Jon in S4. We, as an audience, may not like it because we know the full scope of Jon’s perspective. We know he needs the tapes. We know he needs to stay in the Institute. We understand what’s going on with him. Georgie doesn’t have that! The whole time he stayed with her he was vague and cagey, which, understandable. But Georgie set down a ground rule. She said no spooky shit in her house and no tapes, and Jon broke that. She established a boundary, and even when we understand why Jon broke it, she doesn’t. From her perspective she asked him a simple thing and he ignored her so I think it’s only fair that she sees what Jon is involved in as something he is choosing. Sure, she knows spooky shit is real because of her encounter, but she doesn’t Get It. Doesn’t understand the powers and the pull of the institute and what Jon has found himself trapped in.
With Melanie, Melanie isn’t as trapped as Jon is. She’s bound to the institute, but not the Beholding like he is, she’s Slaughter. And then the bullet is cut out and she starts to get help to deal with the root cause, her anger, because the powers don’t make us evil they just enhance the negativity that already exists within us. So to Georgie, she only has two examples to go by, Melanie who could escape, and Jon who couldn’t, and see can only see this as being Jon’s fault because she doesn’t have the full context of the situation. Her lack of knowledge leads to a lack of understanding. So I think, if you put yourself in her shoes, it’s actually very brave of her to say “I can only be one person’s support system at once without burning myself out too, I’m sorry I can’t be that for you because I already tried to help you and you broke my trust”. We just see it as painful because we’re looking from Jon’s perspective and can only see it as abandonment and betrayal. Which is what makes their dynamic so interesting to me because it really is this grey area of you can see both perspectives. You want Jon to be happy, because he really has no one for a lot of S4, but you also don’t want a woman to have to babysit a man she feels betrayed by out of obligation to fix him because I think we’re all sick of that.
We talk about Jon’s actions are trauma response a lot and how that makes a lot of his shittier things more understandable, but I think you’ve gotta apply that to other characters too. Georgie leaves him in the hospital when he wakes up and to this this is sad, because Jon just wants connection and we know he can’t get that from Melanie and Basira, and Martin isn’t around. But from Georgie’s perspective, it’s kind of obvious why she flees. To Georgie, this is the second time in her life she’s seen a corpse sit up and look at her, and it didn’t go great the last time.
anyways consider: jon and daisy both go full monster and disappear during the apocalypse, leaving basira and martin with no idea where they are or where to find them or even if they’re still Them now without their respective Anchor. martin sets out from scotland to set everything back and save his boyfriend and eventually runs into Basira who’s trying to fulfill her promise to daisy (but still, she hopes that somehow she can get through to her and get her back)
the two of them find out that somewhere along the way jon and daisy found each other and are now going through the domains together (which is like. Fuck. because how tf are they going to confront the archivist AND a fully feral daisy without being mauled). and just like in canon they keep running across their joint victims and its BAD, they like TORE THEM APART JESUS CHRIST
melanie and georgie run across them and join the monster hunting team and so does annabelle cane with is a Surprise to everybody (but a girl’s gotta complete the web’s plan somehow!) so it’s the five of them versus the literal all-powerful demigod of this world and his fuckin rabid guard dog and it’s been living rent free in my head for a week now
