2024-03-25 23:26:25 ¶ ●

# Episode 3 TMP Quick Thoughts

# Housekeeping and Prologue

Hello, this is Douglysium and you might not know me as that guy who wrote over 100 pages of analysis on the Eye (which can be read on Tumblr here (https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/735599414228484097/the-relationships-between-the-dread-powers-the) or Google Docs here (The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss)) or as that guy who wrote an article on the Extinction (which can be read on Tumblr here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/717929126195003392/what-would-avatars-of-the-extinction-be-like-a) and Google Docs here(​What would Avatars of the Extinction be like?: A TMA Speculation)). Suffice to say I might be a bit of a TMA fan. Also, spoilers for TMP up until episode 2. You can read my ramblings on the last episode here (Episode 2 TMP Quick Thoughts).

However, Protocol offers a very unique opportunity and experience for me because I didn’t actually get into TMA until after it was over and I binged all of it. So this is my first time experiencing something even remotely similar to what the original TMA fans probably experienced when waiting for each episode week by week and slowly having to put everything together with the limited information they had. So I decided to throw my hat into the ring since this might be my only chance to do something similar. However, I’m working on some longer form TMA content so I can’t spend as much time on these articles giving a bunch of super detailed thoughts. I will try to keep these short and that inevitably might mean some could have questions about why I think or predict certain things and in those cases I would probably recommend you read at least some of the two articles I mentioned above to get a better idea of where I’m coming from. This also means I won’t be giving you a play-by-play of every single thing that happens in the episode so I encourage you to listen to or read them yourselves and feel free to comment if you feel something is important.

These reviews are probably going to end up focusing mostly on the Entities and their manifestations as they are what I have thought about the most and spent the most time interpreting and there’s been a lot of… interesting theories floating around about how the Entities are manifesting that I want to go over.

Finally, I’m just going to say it right now, spoiler warning for all of The Magnus Archives. I know that Jon and co said one could start with Protocol and be fine, and while that’s probably true, media like this tends to be made in conversation with or take into consideration what came before it in the irl chronology in order to connect them. While I’m sure you could skip The Magnus Archives, I don’t really see the point of skipping over it when we are already getting characters from TMA showing up in TMP in Protocol. So to me it’s pretty clear that if we want to understand the full picture of TMP and all the things it is trying to say then we can’t just try to pretend TMA doesn’t exist or scrub it away. Just because you could understand what’s happening without the context in broad strokes doesn’t mean you’re getting all the nuances.

These articles are meant to be quick and short so sorry if there’s typos and if I don’t address every possible question or possibility. I don’t want to repeat myself too much in this series outside of the prologue so be sure to skim some of my other articles.

## General Thoughts

I’m going to go through a bit of the episode like usual but this time I’m going to try to be briefer about the recap and focus more on just the bits I notice or think are the most important and see how I like that method. It might make these shorter, faster, and quicker to the point.

Like always, we cut to some sort of device being used to perceive what is happening, a computer in this case. Which is again pointing to the idea that an Entity such as the Web, Eye or maybe even something or someone else entirely is listening through devices in the same way an Entity listened through the tapes. I have to ponder if maybe even something like The Extinction could be listening through these devices. As Leitner pointed out in TMA, all the Entities can manifest as just about anything as long as it produces their fear and we have seen Entities manifest as more modern technology in the past. The Eye has manifested as cameras and the Slaughter has manifested as an entire battlefield that probably included things like guns and bombs. We have statements of the Cult of the Lightless Flame benefiting from destruction wrought by plane bombings and Gertrude postulates that if the followers of The Slaughter had known that the atomic bombings were going to happen in WWII then maybe they could’ve set up a ritual or something similar around it in MAG 137 (Nemesis).

But make no mistake, despite all that it is still very clear that some Entities tend to manifest in certain ways more than others. The Buried is much more likely to involve someone burying you alive than The Slaughter is even though being buried alive can be a very real form of violence. But I suppose manifesting as a gun or knife gets that point across much quicker. Certain manifestations can also be more difficult to use when invoking fears unless you are targeting a specific person. It is very hard for The Buried to make you feel trapped if it is manifesting as wide open areas unless it was just using them for contrast or something. Not that it couldn’t, but the association of being trapped in a tight enclosed space is much more common and easier to understand imagery in regards to being trapped. Likewise, you could make the argument that while all the Powers can and do manifest as certain forms of technology it is possible that The Extinction manifests as more advanced forms of technology more often.

As I mentioned earlier, The Extinction seems to be the fear of catastrophic and large scale change. As postulated by Dekker in MAG 134 (Time of Revelation) “But now the fear is not of a rapture or a revelation. It is of catastrophic change. Mankind will warp the world so much it kills us all, and leaves only a thousand years of plastic behind. Technology will strip us of what it means to be human, and leave us something alien and cold. We will press a button that in a moment will destroy everything we have ever been. Animals are witnessing the end of their entire species within a single generation.” Additionally, some of the names for The Extinction are “The Terrible Change” and “The Future Without Us.” So even in TMA characters were noting connections with The Extinction and technology. Additionally, the thing technology, mutations, and apocalyptic events tend to have in common is that fear of large scale change. That even if what is being added or taken away wouldn’t kill us like The End might, we will live in a fundamentally different and scary world. Tying into this is of course the fear of advancing technology and by proxy gaining more ways to fuck us over or make the world a worse place. Dystopian surveillance states often use technology to help keep people in line. Monitoring via cameras or any other number of things like peoples’ social media. Something that is a lot harder to do without this technology.

We also have to ask if The Extinction did emerge would it be like The Web and The End? Most of the Entities operate in a manner that is simplistic yet alien to us. They just want as much fear as possible at any given time but don’t really seem to care where they get it or what happens after most of the time. However The Web and End have a mind and philosophy that is at least closer to that of a human or one we might understand. The Web and End can both conceptualize the future and sort of plan for it. Where the other Entities are fine enacting The Change even if it traps them, The Web and End seem to not be interested in that and The Web at least realizes if the rituals worked the Entities might end up trapped and die without a plan while The End doesn’t seem to mind and apparently craves finality anyway. So is The Extinction similar? Can it conceptualize the future, does it have a similar sort of understandable philosophy or even a grand plan? Is it using The Eye like the Web did in TMA or something similar. Thematically it does sort of make sense that a being born from a fear so often tied to the future consequences based on current actions might be able to form long term plans like The Web (an Entity tied to plans, schemes, manipulation and control).

Some people might seem confused about how I can call The Web and End’s mindset different from the other Entities when they are all nebulous categories that overlap with each other and in MAG 200 The Web even seems to distinguish itself from the other Entities. But I would argue it’s kind of like how you can’t control every part of your body. Yes, an eye is a part of our body just like our brain is but they serve 2 different functions and we cannot control when our pupils dilate even as your eyes burn from a bright light. They just do so automatically when exposed to light. In more extreme examples sometimes parts of the body can even attack or reject organs as well as other parts of itself in a sort of weird reaction in the same way two Entities might attack each other even if in actuality they are both part of a bigger whole.

Whether or not The Extinction has emerged I cannot say. There is an argument that even if you want to buy that the Entities we are following right now are indeed Smirke’s 14 then they might have been reset and since The Extinction wasn’t needed in Jonah’s ritual you could argue it never got the chance to emerge and is back to square one. HOWEVER, you could also very well make the argument for The Extinction emerging too. The Change might have been just the massive burst of fear the Entity needed to come into fruition and on top of that Dekker seems to imply the Entity is based on the fear of massive change. The Change was literally a universe spanning event that turned everything into a fear hellscape and we do see that some, but not all, people are aware that their lives used to be different and something changed to make it so much worse even if they don’t always seem to know what. Additionally, Jon says this in MAG 175 (Epoch) when talking about The Extinction’s domain “Of course it was real – A-At least in the sense that – it was a thing people feared. Whether it was strong enough in its own right to be considered at a level with Smirke’s Fourteen, or – whether it was on its way to getting there, I – maybe. This sort of thing is always muddy.”

But why is this all important, why am I mentioning this and why now? Well, previously I argued that Smirke’s 14 are probably still applicable and I even argued that for the most part they seem to be behaving and acting the same. The Eye forcing people to see things, The Stranger wearing skin to disguise itself, The Flesh taking advantage of a desire for perfection, etc. and I do stand by this idea being the most likely possibility right now, even if it’s not guaranteed. Or at least I stand by it in the sense that I think Smirke’s categories are still relevant and in play to about the same degree they were in TMA. While I do disagree with the idea that the categories are any more or less vague and are somehow revolving around desires instead of fear now I failed to consider how an emerging new Entity could impact how the existing Entities manifest, and as some people have rightly pointed out there’s clearly a greater emphasis on technology in TMP.

As I’ve mentioned before, all the Entities are connected. They are like parts of a body according to Leitner or a spectrum of colors according to Gerard. So what if The Extinction emerging created a sort of ripple effect across the other Entities? Would the emergence of The Extinction push or pull The Entities towards manifesting with or around more advanced forms of technology more often? If we are using the color example from Gerard you could make that argument (even if you want to say that we’re taking the example too literally). Imagine you can only see yellow and blue due to the limitations of your eyes or brain. These two colors are the existing Entities. Now imagine one day you suddenly get hit in the head and your eyes suddenly mutate or a neuron is knocked back into place and now you can also see red (a new Entity). Did you go from being able to see 2 colors to 3 colors? No, you went from being able to see yellow, and blue along with all the possible combinations those two colors have with each other as well as black and white to being able to not only see red but every possible combination red could have with one or both of those colors as well as black and / or white.

In this example it’s not like red didn’t exist before either. You just couldn’t perceive it but now that you can and your entire view of the color spectrum has changed. To get what I’m saying just look up some color wheels based on color blindness. The loss or addition of a color doesn’t just change one color on the spectrum but all of them.

It might change how you maneuver or navigate through the world as certain things stand out more or less to you based on their color. A rock might suddenly seem more shiny or more dull. Parts of the previous colors are still there but now suddenly you not only see red but more shades of blue with more nuance. It’s kind of like if all the Entities were stretched just a bit to the left or something. It also makes me wonder if something similar happened when the other Entities emerged. For example, with The Dark there are plenty of statements that take place at night, in shadow, or darkness that have nothing to do with The Dark (there’s even statements about The Eye involving strange shadowy figures in the night despite its eyes clearly being visible). However, the emergence of The Dark would have signaled that the fear of the darkness was becoming more common and so adding darkness to something scary could have heightened the fear for the Entities. For example, only The Hunt existed before The Dark and being chased is scary but for most people being chased in the dark is even scarier.

Now imagine The Stranger emerges. Suddenly you don’t even know what’s chasing you in the dark which makes it even more frightening and then suddenly The Eye emerges and now people are making statements about that time this event happened while they are constantly reminding you of it in order to make you relive it. Also, the unknown monster has your house address and knows where you live too AND is threatening to dox you. Of course, you could argue against this by saying this might just depend on the fear and it’s possible not every fear would have this effect if at all. It’s possible that there were just as many darkness related instances before The Dark but it was just tied to The Hunt.

This metaphor could go both ways for both the Entities and people. Since people are becoming aware of more fears and they are becoming more visible then the Entities can get more “nuanced” or “vibrant” with their colors. For people, they may suddenly notice concepts and objects they did not before due to a fear becoming more common.

u/UffishWerf also makes an interesting point about color theory and how the words that evolve to describe certain colors often come about in a certain order(https://www.reddit.com/r/themagnusprotocol/comments/1bm3fja/comment/kwbdv6e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). “Berlin and Kay are the guys to read up on for this, but the basics are this: in the languages they studied, black and white were named first, then red, then green or yellow, then the other one of green or yellow, then blue, then brown, then (any order), purple, pink, orange, and gray. (Let’s take a moment to remember that in English, the color orange is named after the fruit. Wild.) There’s also a theory that in civilizations, before those words evolve, they don’t really notice or have a concept for the colors they haven’t gotten to yet, like how Homer wrote about the “wine-dark sea,” describing something we’d think of as blue as red, instead. Not everyone agrees those theories is are, but I think they’re fine for applying to TMA.” I would personally argue that there’s actually a precedent for this when looking at the Entities. The Powers didn’t emerge all at once and most of them are primarily fueled by and born of human fears because they are “more nuanced.” Just like how the mantis shrimp can see more colors than we could ever dream of, humans might be able to perceive more nuanced and different kinds of fears than most animals ever could. It’s not just about being hunted anymore but the possibility of Extinction level events. We also know that both TMA and the TMP universes seem relatively similar to our own (outside of supernatural fear entities) and parallel each other greatly. One could argue that because of this the order in which the Entities occur might remain relatively the same. First, is a fear born of the basic predator and prey relationship of being hunted, then animals like humans realizing all the stuff that could be lurking in the dark, so on and so forth.

Of course, I’m not saying this would necessarily be a hard rule and one could make this argument in support of the idea that we aren’t seeing the Entities from TMA but rather a new set of similar Entities

There’s also time and culture. The fear of The Eye might become more prevalent the more knowledge humans as a whole obtain and the more ways we have to record and track things like statements and various accounts. The Stranger might become more prevalent upon the realization that the world isn’t just determined by gods and magic that we have laid out in detailed creation myths that leave no room for speculation but that we might not know how the universe was created and we still don’t know a lot about most of the universe. Heck, most of the ocean hasn’t been fully explored, much less space.

Most of this is just conjecture and I’m not sure how much I even buy all these points but I think it’s just a nice food for thought.

Episode 1 Again

Okay, I’m going back to TMP episode 1 for a second because I’m fucking kicking myself here. In the quick thoughts about that episode (Episode 1 TMP Quick Thoughts) I pointed out that the first statement kind of screams of The Stranger and not only has themes of someone being replaced and the idea of wearing skin but more specifically the monster in question seems extremely similar to the Anglerfish in TMA (a monster that also stole skin).

But let’s look at the response in that TMP episode. When Harriet asks “Arthur” if it’s really him he says “Some of him.” Now, when Jon asks Sarah Baldwin if she is still herself in MAG 096 (Return to Sender) we get this.

ARCHIVIST

Are you the same Sarah Baldwin that disappeared in Edinburgh in August 2006?

SARAH

Some of her. Skin. A few memories. Not on the inside.

So when Jon asks Sarah, a victim of the Anglerfish, who she is, what she says is SOME of her, SOME OF HER. This isn’t even my fucking maddest point because the first episode of TMP might actually parallel the first episode of TMA. The first statement we ever get in TMP shares a lot of similarities with the Anglefish and do you guys fucking know what the first episode of TMA is??? MAG 001 (Anglerfish)… FUCKING ANGLERFISH (sorry for the strong language I’m just getting a bit excited).

Something I’ve also pointed out is that sometimes the Entities have thematic roles in the story. The Stranger is the fear of the unknown so when our characters are learning about these new Entities they don’t yet understand they are being thrust into the unknown, so it makes sense that the first statements thematically connect with that via the Entity.

## Episode 3 “Putting Down Roots”

Okay, okay, time for the actual episode. The statement in this episode has been throwing people for a loop the most and probably led to the most speculation on if the Entities have changed but I need to slow down.

We cut to Colin trying to fix Alice’s assigned computer while Alice commentates and we just see how shitty the computers are. When Colin tries to insert a command he gets a .jmj error and when Alice questions what that is Colin says “Nothing. It’s just an excuse for the system to ruin my day, is what it is.” Alice suggests trying another computer but Colin says “No. It’s doing this on purpose and that will only encourage it.” Which is odd. First, like I’ve mentioned before, Colin has some traits we have seen with some other Eye related stuff via his obsession with trying to fix things like this. This desire to understand a piece of old hardware is actually similar to an Eye related statement from TMA in MAG 148 (Extended Surveillance) involving a “Security Camera Instruction Manual.” Upon reading the Leitner the victim ends up metaphysically fusing with the camera system the manual is tied to but that’s not the important part. The important part is what led to Samson Stiller reading the manual in the first place. Specifically, a desire to understand and fix the camera system.

Similarly, we have someone here struggling with an old system of technology that might also be tied to The Eye. In case you aren’t completely convinced about where I’m coming from (even if you disagree) Colin says “I know this system better than anyone alive and I still don’t understand how it works. So, I can guarantee you that none of those mouthbreathers would even know where to begin with this steaming pile of.”

In MAG 148 (Extended Surveillance) we get “I remember the smell of dust when Dave went and cracked open the filing cabinet in the back room, before waving his arms in the direction of the drawer and shrugging. I mean, I’d have just left it, obviously, but I think Samson was taking the whole knowing how the system works thing as like – a point of pride? Something he could salvage from the whole situation. Just a way of getting some control over his life, you know?” So here we can see someone else taking pride in fixing an old outdated machine that other people seem not to care about.

But this also shows Colin treating the computer like it’s alive. People talking to their computers isn’t SUPER weird or unheard of but considering Colin’s reaction last episode this might be a double meaning.

Colin could be trying to talk to whatever he thinks or knows is watching him through the computer. It is also possible that the computer literally is part of an Entity such as The Eye, Web, or Extinction due to being some sort of artifact or maybe even a being or monster (kind of like the Distortion looking like a weird door for a good chunk of its existence despite being sort of alive). Colin also pushes back against Alice trying to give the computers nicknames and says “Making friends with this god awful program that tries to throw itself into oblivion every time I turn on a console is not cute. It’s hard enough using every nanosecond of my waking life just to keep this byzantine mess from crapping the bed without you taking the piss.” Maybe he’s just annoyed but he might literally think the computer is trying to spite him and wants to keep people like Alice from getting too attached.

Also, pointing back to what I said earlier about The Extinction, Colin says this “Do you have any idea what will happen if this thing finally managed to extinct itself?” So fear of change and we also know the computers don’t react well to updates. Colin manages to fix it, Alice gives a quip, Colin acts annoyed, and then we get to hear the statement.

I’m not going to run through the statement in as detailed a manner as I usually do but I am still going to see if it maps onto Smirke’s 14 (plus the Extinction (So Dekker’s 15 maybe?)). Like I say every time this could be an act of hubris but even if I’m wrong it’ll still be fun to note possible parallels.

Okay, I think this statement is dealing with either The Eye or The Corruption. Let’s run through The Eye similarities.

Edit (I Might have Fucked Up)

Okay, on further review I may have misinterpreted some important parts of this statement. Luckily, many of the points I made about the statement’s connection to The Corruption and Eye are still pretty accurate I say but I really don’t want to spread misinformation and it’s my first time doing more active content like this and trying to actually keep up with something instead of chewing on it for a month while I write a 100 page essay on it. I’m just going to run through some of the stuff with some corrections.

First off, I’d still argue themes of The Corruption and The Eye are present although I’m leaning way more towards The Corruption now. There’s also some pretty strong spiral themes.

I’m just going to leave what I said about The Eye here- First off, Dr. Webber mentions this “Today was bedlam. I had it all planned out, all of it! And then a panic attack just choked the nerve out of me. It was so humiliating! Felt like the ground was going to swallow me whole, with everyone staring at me only to roll their eyes at my “hysterics,” as the paramedic put it. They don’t understand. I was so close to getting caught… but it’s done. All I need to do now is disappear. I can’t go home. Not for a few days at least. And I’ll have to avoid the usual haunts until they forgot about me again. That won’t be difficult. What’s one more stressed doctor. Just a grey man in the crowd, unnoticed until I’m useful. One man kept staring at me on the tube. He looked like he was connecting the dots… I’m paranoid, I know, lying low amongst wildflowers in an overgrown garden. The mud has ruined my shoes.” Here we see Webber is having a panic attack and he seems upset that people were judging him. The Eye also includes the fear of being judged. Additionally, he seems fearful of being caught / perceived, and he notes a man staring at him and begins to fear that he’s “connecting the dots.”

Webber mentions he is paranoid which could point to The Spiral but I question what he is paranoid about. The Spiral is the fear that you or something is wrong. You thought it was one way only for it to be another. This can be from someone lying to you but also your senses being inaccurate causing you to see or think about things that aren’t there. But paranoia takes many forms and paranoia isn’t always just uncertainty or confusion. There are all kinds of paranoid conspiracy theories about how we are secretly being watched or monitored that would be up The Beholding’s alley. As I’ve mentioned previously the Eye also connects to the idea of “ignorance is bliss.” That sometimes merely knowing something can put you in danger or hurt you. The idea of “seeing too much” as mentioned in MAG 200. This “seeing too much” can take the form of trauma permanently mentally scarring you but also someone or something might punish you for knowing something or might also want to know what you know. Sometimes knowing something puts you in danger. For example, if you see a murder by the mafia said mafia may kill you or hunt you down because you have seen / known too much and you’re now a witness or loose end. If a shady government realizes you know something, such as whereabouts of certain people, they might “make you disappear/”

We also get “It’s almost midnight.(Why isn’t it darker?).” Which is interesting. Usually people prefer being in well lit areas but what’s something the darkness provides? It’s harder to be seen and perceived in the dark. The kind of people often operating in the dark either have a specific job or are trying to avoid being seen. There’s a reason that ninjas performed espionage and assassinations in the dark. If you are operating in well lit areas you are more likely to be seen and it can be harder to sneak around.

Webber talks about changing his identity which further points to the fear of being found out. He also says “I’m cold but it’s worth it; no one will find me here.” and “I don’t have much choice; where would I go? I can’t go home, that’s the first place they’d look. Besides, too many memories there, and then there are the neighbours… Always snooping around with their community watch flyers. I won’t miss parking scheme meetings, that’s for sure.”

Going back to the point about how unusually bright it is we get “It’s well after midnight. It should be pitch black, but I can still make out grey shapes in the gloom. The voice is still calling for me. I’ve got to stay still even though my heart is racing.” So yeah, Webber is almost definitely banking on the cover of night and doesn’t want people to see or perceive him.“It is noted that Maddie “makes a good point, though. Doctors do make the worst patients. We are always self-diagnosing, and it’s always doom and gloom.” and “I can see my bones are tangled with the same fine strands as my wounds. It’s fascinating to see.” which I feel could tie into The Eye and extreme curiosity. In MAG 92 (Nothing Beside Remains) Jonah / Elias read a statement from Barnabas Bennett involving a letter being sent to Jonah Magnus for help after Barnabas pissed off Mordechai Lukas. Jonah / Elias tells Jon in the post statement that Magnus could have intervened and saved Barnabas but chose not to. He didn’t choose not to do so out of malice or lack of caring but simply because he was curious about what would happen to Barnabas and wanted to observe the events. So the Eye definitely has a precedent for just staring at things but not actually doing anything about them.

But then there’s that weird rash infection with all the roots. I mean yeah there’s a very real argument for The Corruption, both thematically and physically, but Leitner has mentioned that the Powers can manifest as anything that generates the fear they feed off of. Not only that, but there is a precedent for The Eye manifesting as a disease or infection. Albrecht von Closen had an encounter with The Eye after coming across a tomb and taking a bunch of old books with numerous statements (something Jonah later stole). In MAG 127 (Remains to be Seen) it’s clear Albrecht is being beset by a strange illness and he is becoming sickly and dying (he’s also spouting statements and staring at people). Albrecht later dies from unknown causes (the mysterious illness) and an autopsy reveals that his internal organs, bones, and inner skin had been covered with eyes… but there’s no eyes visible in this TMP episode. It might literally just be a disease caused by Webber not getting medical treatment or it could be The Eye trying to force Webber to choose between hiding and dying or risk going out and interacting with people. To risk being perceived.

Okay, here is where I make my first mistake. I say he doesn’t like how Jasmine talks to Gerard even though he is clearly talking about Maddie and in addition to that I misread and misheard Gerald as Gerard. So she was talking to someone completely unrelated to the Eye. Something that weakens my point for the Eye.

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. The Corruption is more likely a possibility here. Jane Prentiss mentions that she didn’t like The Eye and her worms reacted to it. She even described it as anathema. So maybe the fear of being perceived is similar to what Jane experienced. Additionally, the Corruption often ties into themes of toxic love. Specifically, forms of toxic love we might find disgusting or repulsive. The Corruption doesn’t just relate to physically disgusting things but also behaviors and mentalities we might find gross. Someone can be physically sick and have a “sick” behavior or be “sick” in the head. Here we see Maddie caring for Webber even as he rots away but she never seems to try to get him the help he probably needs from other people.

You could also argue that Webber seems unhealthily attached to Maddie and is using her to enable his self-destructive behavior. Not to mention The Corruption and disease with all the maggots going hand-in-hand all the time. Something I stupidly forgot in the original version of this was that in the very medical files NORRIS is spitting out, Maddie is “Maddie Webber, age 39 – Deceased— ” and in addition to that the part of the file before this says “journal of Dr. Samuel Webber, age 46. Issued by grief councillor Harriot Manning.” So if this is being documented by Webber as he is turning into a tree that would mean either 1. Maddie is already dead and this is all happening due to the doctor’s unhealthy emotional response and attachment or 2. The doctor possibly straight up killed Maddie. With this in mind that would mean that Webber’s panic attack is linked to the death of Maddie and the thing he is freaking out about is the possibility of people knowing he thinks Maddie is alive or that he might have killed her. The fact that he says “They don’t understand. I was so close to getting caught… but it’s done. All I need to do now is disappear.” points to the idea that he might have killed her.

This part of the statement “Thought I heard someone calling my name. No flashlight though, no movement, just the voice. Sounds like Maddie. My hands won’t stop shaking” might have been The Corruption using the feelings of disgust and love Webber has towards himself and Maddie to call to him. So when Webber dies he rots away and can metaphorically join his also rotting life within the garden or dirt that everyone’s body will one day decompose into.

This wildly changes the reading to being way more Corruption coded. Someone who loved someone in such an incredibly unhealthy way he ended up killing the person he loved. There’s also an interesting metaphor here for the garden. Someone being killed and metaphorically or literally being used to allow a garden to grow as their body rots into something disgusting before being combined with feelings of shame, self loathing, and disgust. The Corruption and self loathing is something I haven’t really mentioned but there’s a precedent for it. As I’ve mentioned, corruption is the fear of disgusting things and that would often include the fear that you yourself might be disgusting physically or in terms of behavior. If you hate yourself you might say “I’m a piece of shit” and the idea of that is usually people find shit to be disgusting and repulsive.

You could even argue for overlapping fears or similarities here. The Corruption is basically the fear of disgusting things and The Eye also includes the fear of being judged. So where they might overlap is the fear of you yourself being disgusting and the fear that other people might judge you as disgusting.

Sam also says “What do I even file that as? I doubt there’s a code for “parasitic-garden-that-whisperswith-the-voice-of-the-woman-heclearly-murderd-and-sort-ofturns-you-into-a-tree”” which could point back to The Corruption and themes of a toxic relationship. Alice also says ““Infection” comma “arboreal”. Cross link it with “guilt” if you’re feeling fancy.” And yeah I can see why someone might be afraid of being found disgusting via guilt about a certain behavior or belief.

There’s also an argument for The Flesh and body horror and in TMA sometimes The Flesh had a bit of garden theme, such as with Jared Hopworth’s domain.

In the original version I do mention The Spiral as a strong possibility but I also don’t give it a fear shake. I’m not going super in depth to it but Webber is clearly losing it and you could argue that maybe this Maddie person is connected to the Spiral and Webber acknowledges he is paranoid so he might be plenty afraid of going crazy. Mentions about how, for example, he is having trouble telling what time of day it is due to the unusual amounts of light could point to themes of The Spiral and being mistaken about something.

This statement is definitely more nebulous than the others so far but at the same time I don’t really see it being different than for example the vampire or that one time someone had to watch a video of a guy eating a computer. There are still statements from TMA that are just as nebulous and people are still debating to this very day what Entity these statements or beings might / should belong to.

Due to the additions I am more confident that this statement is probably connected towards The Corruption. Maybe like 85% sure this is The Corruption (If I had to assign an Entity and we assume they are still present) and the other possibilities being The Eye, Spiral, and Flesh respectively. With The Eye and Spiral being more likely than The Flesh.

Gwen enters the scene and offers Alice some sort of job “thing” on the 27th but refuses to elaborate on what it is. Which reminds me of the behavior Jonah had after taking over Elias and how he often held information from people like Jon for reasons that weren’t always clear. But eventually Alice gets Gwen to open up and she admits that it’s dinner with friends. Despite this it’s still kind of weird that Gwen thought to ask Alice of all people. They don’t exactly seem like friends so that’s strange. I can’t say if this means anything though.

Someone pointed out that Gwen is probably asking Alice to take her shift which makes a lot more sense then whatever the fuck I thought was happening. It’s still interesting that Gwen would ask for a favor though and then proceed to not elaborate which I still find really weird. Normally, if you ask for a favor you usually want to say why in order to get sympathy or understanding and trying to just get someone to do stuff for you for no reason tends to come off as shady. I still wonder if there’s a particular reason Gwen is so cagey. She asked what terrible event led Sam working for this organization in a past episode so I wonder if all the characters have some sort of trauma or encounter with the supernatural that is affecting them differently.

## Conclusion

I don’t have much to say because I’ve been talking too long. Feel free to reply, maybe I’ll respond with my own thoughts in agreement or disagreement.

Also, make sure to point out if I misread anything or accidentally forgot something.