2024-03-31 3:06:11 ¶ ●

# Episode 5 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 4. You can read my ramblings on the last episode here (TMP Quick Thoughts 4).

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.

## Episode 5 “Personal Screening”

If you ask me, the statement in this episode is almost definitely Eye aligned and it’s one of the most Eye flavored statements I’ve seen in a while. But let’s try to slow down and walk through some bits of the episode. Like always it may be an act of hubris to view TMP through the lens of Smirke’s 14 (and potentially The Extinction if I feel it comes to it) but even if I’m wrong I still find this to be fun and the parallels interesting.

Like always, we are hearing the story of TMP from the perspective of something / someone listening in via device and the transcripts clarify that this time we are listening through a landline.

Sam enters Lena’s office to express his worry about Colin’s paranoia and says “Well, today I found him crawling along the corridor, yanking out wires and muttering to himself.” and points out that Colin has “added all those locks to his office door and he refuses to even go near a camera now…” I feel like this mirrors TMA in how we see a coworker becoming worried about another coworker’s increasing paranoia. And, similar to Jon, Colin’s paranoia in part seems to be coming from the feeling that he is being watched or monitored by something. I maintain that if the Entities are present then the O.I.A.R. is at least partially connected to the Eye and we see Colin is even becoming afraid of being seen by cameras and the like.

I think it’s also interesting that Lena says this “Right. Well firstly, thank you for raising this with me Sam. It’s important we don’t keep secrets here.” which feels a lot like some ominous foreshadowing we don’t yet understand. The Eye is all about having no privacy and exposing secrets and Colin seems to indeed be keeping some sort of secret. Not only that, but considering what Gwen saw last episode Lena is also keeping at least one secret.

There actually seem to be a lot of parallels or allusions to TMA structurally or thematically. Many of the statements sure but also the roles certain characters play. Sam is too curious for his own good like Jon and may be here to look into a previous encounter with the supernatural, some have pointed out that Alice and Tim both seem to cope with jokes, and Lena is a shady boss like Elias / Jonah. Just to be clear I’m not saying these are 1-to-1 or are meant to be alternate versions of each other or something. Rather that either The Eye tends to attract certain people, that this is meant to be a reference (Sort of like how how Part 7 and onwards in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure have many direct references and parallels to other characters even though they aren’t always the exact same person / personality or one-to-one), or we are going to end up with some extrapolation, divergence, and / or commentaries on these similarities (either directly or indirectly).

However, long story short, Lena dismisses these claims and basically tells Sam not to worry, schedule a meeting next time, and mind his own business before we cut to one of the computers Sam and / or Alice work at to catch the rest of the story. Alice mentions “Ah. Yeah, Lena isn’t exactly known for her diplomacy.” which points to the idea that Lena probably isn’t the nicest person, or at the very least doesn’t sugarcoat things. Sam finds that Alice left some papers on his desk and she explains “I had a nosey while you were in Lena’s office. Looks like it’s for your Response Department one to one.” One thing I mention a lot about The Eye is that it tends to attract people who are very curious and / or want to know things, such as “Nosy Rosie,” Jonah, Jon, etc.. This scene shows us that Alice might be more curious or nosy than she lets on in some aspects. Of course, in typical Alice fashion when Sam expresses worry about the paper and the Response Department she tells him to basically just ignore it and throw it away but Sam decides to fill start filling it out anyway.

I wonder if this is similar to the magically binding contract from TMA and if Sam just accidentally tied himself to something. Alice does also say “Just chuck it. I told you, I’m pretty sure the Response Department doesn’t even exist anymore. It’s just the system spitting out dead paperwork. Happens all the time.” so we can’t even be sure that this is coming from the Response Department. In fact the paperwork coming from the Response Department could be The Eye or some other Entity and / or supernatural occurrence. We also continue to have Sam’s curiosity hammered into us when he says “And I’m going to fill it in any way. See what happens.” Sam notes that the paperwork asks strange questions when he says “Uh huh… They want my last seven addresses. I don’t know if I’ve even had-” This could point to the idea of the paper wanting a suspicious amount of information since it not only wants to know where you currently live but the last seven places someone has lived.

(Probably rather luckily) Sam gets interrupted by a statement as Alice manages to convince him to stop as CHESTER gives us our statement for the episode.

This statement is about Tom and the blog he is running. On it he reviews horror movies and even says “Hey all you sick freaks out there, Tom here, your gruesome guide to the most twisted horror films of the world wide web!” He also says “I can’t believe this blog’s still up. Was looking for somewhere slightly less confrontational than social media to post my film thoughts, and I remembered starting this back in, what, 2009?” As I’ve mentioned before The Eye is the fear of being perceived and known which also involves the fear of being judged for things. To put it even more broadly, The Eye seems to be about the fear of knowledge in general. Not just the fear that someone / something might know too much about you (or a specific secret) or is just gathering information by watching you but also the fear that you yourself might know too much or have seen something you wish you hadn’t. In MAG 200 we are told in what order the Powers emerged and what led to their birth and for The Eye we are told it came from the fear of one’s eyes “showing them too much.” In essence, that they saw something they didn’t want to. A more direct example of this is Jonah being able to force information into the minds of other people like Martin and Melanie. Jonah mentions that this information has to be true and it points to the idea of forcing someone to know something against their will.

We also get “That first post… Fourteen years old and convinced I was the edgiest writer on the web. Might keep it up for posterity, god knows the kid went through enough” which implies a rough childhood. Considering what happens with the movie I would also like to point out that tying into The Eye’s whole “seeing too much” thing is the idea of being forced to remember or relive certain things you don’t want to. The most obvious form this took in TMA was the statements (as they were people recounting what happened to them) but Jon could also force people to give statements (forcing them to recall things against their will) and when Jon takes live statements both Jonah and Daisy point out that when this is done the victim will be forced to relive said statement every night via a dream in which Jon is watching. Sometimes, if there’s a monster involved, the victim sees things from the perspective of the monster (forcing them to watch their own suffering in a way).

Tom explains “I remember I was pretty lonely in those days. Ever since I was a child, making friends has always been kind of a struggle. My interests have always been seen as a little strange… While other kids my age at the time were looking up to football players and other celebrities, I was looking up to Pinhead and Freddy Krueger… It wasn’t in a psychopath kind of way or anything, I’ve just always been fascinated by horror. I can thank my dad for that, he showed me Puppet Master when I was six. ‘oh don’t worry, buddy! It’s just like Toy Story”… He had kind of a dark sense of humour like that.” before continuing to describe how he was really into horror and continues to have a fixation on it. This also implies that it’s possible the young Tom wasn’t always aware of what he was about to see and was tricked or lied to about what it was. Which could tie into the idea of seeing something you didn’t want to if we assume that this poor kid was expecting Toy Story only to get a scary movie. Funnily enough, someone judging and critiquing films on something like a blog could draw a connection to The Eye via the idea of judgment and the like.

Strangely, the next 3 reviews have been deleted. I wonder if they reminded Tom of something or if he just wanted to forget about it? But that would be kind of weird since he still leaves up the announcement that make mention of the terrifying film he watches later, “Voyeur.” It might also be a much weirder reasoning like someone or something wanting people to find this movie and / or post and making sure the post is preserved for a statement. It’s pretty clear Tom has at least some of the trademark Eye curiosity when it comes to horror movies since he seems to put in a lot of effort into finding this specific horror movie in order to watch it despite searches mostly just revealing what is presumably porn. However, in his search he comes across one thing- “The only thing I could find was another old blog with what must have been the shortest film review I have ever read. You can check the link, but I’ll save you some time: all it says is “Voyeur needs to be seen to be believed. The Scariest movie I have ever seen”.”

Of course, if you’ve gotten this far you can probably guess what I’m probably going to say. This is so obviously The Eye or some similar overlapping Entity trying to bait curious people into seeing something they will probably regret. In TMA Gertrude did mention that The Eye is also the drive to know and understand even if what you find might hurt you and we can see this in action. The drive to know and understand even if this movie could mentally scar you. Unfortunately, Tom doesn’t realize he’s in a horror podcast and this just makes him want to see it even more.

In the next blog post Tom mentions “Oh my God. I can’t believe one of you found it! Thank you SO MUCH Cinephobia12220 for the link!” Based on a quick google search I don’t think “cinephobia” is a real word (and if it is it’s super obscure). However, I can take a wild guess at what the username “cinephobia” means by looking at the root words involved. Cinephile basically means “movie lover” and phobia has to do with fear, so we can assume that the term cinephobia would probably mean something like “fear of movies”, “movie fear”, “phobia of movies”, etc.

After doing a bit more digging I found the term “cinephobia” which according to a wikipedia page means “The fear or hatred of films and the cinema.” Whether or not you want to see this as credible is up to you and I’m proud of the logic I used originally so I’m keeping the previous paragraph since it was at least in the ballpark. Either way, this username is foreshadowing since their name literally means “fear / hatred of movies” (ie the fear of a media you would watch).

Tom manages to find a link and a contest that only asks for his name and he somehow wins said contest despite noting that the site hasn’t been updated in years. At this point it’s clear that all the blog posts not relating or leading up to the “Voyeur” have been deleted. What does voyeur even mean? According to google voyeur is defined as “a person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity”… okaayyyyyy wait there’s a second definition “a person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others.” Okay, I’m going to assume the second definition is what’s applicable here since this ties very heavily into The Eye and the idea of a sort of sadism or someone watching you suffer. Of course, this can also tie into statements as people like Jon gain power and strength from literally hearing about and or watching people suffer. So the movie’s title is yet more foreshadowing. The title might also have a double meaning since depending on why someone likes horror and to what extent you could describe them as a “voyeur” in the sense that they like seeing people suffer in movies. Tom is so desperate for horror he might be somewhat close to a voyeur in this sense but maybe I’m reading too much into that.

When Tom wins the contest he explains “I WON THE CONTEST! I can’t believe it! The invitation was waiting when I got home today, in a small black envelope. I don’t even remember giving them my address. The website must have logged my IP and looked it up or something… I’m really not sure how any of that works.” This is another red flag because The Eye is known to randomly give or find information it otherwise shouldn’t know. We see people like Jon had the ability to know things that they shouldn’t and Jonah was borderline omniscient and could know almost anything he actively put his mind towards.

The cinema “Voyeur” is being filmed at is a theater that Tom actually went to when he was a kid. “And I’ve actually been to this cinema before… I used to go all the time with my dad… they would play classic horror films midday every Saturday.” Considering that Tom probably had a rough childhood this could be The Eye setting up a situation where Tom is forced to remember his past (I mean besides watching the movie of course) and I wonder if this is the theater where his dad tricked him into watching a horror movie. We know that the movie seems to actually be about Tom himself and it’s being played in a place he remembers as a child. Also, Tom mentioning how he wants to give his thoughts on this movie could be likened to a statement and someone giving their accounts about various horrific encounters.

Tom of course is apparently live blogging the event and I think that usually The Eye wouldn’t have it any other way. The more people can witness the horrors another person is facing in real time the “better.” The outside of the theater seems like it’s in a sorry state but the inside is beautiful and clean. Tom asks about this while buying food from an employee and we get “I asked about the mess outside, trying not to be rude about it, but he just said “It’s what on the inside that matters”.” This could be foreshadowing to the idea that the movie is about Tom himself. So the “inside” that matters would be Tom’s own memory and / or experiences. Also, this employee is noted to be old and probably doing all the jobs around this theater. He is at least the one running the concession stand, and usher along with the other stuff. But Tom says that the man is in high spirits which makes me wonder if we’ll see him as a recurring character in TMP’s statements and / or in person (sort of like Simon Fairchild and the like).

Then the movie starts and based on Tom’s reaction he clearly recognizes what’s being shown “ I can hear what sounds like… beeping. It sounds so familiar but I can’t quite place it. Medical equipment maybe? There’s something [UNINTELLIGIBLE] the screen… Looks like it might be a flashback or something, handheld… looks like it was filmed on an old camcorder… Wait. Is that…? I know that room…. How… How did they get [UNINTELLIGIBLE] This was after the accident. Mum wanted to to film it for my brothers… Dad… I… [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Wait. Who is that? In the corner of the screen, there’s… WHO THE HELL IS THAT?” and the final thing we hear from the blog is

BLOG POST: FILM REVIEW: VOYEUR

Voyeur needs to be seen to be believed. The scariest movie I have ever seen.

It seems like what happened is the movie was a video Tom’s mom had taken of a tragic even but there was something that shouldn’t have been there. This wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened with The Eye. In TMA MAG 193 (A Stern Look) we get an account from the original Elias that details how a friend named Allan Schrieber died from presumably reading some sort of book. Upon reading it Allan started to mentally break down and sob while saying things like “It has no eyes”, “so it has to feel its way towards me. But it knows. It knows!” before eventually dying with his eyes mysteriously missing. A lot of people immediately assume this means The Dark was at play but there are statements where someone / something aligned with The Beholding seems to be missing eyes or taking The Eyes of others. Sometimes the idea is that it’s scary that something can somehow still know where you are or see you and sometimes this is the whole “seeing too much thing.” It’s also mentioned “But he remembers so clearly what he was thinking as he looked at the what was left of Allan Schrieber: where are his eyes? What did they do with his eyes?”

If you want a clearer example of seeing something you shouldn’t, there’s the hand mirror that appears in MAG 060 (Observer Effect). Upon looking into this mirror Rosa Meyers notices a dark figure in the night that only has its eyes visible and she feels like she is being watched / stalked even after dropping the mirror and breaking the glass. So The Eye definitely plays around with the idea of seeing something, noticing a figure that shouldn’t be there, and then things follow you before something happens. It wouldn’t completely surprise me if Tom was even replaced or had his mind and / or body taken over somehow (something that has a precedent with people like Jonah) which could explain why his review is eerily similar to the original one. Maybe the old man is body hopping like Jonah? That might explain the old man’s excitement and maybe the old man is in fact “Cinephobia12220.” Hmmm, such an assertion about body hopping with so little information is a bit of a stretch though since the man could just be happy to have a victim and it would be an oddly specific ability for some random new character (merely one iff background or otherwise) to have.

Obviously, Tom also expresses surprise at this theater having the footage and wonders how they could’ve gotten it which ties into The Eye and someone getting information they shouldn’t. Being forced to relive something like this is also comparable to a statement.

Some Entities that overlap with some of the stuff happening in this statement are ones like The Spiral. I could see an argument for some of its themes with the idea of noticing something you missed before or thought wasn’t there as a sign of your senses being wrong. Maybe also The Stranger since Tom doesn’t seem to know what he’s seeing.

We then cut to CCTV audio and Alice talking on the phone before this conversation happens

GWEN

“Do you remember the IT manager before Colin?”

ALICE

“Who? Amelia? What about her?”

GWEN

“No, before Amelia, before I joined. German guy. Lots of tattoos.”

ALICE

“I mean, I think Amelia mentioned him once or twice maybe? Mostly I remember her complaining about his work, but he’d have been here well before my time. What’s this about?”

GWEN

“Nothing. None of your business.”

ALICE

“What? Seriously?”

GWEN

“(walking off). Yes.”

Once again, Gwen being cagey and weird but this time we have a better idea of why. There’s a chance that this German IT manager may in fact be Klaus. I wonder if being the O.I.A.R. IT manager comes with some sort of drawback or “curse?” Maybe even some weird agreement between whoever has the position and Lena? Who knows

## Conclusion

Idk having a blast. Feel free to leave corrections and / or thoughts and I may respond to them and explain if I agree or disagree, or consider why it is or isn’t likely, etc.