you see two doors.
in front of one of them is elias bouchard. in front of the other is annabelle cane.
“this is exactly what it looks like,” annabelle says.
(what does it look like?)
“one of us always tells the truth. the other always lies.” says elias.
(oh.)
(oh no.)
you hear a voice from behind you. “yeah, they’re playing that stupid game again. wanna go this way instead? ☺️”
it’s helen distortion! (yayyyyy— wait. no—)
as per The Riddle, what questions do you start asking?
was it ever mentioned how elias feeds the eye? he doesn’t seem to read statements so what exactly is keeping him alive?
same for martin– shouldn’t his adjacency to the lonely make him need to feed it?
is jon the only one who we actively see and know about how he feeds his entity?
tma au where everyone’s chill with jon being the World’s Spookiest Interviewer and lets him keep taking live statements, inadvertently sabotaging elias’s whole plan
jon’s not the one talking anymore when he takes his statements, and now no one can do the ritual.
someone comes into the magnus institute to give a statement. they glance at jon’s computer screen and see one single folder titled “discredited.” the suspicious lack of any digital folders for investigated or verified statements leads them to believe that all statements are, by default, discredited.
they go home and make a 5 hour youtube video essay cancelling the magnus institute for ‘automatically discrediting all statements’
“what do you bring to the table?”
an axe.
on the day of jon’s interview at The Magnus Institute elias makes sure to put a sign on his door that says “It Is Polite To Knock 😊”
s1 jon goes to an audio equipment repair shop after trying to record the same statement 9 times but the files keep getting corrupted
the repair guy sees there’s nothing wrong with the audio equipment and jokes that the audio distortions ‘must be ghosts’
jon denies it a little too vehemently.
they just don’t make characters like martin blackwood. he’s perfect in ways I didn’t know was possible. no one could ever dislikes him because every word that comes out of his mouth fills everyone with so much light and joy that it practically makes life worth living. he’s so smart and capable, but never gets an ego about it. it’s not even clear if he’s aware of how smart he is. he’s incredibly sweet and kind but still has a backbone and can and will take a stand when necessary. he deserves the world but the world doesn’t deserve him.
elias is such a hilarious character because his whole motive is so cartoonishly evil (world domination, immortality, the whole Bringing The Apocalypse thing), yet his whole demeanor is so serious and down to earth.
elias “don’t be so dramatic” bouchard looks everyone dead in the eye and tells them that it’s very important to file their paperwork properly and if they waste company funds he’ll have to write them up and reprimand them on their next performance review.
then everyone leaves the room and he continues orchestrating the end of the world, as if financial responsibility and Ending All Humanity are tasks of equal importance and significance.
absolutely losing my mind. The Ghost Who is Still Alive is the perfect Michael Shelley/Michael Distortion song please go listen to it.
– catalyst of the story is the death of someone and the person filling their job position
– conflict at least partially revolves around confirming the suspicions over who killed the person who died before the story began
– protagonist is an academic of sorts
– protagonist goes on a paranoia spiral
–themes of not knowing who to trust, suspect everyone, search for answers
– HEAVY themes of self sacrifice
– ghosts
– intervention/ intervention-esque confrontations where people ask the protagonist to stop harassing everyone around them
– nearly all of the protagonist’s friends end up dead by the end
– antagonist is very interested in a crown of some sort
– story ends with protagonist successfully killing antagonist, but in a way where he sacrifices himself right in front of his boyfriend/‘best friend’
–boyfriend/'best friend’ reacts to that with 'well then I’ll gladly die too!’
–protagonist would rather that boyfriend didn’t die.
–sad sad tragic tragic cry forever ending
mandatory movie night at the magnus institute
elias makes them all watch The Truman Show
(it’s the eye’s favorite movie)
absolutely devastating how everyone’s insistence that jon stops taking live statements from people just makes him more dependent on the written ones, to the point where whenever he leaves the institute he needs people to constantly send him statements (because he can’t just feed on the locals)
absolutely devastating how jon’s desperate attempt at avoiding losing his humanity directly leads to him kickstarting the apocolypse. jon’s complete dependance on the written statements is what elias was relying on. taking live statements would have prevented anyone literally putting words into jon’s mouth.
had he just been a little less committed to maintaining his humanity– had he had a little less sympathy or concern for those he had to feed on– he wouldn’t have been able to complete the ritual.
Working for the Knife really do be a jonathan sims songs. in many ways.
im the opposite of jonathan sims head archivist of the magnus institute because my #1 favorite childhood book that I forced my two living parents to read to me a hundred times is the one where the spider gets all his food stolen
always crying over The Tragic Death Trio
rip tim stoker but if I was mad at my boss for stalking me and three other people on suspicions that one of us is a violent murderer, and then we found out that TWO of us were violent murderers, not only would I not be mad at him anymore but I’d be thanking him for his service
me at the start of tma (a day away from dropping it because I found it boring): the stories are fine ig, but the fact that they’re all very clearly told in the same writing style even though they’re supposed to be from people of a variety of ages and backgrounds is really taking me out of this.
me over a year later, after giving tma another shot: OH SO THERE WAS A REASON FOR THAT.
btw THIS Is what I mean when I say elias has such strong claudius vibes
ik I said in the tags of that other post that elias treats jon the way claudius treats laertes but it’s so.
it’s just- the way they encourage and gently guide them to lean into their impulses to make increasingly destructive decisions