continuation of this post
*grabs my soap box and scrambles up onto it again*
and what if the stimulus is less important than the response??
for example. what if someone loses a sentimental item– something that would usually be associated with the desolation (grief, loss, destruction of something important to someone)– but instead of this person reacting with grief, their emotional response is instead a violent epiphany of the finitude of everything, or existential dread at the understanding that a day will come, in the distant future, where every part of the world that’s familiar to them will disappear.
it wouldn’t matter that the initial stimulus is associated to the desolation– it wouldn’t even matter if the sentimental item was destroyed in a fire; the desolation’s motif. their response falls under the jurisdiction of the end or the extinction.
and this can work with any stimulus and any response.
a person who looks at a burnt photograph and, instead of mourning the lost memories, is disgusted by the ashes.
a person who is buried alive. but instead of feeling trapped, they’re more scared of what sort of animals might also be lurking beneath the earth.
a person who’s hiding a dark secret, but instead of worrying about the social consequences, is more afraid that someone might respond violently if they were to find out.
the Dark (fear of the unknown) 🤝 the Stranger (fear of the unknowable) 🤝 the lonely (fear of being unknown) 🤝 the eye (fear of being known)
let the four of them collaborate to torment one person. please it would be so funny
of course jonathan sims hates poetry. the last time he read a poem it started the apocalypse
Im certainly very late to the game on this, but if anyone has tracked all significant 18s in the magnus archives. I’d love to see that.
took me this long to notice that 160 took place on Oct 18th, 2018, and the institute was founded in 1818.
and my computer is on its last leg and doesn’t have the capacity to let me click through every wiki page to look for other occurrences of the number 18
no no I’m doubling down on this
Frankenstein (1818) IS the reason for why the Magnus Institute is founded in 1818
it’s the Reckless Pursuit of Knowledge book. it’s the Pursuing Knowledge at All Costs Because You Need To Know Things book.
OF COURSE that’s going to be significant.
you think jon ever has to tell himself “you’re not hungry, you’re just bored” when it comes to reading statements?
wildly disappointing that we never really get much content from the fact that the one thing known for having a lot of eyes are spiders. yet we get no eye and web collaborations where both eye avatars and web avatars are using spiders to spy on things
elias must have really enjoyed prison. a high surveillance environment where everyone’s on high alert. he must have been having the time of his life. it must have been an all-you-can-eat buffet for him.
blood types were discovered in 1901. I think elias should be haunted by the fact that he doesn’t know his original body’s blood type. I think that would be really funny.
do we know if martin’s deadbeat dad was alive in the apocalypse. do we know if there’s a chance they could have come across him. found him in some Buried domain. (he would have ended up in a Buried domain.) watched him suffer.
how often do you think about the fact that Jon probably viewed it as some form of karmic justice, that he was framed for murder right after suspecting everyone else of committing a murder
it’s truly revolutionary that they made jonathan sims canonically enjoy using his Eye powers.
they could have very easily made him tortured and miserable about it. And that’s not to say he’s not tortured and miserable– he certainly is– but he doesn’t sit there purely hating the new abilities he’s been gifted. He actively enjoys it. He figures out that when he asks questions, people are compelled to answer. And he immediately goes and asks a guy for his “deepest darkest secret” when he isn’t satisfied with the information the man is giving him willingly.
He’s groomed into starting the apocalypse, but the emotional conflict he deals with isn’t a straightforward “I’ve doomed everyone forever”– instead it’s “Everyone is suffering forever, AND I’M ACTIVELY ENJOYING IT”
He’s so extremely human. He recognizes on a logical level that it’s bad, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone– but it feels good. And often, it’s very VERY convenient. It makes whatever he’s trying to do a lot easier. He could get the information he wants. He could indulge in compelling people and taking statements and feeding. During the apocalypse he could instantly kill any avatar he doesn’t like.
And yet he makes a conscious effort to choose not to hurt people.
scrolled deep enough in the tma tag to see a whole entire arguement over whether jon is a good or bad liar.
probably won’t commit to actually citing sources to back this up, but he’s extremely good at lies of omission and extremely bad at outright saying things that aren’t true. didn’t know anyone was debating over this, I thought that’s just canon.
✨my magnus archives self insert✨
– Doesn’t work at the magnus institute
–Isn’t aligned with any entity
–Never had a supernatural encounter
–Never heard of any of the main cast
–Never even set foot in England
