I keep seeing those “what did you think the Magnus Archives was about before you started listening to it?” posts, and I feel like my specific experience was really weird, because I was kind of in the TMA fandom before I ever started listening to the show. I would always see posts about it with no context, think they were hilarious, and like them, and I did that often enough that all the social media I used just became convinced I was a Magnus Archives fan.
Because of the timing (I started seeing TMA posts all the time as season 5 came out, and didn’t start listening until around the time 198 was released) I saw all the memes that came out about each of the last few episodes as they aired, which means I went into the podcast with a little bit of general knowledge but also some very specific knowledge. So like
What I knew about the overall plot before I started listening to TMA:
It’s a horror anthology about the Magnus Institute, London, which collects stories about the supernatural
At first you think the stories are unconnected, but eventually you realize that there’s a complex meta plot
There’s a guy named Jon and a guy named Martin, and they’re in love
There’s a dude named Tim and a woman named Sasha, and they’re dead
There’s something called the Eye, which the main characters are connected to, and something called the Web, which manipulates them
Elias Bouchard is a rat bastard motherfucker
At some point there’s an apocalypse
What I knew about the last few episodes before I started listening to TMA:
Annabelle Cane wanted to fill Martin with spiders, but he was too in love with his boyfriend, so it didn’t work
Jon is bad at rowing
Martin gets mad that the nightmare realm they’re in changes from a giant lake to a giant ladder before he has a chance to show off how good he is at rowing in front of his boyfriend
grad students who actually use the statements for research purposes listening to jon ramble into the tape recorder:
Oh my God, I forgot that there is canonically a group of researchers and grad students that listen to Jon’s recordings, and now I’m just trying to to think of which genre of post-statement is funniest to imagine them listening to. You’ve got:
“I fucking hate Martin”
“In unrelated news, I’m being stalked by an evil bug lady”
“I don’t know if I’m still human. I don’t really know what it means to be human, or if human vs inhuman is even a meaningful distinction, but I’m worried that I might become dangerous, and I’m terrified of hurting someone”
I love the fact that we as an audience learn that the Beholding can see through drawings/representations of eyes in the same episode where Eric asks Gertrude to take Gerry on as an assistant. Like he seriously said, “I’ll tell you how to get away from the Eye’s influence, as long as you promise to spend all your time with my son who’s covered head to toe in eye tattoos.”
The last post I reblogged reminded me of an animatic I saw awhile ago that combined MAG 159 and the song ‘Promises’ from Hadestown. If memory serves, it was very good, but also a little bit unintentionally funny. Because obviously, Peter Lukas is the Hades analog. So when it gets to the lines
Apparently the TMA brainrot is so strong that I’ve started subconsciously sorting my nightmares according to the 14 fears. I didn’t even realize I was doing it, I just woke up from a really disturbing dream a few weeks ago and my first coherent thought was, “Oh, that was the corruption for SURE.”
I relistened to MAG 48 recently (the episode where the woman traveling through Italy runs into Gerard Keay, and he tells her how to avoid being taken by the Lonely) and I was really struck by how sparse the description of Gerry was. I understand why we as the audience heard “A goth dude gave me advice on the supernatural,” and went, “That’s obviously Gerry!” but it’s kind of hilarious that Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, London, also heard that description and went “That’s obviously Gerry!” Like, the statement giver didn’t even mention his tattoos. Jon just thinks there’s only one goth person in the world, apparently.
I relistened to MAG 48 recently (the episode where the woman traveling through Italy runs into Gerard Keay, and he tells her how to avoid being taken by the Lonely) and I was really struck by how sparse the description of Gerry was. I understand why we as the audience heard “A goth dude gave me advice on the supernatural,” and went, “That’s obviously Gerry!” but it’s kind of hilarious that Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, London, also heard that description and went “That’s obviously Gerry!” Like, the statement giver didn’t even mention his tattoos. Jon just thinks there’s only one goth person in the world, apparently.
Holy shit @feathered-serpents you’re right! I was certain that the tattoos were mentioned in episode 4, so I went to the transcript to check, and nope! This is the only physical description we get:
This is messing with my head! I really thought his tattoos were brought up almost as often as his dye job.
[Image 1 ID: tags from tumblr user feathered-serpents. They read #tma #the tattoos are honestly only mentioned that once #my friend has a cool theory that they’re not really physically there #and the nurse could only see them because she was being claimed by the beholding. End ID] [Image 2 ID: a screenshot of the transcript from episode 48 of the Magnus Archives. It reads: “Stood just over the threshold was a man in a long, dark leather coat. His hair was dyed an artificial black, and he had the unshaven look of someone who hadn’t slept in a couple of days. I asked him if he was Gerard Keay. He said that he was, and told me he’d like to see my book. I nodded silently and he followed me inside, closing the door behind him.” End ID]
The single best moment in the Magnus Archives is when Juergen Leitner says, “I was almost beaten to death by an angry goth” and Jon goes, “That’ll be our Gerard.” No I will not elaborate.
So I haven’t listened to all the post-season 5 q&a’s yet but apparently Graham Folger and Oliver Banks dated? You’re telling me Mr “I’m gonna eat all my notebooks” can find a romantic partner and I can’t?
My knowledge that Martin is a complex person with his own needs and flaws who can’t be a supportive partner 100% of the time vs my desire to see Jon loved and supported after experiencing trauma: fight!
- jon hates running. it’s exhausting and you get all sweaty and he hates it, but every day he still queues up an educational podcast, puts on his running shoes, and goes because he just needs to move
- when jon’s brain feels like it’s going a million miles an hour and he just can’t turn it off, he goes and lifts weights until his muscles feel like jello and he knows he’s going to be so fucking sore in the morning
- jon stops working out for a little bit because of prentiss, and jude, and the coma, and by the time he comes back he’s so angry and frustrated because he has to start from square one. all that work, gone. but also he invests in stuff that makes it easier on his hand/leg when he’s working out
- he throws himself back into it during s4 tho. buys extra weights with lukas’ money so he can work out in the archives. daisy silently starts joining him with the little weights after the coffin
- the funniest part is that no one in the archives ever found out (except for daisy and like, who was she going to tell) so jon lugging a gym bag full of free weights into the safehouse catches martin completely off guard
- martin walks in on jon changing once and almost expires right there on the spot. jon has muscles. jon has really, really nice muscles. he has to sit on the couch for a solid twenty minutes just staring into space, reconciling that.
- jon complaining bitterly about the fact that the scottish town they’re living near doesnt have his favorite brand of protein powder, he hates the way the other ones taste. martin bluescreens for a solid thirty seconds before hesitantly suggesting that they try to order it????
- i think itd be funny if martin has the same attitude toward jon working out that my parents do - that is, baffled support. every day jon gets back from his run and martin goes “how….how was the run? did you run well??” and jon loves him for it
au where Jon is a buff nerd and Tim is a jock who listens to jazz
I’m still thinking about the time I mentioned to my dad that I was thinking about writing fanfic, because I liked the idea of setting achievable writing goals and being able to immediately publish it and get feedback, but I didn’t really have any ideas for plots. And he (immediately intuiting that when I said “I’m thinking of writing fanfic,” what I meant was, “I’m thinking of writing Magnus Archives fanfic”) said, “Well, you’ve got to come up with two parts: there’s the statement, where something spooky happens, and then there’s the outer layer of the story, where you’ve got the recurring characters - and, like, Martin’s your favorite character, so he’d obviously show up…” and I had to stop him and ask, “Wait, do you think all Magnus Archives fanfiction takes the form of statements?”
When I explained that it didn’t, he went, “So, what, it’s just anything? Just, like, ‘Martin goes to the bank?’”
Shoutout to my sister who has been listening to the Magnus Archives for a few months and thought until a couple days ago that Alexander J. Newall’s name was Alexander Jane Ewall.
Looking for representation when you’ve got multiple queer identities is so weird cause it’s like
Bi representation: Not bad! There’s still a lot of erasure and a lot of harmful stereotypes, but things are getting better, and I can think of multiple pieces of media that I enjoy that have complex bisexual characters.
Ace representation: Not great. I can’t think of any explicitly ace characters in any of the media I consume, but I at least know of a few high-profile examples.
Representation of asexual biromantic people: I’ve heard of one character ever and it’s in a medium I hate.
You’ve heard of “pictures taken seconds before disaster,” now check out “posts made seconds before developing a new hyperfixation!”
