March 2023

k-dayun:

The price we had to pay.

deansclitoris:

deansclitoris:

my favorite thing about this post is all the people who chose to use the default icon defending themselves in the notes like no stop it just put a picture up

Please add a picture, cause now I think I might have blocked and reported several people thinking they were bots.

Okay, so this has been bothering me for a while now, and I haven’t seen anyone else say it; so I’m going to put an opinion out there and say that Martin and Melanie annoyed me in MAG 199.

(This is also a bit of an analysis of the episode.)

(just so you know, this is very long.)

So first of I should say that I 100% agree with Jon, that they should have trapped The Fears in their world; so just know I’m probably being, at least a bit, biased about it. (not saying killing the world is good)

I think the best way to do this is to start from the beginning of the episode and work my way through it, giving criticism as I go.

It starts with them avoiding the question until Georgie decides they need to talk about it; this is just a minor nitpick, and maybe I misunderstood what he was saying, but Martin says this:

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Then later he goes on to say this:

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So which is it, Martin? Is it up to Jon or not?

Anyway, then there’s this little exchange:

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I know why Martin is so against it, but this just seems a bit obstinate; like I get it, he’s scared of Jon losing himself to The Eye, but you really want to go with The Web’s plan? You know, The Web, the manifestation of manipulation, the malevolent Fear entity, that Web? You want to go with that plan? Really?

And at least Martin has the excuse of caring about Jon, but Melanie? Why is she so against Jon’s plan? Is it really just because she hates him that much? The only possible reason I can think could be that she thinks that Jon will be selfish and prolong others suffering because she knew that he once hid the fact that he took Statements from random people, but even then, I don’t think even Melanie hates him that much.(Considering the fact that she didn’t actually think he murdered anyone, I don’t think she hates him as much as she says)

Next up, Georgie’s trying to talk out all their options and asks Jon about how The Fears will get out:

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Martin is, once again, being obstinate here; he is out right refusing to even consider Jon’s plan, making any excuse to go with The Web’s plan.

Georgie reiterates their options so far:

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Martin, you just said thousands of worlds don’t matter “cosmically speaking” by your own logic they should keep The Fears contained; because if thousands of worlds aren’t “even a drop in the bucket” then their world is hardly even a molecule.

Melanie’s in denial or something, because any reality with The Fears, even if it never gets to full blown apocalypse, is doomed; did she forget all the horrible things happening in their world before the apocalypse?

They have the little blame conversation, then Georgie gets to the third option:

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Martin’s just agreeing to any option that Jon doesn’t take over the panopticon; he doesn’t care if their world dies or a thousand others do, he just doesn’t want Jon to go to the panopticon.

Then they consider the morality of five people deciding the fate of the world, leading to this conversation:

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Despite what Martin says, yes, he is okay with thousands more suffering where he can’t hear; the excuse of saying it’ll be like before the apocalypse makes it sound like their world was good before. Their world was full of horrors before, where people could get eaten by monsters just for having bad luck, and Martin’s okay with giving that to thousands of other worlds.

I’ll put the rest of this conversation in before I continue:

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I put (mostly) the whole thing because I wanted the full context, this is the main thing I wanted to talk about; so they’re debating if their world is The Fears original world or not. Would killing them here kill them for good? yes, and if they thought it over longer they would have realized it; Melanie and Martin are arguing that The Fears were in their world for centuries before they managed a ritual, but now it knows how to make a successful ritual and escape it. what’s to stop it from preforming a ritual, waiting for it to start running dry, then leaving to a new reality? (I say “it” because The Fears are one entity [kinda] with The Web as it’s brain)

Melanie is victim-blaming thousands of other people to justify sending The fears to them; “if a apocalypse happens to them it’s their fault they couldn’t outsmart the embodiment of manipulation, so lets follow said embodiment of manipulation’s plan, yeah?

(As a side note, one thing that confuses me is why they think The Fears can go to so many worlds, do they mean at once? Will The Fears multiply? Because how would they get to multiple worlds at once, they need to be together, that’s why the rituals never worked, it had to be all of them. I always assumed it meant it could hop from one world and then the next when that one got dry. [like a spider on a web, it can travel between each point, but it can’t be everywhere at once])

Jon puts the idea of killing the world faster out there:

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No, they’ll actually have less of a chance, cause now The Web knows what to do. Basira doesn’t want to hear Jon justify killing their world but will justify sending the same circumstances to thousands of other worlds.

That’s basically the end of the discussion, next is Georgie talking to Jon:

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At the very least, Georgie knew that Jon wasn’t going to follow the plan. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she takes the lighter and immediately follows with an apology; Also she admits Jon couldn’t outsmart The Web and it led to the apocalypse, but still goes along with it’s plan. (Maybe she just accepts they shouldn’t bother trying to outsmart it.)

and now to Martin and Jon’s conversation

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I kinda do Martin.

(Others have talked about Martin crushing Jon’s flowershop/barista fantasy, so I’m not going to talk about it.)

Martin just annoys me in this scene to be honest ”well, Jon, you promised not to do anything stupid; oh, and look, here’s a plan given to us on silver platter by, none other than, The Web, you know, the one who caused this and traumatized you since you were 8, yeah lets do that. Don’t worry Jon, we’ll fix this…pass it on? Don’t be silly Jon, I’m sure The Web gave us this plan out of the goodness of it’s nonexistent heart.“

Anyways I’ll wrap this up in a minute, but first, one last thing:

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I’ve seen others say this, but why would Martin killing Jonah stop Jon from taking his place? Especially if Jon’s standing 10 feet away; if the idea is that whoever kills Jonah will take his place then Martin would just become the very thing he thinks Jon will turn into. And if you think it’s because Martin’s not tied to The Eye, you’d be wrong, Martin being tied to The Eye is the whole reason Peter wanted Martin to kill Jonah in season 4. If anyone should kill Jonah, it’d be Georgie because she’s the only one not tied to The Eye.

Now, just to be clear, I’m not saying that any of this is bad; I just haven’t seen anyone talk about it. I’m not saying that the others were wrong for choosing The Web’s plan, (ok, maybe I am a little) it’s not like I have to decide the fate of my, and many other’s, world(s).

I just feel like I’ve seen a lot of people hold the other characters up on a pedestal while Jon’s idea is regarded as the worse possible thing out there (again, not saying his idea was good, just the best out of bad options.)

And just so you know, I’m not saying Martin is selfish for wanting Jon to be safe, I’m mostly just annoyed that he hides it under the guise of caring about humanity (No, I’m not saying he doesn’t care about humanity, just that he’d rather "save” Jon than consider the consequences of releasing The Fears) and most people take it at face value.

I have a lot more I could say about the morality of all the characters, but that’s another post, if you actually read this whole thing, then congratulations, for sitting through my very long, hopefully intelligible, post. (I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on the episode [or this post])

i-will-change-this-someday:

Who is morally the best character in The Magnus Archives?

Jonathan “kill the world” Sims

Martin “get our murder on” Blackwood

Gertrude “sacrifice everyone” Robinson

Basira “ I can excuse murder, but I draw the line at nightmares” Hussain

Alice “Daisy ‘Had a literal killing spot’” Tonner

Melanie “I’m gonna blame all my problems on one person” King

Georgie “ I do not see it” Barker

Sasha “ I hack my coworker’s computers for fun” James

Tim “revenge” Stoker

What is wrong with these people? (See results)

See Results

I could’ve sworn I set this for a week, now I have to remake it, cause I want more than 10 people to vote on it.

You might have seen this already, that’s because I’m remaking it because I accidentally set the other one for a day instead of a week.

I’m just gonna tag this with the characters and basic tags, so please look at the other one’s tags

Mostly Fandom Stuff(maybe)

i-will-change-this-someday:

Who is morally the best character in The Magnus Archives?

Jonathan “Kill the world” Sims

Martin “Get our murder on” Blackwood

Gertrude “Sacrifice everyone” Robinson

Basira “I can excuse murder, but I draw the line at nightmares” Hussain

Alice “Daisy ‘Had a literal killing spot’” Tonner

Melanie “I blame all my problems on one person” King

Georgie “I do not see it” Barker

Sasha “I hacked my coworker’s computers for fun” James

Tim “Revenge” Stoker

What is wrong with these people? (See results)

See Results

You might have seen this already, that’s because I’m remaking it because I accidentally set the other one for a day instead of a week.

I’m just gonna tag this with the characters and basic tags, so please look at the other one’s tags

Mostly Fandom Stuff(maybe)

That was the wrong link.

Mostly Fandom Stuff(maybe)

This one should be right.

thewrongshop:

What do you think the percussive sound that repeats three times at the end of the Magnus Archives intro music is?

Knocking

Lights turning off

Footsteps

Tape recorder clicking

Something else (tell me in the tags?)

See Results

It’s recently come to my attention that the sound I assumed it to be (which shall remain undisclosed) isn’t what everyone thinks it is?? Help me out here

rq-described:

splendiferous-soup:

bigowlenergy:

idislikethissite:

apropoptosis:

trifoliate-undergrowth:

apropoptosis:

on the subject of gnc jon dressing kind of like a grandma when he’s going for comfort, do you ever think he walks into the institute one day wearing an outfit that could have belonged to gertrude once and elias’s heart stops for a full ass second until he registers who it is

Elias:

#I WAS A FOOL TO THINK SHE’D STAY DEAD#Jon in his rough Jon voice: ghrrghhgghrf where is that statement#Elias: oh. okay. okay. I’m not dying today 

(( tags via @trifoyle​ ))

elias Sees an archivist with a gray haired bun, a big old sweater, and a floor length skirt enter the building and tosses his eyes into the nearest portrait so fast his elias body blacks out at his desk but it was just jon

Made a comic counterpart because the concept of this happening is REALLY fucking funny to me

[ID for first reblog: A screenshot of a desktop file, a grainy photo of someone grinning panickedly with wide eyes. It is named “fear” /end ID]

[ID for third reblog: An edited version of the “no fear/one fear” meme comic. Someone stands wearing a T-shirt reading “15 fears.” The comic zooms in on the shirt, which now reads “Gertrude Robinson.” When it zooms out, the shirt reads, “16 fears.” /end ID]

[ID for fifth reblog: An eight-panel stylized digital comic of Jon and Elias from TMA, done in sketch-style black lineart on a white background.

1. A drawing of Jon. He is Pakistani and has his hair in a bun. He wears earrings, glasses, a shawl, and a long-sleeved shirt. He holds a book titled “scary shit” and says “Hmm.” An arrow pointing to him reads “Jon”

2. Elias sits in his office and looks at the doorway behind him, where Jon’s back is visible. Elias looks surprised.

3. The comic zooms into Jon’s back. He seems to glow against the gray background. Large red text reads “Gurtrude Robinson” with emphasis lines. There are also drawings of red eye symbols around Jon.

4. Elias is now shaking and sweating, panicked. He says, “Here?? Now??”

5. The panel shows three versions of Elias in distress. In one, he sweats and smooths his hair anxiously. In another, he is bent over on hands and knees on the ground. Another is a closeup of his sweating face. There are red eye symbols around him and red text over all the doodles reads, “I was a fool to think she’d stay dead”

6. A closeup on a pair of eyes, wide open in shock with emphasis lines around them.

7. The comic returns to the room Jon is in. A painting on the wall with emphasis lines around it looks at him with red, wide eyes. Jon holds papers and mutters, saying “where is that statement”

8. Elias collapses on his desk, sweaty and relieved. Text next to him reads *coming to.* The eye symbols around him are black again and he says, “Oh thank god it was just Jon I’m not dying today”

/end ID]

vosh-daemon:

Nastume Yuujinchou is such comfort material.

Literally just the story of an abused/neglected child (who’s heavily coded being neurodivergent imo), coming out to a rural town as a teen and slowly healing after finding his gradmother’s journal and is finally given some insight into this very personal and very distressing trait he’s carried all his life.

The more he travels around and meets these otherworldly beings his grandmother pretty much bullied into being her friends, he makes his own lifetime friends in them, and eventually learns to open up to the people around him more. It really is exactly the coming of age story, told through the scope of this teen identifying with someone who knew something of this ability he has and the bitter isolation that it causes, and then slowly growing out from that.

Natsume legit goes from being this jaded, hard-hearted person to this caring, if not still melancholic individual who can run in and attempt to help others around him with the same abilities he’s resented for the entirety of his young life. His being able to regain his compassion for others is such a matter of triumph for him, and it’s so explicitly rewarded in ways that are just so satisfying to watch.

tizzymcwizzy:

we were talking about cats in the vc today

samglyph:

I don’t have any coherent thoughts about 31 actually my brain just keeps going “John slapstick episode” and “bullying him”

traegorn:

toomuchtaylor:

titkoks:

This man nearly died to create this for us. The least we can do is watch it from start to finish and then share it immediately.

I love Tom Cardy so much.

swordsonnet:

the funniest thing about s5 martin blackwood is that he wildly oscillates between “i can fix him” and “i can make him worse”. he wants his boyfriend to open up about his feelings, but he also wants him to murder people with his eldritch eye powers

catasters:

catchymemes:

visenyaism:

visenyaism:

one fun thing about being a teacher in march 2023 is that chess is a literal epidemic among teens. we are starting to have meetings about how we can STOP teenagers from playing too much chess which is like if we were trying to figure out how to stop them from reading for fun. When i was in high school five years ago chess was nerd shit only but now it is transcending every social and language barrier and is absolutely rampant. kids aren’t on their phone texting in class anymore it’s ONLY chess.com. kids are playing chess on their phones while playing chess in real life. this is still better than tiktok because at least the kids are developing an attention span from this

the worst part of this is that they’re on chess dot com instead of getting an education. but the BEST part of this is watching high schoolers develop the weirdest goddamn strategies I’ve ever seen. One of my students invented something he calls the “evil advisor gambit” where he gets a third person to give out constant terrible advice to both teams hoping that his opponent falls for it straight-up or that his opponent thinks HE fell for it and will act accordingly thus worsening their own strategy. he has won every game he has been able to pull off a coordinated evil advisor gambit in. this is chess innovation never before seen in its 700 years on earth