Elias: Jon did something no one else has done before. He escaped The Buried.
Basira, who escaped The Stranger WHILE THEIR RITUAL WAS IN FULL SWING just by thinking her way out: 🤨
Okay, this keeps crossing my dash. I am so sorry, but I have to rant just a little.
Yes, Basira reasoned her way out of the Unknowing - because she’d been vibing with the Beholding for months.
Like, really.
She’d been in the archives, absorbing knowledge like a crazy sponge. For months.
She’d been on the Eye Juice. For months.
While everyone else was running around, being terrified, reading statements, getting scars, she was literally sitting on a bookshelf in the Archive, chipper, absorbing so much knowledge that she amazed even herself.
Remember how GOOD she felt? When Martin or someone came across her, she was like YAY look at what I LEARNED yay!
Let’s not overlook that she was being happy and chipper as a hostage - while Daisy was forced to go kill things at Elias’ command to keep Basira safe.
The Eye was rewarding her for absorbing knowledge. We saw it do that to Jon, too.
Basira was dangerously in tune with the Eye. I am completely convinced this is the major reason she got out of the Unknowing. Unlike Jon, she wasn’t fighting the Eye’s curiosity at all, and it gave her enough of her own mind to make her way out.
Basira can absolutely be logical, but by this point in the show… she was really not.
Never mind that she’d already been supporting Daisy killing people, and only barely stopped her from murdering Jon. (She KNEW where Daisy was burying bodies in the woods, for crying out loud.)
She thought it was fine that Melanie was dangerously violent because it was really convenient. Basira barely had enough conscience left to agree to Jon removing that ghost bullet.
Speaking of - Basira treated Jon like the worst monster of all monsters when he had done nothing but survive. If she’d worked with him, tried to use her supposed logic to help him figure out what he was becoming, he’d never have ended up taking statements without asking first. But she did not. She told him he was a monster and pushed him away.
She wasn’t even consistently paranoid. Basira I cAn OnLy TrUsT MySeLf Hussein then proceeded to visit Elias in jail and believe him, haring off on some crazy adventure without even telling anyone where she went. Because Elias apparently is more believable than Jon???
And after all that, she had the gall to be UPSET that Daisy came back from the Buried with her own mind intact, no longer possessed by the Hunt.
I love her as a character, but yeah. She got out of the Unknowing because of her connection to the Eye.
She DID punch Elias, though. Absolute legend. Full stars for that.
FINALLY SOME GOOD FUCKING TAKES. Basira is seen as a sort of mouthpiece to any listener weighing the morality of Jon taking live statements, a sort of “if you think it was wrong, you think Basira is right!” But she is her own character! She is one of the messiest characters in the show and that’s part of her writing. She sees herself as the logical, detached one keeping the others on a leash—and most of the fandom interprets her this way—and that’s exactly the source of her biggest blind spots and weaknesses.
(Also re: the OP’s comment: Dozens of people had escaped The Unknowing before, as described in the episode right before the season 3 finale. The Buried was unique in leaving no survivors, so the point still remains.)
Elias: Jon did something no one else has done before. He escaped The Buried.
Basira, who escaped The Stranger WHILE THEIR RITUAL WAS IN FULL SWING just by thinking her way out: 🤨
Okay, this keeps crossing my dash. I am so sorry, but I have to rant just a little.
Yes, Basira reasoned her way out of the Unknowing - because she’d been vibing with the Beholding for months.
Like, really.
She’d been in the archives, absorbing knowledge like a crazy sponge. For months.
She’d been on the Eye Juice. For months.
While everyone else was running around, being terrified, reading statements, getting scars, she was literally sitting on a bookshelf in the Archive, chipper, absorbing so much knowledge that she amazed even herself.
Remember how GOOD she felt? When Martin or someone came across her, she was like YAY look at what I LEARNED yay!
Let’s not overlook that she was being happy and chipper as a hostage - while Daisy was forced to go kill things at Elias’ command to keep Basira safe.
The Eye was rewarding her for absorbing knowledge. We saw it do that to Jon, too.
Basira was dangerously in tune with the Eye. I am completely convinced this is the major reason she got out of the Unknowing. Unlike Jon, she wasn’t fighting the Eye’s curiosity at all, and it gave her enough of her own mind to make her way out.
Basira can absolutely be logical, but by this point in the show… she was really not.
Never mind that she’d already been supporting Daisy killing people, and only barely stopped her from murdering Jon. (She KNEW where Daisy was burying bodies in the woods, for crying out loud.)
She thought it was fine that Melanie was dangerously violent because it was really convenient. Basira barely had enough conscience left to agree to Jon removing that ghost bullet.
Speaking of - Basira treated Jon like the worst monster of all monsters when he had done nothing but survive. If she’d worked with him, tried to use her supposed logic to help him figure out what he was becoming, he’d never have ended up taking statements without asking first. But she did not. She told him he was a monster and pushed him away.
She wasn’t even consistently paranoid. Basira I cAn OnLy TrUsT MySeLf Hussein then proceeded to visit Elias in jail and believe him, haring off on some crazy adventure without even telling anyone where she went. Because Elias apparently is more believable than Jon???
And after all that, she had the gall to be UPSET that Daisy came back from the Buried with her own mind intact, no longer possessed by the Hunt.
I love her as a character, but yeah. She got out of the Unknowing because of her connection to the Eye.
She DID punch Elias, though. Absolute legend. Full stars for that.
FINALLY SOME GOOD FUCKING TAKES. Basira is seen as a sort of mouthpiece to any listener weighing the morality of Jon taking live statements, a sort of “if you think it was wrong, you think Basira is right!” But she is her own character! She is one of the messiest characters in the show and that’s part of her writing. She sees herself as the logical, detached one keeping the others on a leash—and most of the fandom interprets her this way—and that’s exactly the source of her biggest blind spots and weaknesses.
(Also re: the OP’s comment: Dozens of people had escaped The Unknowing before, as described in the episode right before the season 3 finale. The Buried was unique in leaving no survivors, so the point still remains.)
you know what? i will defend jon’s decision to destroy the table, and every time i see someone say it was ‘obviously stupid or whatever i want to combust. was it the smartest decision? no. but what choice did he have? just sit around, knowing this creature imitating his friend and colleague was in the midst of them? i think an aspect of jon’s character that people often ignore is that he always needs to do something. he literally can’t just do nothing. also, i find the table confusing as fuck, so i don’t think the conclusion of destroying it = destorying the not-them is super unreasonable
this episode also sets up so much of jon’s future character. because i think this is really the first time we see him pushing people away for seemingly no reason (to them. we as the audience know why) to then do something incredibly dangerous and maybe a little bit stupid. up until this point he’s been glad to either send others off to do these things or to let them be at his side in the madness. now he feels this need not only to do something, but also to do it himself, and although this behaviour initially seems to be born out of paranoia and mistrust, as the show goes on it turns into being about guilt and a martyr complex
Actually. Y’know what? Less about my personal grievances with the characters, more about the internal inconsistencies of the world building and lore.
The Archivist can compel people to tell the truth regardless of if they want to… but the statements that feed and empower them can have unreliable narrators.
Georgie was unaffected by the apocalypse due to her loss of fear… but Jon was able to compel her to tell him a truth and feed from her statement?
Martin had a domain and was able to hide in the Lonely, but he never had to feed on anyone to strengthen these abilities.
[ID: digital black and white drawing, the magnus archives fanart, two panel comic The first panel shows Jon siting behind a desk, he is leaning forward and holding his hands. He looks anxious. He has a sweather and long hair in a bun. There are some papers, pen and mug on the table. There is notice-board behind him. He is saying “ You’re starting to sound like gertrude”. The second panel shows Basira.She has hijab and white shirt. She is standing with a file pressed to her chest. She looks serious. She is saying “ Good. Far as I can see Gertrude Robinson was the most effective person in this place.” end ID]
[ID: A series of five illustrations, separated in two pages, associating the five stages of grief with the five seasons of The Magnus Archives, through Jon. The style is sketchy and the palette monochrome: bright red, dark red, black and white.
The first page is divided in two illustrations. The first, “Season 1: Denial” shows Jon taking a cigarette break at the institute. We see his profile from up close, and further away, his reflection in a window. He is looking down, and cannot see the many spiders crawling over his reflected self, nor the web they weave or the eyes that stalk him. The second, “Season 2: Anger” shows Jon raising the ax over the table, his eyes closed with the effort, swinging with all his might.
The second page depicts Jon and Jude’s fiery hand shake at the top, and reads “Season 3: Bargaining”. Then, at the bottom left corner, Jon’s scarred hand is holding Martin’s glasses. In the glass he can see his reflection, filled with eyes, and lonely fog spreads down from the object. “Season 4: Depression”. Lastly, we see both of Jon’s hands: One of them is holding a knife in which his reflection can be seen, smiling. The other one is softly tugging on Martin’s hand, bringing it to the knife. Martin’s fingers are slightly curled in reluctance, but stay soft. Signed: Meaningless Mikhaïl. End ID.]
Hear me out.
When you were eight you unwillingly opened a door and were saved only by the sacrifice of someone you have no way of remembering or knowing anymore - this will happen again, on a larger scale. How do you grieve?
Melanie was fighting against the Slaughter, despite the fact she admits she kept the bullet in her leg on purpose. Martin was isolating himself to protect everyone else, despite the fact he admitted he didn’t really care about the others. Georgie was reminded of her trauma when Jon woke up from his coma, despite the fact she literally couldn’t feel any of the effects of fear. Basira believed both Melanie and Daisy didn’t know what they were doing and judge Jon for the exact same things they did, despite being shown and told that it was absolutely no different.
But Jon stalked them because he was afraid they were going to kill him and not because he wanted to clear their name. Jon got marked because he couldn’t let information go undiscovered and not because he was being given hints that he had to stop the Unknowing at all costs. Jon fed on people and kept it a secret because he wanted to keep doing it and not because he was already a monster who should’ve stayed dead and he definitely didn’t release the name of his workplace to whatever her name was so they’d have a reason to confront him when he didn’t end up getting stuck in the coffin. Jon wanted nothing more than to exert his power over the other avatars because he was power hungry and not because his anchor told him he shouldn’t feel bad about it instead of the immediate disgust he felt after obliterating Not!Sasha.
i think its very funny that well before i knew elias was actually evil i just hated him. day fucking 1 of hearing his smarmy fucking voice i was like oh this guy sounds like a fucking tool. a lukewarm fridge of a man and a shitty boss i know this in my heart. i didnt even think he’d be cool enough to be a main villain i was just like he sounds like someone to say “we’re all a family here” to his employees while docking from their pay for every minute that they spend strolling toward a bathroom while at work. i was like oh if this guy was american he’d be real into golf. kinda guy who cooks his food with one singular drop of oil ever and thinks black peppers too spicy. im glad jon stabbed him to death but i think we as a society moved on too fast from this. i think martin shouldve gotten that rope to drag him down from the eye and beat the shit out of him even if it didnt do anything. i think they shouldve let melanie poison him i think if she didnt give him enough poison and had to finish the job manually that wouldve been funny. i dont like him.
just this once i think we could normalize NOT wanting to fuck that old man
okay it’s very simple. jane prentiss was coworkers with oliver banks. oliver was also exes with graham the notebook eater. oliver was also friendly with annabelle. annabelle had a whole puppet/puppet master thing going on with neil lagorio. neil was exes with gabriel the worker in clay. neil never worked on that dexter banks (no relation)(…unless?) spider movie, but he had been rumored to. gertrude killed gabriel, and she herself was involved in that whole agnes/jack/jude fiasco, and jude was casual friends with nikola orsinov and mike crew. mike crew was childhood friends with dominic swain from mag 4, and also he facilitated jared hopworth getting his hands on the boneturner’s tale. it’s not confusing at all when you think about it.
anybody who says that jon was stupid for being paranoid during season 2 would Not survive the horror movie
- the previous head archivist disappears under mysterious circumstances.
- he is then given the position of head archivist, something he’s well aware he isn’t qualified for.
- while working this position he’s constantly plagued by the feeling of being watched, to the point that he outwardly modifies his behavior in reaction to the statements to try to throw off whatever the source of this feeling Is.
- during all of this, his co-worker suddenly goes missing only to come back with news of having been held hostage by a living flesh hive trying to eat him with worms.
- this living flesh hive is now sending worms to your place of work.
- while trying to figure out how to deal with the worms he finds a statement from the flesh hive that is Directly Speaking To the previous archivist. cementing the fact that the magnus institute is being sieged by worms Because Of A Grudge Against The Head Archivist Position.
- while this is happening Mysterious Delivery Men show to Directly deliver a dangerous artifact To Him in the magnus institute, referring to him directly as “the archivist.”
- the flesh hive does, in fact, break into the institute and eat him with worms, specifically calling out To Him (to The Archivist) as she comes in.
- while running around trying not to be eaten by worms, one of his coworkers finds a secret tunnel system that’s been directly connected to their building that just so happens to be hundreds of years old.
- and while he’s being Actively eaten by worms his Other coworker finds the murdered body of the woman who was the previous archivist, who the flesh hive had been addressing in her statement, propped up in those very tunnels.
if you look at all of that and say “there’s No Reason for jon to think that anybody was trying to kill him, he should’ve just tried not being paranoid” I’m sorry but the girl from the ring would win. you are not the final girl, you’re not even the fourth.
[ ID: a picture of manuela from the magnus archives. she’s a thin latina woman with brown skin, medium length dark hair, and a dark turtleneck. she appears to be sitting in a dark laboratory and there’s a speech bubble above her that’s a screenshot of a text post by tumblr user dyke-crossing saying “one day i’ll extinguish the sun. then you wont see. none of you will fucking see.” she is drinking from a mug colored like the trans flag that says “self made” ]
I believe I said something to this affect in some tags ages ago, but I absolutely think jon giving jess tyrell the name of his workplace was a deliberate attempt at getting caught. parsing some timeline stuff, he took his first two victims in the first three weeks he was out of hospital, and then he did his third another maybe 3-4 weeks later after the coffin, but then jess was his first after two months of nothing. I think he tried to stop, realized he couldn’t keep it up, so (maybe subconsciously) set a trap for himself while also making sure he’d be on a boat to norway for the immediate fallout.
re-listening to the magnus archives for the nth time and man the quality drop-off after the episode where gerard kaey just Explains the Lore to jon is astonishing. I’d thought the decline was mostly confined to latter season 4 and 5, but nope! it’s there halfway through the series!
I think a number of things about the show’s premise are fundamentally unworkable, but one that really stands out to me now is the extent to which it wants to be a drama when it has done very little to establish, specifically, what its characters are like around each other. I have a pretty good idea of who Jon is, and a reasonably solid sense of who the rest of the cast is, but I don’t really understand how any of them fit together. even Jon and Martin, ostensibly the central relationship of the show…I don’t really understand what that is! what’s the shape of their dynamic? what do they see in each other? what do they like and dislike? why are they together (even in a platonic sense)!
(sidenote: honestly I feel like the most well-developed relationship in the whole thing is Jon and Elias, because there is a very clear rationale for what’s going on there: Elias is grooming Jon and has some emotional investment besides that because he thinks of Jon as his property; Jon at first isn’t aware of this and then struggles with wanting to leave but also wanting to stick around because he’s curious, and because on some level he wants Elias’s approval. yep, check the box, that’s A Relationship)
now this lack of character stuff isn’t so much a problem in the early series when it’s primarily about the shortform statements— a frame narrative, and a handful of constant characters to populate it, are handy for all kinds of reasons! there’s a much better version of this series that casts Jon as a kind of occult Hercule Poirot, and afaict that was originally what the series was supposed to be. but once the show makes its ill-fated pivot towards drama, it has to be about the characters because that’s all a drama is ever about, and the gaps become blindingly obvious especially because of the decision to make the first part of season 4 about Things Falling Apart
and like, listen, if you have a group of characters who are friends, and you’re a drama, you kind of always want to do this, right? the Platonic ideal of this kind of thing is the lead up to the Buffy season 4 finale, where Spike tries to get everyone at loggerheads, and then all of season 6. but the reason that works on Buffy is that the viewer has a very clear idea of what all of these relationships are, and why they exist. take Xander and Buffy: Buffy loves Xander because he’s a goof and he’s sweet and he does the right thing when it counts, even though he’s not special or strong; she needs someone like that, who knows and sees everything she is and yet still loves her from the ground, and it was never going to be Willow because Willow is also, in her way, part of the supernatural world. where’s the wedge? Xander feels inadequate and like he has nothing to offer Buffy! boom, done, conflict generated.
but like…what is the conflict between Martin and Jon in early season 4? Martin used to be super involved and now he’s not and there’s kind of nothing to be done about it? Basira just randomly despises Jon because…she lost her partner, but never expresses it in a way that reads as anything other than petty sniping, which isn’t really in line with the rough sketch of her character we’ve gotten so far? it really feels like the writers’ room (well, one guy in this case) decided that there would be A Conflict at the beginning of season 4 between the characters, but never stopped to realize that with the board state as it was, there wasn’t really a way to do that that made any sense, because we have no idea who these people are when they’re together.
it’s such a shame because the early season horror shorts really are so strong. I know the author cites MR James as his inspiration, and that shines through in a way that I’d confidently call an improvement on James’ work! really well-crafted, minimalist horror with a laser focus on the story’s core idea, the Thing that makes this tale scary— there’s a wonderful intention to it that makes them a joy to listen to. I just wish it’d kept going like that…
this hits my own issues head on tbh
like there’s an amount of background information we’re supposed to just assume or believe from context clues that just doesn’t work? and once the mystery of what connects everything we’re hearing is explained it just… loses all intrigue.
and then it becomes clear this isn’t going to turn into a story about healing from trauma and is instead a bunch of misery piled on misery with very little of it making any logical sense outside of that.
Y’know. I said I was gonna go apeshit when A-Mag-A-Day got to Threshold and tbh? I’ve decided I don’t actually care? I think I might’ve actually burnt out my anger? Like. Saw a picture of Daisy and Basira and Melanie brandishing weapons with a caption like. “Heard you were harassing women” and I’m just like…
Does. That really make it worse? Like. Genuinely?
Idk. Like. At this point it’s a lot less about what happened in canon and how people treat it as some kind of black and white issue where if you’re sympathetic at all to Jon that you’re not actually seeing him as a flawed person who made bad choices.
But anyway. An intervention requires people to actually want the person to get better because the ones intervening care about them :) Not by threatening them or being disgusted by them :) That’s all.
JON: *has something done to him that he’s done to others* Well clearly I have no right to be upset, and what I did was obviously worse, so I’ll just forgive and forget.
EVERYONE ELSE: *sees Jon do something they’ve done to others* WHAT THE FUCK, JON. YOU’RE A MONSTER. HOW DARE YOU. KILL YOURSELF.
Resisting the urge to point out how believing that Jon would’ve died or not been able to actually blind himself doesn’t actually make his choice not to do it despite that unsurety less meaningful because as you all like to point out it was still his choice and I can believe it would’ve not worked out how he wanted if I want to.
