kankurette:

spiribia:

do you ever have moments where you can tell the creator assumes you already find a character very annoying / unlikable / so forth and the story starts comporting itself accordingly to give the offending character disproportionately harsh treatment that you’re not even really into and all the other characters are constantly dismissive or rude to them but because you dont get any personal rush out of seeing any of this it’s just like Can you guys calm down.

#the reverse is also real#when there’s a character that the author assumes you have to like#so everything in the story acts as if they were 100% right all the time#even when they’re not necessarily

@shinjiroaragaki yep, that too.

ashes-in-a-jar:

It’s hard to still be obsessed with Jonathan Sims and not talking to anyone about it anymore

mileaftermile:

Thinking about the fact that pain and suffering in TMA can only be passed to others, never stopped. Thinking about how even in Anglerfish Nathan Watts escaped but someone else disappeared the same night. Thinking about Lost John’s Cave and “take her, not me”. Thinking about Jon in the Panopticon, saying he could make the people who deserved it more suffer instead. Thinking about how the apocalypse in their world can’t be stopped and can only be passed to other worlds. Thinking abou

levaagrace:

levaagrace:

Thinking about ants.

Thinking about a lot of things.

Thinking about individualism. Thinking about community. Thinking about isolation. Thinking about mob mentality. Thinking about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. Thinking about competing access needs. Thinking about society as a whole.

Thinking about ants.

dcartcorner:

Elsewhere AU - Bundle 2.16

theratisbackanditsinyourkitchen:

The scene in the Magnus archives that I think shows how human Jon is compared to Elias would have to be when he burns Gerry’s page. It clearly hurts him to burn it, it hurts him to destroy all this knowledge, the same way Martin burning the statement hurt Elias. The difference between the two is that Elias hurts others to stop his own pain, Jon hurt himself to stop Gerry’s pain.

equalseleventhirds:

apropoptosis:

apropoptosis:

in the club thinking about how jared hopworth is an idiot but also how the fandom is fundamentally missing the point about his character

he’s not one dimensional. what he wants is love and companionship. he talks about his father’s pride in him being tall, and you can fill in the blanks that there wasn’t anything else he felt proud about. his mother was evidently stern. he realized as he grew up that he wasn’t book smart, and probably was never going to leave where he was, and that the world around him resented him for that kind of an existence

so naturally he takes to the flesh. as people are exiting his life en masse, suddenly he has this ability to shift people. to make them happier. to make himself more complete. but he discovers this joy he has is a horror for some.

elias didn’t just send jared information on where to find bones, victims - he sent him information on where to find friends. jared is perfectly cool just chilling out running a gym and contorting people who are unhappy with their bodies, friends who won’t leave him

the flesh is primarily about the horror of being grist for the mill - jared is a beast marked for the slaughter of a society that had deemed him unacceptable, unworthy. his lack of wanting anything bigger than the satisfaction of being enough - for himself, his friends, his patron - speaks volumes about how deeply his need for affection runs

idk i just wish more people talked about that

#yeah i LOVE jared hopworth#like if we as a fandom can talk abt peter lukas having a sad childhood… jared had a sadder one#without even being in a cult#his father was a bully who wanted him to be a bigger one#his mother never smiled at him? what the fuck#he made ‘friends’ by being big and making other kids feel like they could be bullies#and then when they grew up and advanced in education & in the world and he DIDN’T#they treated him like he was lesser#and he resented them bcos he couldn’t understand that and he felt left behind#and yes he did bully them and did little petty crimes#he fucked with the statement giver in his first episode pretty much a lot#he was not exactly a GOOD person but he WAS extremely disadvantaged and no one was helping him#and then the boneturner’s tale found him and spoke to him#and what did he do with it? tried to make his father taller like he wanted. tried to make his mother smile.#failed at making them happy and then? the book that was maybe the first ever sentient-ish thing that wanted him and wanted to help him?#that was taken away from him! no wonder he wanted it back! no wonder he didn’t care what he had to do to get it!#and then yes after that he just wanted to run a business or two and have some friends#and if his friends wanted him to sometimes hurt people for them… well that’s fine he’s good at that#that’s what other people have always wanted from him going all the way back to his dad#………..do i have a lot of feelings about jared hopworth YEAH#when i say all the avatars except jonah magnus have trauma I MEAN JARED TOO

@equalseleventhirds​ finally some good fucking food

sorry op i don’t meant to keep talking but i just looked at the transcript for jared’s statement and i’d forgotten that he literally talks about when he was in SCHOOL and thus a CHILD like “Those were bad times. I tried to look ahead, but I couldn’t see anything. No future, no hope; just bitter parents, and whatever misery I could pass on to everyone else.”

like damn, he was super depressed and not coping well and had no one helping him when he was a kid and then a young adult. until the boneturner’s tale came to him.

If you make a joke about ‘Elias Bouchard’ and Peter Lukas being ex-husbands or what the fuck ever, I automatically will dismiss every thing you have to say about The Magnus Archives. Period. It’s a stupid and tired joke. Same with the fucking kayak jokes. Die.

levaagrace:

“[…] why does pretty much all georgie discourse ignore her s5 scenes?”

Probably because most Georgie discourse isn’t about Georgie herself but instead about the fandom’s need to put her on a pedestal as the queen of self-care and boundary setting.

And how the podcast does nothing to discredit this.

Even with her apology.

Cause Jon automatically denies it and continues to deny it and by not accepting it — no matter how much SHE acknowledges her faults — narratively, her actions are venerated while his are despised.

It’s the same issue with almost every single other character when it comes to their actions and emotions towards Jon. Narratively, no matter how much the fandom or the writers themselves wants to disagree, Jon is the Big Bad and everyone against him are the heroes. And narratively, that means the heroes are in the right and he’s in the wrong.

It would be different if Jon wasn’t the linchpin of the apocalypse. It would be different if his role wasn’t to become the anti-Christ. Because if he didn’t have the power he had, he wouldn’t have been who they were needing to stop. If he was less of a manifestation of all the pain and fear they were needing to stop, the weight of his actions would’ve been equal to theirs.

But narratively it wasn’t. They weren’t.

His actions were absolutely greater in their effect than theirs against him. That’s the whole point.

So. To bring this back around. Narratively, any apology or ~aCoUnTaBiLiTy~ the others make have less importance than anything Jon does. So. No. We don’t think about or acknowledge the weak ass platitudes they give him in the goddamn penultimate episode because it doesn’t actually matter. Narratively.

Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.

“that maybe those weren’t meant to be statements we agreed with uncritically,” blah blah blah

WHERE WERE THEY CONDEMNED AND DEHUMANIZED BY JON AS MUCH AS THEY DEHUMANIZED AND CONDEMNED HIM?

Show me the receipts. Give me the time stamps or screenshots of the scripts. Anything concrete instead of your own presumption of the text. Show me the actual, factual, goddamn text. Not subtext. Not metatext. On voice in podcast.

orchidthesupportingcharacter:

apnifty-deactivated20240222:

levaagrace:

If you make a joke about ‘Elias Bouchard’ and Peter Lukas being ex-husbands or what the fuck ever, I automatically will dismiss every thing you have to say about The Magnus Archives. Period. It’s a stupid and tired joke. Same with the fucking kayak jokes. Die.

EXPLODE, TIM WILL ALWAYS BE KAYAKING HE IS OKAY HES JUST ON A KAYAKING TRIP

I think we should stop invalidating the end of Tim’s arc. Here’s some things to consider:

1. Absolutely kicked ass. Big explosion, hell yeah

2. Stopped the Unknowing*

3. It was done to avenge his brother

4. Very effectively tied up his arc of not trusting the other archive team because he’s focused on his own thing

Here’s what kayaking jokes accomplish:

1. Deny all of that

* I think the whole “every ritual accept the eye’s could not have worked” is a sort of poorly executed concept that invalidates literally all of the stakes from the previous seasons

Exactly. Fucking. Exactly.

I think we glossed over the fact that Martin asked Jon if him dying would’ve both freed the assistants from the archives and prevented the end of the world.

Kinda fucked up, don’t ya think?

orchidbreezefc:

anonymouseeverything:

friendlyneighborhoodchaosdm:

I’m curious:

Hey, fellow horror-fiction-podcast-obsessed friends, I’ve got a baby theory rolling around in my head and I’m seeking proof. Bear with me - what’s your least favorite thing about your favorite podcast? Specifically not counting audio quality issues (for example, I struggled mightily with Jared Hopworth’s voice in TMA as well as with the volume balance in more action-y sequences at the end of s1 - but that’s sort of its own thing, and not applicable to the Theory)

Also I want to be clear that I have only tagged podcasts that I deeply love and I am not seeking negative feedback because of any kind of malice towards them. They have, collectively, eaten my brain

I was personally disappointed by the overall direction of TMA’s later seasons. It kind of felt like Jon was being used as a scapegoat for everything that went wrong in the podcast, all the way down to the apocalypse. I get that it’s supposed to be realistic portrayal of isolation/trauma or something, but it wasn’t narratively satisfying as a viewer of a piece of fictional media.

I loved each individual scene in S5 (I relisten to some of the death scenes even now, even though I hate major character death), but the overall vibe of it was kind of “Jon, why are you being such a bummer? You have so much power because you specifically chose to take it with no possible outside influences tainting your decision”. I chalk most of it up to me just really liking Jon, but at the same time Daisy gets way more leeway than he does, and she and Basira are straight up cops.

Malevolent is wonderful, I love it immensely, but the plot is all over the place. I watch it mostly for the soap-opera level relationship drama, but I wouldn’t necessarily even call that portion well written or well paced. I’m absolutely obsessed with it though, the character dynamic of “I love you but we’re just friends” is like crack to me. It’s a bit aimless overall.

I haven’t finished WTNV, but I do remember being kind of disappointed that the characters all talked like Cecil when they were introduced. Cecil has a very meandering, fantastical way of describing things that I thought was a part of his character, but when everyone talks like that it kind of takes away from his uniqueness. He has less of an interesting hook without his “Voice of Nightvale” schtick (it’s like, there’s a 5 headed dragon, and a secret police, and an old woman without a face, and a grandma who knows illegal angels. What is cecil compared to that? Some guy?). It’s been a while since I’ve watched it, so maybe this has a reason behind it I never got to/don’t remember.

I loved the first seasons following Dan Powell of Archive 81, but after the season 2(?) finale, they started introducing all new characters and I did not care at all. Never finished it because I wasn’t going to sit there wondering “When does this tie back into the main story? Is that it?” for more than 3 episodes.

don’t mind me, reblogging for the excellent breakdown of several of the big issues with tma s5 here <3

orderforbrian:

i forgot this web martin meme sjfkdlsjfiosj - harboring a crush on a dude with arachnophobia is not going well

[Start ID: Two panel comic of Jon and Martin from the Magnus Archives from an AU where Martin is an avatar of the Web. Martin is a fat mixed Polish/Korean man with short wavy dark hair that has a streak of white on one bang. He has a beauty mark under his lip. In his Web avatar state, he has eight black eyes, one set above his normal eyes, and two sets below, he also has fangs. In the part of his hair, there is a spiderweb pattern, and behind him there are some black spider legs coming from his back. He is wearing a dot patterned sweater and a teddy lined jacket. Jon is a thin Persian man with long curly hair that has streaks of grey, and has a beard. He is wearing a button up with a cardigan.

First panel, Martin is holding up his hands in defense, looking up with a fearful expression. He says, “Why won’t you love me, Jon?! I’ll be anything you want me to be!!”. In the second panel, Jon is holding up a broom with a furious expression. He shouts back, “I want you to be dead!!” End ID.]