HE’S EATING PEOPLE!!! literally for a statement to become part of the narrative that jon is constructing, the statement-maker regurgitate it and relinquish control over it, must go from person with agency living in the world to inert statement preserved in the archive… the narrative requires constant sacrifice in order to proceed, the plot is powered by the routine violence of extracting statements… when you take someone’s story for your own you do them a great harm…. archive as site of preservation only after thorough digestion, archive as tomb….
literally being dragged out of your life into your statement… from person moving on from trauma to character in a story that you can’t stop reliving…
update may never stop thinking about the violence and consumption inherent in qualitative research… the fact that you have to extract something from a subject in order to create an artifact or record, that you have to erase, leave out, edit down in order to create a coherent historical narrative… foucault voice knowledge is not made for understanding, it is made for cutting… and the making of knowledge requires cutting as well… the archivist’s whole thing is that they’re supposedly capable of extracting a ‘complete statement’ or whatever but a statement as an object can never be complete because a statement IS an object and not an experience… qualitative research, no matter how detailed or supernaturally augmented, requires the inherently violent reduction of complex lived experience into data via consumption by a voyeur, someone who did not live through the experience but merely appropriates it afterwards for their own gain…
the irreducible TENSION between the archivist and the people whose lives he is feeding on in order to build his archive… delicious <3
HE’S EATING PEOPLE!!! literally for a statement to become part of the narrative that jon is constructing, the statement-maker regurgitate it and relinquish control over it, must go from person with agency living in the world to inert statement preserved in the archive… the narrative requires constant sacrifice in order to proceed, the plot is powered by the routine violence of extracting statements… when you take someone’s story for your own you do them a great harm…. archive as site of preservation only after thorough digestion, archive as tomb….
literally being dragged out of your life into your statement… from person moving on from trauma to character in a story that you can’t stop reliving…
update may never stop thinking about the violence and consumption inherent in qualitative research… the fact that you have to extract something from a subject in order to create an artifact or record, that you have to erase, leave out, edit down in order to create a coherent historical narrative… foucault voice knowledge is not made for understanding, it is made for cutting… and the making of knowledge requires cutting as well… the archivist’s whole thing is that they’re supposedly capable of extracting a ‘complete statement’ or whatever but a statement as an object can never be complete because a statement IS an object and not an experience… qualitative research, no matter how detailed or supernaturally augmented, requires the inherently violent reduction of complex lived experience into data via consumption by a voyeur, someone who did not live through the experience but merely appropriates it afterwards for their own gain…
the irreducible TENSION between the archivist and the people whose lives he is feeding on in order to build his archive… delicious <3
FURTHER POST to say that even though it’s tragic that we didn’t get any gen pov in the final book, the fact that the last of gen’s pov that we DO get is at the end of the queen of attolia, and the last scene of that book is when irene finally accepts his proposal.. like literally the last time we are WITH gen is at the moment he becomes king… and so like of course we can never have his pov again, because the fate of kings is to seen always through the eyes of others, to never be alone with their own thoughts, to never be free of the distorting powers of rumor, myth, and legend…. and so we are with costis as he learns the king, and then sophos, and then kamet and then pheris… but all of them have different relationships with the king and different stories to tell about him… and even when, as in pheris’s case, their accounts are specifically about the king, they are also using the king as a mirror through which to reflect themselves… it’s so interesting how mwt plays with gen’s power and agency throughout the series bc like. yes history is written by the winners and so return of the thief is written by the king’s historian because gen ultimately succeeds in uniting the nations of the peninsula, but the king’s historian is not the king himself… the only time gen tells his own story in his own words is when he is the thief… whereas when he is king he has the power to shape nations, to command armies, but he can no longer give his own account of himself, because he has become something more than a person, and his office and his mythos are both co-created with people outside of himself,,, and so he gains all this power but he is no longer his own person and as such cannot tell his own story…. and how the fact that we never return to gen’s pov implies that whatever he gave up in becoming king he can never get back….. loving it here
HE’S EATING PEOPLE!!! literally for a statement to become part of the narrative that jon is constructing, the statement-maker regurgitate it and relinquish control over it, must go from person with agency living in the world to inert statement preserved in the archive… the narrative requires constant sacrifice in order to proceed, the plot is powered by the routine violence of extracting statements… when you take someone’s story for your own you do them a great harm…. archive as site of preservation only after thorough digestion, archive as tomb….
literally being dragged out of your life into your statement… from person moving on from trauma to character in a story that you can’t stop reliving…
HE’S EATING PEOPLE!!! literally for a statement to become part of the narrative that jon is constructing, the statement-maker must regurgitate it and relinquish control over it, must go from person with agency living in the world to inert statement preserved in the archive… the narrative requires constant sacrifice in order to proceed, the plot is powered by the routine violence of extracting statements… when you take someone’s story for your own you do them a great harm…. archive as site of preservation only after thorough digestion, archive as tomb….
something i like a lot about jon’s relationship with the beholding is that we never get a concrete moment of claiming/possession. we know that jon has always been a curious person, has always sought out knowledge; indeed, his first contact with a leitner came about as a result of his voracious reading habits as a child… while he becomes more focused on finding answers, more willing to pursue knowledge at any cost, more dependent on the statements over the course of the podcast, we never see an instant - if there even was one - where he goes from being uninterested, uninvolved, to suddenly needing to know. there’s no way to tell how much of jon is jon and how much is the archivist, how much his selection by the beholding fit naturally into the course of his life as it was and how much he has changed because of the powers and duties associated with his role.. whether the eye chose him or whether they chose each other…
something i like a lot about jon’s relationship with the beholding is that we never get a concrete moment of claiming/possession. we know that jon has always been a curious person, has always sought out knowledge; indeed, his first contact with a leitner came about as a result of his voracious reading habits as a child… while he becomes more focused on finding answers, more willing to pursue knowledge at any cost, more dependent on the statements over the course of the podcast, we never see an instant - if there even was one - where he goes from being uninterested, uninvolved, to suddenly needing to know. there’s no way to tell how much of jon is jon and how much is the archivist, how much his selection by the beholding fit naturally into the course of his life as it was and how much he has changed because of the powers and duties associated with his role.. whether the eye chose him or whether they chose each other…
LOVE when a statement giver switches from present-tense to past-tense and you know that the person whose story they’re telling is dead and now exists only in the past and in the narrative, having been removed from the present
i feel like a big reason why tma rarely scares me is because of the format of jon and the others reading statements. the statement makers are speaking in the past tense; whatever they are making a statement about, they have survived it long enough to make it to the magnus institute and give their testimony. those they are speaking about may have died or disappeared, but with the exception of historical statements and statements taken from deceased subjects, you must be alive to tell your story, and so whatever has happened, while awful, was not fatal. but that is also why the worst part of the episode is often the final comments, when jon details the research done by the archival team, often concluding with the news the statement maker was killed by the thing that was terrifying them shortly after making their statement. as soon as the statement maker’s story has been taken from them, as soon as what they have been experienced becomes part of the larger meta-narrative, they die; they become someone that a different narrator, telling a different story, is speaking about in the past tense. the story needs to keep eating people in order to continue being told; it needs people to be sacrificed to the past tense in order that those still lucky enough to be in the present might have something to talk about.
some sketchdumps of The Magnus Archives from twitter. i’ve been listening to it a bunch while traveling / working, and it’s my new favorite thing + super fun to explore the characters when i take breaks.
they’re still evolving in my mind as i go thru it but i think i’m getting there. spooky stuff next time i have ..time! (PS please no spoilers, im only in s2!)
literally is it worse to think yourself powerless in the face of great evil but be able to take comfort in believing you’re not complicit in the horrors being inflicted on the world OR to discover for certain that you have the capacity to influence the outcomes of events but then watch yourself use that power to behave exactly like the thing which most terrifies and disgusts you !
LOVE when a statement giver switches from present-tense to past-tense and you know that the person whose story they’re telling is dead and now exists only in the past and in the narrative, having been removed from the present
i feel like a big reason why tma rarely scares me is because of the format of jon and the others reading statements. the statement makers are speaking in the past tense; whatever they are making a statement about, they have survived it long enough to make it to the magnus institute and give their testimony. those they are speaking about may have died or disappeared, but with the exception of historical statements and statements taken from deceased subjects, you must be alive to tell your story, and so whatever has happened, while awful, was not fatal. but that is also why the worst part of the episode is often the final comments, when jon details the research done by the archival team, often concluding with the news the statement maker was killed by the thing that was terrifying them shortly after making their statement. as soon as the statement maker’s story has been taken from them, as soon as what they have been experienced becomes part of the larger meta-narrative, they die; they become someone that a different narrator, telling a different story, is speaking about in the past tense. the story needs to keep eating people in order to continue being told; it needs people to be sacrificed to the past tense in order that those still lucky enough to be in the present might have something to talk about.
one wants to tell a story in order not to die, but what happens when the story is done?
LOVE when a statement giver switches from present-tense to past-tense and you know that the person whose story they’re telling is dead and now exists only in the past and in the narrative, having been removed from the present
i feel like a big reason why tma rarely scares me is because of the format of jon and the others reading statements. the statement makers are speaking in the past tense; whatever they are making a statement about, they have survived it long enough to make it to the magnus institute and give their testimony. those they are speaking about may have died or disappeared, but with the exception of historical statements and statements taken from deceased subjects, you must be alive to tell your story, and so whatever has happened, while awful, was not fatal. but that is also why the worst part of the episode is often the final comments, when jon details the research done by the archival team, often concluding with the news the statement maker was killed by the thing that was terrifying them shortly after making their statement. as soon as the statement maker’s story has been taken from them, as soon as what they have been experienced becomes part of the larger meta-narrative, they die; they become someone that a different narrator, telling a different story, is speaking about in the past tense. the story needs to keep eating people in order to continue being told; it needs people to be sacrificed to the past tense in order that those still lucky enough to be in the present might have something to talk about.
it’s not all the jumping and falling, it’s the fucking WINK!!! not only are you forced to witness something awful that you have no hope of preventing or understanding, you get the feeling that you’re in on it; that you’re supposed to know what meaning to make of it, that what is happening should be happening and it’s you who’s missing something. not only are you being hate crimed, but it’s all passed off as part of the plan, a routine performance, a joke that you’re supposed to find funny.. absolutely not
realizing the more horror podcasts i listen to that while i dream of being a slasher film final girl (brave, resilient, justice personified, usually gets to stab someone), i am in fact a horror podcast final boy (just curious enough to become embroiled in eldritch rituals but too self-sacrificing and resigned to my fate to do anything about it once there, “this may as well happen” but it’s about your body being used as a vessel for other powers)
LOVE when a statement giver switches from present-tense to past-tense and you know that the person whose story they’re telling is dead and now exists only because they are preserved in the narrative, having been excised from the present
it’s like. tim accuses jon of knowing things about him because of his powers of sight, and jon says “that’s not what this is,” implying that he would know tim that well even WITHOUT his new abilities, and jon accuses tim of trying to commit suicide by circus and tim says “that’s not what this is,” implying that he would put himself between jon and danger even if he wasn’t also trying to “go down swinging”…. they both say “that’s not what this is” and it’s hard not to hear “that’s not what this is to me”… that’s not what YOU are to me… you are not a testing ground for my powers or a vehicle of my revenge and self-destruction… you are something else, something worth knowing and saving for other reasons, even though i can’t bring myself to say them out loud….
tim “kick me under the table all you want, i won’t shut up” stoker
no matter how much everyone tries to write tim off as “sulky” or “stubborn” or “having a bit of a breakdown” he refuses to call his time at the magnus institute anything less than what it is, which is a horror show that he was ensnared in unwillingly and unwittingly by people in power who were supposed to have his best interests at heart. he never fails to place the blame exactly where it falls, which is with elias who binds him to the institute and with his coworkers, particularly jon and martin, who keep their heads down as they become more dependent on the archives, look the other way when people die, insist that everything is fine or that it will be soon if they just keep enabling elias a little longer. he is the canary in the coal mine that is the archives; he is the one who lost sasha and found jane prentiss and never recovered, but also never let anyone forget what happened to him when all anyone told him to do was sit down, shut up, and get back to doing his work. he came to the institute to get some kind of justice, some kind of closure for his lost brother and instead he was made into an instrument of harm, forced to watch more and more people disappear without being able to save them… but he refused to suffer that humiliation quietly or to accept it as normal and instead he insisted that those responsible show themselves for what they were rather than hiding behind professionalism and false courtesy; he refused to be coerced or cajoled into complicity.. he insisted that if what elias wanted was his compliance, he was going to have to kill for it like the monster he is.
When Jon runs out of statements and gets hungry he just quizzes Martin endlessly about weird stuff that’s happened to him
Martin: ok um one time I saw a cat in an alley so I went to to pet it but then it was gone but to be fair I think it was just hiding behind a garbage can
Jon: Intriguing. That was like eating one (1) cracker but go on
the epic highs and lows of the tma episode where the guy befriends a huge powerful pig by offering up his life in a charged and terrifying moment and gaining its trust only to immediately betray it by filling its pen with concrete and watching as it dies a slow and painful death
most powerful move in tma statement history and i can’t even respect it
