is it acceptable to headcanon a character as having a completely different name than they do in canon. because i might not be a good writer but i am arguably better at naming characters than jonny sims. her name is joan robinson now because that makes more sense thematically. thanks
the eye has three children. an oldest daughter who would do anything to make it happy. a middle child who feels isolated from the rest of the family, even resenting and actively rebelling against them. and a youngest child; the favourite, though they never even wanted to be.
(Spoilers for seasons 1-2 of TMA) HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!!
I got hyperfixated on The Magnus Archives back in November and now I can finally post some fanart for it! Here’s my season 1 and 2 dump. I have much more stuff for the later seasons, which I will be posting soon hopefully.
Enjoy my drawings of the Eye’s special little boy!!!!!
if this take gets me in trouble im just gonna blame sea-induced madness because im on a boat rn but like. lonelyeyes could be a polycule and still be equally divorced AND still called lonelyeyes. if you put gertrude robinson in there. in this essay i will [red dot appears on my forehead]
Hi! Can I ask a question? If you were to pick a season of the year for tma characters (Archives, I mean), what would you choose? Are there characters you associate with a particular season? (like, for example, I associate Martin with spring.)
It's just interesting for me to hear different interpretations, but if you don't want to answer, feel free to ignore this.
Anyway, have a lovely day!
ooo that’s an interesting question. i think i’d have to say i kind of associate gertrude robinson with autumn, for some reason. also peter lukas with winter for obvious reasons, but specifically finnish winter, which i’m currently suffering through (it’s -19° degress celcius in finland right now). i also kinda associate the distortions with spring.
if this take gets me in trouble im just gonna blame sea-induced madness because im on a boat rn but like. lonelyeyes could be a polycule and still be equally divorced AND still called lonelyeyes. if you put gertrude robinson in there. in this essay i will [red dot appears on my forehead]
ok people seem to fuck w/ this so im gonna elaborate. like why shouldn’t we give gertrude two awful husbands. why shouldn’t we give peter two problematic eye avatar wives. why shouldn’t we give elias two lonely-aligned exes, constantly trying to sabotage her plans. i think it’d be funny and kind of hot.
the reason i think jonah/gertrude is yuri is because their dynamic is an impasse. a stalemate. jonah knows gertrude’s putting up a facade. gertrude knows jonah’s true identity. if either of them make a move against the other, they’re risking everything. they both have convoluted plans that they cannot risk going wrong. they have to find subtle little ways to sabotage each others’ schemes.
jon sims the archivist character of all time. canonically does not fuck and has no interest in fucking yet still manages to have intense verbal sadomasochistic hatesex with nearly every other character in the podcast.
The magnus archives as a musical, plot and all is the same but y’know epic soundtrack and vocals (Jonny we know you can sing don’t hide from us)
Except the only character who’s self aware/meta about the singing is Melanie
She comes in to give a statement and is like “THREE PEOPLE HAVE SUNG TO ME WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT MUSIC COMING FROM IM GOING TO STAB EVERYONE HERE.”
She obviously does a couple songs also
PLUS!! Jon’s s5 smiting is him having a sing-off with the other avatars
I HAD THIS IDEA TOO AND I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS
im more of an orchestra/band person. I’ve been in or played pit for a fair share of musicals, but just know im coming at this with more classical music knowledge than musical knowledge
-each one of the powers having its own theme/motif that can be heard during songs(the eye’s motif is the opening theme)
- annabelle Cane’s theme being heard from the pit orchestra every time the tape recorders or the lighter is drawn attention too so that none of the characters would actually know but the audience can see the web’s strings. the audience doesnt know why the theme keeps appearing until Annabelles number near end of season 4
-jon starts out with his own few themes but as the musical goes on more of his songs stray from his main themes and the eye slowly takes over.
-imagine whenever jon reads statements on the stranger he reads it in song and you can hear the stranger theme or the statement theme being played in a more circus version in the background/as a verse to songs and then during the unkowing it gets its own full number with a wild and overwhelming dance that completely drowns out all other themes.
-Gerry kaey gets a song. whole idea
-jmart duet in the lonely IMAGINE. like Martin’s theme disappearing thru season 4 as he loses himself to the lonely until the season finale when he is completely singing the lonelys lament and then jon finding him by singing martins songs. when martin says ‘i see you jon’ he sings it in Jon’s theme and they duet
-the door opens in a duet between jon and jonah where jon begins reading the statement with the spotlight on him and then at the 'apologies for the deception’ line another spotlight opens over jonah who is standing on a set so he is higher and behind jon. jon is still singing sort of like a backup with the exact lines as elias but elias is having a solo for most of this. elias and jon do a partnered dance number for this as jonah leads jon thru his scheme. at the end jon ends up on his knees facing the audience and elias behind him turned away from the audience as he opens a set door. the last phrase of the opening theme is them singing 'i open the door’. a giant eye projected onto the set with the door in it opens
-same duet from the lonely being used in the series finale as martin had to kill jon.
i really like that all of the fears have several different names in tma. that’s so weirdly realistic. like think about how specific deities and mythological creatures and even just strange phenomena have multiple different names in real life. humans, when given no further explanation of something they perceive, will give it a name themself, just like how jon began calling the desolation “the lightless flame” all on his own, based only on statements. but when he calls it that to jude’s face, she immediately corrects him, “the desolation”, because that’s the name she knows it by.
i also really like how there seems to be different types of names. for example, “it knows you” “i don’t know you” and “too close i can’t breathe” all seem to be sentences describing what the fear entity feels like, whereas “the eye” or “the spiral” more describe what the fear entity manifests as.
it makes no sense and i have no reason to believe this, but i do believe gertrude robinson was a the taxpayers fan.
wait i have an excellent fucking addition to make because i am a genius:
she’s also an mcr fan. imagine. gertrude and gerry going somewhere on a train. its a longer trip so gertrude pulls out a pair of really low quality earphones. gerry, bored as hell, about to ask what she’s listening to but he can hear the music through the earphones and wait a fucking second is that helena by mcr. gertrude do you listen to mcr. yes gerard why do you find that so surprising i thought it was obvious.
i wanna talk about tma characters and the concept of a facade. because i have a lot of thoughts.
so most people understand how ironic it is to characterize martin blackwood as a soft boy that can do no wrong, because one of the most interesting parts of his character is how much of a subversion of that trope he is. he’s manipulating people by acting like that. this is addressed in the canon. he wants everyone to like him, and he knows he’ll almost always get what he wants if he puts up this facade.
something people talk about a bit less, but is still equally canon, is that gertrude robinson was doing basically the same thing. pretending to be just a boring old woman, when she’s actually extremely clever and ruthless. she plays into everyone’s pre-existing biases and assumptions masterfully to hide just how competent she really is. she knows exactly what she’s doing, and she’s willing to sacrifice anything and anyone for the sake of her self-appointed mission. characterizing her as a grandmother figure is the funniest form of irony to me.
but do you know who isn’t putting up a facade? do you know who isn’t changing their behavior to affect your idea of them?
the older avatars.
peter lukas isn’t pretending to be passive-aggressive and overly cheery, he just kind of…is. why would he ever bother putting up a facade? he doesn’t want people to like him. his authentic self is this talkative yet asocial man, who specifically aims to be awkward and unlikeable.
people say that simon fairchild’s polite and carefree demeanor is an act, but i really don’t think that’s true either. i guess i might see it differently because i personally resonate the most with the vast out of all the fears, but i really think that a lot of that behavior makes perfect sense for his character. he doesn’t think that anything in life matters. his personality reflects the lightness and carefree nature of that mindset. he just doesn’t care. he does everything for fun. he’s not pretending to be anything he isn’t.
this could be me reaching, but honestly, i don’t think even jonah magnus is putting up that much of a facade. he’s lying, sure. he’s manipulating people, obviously. but he’s not changing his behavior in order to do that. even in mag 160, there’s no big, henry mildmay-esque “dropping of the act” when he has his monologue. if you look at his behavior as elias bouchard, it’s exactly the same as the little bits of him that we get to see in s5. the elias whose last words are “good luck” is the exact same elias as the one who always greeted basira with “hello, detective”.
"humans put up an act. monsters don't bother to." And it's contradiction. Please elaborate! I have so many thoughts about the human vs. monster in relation to TMA and I love reading other people's thoughts about it.
ARGH THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING !!!!! ok so
it’s a bit of a contradiction of my other interpretation, because my other interpretation is that the entire idea of avatars being “monsters” in itself is an act for them. an entirely different kind of facade, where they pretend to be completely inhuman to excuse their actions. you can blame a human for harming other humans, but you can’t blame a monster for simply being a monster.
an interesting exception to this is nikola. she’s an avatar that was never human to begin with, and so she has no humanity that she’s trying to escape. she is, for all intents and purposes, a pure extension of the stranger itself.
i think that that’s what all avatars are trying to be, in one way or another. but the tragic and fascinating thing is that none of them, except for nikola, truly can be.
another cool aspect of this is avatars and their relationship to mortality. it’s said that the one fear that existed before humanity was the hunt, and interestingly, not the end. this implies that the fear of dying is inherently human. almost all non-end avatars express this fear in one way or another.
even at her most distorted, helen begs for her life. she doesn’t want to die. why would something entirely non-human even be capable of that sort of fear?
some avatars are ‘immortal’, but not unkillable. none of them are actually unkillable. even the pupil of the eye dies like a mortal, choking and bleeding.
because i think the truth is that none of the fears can ever make you actually inhuman. you have to be a non-human to begin with, like nikola. humanity is a mark that can’t be erased, for better or worse, and so every single avatar that used to be a human will always have something inherently human about them.
and all of that brings me to jonathan sims. jonathan sims, who chose to be a human, chose to hold onto the parts of himself that were. i think that’s why he’s the protagonist; his entire character arc proves that the other avatars are pretty much just really fucked up humans, pretending to be monsters.
in my mind im always creating new tma ocs based on silly concepts but my coolest idea for now is a character aligned with both the spiral and the vast, a collab i like to call the infinite. aka the inescapable endless. aka the it has no end.
i already have a vivid idea of what their statement would be like and everything.
gertrude never would have become the Archivist, whether she gave in to the Eye or not, and it’s for one reason and one reason alone: Jonah needed avatars of the other fears to mark the Archivist, and whenever Gertrude interacted with another avatar, she was the one traumatizing them. she was not the marked, but the mark maker.
the idea of the sky opening up into a giant eye is excellent and creepy, but unfortunately i can no longer take it seriously after imagining people just posting pictures of it captioned shit like “quit staring at me with them big ol eyes” and “im shaking someone please buy her brown contacts” and “fuck r u lookin at”
the thing is that if jonathan sims and sydney sargent met, i do not think they’d get along. it’d be like epic rap battles autism vs. adhd. sydney would take one good look at jon and go “this man has zero sense of whimsy and fun i want him dead” and jon would take one good look at sydney and go “this man is dead. who did this. is he an avatar. i am scared get me out of this fucked up summer camp”
and if jonah magnus and elijah volkov met, it’d be a whole different kind of disaster. it would turn psychosexual before you can say sigmund freud. and they would both be hypocrites about it too just thinking “damn this bitch is crazy. i’m so glad i picked the correct religion, unlike her” about each other the whole time.
but if gertrude robinson and lucille bertuccelli met, it would be the best thing to ever happen to both of them. they would be best friends without ever expressing a single emotion towards each other. if they met, the world might go up in flames, though.
i can’t believe more people aren’t hearing me out on daisy/elias. do you guys not understand the doggirl catboy dynamic. the “one day, someone will kill you. i hope it’s me.” “good day, detective.” dynamic. a hunter and a girl with such a huntable energy. literally the femslash ever. both of them are so horny and neither of them is happy about it so they take it out on each other via psychological and physical violence. and theyre lesbians
honestly the real reason i keep writing and posting about jonah magnus as a lesbian is because everytime i do, i feel like i’m shooting a gun into the air to make sure none of you guys forget who you followed. this is a part of my brand.
(note: there’s no official images of this character)
JUSTIFICATION:
“If Elias was a girl she would absolutely still commit horrible atrocities, do the most horrific abusive shit to her workers, and still plunge the world into an undending hellscape of terror and madness. However, the most effective people opposing him in canon are all lesbians, so if Elias took the E she would probably do all of that shit even more efficiently with an army of lesbians at her beck and call.” - Anonymous
i am like one encouraging reply away from writing a crackfic where all the avatars go to a karaoke bar and each eyevatar gives a shockingly different yet cunt-serving performance.
