Once again I think the TMA fandom very much misses the fact that what determines which entity something is associated with is usually not the object/event/etc itself but how the victim/target responds to it. If you’re looking to create an OC or write a fic or something, don’t think “what entity is this kind of assault part of” or “what entity is this animal associated with”, think “what kind of fear does this evoke in the target?”
Do they fear the senseless violence? Do they fear the things they can’t see or understand? Are they afraid of being watched or followed? Does it make them distrust the intentions and even identities of everyone around them? Does it make them question their own memories and perceptions?
Things like that. Everyone has a different response to traumatic experiences and you can really explore that with the entities.
And also mix and match! I know it was pretty much tossed in the garbage for s5, but there was a lot of interesting theory in TMA about the entities all being one huge thing instead of a bunch of smaller ones so you could definitely have them overlap in your works.
elias’s mag 40 statement is deliberately written to allude it’s all improvisation. it’s the way he starts actively lying halfway through when he apologises for not taking jon’s concerns seriously and the ellipses start getting prominent. the compulsion does not let people pause to recollect their thoughts.
elias’s tone and manner of speech also remain light and conversational, the statement is not characteristic of prose, of a story (his 92 and 120 narrations otoh are appropriately dramatic because they’re proper statements). at one point he says he had “one close call” and that he “composed” himself and made his way to the boiler room. if he was successfully being compelled he would’ve been forced to elaborate on these encounters, because beholding wants its victim’s fear in exquisite detail, they should be describing the memory like they’re being made to relive every horrible second of it. elias is not doing this, he’s not revealing any secrets he doesn’t want to and he’s not feeding jon his fear. nobody’s going to notice this on a first listen, but the way the episode is structured also helps here because you’re not expecting any grand revelations right at the beginning -> elias (doesn’t sound like an official statement; tries to make a joke at one point) -> then tim (real. unnerving) -> not!sasha (lying. dramatic irony) -> finally, martin (gertrude robinson was shot. which means someone here is a killer)
[ID: two examples from the transcript.
1: everyone else had already evacuated. We… had reached the ground floor when… well…
I… know I have often seemed dismissive of your concerns before,
2: he’s been stealing fire extinguishers. But… honestly, I didn’t fully appreciate what you’d been talking I about until I turned that corner and we saw what I can only describe as a… a tidal wave of filth
“jon turned into the monster that destroyed his childhood” close. jon turned into the book that destroyed his childhood. he functionally became a leitner. jon’s not just any devouring monster, he’s an archive of stories, he’s the frame device of the podcast (Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, Jon. You are a record of fear—MAG 160), he eats his victims the way those books did. every leitner has a story to tell, and often its victims end up trapped inside it, becoming a part of the tale—this is exactly what jon does as the archivist, when he reads/takes/compels (eats) a statement he is re-experiencing and storing within him the subject’s fear, each new victim is then incorporated into his mental collection of nightmares (You are a chronicle of terror). elias’s murder of leitner then has another layer of narrative meaning to it. it’s a marking of territory, of course, because jurgen is about to reveal important information to jon which will presumably ruin elias’s plans for him.
mag 80 - “librarian” / mag 160 - “the eye opens”
but it’s also about the transition from a world with artefacts as a source of isolated horror consuming and transforming individuals, which leitner and his books are symbolic of, to one where one being - the archive (jonah magnus’s archive), which has been marked by every fear and therefore holds within it the essence of every fear—devours and reshapes the entire world.
[ID: two screenshots from the transcripts. In the first Leitner says “The books are, I think, their essences in a purer form.” The second says “they could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this - nightmare kingdom.” End ID]
