#tmagp theory

[fatallyabirder]

okay perhaps I’m just talking here but I feel another good piece of evidence for the “fears are created and manifested by the persons/victims individual fears” or whatever we’re calling it is that (Diva) described not hands originally, just something in the water. I feel that only after she imagined the things being hands in the water and getting scared did they become that. Or not! who knows.

[sasha-n-james]

Monique Bakayoko theory - TMAGP 43 SPOILERS

so the victims of monique seem to be very similar to the drowning victim that Alice encountered.

at first i wondered if the drowning victim was Prim, but some date-checking showed that Prim would have been drowned in 2010, so a very long time ago. but they seem to have died from almost identical causes.

but, the drowning victim that alice met was still found as a musical location: not an opera; but at Luke's concert.

luke's band has so many references to water. even the name: a 'dredgerman' operates mining machines from the bottom of a body of water. what if luke's band has a similar power? what if monique is a part of the band and can control her power to affect individual people after 15 years? what if monique was there in attendance, or what if the power of monique was somehow passed on to luke?

much to think about.... but i knew immediately that "sink or swim" would have a connection to the dyers.......

[anorak-attack]

is this anything

[magnus-marmot]

TMAGP 43 Thoughts: The sea is (still) Mercury

Ooo this was a good one. We're still being trickle-fed information a tiny bit at a time, but at least the incident was really good and the drama continues to build up. I was supposed to write this post yesterday but I got sidetracked reading the original Greek play Medea. It's a banger, can recommend.

Spoilers under the cut. (For both the episode and Medea lol)

General thoughts

Heinrich is now officially part of the crew, I'm telling you. Alice has adopted a pet monster who's very adorable and not safe. And sad that he couldn't prove it to Colin. Oscar Jarrett and his tattoos are also popping up again. I wonder if Gwen would be more worried for Alice if she's listened just long enough enough to hear that. She's too busy pretending like she knows what she's doing. I hope we'll finally get to hear from Lena next week.

The casement was really cool and spooky. As I said, I read Medea to see if there were any thematic connections to the case. If there are, they're pretty thin, but I'm glad I read it. Medea was a sorceress who joined Jason and the Argonauts on their sea voyage as they quested for the golden fleece. She ends up marrying Jason and they have children. In the play, Jason has decided to leave her for a princess, and in revenge Medea kills the princess, the king, and her own children to cause as much pain to Jason as she can. She's then flown away in Apollo's golden carriage. The opera moment recalled by Prim takes place when Jason confronts Medea, covered in her children's blood. Make of that what you will. There's also a tenuous link to alchemy, in that the golden fleece is sometimes used as symbolism for the Stone. But I doubt that was a conscious decision. Though I do wonder if the series bible given to the guest writers lists out some of the symbolism, since there seems to be a lot of it in the show.

Alchemy connections

Starting with the obvious, Alice recognises the symbols for Mercury ☿, Sulphur 🜍 and copper ♀. I've explained Mercury and Sulphur to death, but copper is associated with the planet Venus, the element of water, and the concepts of love, harmony and femininity. But it's impossible to draw conclusions without the context, so it might not be worth reading into. Though I will say that some alchemists believed (due to the law of correspondences, or "as above, so below") that invoking the symbol is equal to using the element itself. This is probably how the tattoos work in this universe, Oscar Jarrett was basically carrying out alchemical work through the use of symbols and art alone (with ink as his mercurial conduit). Since the goal of the Work is to refine and perfect matter, his goal was probably to perfect the human body. Which also raises questions for the heavily tattooed Klaus, who just so happened to be building an alchemy machine with the same symbols.

Speaking of Klaus, we finally get his full name: Klaus Schweitzer. This is a reference to another alchemist, Johann Friedrich Schweitzer, who's apparently credited for successfully transmuting lead into gold. Though in the story he's just randomly given a Philosopher's Stone that happened to work, so I don't know how much credit we're supposed to give him. But if we're reading into the names, just know that Edward Kelley was a con-artist who also claims to have found the Stone (in powder form), was employed by Rudolf II, failed to show results, killed a guy trying to escape, was given a second chance, failed again, and eventually killed himself to avoid punishment. So uhh. Here's hoping the name's not a sign.

Incident analysis

Since I've started doing this now, I'll break down the alchemical symbolism in the incident. (See my post on transmutations and symbolism in TMAGP.)

I keep harping on this, but in alchemical imagery the sea almost exclusively symbolises Mercury. In this case, it's Mercury as a solvent. Drowning symbolises the dissolution of matter into prima materia, beginning the nigredo stage. (Drowning of the king is an especially established metaphor, and the Diva's date drowning fits that too.) To that end, we have the Diva contained in a sealed vessel, ie. the ship cabin filled with water. Incidentally, a ship/ark is one of the common symbols used for the alchemical vessel. Other common symbols for the nigredo stage include darkness and corpses, both of which are present. Though it's interesting how the Diva emphasises their paleness, and the whiteness of the swirling waters. These are symbolic markers of the albedo stage, where the matter is purified. It's possible that her singing to the corpses was actually her way of carrying out the purification.

She says that the word "Diva" means someone who died and became divine. This is a very apt metaphor for the goal of the Opus, where matter is killed and then resurrected into a new, perfect form. I believe this is what happened to her. She died, either literally or spiritually, and then became "divine". Basically, she went through the process of transmutation and became an embodiment of the Stone. And just like the Stone transmutes matter (known as projection), she and all other externals project their newly gained powers on the world. It could also be that the transmutation stopped at albedo, which would leave her with incomplete powers (the White Elixir, associated with Luna, which transmutes matter into silver instead of gold). It's also once again noteworthy that she doesn't hunger for fear, but for admiration.

Random musings

Music keeps popping up, and I don't think it's coincidental. With the violin, Bonzo, and this, it seems that music has a special effect on the world. It feels like there's a connection, but I don't know how it ties in. Pythagoreans believed in universal harmonies, and there are some connections between vibrations and the modern concept of manifesting. I'll have to look into it some more.

I have started to wonder if I've been wrong in assuming that the DPHW classifications have a direct link to the metaphysical forces at play. The cases are starting to make more and more sense to me as metaphysical and literal transmutations, and for those we only really need two metaphysical forces: solve et coagula, or dissolve and coagulate, passive and active, Mercury and Sulphur, water and fire, Luna and Sol. And yet there seems to be some thing that they tap into, some invisible ideal plane where thoughts and archetypes and fears live and can be made into reality. Which makes sense in the Hermetic worldview but doesn't fit with the categorisation. So I'm wondering if the DPHW doesn't measure powers but ingredients.

I'm almost ready to scrap my DPHW theories completely and return to the idea that the OIAR is unknowingly just feeding Freddie a balanced alchemical diet in data form, and are helping it to metamorphosise into some horrifying new form. The system was built by Klaus, and Klaus seems to have been obsessed with some sort of immortality project. But we'll see.

Sorry for the long and rambly post, I have a lot to think about and re-evaluate.

[mita-vittua-olivia]

hi haha just bringing this back !!! now that he was officially mentioned again and seems to be linked to the stasi!

Why I think Klaus the IT guy is behind everything.

i just came up with this theory while relistening (… again) and i feel like i might be onto something here. bear with me, i don’t know how long this post is going to be.

i have several pieces of evidence for this theory.

1. the emails

the mysterious emails coming from a gibberish email address have appeared quite a few times now; sam and gwen have both received several emails with information they were looking for. sam got info on the magnus institute, gwen got incriminating accounts of things lena did. someone is definitely trying to … help them (the emails eventually led to sam’s downfall, and i’m sure gwen won’t be very okay in season 2 either.)

i think the working theory most of the fandom seems to have about the emails is that it’s jon and martin (and perhaps jonah) sending the emails from inside of the computer, but i’m not too sure (partially because i don’t even know if i still believe it’s them in there, but that’s something for another post). i think there is a real chance it could be him; he’s an IT guy after all and i guess he could have a way to find compromising data? i don’t know but i believe it would make sense.

2. colin

this is an excerpt from episode 19, and while the mercury/sulfur/alchemy references are, again, something for another post, i found two things in particular very striking.

firstly, “he sees too much already.” colin is clearly talking about someone in particular, one person who presumably has control of the cameras, computers, and phones. not an organisation, not multiple people, he. singular.

while this could be anyone, the next sentence does make it clear to me who he is talking about (if my theory is correct, at least). “doing mummy and daddy stasi proud, i’m sure”.

for anyone who doesn’t know, the stasi (or Staatssicherheitsdienst = state security service) was the secret police of east germany who would spy on people by, among other things, wiretapping them and going through their mail - and the wiretapping part obviously reminds me a LOT of what’s going on at the oiar. now, this reference would make a lot of sense if it was in fact klaus who is behind things because, as we remember, he is in fact german. so the “mummy and daddy” part makes an awful lot of sense for colin to say.

and again, klaus is an IT guy, so i think he would definitely be able to hack the cameras and phones to spy on the oiar crew.

3. the lena video

the first (and last) appearance klaus had so far was in the video that was sent to gwen (by a gibberish email address; possibly one he made himself) where lena attempts to shoot him. while we don’t know the reasoning behind the attempted assassination, we know that lena is not an evil woman, we know she wouldn’t kill anyone without proper reason. as of episode 30, we know she only does the things she deems necessary, and if she felt like she had to get rid of klaus, something probably did happen with him; something that made her believe he could be dangerous.

i don’t know why klaus would spy on them, i don’t know what his motives or ulterior intentions could be, but i think it is likely he has something to do with it. let me know what you think of my theory or if you have any additional evidence :D

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 43 Thoughts: Prim and Proper

We're back with the first guest-written episode in quite a while, but it's one I've been very much looking forward to. This week's episode is written by Jon Ware write of The Silt Verses and I Am In Eskew. Both of which are some of the best the medium has to offer, The Silt Verses especially. Of all the things guest writers have written that's probably the one I'd direct you to with the most fervour. Read this, then go listen to that.

It's a great episode all around. A few little things that are very big things, and good amount of reference to earlier happenings.

Spoilers for TMA , and TMAGP episode 43 below the cut.

Alice and Heinrich, are perfect together. I need a spin off, or at least a fluff ep, of these two. Just give me the buddy cop of bad cop and monster cop. Or Heinrich reads the IKEA catalogue. I will miss him so much when we leave Germany.

We get yet another name drop of Oscar Jarrett, they've been explicitly mentioned in episodes like 11, Marked, and 20, Social Stigma, and as I'm sure you all remember was a particular interest to Ink5oul. They were largely trying to recreate Jarett's work, to limited success, but as we saw it was effective even when done relatively poorly.

This whole section also really hammers home the GDR connections that were such a major part of the pre-season 1 ARG. Klaus himself is a very interesting figure and with the reveal of his last name I think we have an awful lot to go on about just how important he is. But I don't get to use the Klaus Watch section of these posts often enough, so that stuff will be at the end. It'll be a chunky section though. Lots to dig into there.

This was a really solid incident. I think all in all it's fairly explicit about what's going on and what it all means so there isn't a lot to dig into for me from that angle. It's very The Silt Verses-coded too. So if you want more spooky benthic horrors, and a lot more idolatrous worship, then you should really check that show out. It's pretty fuckin' fantastic. This incident does a lot in a pretty short time too. I'm not 100% sure we'll see more of our Diva here but I do like that it's, seemingly, another from the PoV of an "avatar". This one leaning quite hard into the "if you think it happens" angle of the last few episodes. The horror only really started when she thought there could be a hand down there. It'll be interesting to see how this sort of self-manifestation happens in the future but as of yet I'm not in love with it. It does recontextualise some things like how [Error]'s victims were affected but I think I'll need to see how it ties into the broader metaphysics before I'm happy with it.

However, we do have a repeat "character" here too and it's a sneaky one. Very blink and you'll miss it. Both this incident, and the one from episode 29 Keyed In, are pieces of evidence collected by David Collins and taken to North-West Long-Term Evidence Storage. Given this is a guest-written episode that's something Jonny and/or Alex would've had to have specified and as such will likely be relevant down the line. The two have a lot of watery drowning themes in common too. We've also seen a lot of the eldritch monsters that lurk in the deep throughout other incidents as well, in addition to a good bit of drowning. If I were the sort of man to throw out wild, and oft baseless, theories I would say that ol' Davey could be an avatar/external/angstjäger related to such phenomena, or perhaps an agent for the other forces of the world that's cataloguing such things. Alas, I'm not the sort of man that would do such things.

Celia and Gwen's interaction at the end of this ep doesn't have much going on. Gwen is presumably going to be having that Starkwall meeting though so that should be fun next episode. Celia being all on her on will totally be fine and nothing spooky will happen to her, I'm sure.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

Klaus Watch: Another Klaus mention. Now we've got his last name too, Schweitzer. Which basically means someone Swiss. But that's not the interesting bit of this name. As I'm sure we're all aware the most of characters are named after historical alchemists in the same way TMA characters were named after horror authors. Klaus likely gets their own surname from Johann Friedrich Schweitzer. Which given the way those two names are intertwined thus likely makes this our first two-for-one as far as namesakes go. But there is more here beyond just that too. Johann is most well known for The Golden Calf, or, to give it its full title:

THE GOLDEN CALF, Which the WORLD ADORES, and DESIRES: In which is handled The most Rare and Incomparable Wonder of Nature, In Transmuting METALS; VIZ. How the intire Substance of Lead, was in one Moment Transmuted in Gold-Obrizon, with an exceeding small particle of the true Philosophick Stone.

And as you may be able to glean from the title it deals with the Great Work, the Magnum Opus, the creation of a the Philsopher's Stone. What's more, he ostensibly completed the task. Lead to gold and all. Which, while not uncommon, isn't something most of our other namesakes claim. Freddy and Klaus being all tangled up in that both speaks to what we know of them thus far, and probably isn't a good sign for things to come. Add on to this the Jarrett connections and how we know that Jarrett's work was transmutative in nature and it's all looking like Klaus might really have been onto something serious.

DPHW Theory: 4153 is pretty normal I reckon. Weird might be a little low as these things go but that's nitpicking.

CAT# Theory: 1. Mhm, yep.

R# Theory: B would've been such a good fit for the old idea. Shame.

Header talk: Idolatry (Music) -/- Compulsion (Drowning) is mostly normal, drowning is a bit of a weird one though. Not super weird just not super accurate.

[my-nida]

Hearing that line my mind thought of this…

[redstringredeye]

I am unwell

[1nk20ul]

Jonathan Sims ALIVE?? I Believe I Have Proof.

(Spoilers for The Magnus Protocol!)

You heard that right. And if you've listened to TMP 39 - Dependents, you've heard it too. Not only can I prove without the shadow of a doubt that not one, but two Archivists are roaming TMA's London, but I can also prove with spectrogram + phonetical analysis exactly what Jon is saying.

Let me prove it to you.

First, let's start with an unedited audio sample, taken at 16:30:

Did you catch it? If you didn't, I don't blame you. There's a lot happening here. Let's check the official transcript for more context about what we're hearing.

So, what we're hearing is definitely the Archivist. It's evident that it's whispering something, but the specifics are currently hidden under layers of reverb, static, and tape winding. Let's clean it up a bit to get a better listen. I pitched the audio down 30%, reduced the background noise, and ran it through a few frequency filters to make the speech more prominent.

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, that's definitely Jon.

At the very least, we know this is obviously not Beth Eyre, who voices [ERROR]. Since the transcript states that this audio has to come from an Archivist, that really only leaves us with one other possibility.

But let's assume you still don't believe me. I took the liberty of isolating the vocals entirely and running them through a linguistics analysis programme called Praat (which is fantastic + free by the way!). This way, we can analyse the speech all the way down to the position of the Archivist's mouth when speaking.

Here's the new sample we're working with:

I admit, the speech is a tad more muffled in this version. However, the lack of background noise makes the spectrogram much easier to read, which is what we are aiming for here. We're far past the point of just using our ears.

Behold the Spectrogram:

Looking at this diagram, we can conclude that there are four words being spoken here. (The second word is the gap in the middle part. Note the density shift at around 1000Hz. We know this word must be free of any sharp consonants.) More importantly, the formants provided can be compared to samples of Jon's RP dialect to determine if there's a match. If the frequencies match, it's the same voice. If we get the wavelengths to match, it's the same word.

Let's start with the first word. I'll skip the specifics, as explaining every minute detail would take forever and bore everyone to death. The left image was extracted from the spectrogram above. The right photo? That's Jon saying the word "this."

Note how both waveforms are split into two halves, low then high. Note how the high half trails off at the end. Take into account the similar placement of the red formants. This is the same word, pronounced in the exact same dialect, with the exact same frequency. It is Jon.

Let's do that again with the second word.

Again, the formants line up in the exact same order. The audio on the right is a bit louder, which is why the waveforms have a higher contrast.

What did this word happen to be? World.

Here is the original spectrogram in Audacity. The two bright spots on the right-hand side are easy. It's the same sound as the end of the first word as well. (Notice the frequencies are the same.) These are an easy Letter S. I then fact-checked this using methods like before.

Finally, we have clear, undeniable proof:

"This world isn’t yours."

Edit: thank you to @thestrangepoet for correcting “is” to “isn’t!” The presence of the letter T was a bit inconclusive, but it makes so much more sense in this context.

Now, what does that actually mean? Well, he’s likely referring to Sam. The extent of what he actually knows I’m uncertain of. Feel free to theorise and let me know! I have an idea about how this affects the overall story, but that's a post for another day.

I furthermore checked every single instance [ERROR] spoke for occurrences like this, and what did I find? Nothing. There was a bit of whispering in TMP 10 that I couldn't manage to isolate, but the voice was definitely Beth Eyre's. The only other time an Archivist audibly appeared in this fashion was... Oh, Hello. The TMP series teaser with Jon and Martin. Brilliant.

Now I just have to hope that nothing gets debunked by tomorrow. I'm crossing my fingers, TMP 40.

Thank you to Rusty Quill for sending me down this rabbit hole! The details added to all corners of the production bring so much life to the Magnus mystery. I'm glad I could dig deep and analyse this - We love you!

[macabresymphonies]

If by this point you don't believe Celia is the same TMA universe Celia her meeting with Lady Mowbray cemented she is, because that was the most "seasoned Magnus Achives character meets an avatar" interaction we've had in a while:

ask her if you can do something for her just to make sure she scrams

don't give your name when trying to be tricked into saying it

ignore her creepy sniffing and vauge remarks

don't interact needlessly

don't play into her narrative

don't get caught on the stupid pun at the end

Godspeed Celia, you beautiful creature, if anybody is equipped to live till the end it's you.

[bobliophage413]

i know it probably won’t be this BUT i’ve been entertaining myself thinking about what if alice and sam find the tape with episode 200 (maybe minus the part with basira n friends) in the ruins of the magnus institute and they just stare at each other like:

while listening to

guy from computer doing a murder

guy from computer lore dumping

SECOND guy from computer yelling at guy from computer for doing a murder

GUYS FROM COMPUTER ARE GAY FOR EACH OTHER? love wins.

what’s this about traveling other dimensions?

second guy from computer doing a murder. love loses.

[sasha-n-james]

🖥️

klaus theory (tmagp 43 spoilers)

i think Klaus is trying to make himself immortal.

he collected Oscar Jarett tattoos, the supernatural tattoos that seemed to never decay, as ink5oul could find them intact on buried corpses.

Klaus and his photos of Jarett tattoos inspired the tattoo shop's array of alchemical tattoos, which he likely had all over himself, as he was described as heavily tatted.

and he must have some sort of ulterior motives to make him a 'bad guy,' at least in the eyes of lena. she may be a bitch but she wouldn't shoot someone for no reason.

tl;dr: Klaus is using alchemy to make himself immortal

[clare-89]

Interesting parallels Chester. Very interesting.

[the-butterbun]

"There's something familiar in the figures i paint. I don't know what it is. They are so impossible in their shape and yet i feel like they all had names at some point. Like this one, Micheal, I think."

[callistocreations]

I THINK I FIGURED OUT THE NEW ENTITIES SYSTEM IN TMAGP.

I haven't seen any other fan theories like this, but if anyone else thought of this first, please let me know.

Anyways, alchemy obviously plays a big part in the magic system of the protocol universe. And I've seen several people bring up that Celia mentioned the three primes of alchemy. Based on my very non-expert google knowledge, the three primes are salt, mercury, and sulfur. Salt represents the body, mercury represents the mind, and sulfur represents the soul.

In other words, physical horror, psychological horror, and existential horror. There are three fear entities in this universe; Salt, which is fear relating to the body/physical harm, Mercury, which is mental/emotional fears, & Sulfur, which is existential fears. This lines up pretty well with what Colin said:

This time, the way to keep the entities from entering our world is to keep them balanced. And based on what we've seen, the way to keep the balance is probably by sacrificing people to them.

This next part is a bit of a stretch & I don't expect it to be right. Something interesting I noticed, all the Externals we've met so far seem to be Salt-coded. Maybe the OIAR is only in charge of the salt part of the balance? What if the Hilltop Center and the Magnus Institute were in charge of the other two elements? Colin didn't mention what happens when there's too much salt, but we might see that for ourselves soon.