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it was in fact well labeled, I never said it was not that. Like I said in my post, there is a huge dearth of material that even approaches psychiatric abuse and gaslighting, and I was naturally very eager to see how it was done because I am in fact very interested in feeling seen. And I understand that for some people that was what they felt, and again, said as much in the post.

I also clearly said I was making it because I can’t imagine I’m the only one who had the reaction I did and especially since the content is what it is, you can imagine going onto the tag and NOT seeing this point of view, after that content, was rough (I’m okay, I have friends I can talk to). I made it pretty clear with my opening lines that thats why I was posting what I was posting.

Good writing is a matter of taste - I can take issue with the actual writing somewhere else - but i think its not controversial to say it had all the subtly of trying to portray the horror of being held at gunpoint with a clip of a gun being loaded and someone screaming don’t move or I’ll shoot. (this is slightly exaggerated for effect). The most pernicious forms of psychiatric abuse I suffered were never this straight forward (though I endured my fair share of dr. davids.) At least them I could identify. The oversimplification and the mixing of intrusive thoughts with how psychiatric abuse is actually perpetrated is going to be a matter of competing needs, probably. (It may very well help people. But the lady in the day hospital who grabbed my arm and told me i didn’t deserve love and then locked me in a room didn’t teach me to notice the more malicious and dangerous forms of psychiatric abuse I had before or after - it actually just gave me a false benchmark.)

Before season 5, statements were clearly one story, one experience with one aspect of the horror of things. They humanized the victim, they understood their mindset. Season 5 is more experimental and paints with a broader brush. So naturally it’s going to be different. Some things will work, some won’t. Some will work for some people and not for others.

I am not the first to note that some of season 5 goes right at trauma as horror in ways previous seasons did not and seemed to avoid. I am on record as saying I felt certain slaughter as war episodes always landed iffy on that. But this was over the line for me, and my reaction is valid, and I wanted to share it because I can’t imagine I’m the only one.

If this is what you and other psychiatric survivors needed and wanted, I am glad. You can’t know how glad I am that any of us are feeling seen and acknowledged when the current discourse is so adverse to talking about it.

But that doesn’t mean I think it was tactful or well done or the right way to handle it. This was not, however, an attempt to say that team TMA was trying purposefully to sneak some trigger unlabeled onto psychiatric abuse survivors or was intended maliciously. I just thing it was poorly done, and based on previous content from the podcast, I was disappointed in addition to feeling triggered and sick - which, as you said, they did warn far - and as I said, you have the issue of wanting very much to see this portrayed and knowing it is risky - I don’t have a solution for that.

This got long, sorry. Everyone is entitled to their reaction and critique. I’m glad you enjoyed it though and I hope you are well

I wasn’t going to post this but then it occurred to me that someone else might be feeling this way and feeling alone, so here it goes - spoilers for MAG177 - this is all salt and not positive about it, from the pov of someone who has been through this trauma that’s the basis for the episode. 

there is such a dearth of content about psychiatric abuse but if this magnus archives episode is how people think it should be covered i’d rather it stay the way it is. 

what made jonny sims think it was a good way to approach something as complex and sensitive as bad therapist gaslighting with the laziest mental health as horror aesthetic tropes and written in just a straight second person litany of triggering phrases? What happened to the magnus archives that approaches people with empathy? Where is the podcast that’s strength was getting into the heads of each statement giver and whose creator is on record as saying using people’s trauma as horror shlock is not a good idea?

It’s nice to see bad therapists acknowledged as a real thing by something as popular as this, but the way it was done? And so sloppily in the middle of an arc about police murder? I wish he’d just left it alone.

Like. If this makes other psychiatric abuse survivors feel seen, I’m glad. This isn’t to take away from that for you. We need more content. But we deserve better, more empathetic, more nuanced content than this.

I want to unpack this more, but I physically and mentally cannot. 

I don’t feel seen, I just feel sick. And not in the ‘good because its horror’ way. 

And if anyone else had that reaction, you aren’t alone. 

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I wasn’t going to post this but then it occurred to me that someone else might be feeling this way and feeling alone, so here it goes - spoilers for MAG177 - this is all salt and not positive about it, from the pov of someone who has been through this trauma that’s the basis for the episode. 

there is such a dearth of content about psychiatric abuse but if this magnus archives episode is how people think it should be covered i’d rather it stay the way it is. 

what made jonny sims think it was a good way to approach something as complex and sensitive as bad therapist gaslighting with the laziest mental health as horror aesthetic tropes and written in just a straight second person litany of triggering phrases? What happened to the magnus archives that approaches people with empathy? Where is the podcast that’s strength was getting into the heads of each statement giver and whose creator is on record as saying using people’s trauma as horror shlock is not a good idea?

It’s nice to see bad therapists acknowledged as a real thing by something as popular as this, but the way it was done? And so sloppily in the middle of an arc about police murder? I wish he’d just left it alone.

Like. If this makes other psychiatric abuse survivors feel seen, I’m glad. This isn’t to take away from that for you. We need more content. But we deserve better, more empathetic, more nuanced content than this.

I want to unpack this more, but I physically and mentally cannot. 

I don’t feel seen, I just feel sick. And not in the ‘good because its horror’ way. 

And if anyone else had that reaction, you aren’t alone. 

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this episode had some FASCINATING worldbuilding implications

like, the thing that was maxwell rayner died in the light, and manuela’s dark sun died in the archivist’s sight, and the people’s church of the divine host is no more than maybe a handful of scattered survivors

but callum, who was saved from the dark, turned out to be a bully, and the dark grew anew from his (human) fear and his (human) cruelty. no ancient beings needed. no terrible rituals. no supernatural books. he was becoming an avatar even before the apocalypse, that just… solidified it. gave him a domain.

(we focus so much on the avatars we already know, on jurgen leitner’s books, on robert smirke’s circles, that i think sometimes we forget the fears are not as categorized and codified as they seem. callum didn’t know shit about fourteen fear entities or complex plots or world-ending rituals. he was scared, and he wanted to scare others the same way, and at their heart that’s what the fears are about.)

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i've been saying this about some of the war episodes and the grenfell tower episode for a while. i haven't heard 172 but im bracing myself now. but like this isn't new.

the thing is that I just think that if you're gonna get your horror from real life things, it should be written for the people who experience these things and not for outsiders to feel bad about those people and at least from what I'm seeing in discord these last two eps were not It

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everyone’s like ‘jonny sims says fuck landlords’ 

well then why do they leave without killing arthur nolan, the landlord. 

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you, small brain, trying to portray michael magnusarchives with art: (scary blond man with hands who glitches a little)

me, a giant brain genius:

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gotta say i am. hm. maybe a little hmmm about how hmmm everyone seems to be about the new tma episode in the tma spoilers tag

it feels distasteful and i get that if that's what you have to do then whatever I guess but. this episode is almost certainly directly about grenfell tower. i watched that shit happening live on tv. it was highly unpleasant

i woke up to like a smoking blackened husk that didn't go out for three days. this is the only episode of this season I've found upsetting to listen to

I'm just pissed that uk issues never get seen in socialist discourse online. it just isn't talked about. like people in the tags are obviously discovering grenfell happened for the first time and fair play but the response we had as british people isn't talked about either - the residents of grenfell knew this was going to happen years before it happened and the country is still hurt over the fucking lackadaisical response our government had to it

people talk about our government like we're just lumped in with them like they're just observing us from afar, and then they make stupid jokes. like instead of treating us with solidarity and our country-specific issues with respect, they're just...events. viewed from afar. to be picked up and put down when it's convenient, or when it's time to make jokes about being British lmao!! so funny!!

so much fun to be trapped in this rotting country. so much fun to see your friends unable to get the right documents to work here, your family suffer working in an NHS that's had a decade of to-the-bone cuts, to not even really remember a time when you weren't living under a Tory government, because you're 21, and they've been here since you were 10.

i just can't meme about this episode the same because issues like grenfell? don't get coverage in online leftist discourse. so it just feels tacky because this episode was so clearly tied to that and it's...idk, it doesn't feel like it's gettin the same weight put on it.

this was an episode about horrible landlords and the real events that took place and continue to happen up and down, left and right. I can't really woobify it right now.

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so they made an episode about essentially the grenfell tower fire, a real actual trauma experienced by real actual people, without any added spooky horror, and then left without actually confronting the representative of bad landlords? 

i know tma has always dealt in real fears and by necessity brushed against real traumas, but in an early q&a jonny said he doesn’t write sexual assault trauma because he hates the idea of using it for entertainment horror. its a position i respect and agree with, but it makes it super weird when he does use real trauma for entertainment horror. it’s been an issue i’ve had with some of the slaughter war based episodes for a while. i figured by the summary going in, this was going to be the same with grenfell, and it was.

but i didn’t think they’d leave without at least confronting arthur nolan. sort of a weird choice for episode to make about jon’s own, as jude puts it, petty revenge quest and compensating power trip. i mean i know it had to be jude for plot reasons, but still. idk

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can’t believe im saying this but jude perry is correct. and proved so immediately after she dies when jon and martin leave the bad landlord domain without smiting the bad landlord. 

i mean she’s right even before hand bc jon just flat out admits he’s here not for justice or lessening torment, he’s here to drag martin through real pain and fear for revenge.

like he’s not even pretending its for any other reason going in, so everything jude says is spot on, he’s just doing desolation cult vengeance by murder stuff.

 but if there was any doubt, he proves it by leaving with Arthur Nolan still just kicking back in some penthouse watching the flames.

there’s no ‘Oliver Banks didn’t choose this any more than I did’ justification for  mr. ‘i find arson fun but freezing an old woman to death works too’. there’s not even the ‘I have to leave people in The Buried because I’m here for daisy and will never go back in again to try to rescue them later either’ excuse. 

he just came here for revenge for his own burnt hand, and left when he got it via murder. 

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i, uh... 

i think i found someone in the process of becoming an Avatar of The Buried. 

(on a random reddit thread. asking about lower back pain.)

[copy of text under the cut]

I shovel and dig every chance I get. If my wife leave me alone for even a minute, I'll find my way into the back yard with my pack of shovels getting into all sorts of holes. I can't even feel my back working anymore things are so easy for me in that cold earth. Pounds and pounds and tons and tons of Gaia's brown flesh shoveled to here and shoveled to there and back again and back again.

Ka-shhunk, FWHP! Ka-shhunk, FWHP! Ka-shhunk, FWHP!

Wanna get better at shoveling? Better at digging? Hit the gym and a load one of them barbells up but only on one side. Pick that baby off the ground a few dozen times like you're shoveling lead into the great mechanical mouves of the Jovian gods that will some day return to claim our souls. When they come, I'll be ready with shovel in hand and my back like a might oak tree. I shant disappoint these gods and they'll be well fed by my shovel.

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i love that Oliver had a whole book report prepared but when mr Archivist wanders into my domain, he’ll just open his mouth and blast 23 straight minutes of caramelldansen on repeat

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is oliver banks just iconic and extra like that or was he being iconic and extra in specifically that way because its the exact flavor of dramatic flair that jonah magnus goes gaga for. reports? with section headings? you naughty avatar of my greatest terror here to remind me i will never escape it, did you happen to bring... charts with that? 

what’s next, office supplies with ‘momento mori’ printed on it along with a very professional  company logo? 

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aND ANOTHER WEIRD THING ABOUT MICHAEL’S TIMELINE

So Gertrude started working at the institute in 1965 at the age of 25 or so. If Michael is old enough to have known Eric before Gerry was born, he would have met Gertrude when she was in her 40s and she would have been in her late 60s during the Spiral ritual.

But a big part of Michael going along was because he thought Gertrude was a harmless old lady who needs assistance. If he’s known her since she was younger, there was no way he didn’t see how smart Gertrude was. Emma kept him in the dark about the entities but he interacted with Gertrude on the daily. This also suggested a larger age gap than just twenty years.

Look, Johnny could have easily forgotten or changed his mind to have Michael be older and that would be fine by me, but something doesn’t sit right with me about Michael’s timeline.

And don’t even get me started on Agnes.

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@trektaalik​, who does not listen to TMA but has been known to accurately guess the entire Fear system and main metaplot points when given only vague spoilers, casually dropped a Grand Unified Theory of the entities one evening back February. With her permission and encouragement, I started writing it up to post, but caught hiatus-itis and didn’t finish it.

Which means now, you only have my word to go on that my sister may well be an prophet. In her words, “I would love to be the Punxsutawney Phil of Magnus Archives, while knowing as much about Magnus Archives as a groundhog knows about seasons.”

In light of Oliver Banks’ report that the world is now a closed system, dying without replenishing itself, my sister’s theory feels all the more likely to be true, so without further ado:

A Grand Unified Theory of Fear

The many Fears are in fact one singular parasitic Fear, which organically evolves and specializes to fill niches in the system from which it feeds. It undergoes a life cycle, starting as the most basic and generalized of fear, expanding and specializing as its host (Earth, at the moment) evolves, and ending with the Extinction. When its host becomes extinct, it collapses back down to its smallest, most basic form once again “like a little tardigrade of terribleness” (@trektaalik​), effectively dormant, and either waits for new life to evolve in the same place, or seeks it out elsewhere. This cycle likely has repeated many times before, and will again (if it survives the show) when it’s done with humanity. 

This life cycle can be divided into four stages:

Nascence

Specialization and expansion

Host extinction

Dormancy 

At our current point in TMA, Fear has left the specialization/expansion stage and has entered host extinction.

Keep reading

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i, for one, want to see the man who is not there’s domain. everyone and everything just isn’t and thats really really distressing. dissociation panic station. do i vibe with that or am i so scared of that that i might end up there? who can say

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i refuse to admit im posting meta on tumblr again. i am not. i said i wouldn’t so i am not