#TMA Meta

[gammija]

nothing personal but this kind of comment rlly exemplifies to me a disconnect between canon and popular fanon jmart characterization because they almost literally had this conversation in canon - except, their lines are swapped!

jon, for all his scared grouchiness, is a secret romantic, while martin, for all his forced optimism, is at his core a pragmatist

[sherlocks-freebitch]

As much as I love the headcanons of TMAGP jmart locking eyes across the street, and having an infinitely brief moment before being cruelly swept away from each other, I'm even more in love with the idea of them crossing paths and never clocking each other at all. Maybe they bumped into each other outside a Tesco, both mumbling apologies and avoiding eye contact. Maybe one of them worked in a call centre and the other called up to complain about his phone contract. Maybe one had to squeeze past the other to get off a packed tube. How many people do we cross paths with in the course of our lives who could mean everything to us, if the circumstances were different? How many connections do we miss?

[geodebiome]

i like tma meta because season 1-4 is just like well that magnus can archive i guess. and then mag 160 is like OH OKAY THAT MAGNUS CAN ARCHIVE. I GUESS. and then s5 is like How Do We Stop The Magnus From Archiving. and now protocol? seems to also ask the question How Do We Stop The Magnus From Archiving

[orchidbreezefc]

ok. years have passed and we've had some distance, so i'm finally gonna take the leap of faith that tma fandom is finally ready to hear me on this. let's talk about tannins.

161 was the first tma episode i heard on early release, and i felt the bit where martin declines wine and cites tannins was pretty obvious in its implications. cool, got it, say no more.

imagine my surprise when i was one of maybe three people i saw read between the lines there, in a fandom famous for red stringing--a fandom that immediately caught the much less obvious thread of ignition sources in the same episode. i'll spell it out: alcohol is an issue for martin.

maybe it just felt obvious because addiction is a pet issue for me--as it is for jonny, who has said everything he writes is filtered through a lens of addiction. i don't know if that's due to his own experience or a loved one's, and i won't speculate; i also don't know if martin personally struggled with drinking or just avoids it for fear he would, but alcohol would fit what we know of his family. his dad walking out and his mum spiralling into bitter wallowing and verbal abuse? i'd bet one or both of them drank, yeah.

on a basic level martin tries to decline alcohol, and that alone should have raised eyebrows given what we know of martin and, again, a fandom that dissects everything. we already knew martin "K" blackwood lied about his personal life and his family in particular, especially pre-canon, which is when this flashback took place. i was shocked that everyone took his flimsy excuse at face value with no further questions.

and the excuse is flimsy. martin turns down wine by--nervously--exclaiming tannins are "a proven headache trigger!" which sounds like trivia from a magazine cover and not the words of someone who actually has headaches--and it hasn't come up before or since. jon, confused, points out that tea, a drink martin consumes to a degree that is memetic both in- and out-of-universe, also contains tannins, and martin squawks a panicked, "what?!"

if tannins are enough of a concern for martin that he knew they're in wine and so avoids it, why didn't he know they're in his drink of choice? why does he still drink tea at the time of canon, and why doesn't he struggle with constant headaches from consuming 'a proven headache trigger' day in and day out? why, indeed, would someone avoid wine and not tea?

when sasha insists martin drink he caves and agrees to 'just a drop'. i imagine him pouring it in a plant, which admittedly he could have done if tannins really were the issue. i will say that i, for one, would be less likely to falsely agree to something that makes me physically ill than to a private issue that i'd rather not be pressed on any further. this scene also establishes martin's birthday was an ice cream party instead of the more traditional visit to a pub.

also, this scene was in the first episode of the final season, as one of three flashbacks that could have been to any pre-canon event in the archives. prime narrative real estate. not really time one would waste on establishing the important character context that martin has... headaches. which never comes up before or after, even regarding the week he spent in spiral town. but you know what is pretty crucial character background...?

it felt like a no-brainer, and yet all i saw was h/c fluff about jon attending to martin's headaches. and i hate feeling bitter about disability representation. i want folks with chronic headaches to feel seen and have fluffy escapist fantasies. i don't want to be mad about people portraying a character with a disability. but, guys? you got the wrong disability. jonny sent a clear message, and it went over fandom's head.

[cult-of-the-eye]

You hover your mouse over me and three dialogue options appear:

That happened in the Magnus archives once

Augh

Oh cool!

[regainingparadise]

Writing from Elias’ POV is immensely fun, because he somehow manages to be both an omniscient narrator (able to give insight into other people’s motivations and emotions) and an unreliable narrator (all that insight is filtered through his own ego and focus)

[theendorisit]

Every time Jonny and Alex try and write a scary monster.

[late-to-the-magnus-archives]

This guy gets it

(Comment on YouTube MAG 111)

[thermodynamic-comedian]

i really really like how michael and helen represent two sides of the spiral.

michael speaks slowly, emphasizing everything, giving you the idea that he's lying to you, but you're never quite sure. and that's the fear. that your own mind is lying to you, that you're going insane, that you can't trust anything you believe. this fear was present in michael shelley's life very prominently, from his childhood all the way to the very nature of his death.

after a while, though, helen speaks with confidence and certainty, leaving no room for doubt, you know she's lying. you know she is. but you can't prove it. and that, too, is the fear. that you're right, but nobody will ever believe you. that it's all fake, everything society is built on is fake and you're the only one who knows. and i feel like the little bit that we know about helen richardson also embodies this fear: she was a real estate agent, a very stereotypically deceptive job. i don't think it's far-fetched to say she probably lied quite a lot to her clients, all while aware of the reality of the situation herself. the idea of being the only one who knows just how fake everything is but never being able to tell anyone.

i think it's so cool that they both became the source of the fear that marked their lives.

[phynoma]

It has been brought to my attention that people might be interested in the research I've done for Magnus stuff (I frequently go on research dives and assume it's of interest to no one but me 😅)

[hezekiahwakely]

Jon's introductions to every statement are really funny on a meta level. The fact that he introduces himself by full name and title every single time on a recording. Like yeah, makes sense from the immersion perspective and all, but from an audience viewpoint it's like. Yeah buddy. We know who you are, Jon. I think we'll know who you are just by voice now. But no, our best friend Jonathan Sims Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London must stick to his routine and to the bit. And we love him for it.

[grahamfolgersdeliciousnotebooks]

Thinking about Jon’s time with the Circus again. Thinking about what a month spent in a refrigerated warehouse would do (because it would have to be refrigerated, wouldn’t it? it’s meant to store waxworks), just how cold his skin would be. Do you think it even still felt like his skin? Do you think his fingers brushed the skin of his arm and felt only the inhuman chill of wax, and his arm received the touch of his hand and felt only the dead press of plastic?

Thinking about how thoroughly his time with the Stranger would have made him a stranger to himself.

[two-pupils]

I swear half the time I see posts on here I wonder if people even listened to the same podcast.

Constantly people argue about who would have made a better Archivist while completely missing what the Archivist’s actual role was:

Firstly, Gertrude was not a good Archivist. In fact, her being shit at it was a major plot point. She purposefully left the Archives disorganized to try and stop whatever Jonah was planning. She didn’t like using her compelling powers. She was good at stopping rituals. That isn’t the Archivist’s duty, she just took that on herself. We don’t really know who was ‘stopping’ rituals before her, though we can assume Jonah was at least invested in doing so until he figured out they didn’t work. (I’m also assuming rituals could not happen very often, with perhaps centuries between.)

A good Archivist would be nothing like Gertrude… she wanted to appoint Sasha because she could see they were like-minded and maybe we could extrapolate that Sasha would have gone a similar route in being obstructive to Jonah’s plans

A “good” Archivist would be someone who directly embraced the Eye and willingly took as many live statements as they wanted. I think we can say Jon was decent at the role comparatively.

Do not get being a good Archivist and being good at undermining Jonah’s plans( and the plot of the show) mixed up. Argue all you want about whether x character would have fallen for the ritual… but don’t say they would have been a good Archivist. Because you’re arguing for the opposite

[ashes-in-a-jar]

A fun theory

In this brilliant post, op shows how Jane Prentiss encounters and mentions all 14 Fears, describing them as though she deeply understands them all from within her corrupted lens. Op calls it an early hint in the narrative to the Fears and their role in the world but I want to posit an in-world theory.

I think that part of the reason the Web sent a spider to cause Jon to break the wall and lead Jane to act earlier than she wanted was because Jane's rudimentary ritual to bring the Corruption to the world (through the circle of worms which Tim later found) would have actually worked in bringing all the Fears because Jane was already marked by all of them and was now in a place of power (the tunnels under the institute) and ready to incubate and create a corruption-based apocalypse.

This is something that the Web did not plan for and would not be able to control, because, as Jon said in episode 152, "what did Elias call it? – Filth. I don’t think it really plans much. It just starts to grow wherever it can get a foothold, and, if no one stamps it out in time… game over." The Web has no control over a thing that doesn't plan and had to "stamp it out" before it caused a "game over" by derailing all its schemes of a controlled eyepocalypse, ruled by its puppets (Jon and Jonah).

[cult-of-the-eye]

A vast avatar weather reporter who describes storms as if they're in love with them

[regainingparadise]

I love Jared Hopworth. So many of the Avatars we really get to know are part of these lineages or cults that are trying to end the world for their gods. Jon and Elias with the institute, the cult of the Lightless Flame all working together to raise Agnes and bring about the apocalypse. Maxwell Raynor taking bodies, the Fairchild family choosing members, the Lukases creating the most dysfunctionally lonely family, other Flesh avatars making pits of evil meat.

And then there’s Jared, who’s just like, “nah. I found a book, don’t care where it came from. I’m gonna fuck up people’s bodies for money. Mostly consensually, sometimes for the mafia. Have fun with your god or whatever idk. Wanna buy a gym membership?”