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douglysium · 5 months

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The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss

*Content warning: This article is about a horror podcast with Entities embodying fears. So it will go over and portray common fears and scary imagery such as violence, being watched, body horror, etc..

Intro

If you want to read this article on Google Docs you can do so here(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-Z4dAyCCDMsfNPGlBG23mDfOFxqWYwjZ9JWQW6JwM4Y/edit).

I love Magic the Gathering, but MTG isn’t the only thing I want to make articles about. At the end of the day I prefer to make articles about whatever I find interesting to help prevent artblock and appeal to a wider variety of people. While I’ve written a decent handful of MTG articles, at the time of writing this, I have only written one article about the Magnus Archives and the Extinction. Which you could read on Tumblr here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/717929126195003392/what-would-avatars-of-the-extinction-be-like-a) and on Google Docs here(What would Avatars of the Extinction be like?: A TMA Speculation). The lack of TMA articles isn’t due to lack of trying though. Originally, I was going to make a series talking about the fears the powers embody and how that relates to each of their artifacts and imagery. The only problem is that it didn’t feel special. I have a personal rule that if I am writing about something it usually needs at least one aspect that makes it different and more appealing than just listening to someone read out a Wikipedia article.

Luckily for us, I have found that thing. For I have been struck by a bolt of inspiration from videos of one by the name of Afton G. Kier(The Eye Explained (The Magnus Archives Entities)) in which he mentions some of the notable relationships between the entities. One thing I think is rarely talked about in regards to the Dread Powers is how they are all connected, and all their similarities. Some fans have a habit of trying to see each entity as wholly distinct and separate from each other but the TMA podcast itself goes through great lengths to show us that this is not the case.

In MAG 80 (The Librarian) Leitner compares the Entities as being but pieces of a larger body: “Imagine, you are an ant, and you have never before seen a human. Then one day, into your colony, a huge fingernail is thrust, scraping and digging. You flee to another entrance, only to be confronted by a staring eye gazing at you. You climb to the top, trying to find escape and, above you, can see the vast dark shadow of a boot falling upon you. Would that ant be able to construct these things into the form of a single human being? Or would it believe itself to be under attack by three different, equally terrible, but very distinct assailants?” Meanwhile in MAG 111 Gerard compares them to colors: “I always think it helps to imagine them like colours. The edges bleed together, and you can talk about little differences: “oh, that’s indigo, that’s more lilac”, but they’re both purple. I mean, I guess there are technically infinite colours, but you group them together into a few big ones. A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, why are navy blue and sky blue both called blue, when pink’s an entirely different colour from red? Y’know? I don’t know, that’s just how it works. And like colours, some of these powers, they feed into or balance each other. Some really clash, and you just can’t put them together. I mean, you could see them all as just one thing, I guess, but it would be pretty much meaningless, y’know, like… like trying to describe a… shirt by talking about the concept of colour.”

If I were to make my own analogy by bouncing off Gerard's, I’d compare the entities to the electromagnetic spectrum and light. Each entity is essentially a “wavelength” or “color” but they are all part of the wider spectrum. If we were to use visible light as an example each Dread Power is but one or more colors of light that make up white light, and white light is every color of light mixed together. The point here is that each fear is in truth but a piece of something larger. Not to mention that they often overlap or are fed by similar fears or actions It is important to mention that Gerard and Jon also go on to state “O-Of course, with these things it’s not a simple spectrum, y’know, it’s more like –An infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once.” So while I would personally argue the Dread Powers still sit on a sort of spectrum, the spectrum in question is a lot more soupy and amorphous than a simple color wheel. I myself have made a graph detailing which Dread Powers I think are closer or more synergistic with each other than others but technically every power is connected to each other in some way, and I figured the best way to get my point across is by looking at how each fear overlaps. But in order to properly do that we must fully understand each Entity and all their nuances starting with the great all-seeing Beholding itself.

Also, each individual article will focus on one Dread Power and their relationship with each entity. This article will focus on the Eye, and each entity will get their own article in the future.

The Eye

Before we can dive into some of the comparisons and contrasts between the Eye and the other Entities, we must first define the Eye by understanding the fear it embodies and some of the imagery associated with it.

The Eye is an entity that is stated to have been born from, and feed off of, the fear of being watched, exposed, followed, of having secrets known, but also the drive to know and understand, even if your discoveries might destroy you. Getrude also mentions it feeds off the fear of being judged in MAG 161(Dwelling). With entities such as this, some of the fears may seem random or not quite connected to each other so I thought it would help to try to find not only what connects all these together but boil them down to their core essence. This is surprisingly easy since the fears of most Entities can usually be connected by very basic words or phrases.

Basically, it appears that the Eye revolves around fears that have to do with knowledge. Whether that be the fear of someone knowing about you, someone attempting to understand something about you, or the fear of coming across a piece of knowledge you would rather not know. One way this can manifest is by something trying to reveal or gather knowledge about you. Which can be done in ways such as watching someone, exposing their secrets, listening to private conversations, etc. This is also where I think the whole following aspect of the Eye comes from. It’s the idea that someone is observing you, which is a form of gathering information, for any sort of purposes. When we think of why someone would be following someone / something else it is usually connected to information. Maybe they are trying to follow you to your house, maybe they are trying to see if you go to a place where they KNOW you’re alone, or maybe they are just trying to spy on you. Typically, when someone is following you they are either gathering information or waiting for the right moment to strike (which also involves getting information.

The Eye’s theme of being exposed also connects to what Gertrude said in regards to it and the fear of being judged. If you are being judged then something is not only watching and / or paying attention to you but they are also trying to understand you or expose who / what you are. A lot of the time, when we are being judged, people are looking for faults and shortcomings or something they can exploit. Which is something that many find scary. There is also the fact that if someone is judging you then they could come across some fact about you that you don’t want them to know about (Imagine if someone went through your house to appraise how clean it was just to point out how dirty it is or if they found something you hid). Someone judging you may also be looking for something bad to do to you. Maybe they noticed how valuable your jewelry is and are thinking about stealing it now.

Something that I feel many miss is that the Eye not only focuses on the fear of someone / something gaining / exposing knowledge and secrets about you but also the idea of forbidden or cursed knowledge. In essence, there are some things that people don’t want to know about, something that the TMA wiki lists as “horrible knowledge.” This kind of fear also feeds the Eye, it's the reason why Jonah Magnus can shove information into people’s minds. Has anyone ever told you some weird disgusting fun fact that you didn’t need or want to know? Have you ever heard the phrase “ignorance is bliss,” “out of sight out of mind,” or “what you don’t know can’t hurt you?” Have you ever seen something that you wish you didn’t and just want to forget about, or maybe you just walked in on your naked grandma? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/752Tb059OH8

There is also the stereotypical setup where someone witnesses a murder and immediately realizes that they weren’t supposed to see that and by merely knowing what they just saw a target has been put on their head. There are people who really don’t want you to know stuff and if they realize you know it you might be in trouble. These are all things that connect to aspects of the Eye.

What I’m trying to get across with all these examples is that knowledge in and of itself can be scary and a burden. Something that in turn feeds the Eye. This is also why we have weird Eye related statements like the one in MAG 23 where one by the name of Albrecht von Closen sees a man with missing eyes. To some of the more astute viewers this seems pretty weird. Usually, the lack of eyes or missing eyes is associated with the Dark because it has to do with blindness and being unable to see. However, while it is stated that the man in question could seemingly still see clearly (which is what made it weird), I believe that when the Eye takes away someone’s eyes it has to do with the idea that the person in question saw something that they weren’t supposed to or didn’t want to know. That whatever they saw and knew led to them getting put in danger either physically or mentally. Either that or the idea that someone would rather go blind and remain in ignorance than see / know something.

Imagine witnessing something so terrible it makes you want to claw your own eyes out. I think many can also relate to the idea of wanting to ignore a problem or not even think about it instead of addressing it. There’s also the idea of some sort of forbidden knowledge that can drive you mad as a common trope in horror.

Connected to this point is the drive to know and understand, even if your discoveries might destroy you. What this basically refers to is sometimes we want to know something even if we know it might hurt us. Think of wanting to know what happened to a loved one or friend even if you know what you are about to hear is going to be terrible, or being unable to look away from a horrific accident or brutal violence uploaded onto the internet even though it traumatizes you. The Eye has a big “curiosity killed the cat” and “ignorance is bliss” theme that I think a lot of people overlook. Something that is also reflected in what we learn in regards to the Eye’s creation in MAG 200(Last Words). When we learn in what order the Fears were born and the fears that led to their creation we get this: “and struggle at learning, so too did they learn to fear that their eyes might deceive them, or show them too much.” Here the “fear that their eyes might deceive them” is the Spiral while the fear of being shown too much is the Eye since none of the other fears mentioned in that statement match up with the Eye and clearly correspond with the other Entities.

Names

A lot of what I am talking about can be seen with the Eye’s name. Of course, the most common name we hear for it, “the Eye,” has to do with the idea that if one or more eyes are looking at you they are probably watching you. Not to mention there’s the idea of you witnessing something terrible with your own eyes or being forced to watch something. Eyes are also symbolically often connected with insight, truth, and knowledge (such as the idea of the “mind’s eye”). Which stems from how heavily humans rely on their sight and eye contact for all sorts of things, and to help understand the world around us. Also, some cultures see the idea of not making eye contact with someone as not acknowledging them or acting like you have something to hide. All this is also why the Eye’s influence manifests as eyes so often and why it dips into ommetaphobia (the fear of eyes). But let’s look at some of the Eye’s other names.

The name “It Knows You” stems from the idea that the Eye revolves around the fear of information and knowing things that you don’t want other people to know. It also adds the idea that it is extremely difficult if not impossible to hide from its metaphorical gaze. It may even know more about you than you do about yourself. Basically, it knows who you are even if you don’t know what it is.

There is also “The Ceaseless Watcher.” This mostly just ties into the fact that the Eye is almost always watching and, as mentioned before, hiding from it is nearly impossible. It is always watching. Which means it sees your private moments, embarrassing secrets, is there when you think you’re alone, etc..

Then there is “The Beholding.” Which is personally my favorite name for the Eye. Beholding is the present participle form of the word behold which means to “see or observe (a thing or person, especially a remarkable or impressive one).” The emphasis on observing ties in very nicely with the Eye and its fear of being watched and observed. Behold also fits very nicely with the Entity’s themes of dangerous / forbidden knowledge and things you don’t want to know or see. If I yell “BEHOLD!!!” and show you an object then I am trying to get your attention and I’m basically asking you to look at what I’m showing off. I want you to see and witness it (basically I am trying to get you to behold something).

Symbology

The wiki lists some of the Eye’s common symbols as eyes (of course), books, libraries, security cameras, tape recorders and a figure that keeps constant watch. One thing to note is that technically any of the Dread Powers can manifest as just about anything and use any number of symbols as long as it generates the corresponding fear they crave. It is even pointed out by Jurgen Leitner in MAG 80 that it's not usually about what imagery, action, or object specifically being used by an entity to gather fear but rather how it’s being used. Don’t get caught up in the what but the why. If supernatural bones are being used it could be to remind you of your death and mortality and / OR your flesh being harvested and devoured. When it comes to the manifestations of the fears and the abilities they can grant this is not supposed to be a hard set in stone list telling you what kind of stuff the Eye can or cannot manifest as. A lot of the stuff regarding the fears is fluid.

I’m going to skip over talking about the eye and eyeless symbology because I already went over it in “The Eye” section, so let’s go over books. The thing about books is that basically every entity has a strong connection to them due to the existence of leitners. I mean I guess you could argue books are important to the Eye because books are often associated with knowledge and information. Reading a book can let you know about something. Furthermore, people can put stuff they don’t want others to know about in things like diaries or even purposefully make the book public to expose something / someone. There are also books people don’t want to read due to the contents that are contained within. Something that is only heightened by the fact leitners exist. Just randomly picking up and reading any leitner you come across is a bad idea, since whatever you read might literally hurt or distort you in some way, which ties in with the Eye’s themes of forbidden or dangerous knowledge and the desire to know something even if it could hurt you.

Leitners

“Old Crumbling Book With No Library Markings”

I figured it would also be cool to go over some of the books individually. First is the book that appears in MAG 193, “A Stern Look.” The book itself gets no name but the wiki lists it as “Old crumbling book with no library markings.” While the pages appear blank to Elias Bouchard when it was read by Allan Schrieber he claims that something saw him through the pages and was coming for him. Going as far as to say he could see it in every mirror, every distant doorway, a silhouette on every skyline. Coming closer and closer each time, finding its way towards him, step by step. What is most interesting about it is that this thing Allan is describing has no eyes and must feel its way towards him. However he says that “it knows.”

For the sake of clarity it is never directly stated which power this crumbling book belongs to. However, the Eye and the Dark are most likely. The Dark has a tendency to steal eyes as a way to render people blind or trap them in darkness. However, I would argue that there is a way higher chance that this book belongs to the Eye. For one, Allan puts great emphasis on the fact that the thing saw him through the book. Not only that but it is stalking him, with stalking and following being a fear the Eye feeds off of, and there’s also the fact that he emphasizes the fact that “...it knows. It knows” despite it having no eyes. Which is similar to the strange man related to the Eye Albrecht von Closen sees in MAG 23. A person who also had no eyes but could still see. There’s also the fact that Allan or the creature don’t seem to have anything to do with darkness or the night. While the creature is blind there is no emphasis on Allan losing his vision and the creature appears basically everywhere (not just in the dark, shadows, or at night). Not that something relating to the Dark couldn’t appear in well lit areas, it’s just that I don’t think the emphasis is on darkness here.

Considering the statement in question also involves how Jonah stole Elias’ body, I would not be surprised if from a narrative perspective the leitner was tied to the Eye for that reason. For example, Elias having had a close encounter with the Eye via his friend could make him a more appealing target for Jonah’s body snatching, but that is just speculation. I also think that, as I went over, the creature Allan describes lacking Eyes could relate to themes of forbidden knowledge. As it is the act of reading the book out of curiosity and “knowing” its contents that causes the thing in question to start following him. While this can technically apply to a lot of leitners, what I think the figure is supposed to hammer home is that Allan saw something he wasn’t supposed to see.

Of course, there’s only so much I can say since we don’t know if the creature actually does anything to Allan besides follow him. If I had to put my theory hat on and write a little fanfiction my guess would be that maybe there was something on the pages when Allan read it. That thing being the creature itself. So when Allan read it the creature “saw” Allan and “escaped” leaving the pages blank by the time Elias saw them. Continuing with this speculation I postulate that there are two possible things that happen with this creature. 1, It keeps following you around and scaring you as it gets infinitely closer or 2, it eventually reaches its target and takes the original reader’s eyes. But, once again, that is mere speculation and I have no idea what it would or could do once it got those eyes. Maybe it just leaves the target blind or maybe the target is forced to witness the creature stalk other people(who knows).

“Security Camera Instruction Manual”

Next there is one of the more talked about Leitners. Like with the last one it doesn’t technically have an official title but the wiki refers to it as just the “Security Camera Instruction Manual.” This book appeared in MAG 148 (Extended Surveillance) and it is described as being a CCTV manual that was a yellowed, water-damaged, and well-used pamphlet that couldn’t have been more than ten pages of A5. Someone had even put their name on the front of the book as if they were afraid someone would steal it. According to Sunil Maraj, when the book was read by their co-worker Samson Stiller a couple of weird things happened. Samson got weirdly obsessed with it and even though he had found it at 10 in the morning he was still just staring at it, reading it, at 2:00pm and he just couldn’t put it down. Then when Sunil caught a glimpse of some of the pages within the manual one of them had a black and white picture of Sunil themselves on it. Which should have been impossible considering how old the manual itself was, and when the manual and the camera system were made Sunil would have been a baby.

After this Samson looked up at Sunil and Sunil was spooked by the fact that Samson’s eyes were glassy. While Sunil wanted to write it off as a dream, things kept getting weirder and weirder. Samson would always be at work staring at the monitors, watching people come and go, with his eyes wide like he was drinking it all in. It was so bad that the dude never even left work. Sunil attempted to stay and watch him leave at some point but Samson just got really quiet and stared at them. While Samson kept staring, Sunil attempted to talk with him. Meanwhile, the bank of monitors to the security system the manual was for sat right behind Samson. One by one, each of these monitors would go dark. Sunil describes a feeling in their gut telling them that if the last monitor turned off then something really bad would happen to them.

Due to the monitors being part of one of those big and bulky old CRT sets the picture that they displayed was usually never that clear. But in that moment, Sunil caught a glimpse of a picture of himself in the monitor staring back with a terrified expression with a perspective that kept getting closer and closer as the screens continued to go black. The terror displayed on the monitor became something that Sunil themselves began to fear, causing them to leave as quickly as he could while their legs were shaking.

Then there were the actual cameras present in the shopping center this all took place at. Because Sunil worked security he knew where all the cameras were, as well as where they covered and where they moved. Most of the cameras were completely static and just pointed at one place. However, overtime while shopping Sunil would feel a tickling, creeping sensation all over the back of their neck. As if he was being watched. So he started to keep this eyes on the camera and noticed that the cameras were following them, always focused right on him. Whenever Sunil moved the camera would follow him despite the fact that they aren’t articulated, meaning that they lacking any motor or swivel mount that would allow them to physically turn or move. At one point, when no one was looking, Sunil threw a can of deodorant at one of the cameras and hit it square on. Coincidentally, Samson would wear sunglasses for the next two days and when Sunil managed to catch a glimpse of Samson without them there was a visible crack right down the center of his eye. When Sunil tried to talk about all the strange events with some of the others at the store they clammed up as if Sunil was trying to get them in trouble.

Then Sunil took a break from work and during that week Samson disappeared someone named Dave called Sunil very frantically, repeatedly asking things like if Sunil “knew” or if Sunil “told him.” Sunil didn’t understand what he was talking about but Dave kept screaming asking things like “what do we do with his eyes?” before breaking down sobbing and saying “He won’t stop” and “we can’t get rid of his face.” Long story short after that Sunil never saw Samson in person again but he did find his work shirt in the back of the store. It was torn to shreds and wrapped around the Security Camera Instruction Manual. Sunil took the liberty of putting the book back in the cabinet and throwing away the shirt. Sunil tried to stick around at his job but he was asking too many questions for his bosses. He also wanted to know why Samson hadn’t signed out of the building’s system before he disappeared but no matter who tried to reset it the system always logged back in as Samson. Whenever Sunil was watching the CRT screen he would see Samson staring right back, quietly calling them to join him.

Holy shit, that was a lot more writing and recapping then I would have liked but now we can begin with the analysis. Most of this is ridiculously on the nose. The cameras connected to the leitner obviously tie into the fear of being watched or surveillance. Something we see by Sunil being watched constantly and how his coworkers become paranoid (Samson is essentially stalking his coworkers while they are in the store). I would venture to guess that the reason their coworkers just clammed up as if Sunil was trying to get them in trouble was because they were afraid of being watched and that by extension Samson would catch them.

I don’t think it's ever directly stated what the leitner does but the TMA wiki says “An instruction manual for a security camera aligned with The Eye that has images of its readers within it. After reading it extensively, the reader becomes part of the security system, every camera feeling like an eye of the reader looking back at them. If read too extensively, the manual leads to a disastrous end for its readers.” I would say that this is pretty accurate and the idea that Samson became fused with the camera system somehow is pretty likely considering that the damage done to the cameras seems to correspond to his own body and Dave’s freak out when asking how to get rid of Samson’s eyes and face (something that I assume had to do with the cameras and/or their monitors). There’s also the fact that Samson mysteriously disappears and Sunil proceeds to see his face in the monitors (which to me implies that Samson has become either literally or metaphorically fused with the camera system(probably both)). However, these are all very surface-level.

Remember how I mentioned one of the Eye’s themes was forbidden knowledge and things you don’t want to know about? Well, this can be seen here. Firstly, with Samson and the cameras themselves. We are told “There was only one piece of equipment that seemed to give him any trouble. It was this old Tecton multicamera recorder from the late 80s, managed the feeds for one of the various budget shoe shops that lined the promenade.” Samson was pretty knowledgeable about the camera systems and the only camera system that gave Samson any trouble was the one connected to the Leitner. It was the one system that he didn’t seem to know how to work. This is when we are told “Sam spent almost a whole month wrestling with it, before he finally cracked and he asked Dave – the bearded old guy who we all sort of assumed had been there the longest? – whether they still had any of the old operating manuals” and “I mean, I’d have just left it, obviously, but I think Samson was taking the whole knowing how the system works thing as like – a point of pride? Something he could salvage from the whole situation. Just a way of getting some control over his life, you know?” I want to emphasize Samson’s desire to know and understand here.

This concept is a bit hard to explain but let me try. So you know how the Hunt sort of gets people to give into the thrill and adrenaline of chasing and catching things. We sometimes see the Eye do something similar, but instead of hunting it's looking for information or sticking your nose in people’s business. The Eye sort of beckons people with the promise of knowledge or answers quite often. Basically, Samson becomes obsessed with knowing how the camera system works and how to fix them which leads him to coming across dangerous knowledge that ends up hurting him. Upon reading this Samson not only becomes part of the system and begins to generate fear for the Eye by watching his coworkers but I imagine no one who witnessed that wants to read that book (which is shown when Sunil puts it back in the cabinet). Samson himself also beckons people to look for the same knowledge when Sunil sees him in the monitors at night. There’s also the scene where Sunil confronts Samson and all the monitors begin to wink off and Sunil sees his own face in the monitor looking terrified and freaks out before leaving. This once again ties in with the Eye’s themes of forbidden knowledge. The idea being that Sunil didn’t want to know what was about to happen if he stayed, and knowing what happened probably would have led to something disastrous either directly or indirectly. Basically, if Sunil stayed there it was very likely it would have been a “curiosity killed the cat” moment. There is also a cruel irony in that Samson probably did end up learning how the security system worked even if the answer was probably supernatural and got him bound to it.

“Small Grey Book”

This brings us to our next Leitner. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of info on it but fortunately, that means I don’t need to recap a lot. This one was mentioned in MAG 091 (The Coming Storm) as one of the books obtained by Michael Crew. It took the form of a small gray book and while Michael couldn’t read it due to the fact that it was written in Cyrillic it attempted to read him back so he buried it on a lonely stretch of moorland. All we have on it is this dialogue “I spent some time with a small grey volume, I think it was in Cyrillic, that decided it was at home amongst my bookshelves. I couldn’t read it, of course, but… when it tried to read me back, I buried it on a lonely stretch of moorland..”

It isn’t officially stated what entity this leitner is aligned with but I would probably guess the Eye based on what information we do have on it and the idea of “something trying to read you back” focuses on the Eye’s themes of being exposed and / or seen and known. It’s not impossible for it to be aligned with another entity but I would be very surprised unless some more information about the book comes out. There is no wondering if the book is actually watching you to hint any relation to the Spiral, or that something is looking to hunt you in relation to the Hunt, or focus on the idea that Michael didn’t know what was trying to read him in relation to the Stranger, so on and so forth. He knew it was the book trying to read him and got rid of it, which makes me lean very firmly into the idea that the book probably belonged to the Eye.

Still, since there is so little information on the book I thought it would be fun to put my theorist / fanfiction cap on for this one. So what could this book be like? Well, I would postulate that as you read the book when the book reads you back it begins to write about you on its pages like some sort of weird cursed and fucked up diary. I think that Crew saying he buried it when it tried to read him could refer to the fact that maybe while it started off being in Cyrillic it somehow began to change slowly. Integrating information and secrets about Crew into it. During this process, it's possible that even if you can’t read Cyrillic the book might still be “watching” you as it “reads” you so you get the sense that something is happening with it. Imagine walking by your bookshelf and getting the feeling that something is watching you.

There’s also the possibility that the book tries to merge with the reader sort of like how the camera system and Samson merged. In the case of this gray book though the merging could probably lead to all the things and secrets you know being put into the pages of the book allowing other people to uncover them and read them with you being unable to do anything about it or revealing things you know about your friends or family. If the book became too attached to you in this way it is possible that you might be unable to destroy it and the information it contains within you without hurting yourself like with Samson and the camera system.

Other Artifacts

While we are done with the Leitners specifically I figured it would be nice to give some of the other artifacts a fair shake.

Hand Mirror

First up is the hand mirror that appears in MAG 060 (Observer Effect). Rosa Meyer finds this mirror and a handwritten note while looking through Christopher Meyer’s stuff after he died. The note simply said “BEHIND YOU” in all capital letters and Rosa proceeded to turn around only to find that nothing was there. So they shrugged it off and picked up the mirror. The mirror was heavier than expected and seemed to be gold, or at least gold-plated. The glass was also a bit grimy but intact. There were no clues in regards to the time period it was made or where Christopher got it, but Rosa does refer to the mirror as “this ancient hand mirror” at some point. She then looks into the mirror and sees how much of a mess she is. But as she begins to check the next box the mirror shifts in her hand slightly and with this new angle she could see a face staring in from the window behind her staring in through the mirror. Rosa is unable to describe much about the features of this figure other than the fact that it was dark outside and the figure in question was almost completely in shadow and it was huge, appearing to take up most of the window behind her. The only thing she could make out clearly was its eyes. Which she describes being “bright, shining, bulging eyes, with pupils so dark it made me feel sick, drinking everything in, watching with a greedy intensity.” Rosa could feel the unblinking gaze of this creature burning into the back of her neck. Startled by this, and muscles locking in terror, the mirror falls out of her hand and shatters on the floor.

However, this does not seem to undo or lessen the effects of this mirror as Rosa still felt like she was under constant scrutiny and observation. This ended up having a negative effect on her health because she had trouble doing things like concentrating and sleeping since she felt like she was unsafe and constantly being watched. In typical horror fashion, it appears that Rosa is the only one who saw it and the only one who can feel this creature’s presence. At first, she assumed it was a human stalker, which she has had before, but this would turn out not to be the case. Rosa comments that the strange thing she is she should be used to this due to presenting the Look East segment for BBC News and she would try to imagine the thousands of people watching her when on air. But even then the camera was no more than a dead, empty lens and it was not the same as what was happening with the mirror. She mentions having no idea what the figure wants and if it just wants to scare her, hates her, etc.. Rosa puts new glass into the mirror but the mirror functions like any other mirror and the figure does not appear.

I want to try to keep these recaps as short as possible and I want to focus on the artifacts and not recapping entire episodes (besides if you really want to look for more nuance or potentially missed details yourself you can always listen to the actual TMA podcast or read the transcripts). The wiki lists this artifact as being aligned with the Eye and while there are potential elements that point to the possibility of the Spiral, namely that Rosa wonders if she is going crazy or suffering from paranoia or schizophrenia on top of the fact that no one else can see this figure, the main fear she is feeling is clearly from that of being watched and stalked. This is reflected in how only the eyes of the figure are completely visible, hammering in the idea that the creature is watching her.

It is also important to emphasize once again that the Fears often mix and mingle. They are not a strict binary and like colors can overlap / mix. A person wondering if they are crazy or being confused does not mean that there aren’t different or other powers at play. It’s sort of like how a lot of the Dread Powers and their followers threaten to kill or hurt but that does not mean that the End or the Slaughter is always present. The Vast loves using the imagery of falling to your death even though the fear of death also encompasses the End. So the fear of falling to your death would presumably usually feed both the Vast and the End or potentially lean towards one or the other depending on what is being emphasized. Also, Rosa seems pretty confident that she is being watched and that she is not crazy by the end.

As far as Eye themes, this artifact is ridiculously straightforward. Focusing on the Eye’s themes of stalkers, being followed, and something observing you. There is also the fact that the mirror seems to require you to look into it which plays up the theme of sight and using one’s own eyes to see too much or something you wish you didn’t.

How the mirror work is left relatively vague the more you think about it. It seems like looking into the mirror causes the figure to begin to follow you. Shattering the mirror doesn’t do anything to stop this and fixing it didn’t change anything. It is mentioned that Christopher Meyer (the person who had the mirror before Rosa) died absurdly young at 38 from a stroke. Something that Rosa finds weird and unprovoked even if he wasn’t the healthiest. If I had to venture a guess based on the stress Rosa undergoes while being stalked by the figure I would say that in all likelihood Christopher probably found the mirror, got stalked, and died from the stress caused by the supernatural stalker. Rosa mentions things like being unable to sleep, eat, or concentrate because she feels like she is being watched.

It is mentioned that Christopher was looking into writing a book on totems of “outer cults, small organized groups of worshippers whose beliefs weren’t simply deviations from paganism or other major religions, but seemed to focus on holy beings or concepts completely apart from what would be considered normal religious practice. Some seemed to have more in common with ancient shamanism than with organized hierarchical worship, and all were highly secretive.“ He managed to collect several artifacts considered holy by certain sects of these faiths and Christopher apparently abandoned the project a year before his death. Leading me, and Rosa, to assume that the mirror was one of these “holy” objects. Taking it one step further it is likely that Christopher accidentally stumbled upon one or more cults worshiping one or more of the Dread Powers as gods and one of these cults either worshiped the Eye or had its mirror. Worshiping one or more of the Dread Powers as gods is not uncommon, which is understandable due to their supernatural powers and influence, and this worship is something we see with Peter Lukas referring to the Lonely as a god, the Cult of the Lightless Flame referring to the Desolation as a god, and The People's Church of the Divine Host referring to the Dark as a god. I imagine the reason Christopher stopped his research into these cults was because he got fucked over by this hand mirror and potentially one or more other artifacts and decided to call it quits. You could also argue that there is a bit of a theme of harmful knowledge that the Eye loves here. With Christopher finding things like this mirror while actively going out of his way to find and know about these secretive and hidden cults. Christopher seems like someone who potentially had a large amount of curiosity which is a personality trait and behavior that we will see tends to attract people ot the Eye. Considering that Christopher stopped his research I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that Christopher had enough even if that meant he wouldn’t finish his research and you could argue a “curiosity killed the cat” on this one.

Rock Eye

The next artifact we have is the “Rock Eye.” It appears in MAG 051 (High Pressure) and takes the form of an eye carved out of a rock that interferes with video cameras unless kept in its accompanying black velvet bag. We don’t know much at all about it other than it was one of the items in the Magnus Institute’s Artifact Storage. The wiki lists it as being aligned with the Eye. So there’s not a lot going on here but boy is there a lot to talk about.

First off, this artifact interferes with video cameras. Which is something that usually seems totally opposite to what the Eye would want to do even if we see it doing this on occasion. If anything hiding stuff tends to fall under the Stranger’s unknown or the Dark’s darkness. I couldn’t blame someone if they chalked this up to another entity like that of the Stranger or the Dark and saw the Eye imagery as a coincidence. However, there is something worth considering here. First off, the Eye does sometimes use imagery of losing eyes and the like to imply dangerous knowledge or not wanting to see something. While this could extend to messing with surveillance equipment in some way I don’t think what’s happening here specifically.

See the Dread Powers sometimes do this thing where they sort of “save” people to generate more fear. This is best seen with the End. There are several cases where the End appears to save people from death or actually elongate their life instead of just killing them (such as with MAG 029 (Cheating Death)) and how Gerard and Mary Keay are bound to the book as some sort of weird spirit thing. The most extreme example of this is probably MAG 155 (Cost of Living) in which Tova McHugh gains the ability to extend their own life by essentially feeding off the life of others. Allowing them to survive where they normally would have died in the form of a near-death experience while the unfortunate victim takes the brunt of the blow and dies. This seems super weird, why would the End give anyone any way to dodge death or any form of immortality if death is what it feeds on? But that’s the thing, the End doesn’t feed on death. It’s not some sort of psychopomp, grim reaper, or god of the underworld, it is the embodiment of the FEAR of death. What it feeds on is the FEAR of death not necessarily the act of dying in of itself. So when the End keeps people alive it is usually trying to squeeze every last drop of fear out of them, to keep them hooked on some sort of life it grants while still being terrified that they could die. I think something similar is happening with the rock here.

The Eye isn’t observation, knowledge, or information itself but the FEAR of things like being observed. So by hiding someone it can essentially feed on the fear that person has of ever being caught or seen. We see the characters speculate about something similar in regards to the old camera used by Mikaele Salesa and Annabelle Cane to create an area free / hidden from the entities in the Post-Change world. Mikaele speculates that “it operates as a sort of, er, battery, charging itself on all the quiet worries that come from living in hiding, and then when the sanctuary collapses, all that fear flows out at once. No doubt, if my oasis breaks before I die, The Eye will get quite the feast from me, but in this new world I would hope it has other things to keep itself busy.” This leads me to suspect that the “eye rock” might do something similar. Imagine someone using such an artifact to sneak around. In such a case they're probably doing so out of fear of being caught or because they don’t want to be caught, and being caught is a form of being seen or judged that would usually fall under the Eye’s domain.

Old Camera With a Broken Lens

I guess I should mention the camera Mikaele talks about in question. The wiki dubs it "old camera with a broken lens" and it appears in MAG 141 (Doomed Voyage), MAG 181 (Ignorance), and MAG 196 (This Old House). It was destroyed by Anabelle in MAG 196 but it was an old camera with a broken lens that had the ability to hide one from the Dread Powers. It was the first object sold by Mikaele and it was originally sold to a scared old man who had long been running from “his own supernatural debts.” Mikaele would later recover this camera as part of his plan to survive the Change by hiding from the powers. There’s not a lot to say here due to the fact that I covered the camera in depth in the last section. While the wiki lists the camera’s alignment as unknown Mikaele seems to imply or at least suspect that it is an artifact of the Eye or at the very least happens to generate a fear that feeds the Eye. I guess it is not impossible that the camera is connected to multiple power or not any specific power. However, if we had to assign an entity based on what I’ve gone over so far the Eye definitely takes the top of that list as one of the possibilities.

Tape Recorders

This brings us to the last artifact, the titular tape recorders. Okay, okay, I know what you're about to say “Doug did you even finish the podcast? The tapes are aligned with the Web.” But I’m bringing them up to make a point. A lot of people, both in-universe and real world fans, thought for a decent period of time that the tapes were the Eye’s due to the whole theme of observation. In MAG 197 (Connected) Basira says this in regards to the assumption of the tapes being aligned with the Eye “I always assumed they were with The Eye. The whole ‘watching, listening, waiting’ thing, y’know?” Now this shows a couple of things. First of all, it’s a pretty good display of the fact that the Eye can manifest as more than just specifically eyes and being watched given how many characters in the universe assumed the tapes to be aligned with the Eye.

Some fans end up having a very narrow view of the Eye because they believe it can only manifest as being watched but the Eye feeds off the fear of observation in general. Something that can include being listened to (imagine someone eavesdropping and listening to your secrets). Also, the fears in general have a very metaphorical component to them. The Lonely isn’t just the fear of being alone physically but also the fear of being alone emotionally. Similarly, the Eye isn’t just the fear of being seen literally but also metaphorically. Being acknowledged or having someone trying to get information from you.

The second point I want to make is that this shows how the Dread Powers can overlap. It is impossible to cleanly separate each fear into its own little box with no overlap (that’s actually one of the core themes of the show). Just like how the entities are colors, you can have mixed colors. You can argue whether turquoise is blue or green all you want but at the end of the day turquoise is both blue AND green not just one or the other.

Information and observation can be very helpful for manipulating people, which is good for the Web. The fact that a bunch of characters also assumed the tapes were the Eye’s or didn’t know what entity they were connected to helps highlight some of the overlaps and similarities at play. Both the Web and the Eye can have themes of listening and waiting. Typically, the difference is often what they want to do with that information. But we’ll get more into that later.

Websites?

Okay, I’m not 100% sure where the line is drawn in the sand for what is and isn’t an artifact, I’m not sure if a website would count as an artifact unless it's taking the form of a server being stored somewhere but I thought it would just be funny to put this here. Sparksfly.com is a dating website and one of those things that’s never explicitly confirmed to be connected to the Eye but given the information we have most people can agree that it probably is related to the Eye in some way.

Sparksfly is name dropped in “What The Ghost? - The Devil's Dance” as one of the podcast’s sponsors. Georgie Barker pitches the website by saying “Wouldn’t it be great if your dating service knew you as well as your friends do? Well, SparksFly.com does! In fact, they know you better than anyone. With SparksFly, there’s no need to fill out lengthy surveys; they get all the information they need from your browser history – Wow. Okay! What The Ghost? listeners get a month’s membership for free! No need for a code; (voice climbing higher) they already know who you are! (still at a markedly higher register) SparksFly: Privacy is just another word for loneliness?!(really fast) I-went-out-with-someone-I-met-online-once. (exhale) We didn’t have a lot in common; I mentioned the podcast, and he spent the rest of the night complaining about the Ghostbusters remake. But we had Thai food, so it was an okay date. I got the tofu Massaman curry.”

The website seems to revolve around knowing shit that it shouldn’t and doing things such as snooping into your browser history and explicitly invading your privacy. Also, this moment is hilarious because while Georgie is reporting on a supernatural even there’s potentially a supernatural website right under her nose and I think there’s something to be said about the website sponsoring something like “What The Ghost?” The Eye tends to gravitate towards things like statements and reports / experiences as a way to attract people who want knowledge and draw upon the fear people get from witnessing or knowing certain things.

Factions

While we do see a couple of organizations aligned with the Eye, the Usher Foundation in the U.S. and Pu Songling Research Center in China are both sister locations of the Magnus Institute in London, plus we don’t know a lot about them. We also learn of a couple of ancient organizations or cults but I won’t really be going over those too much because of the lack of information.

The Usher Foundation and Pu Songling Research Center

Before I dive more into the Magnus Institute itself I should mention that the Usher Foundation probably gets its name from the Edgar Allan Poe story “The Fall of the House of Usher” while the Pu Songling Research Center probably gets its name from Pu Songling, a Qing dynasty author best known for Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (which is a collection of nearly five-hundred supernatural tales). Both these names connect to how TMA itself is a horror podcast and how they, along with the Magnus Institute, focus on collecting statements about the supernatural. Stories and accounts that are often horrific and / or scary and supernatural. The Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio being a collection of stories could be a reference to the archives the Magnus Institute and its sister foundations have. Other than that, we don’t know a lot about them. It is unknown if Jonah’s weird boss contract thing applies to any part(s) of those foundations or if each institution has its own boss and group that parallels Jonah Magnus and has its own weird supernatural going on with its Archival staff. It could also be that the other institutions use a different system that is similar or completely different than the one used at the Magnus Institute.

The Magnus Institute

This brings us to the Magnus Institute itself. I will start off by saying that there will probably be some things I miss since the Magnus Institute appears so often and I can’t sit here going through everything relating to it episode by episode in a timely manner despite how fitting that would be for an article about the Eye.

The titular Magnus Institute most likely gets its name from the classic ghost story by M.R. James, Count Magnus (which most likely relates to TMA being a horror story and how the statements the Institute collects are usually horror or fear-based in nature). The Magnus Institute’s motto is Audio. Opperior. Vigilo, which means "I listen. I wait. I watch" (by the way I’m going to start referring to the Magnus Institute as MI sometimes in this article to save time).

The MI describes itself as an academic institution dedicated to researching the esoteric and paranormal. They stress that they are not paranormal investigators but rather research dedicated to revealing the knowledge of the unknown. Of course, the entire Institute is connected to the Eye but some places or positions in the MI are more closely tied to it than others.

We already have some interesting stuff to dissect here. First Audio. Opperior. Vigilo, or "I listen. I wait. I watch," connects to the Eye’s themes of surveillance and observation. A lot of characters in TMA call the Eye out for having all this knowledge but then proceeding to just sit around with it and this is a pretty good example of what they mean. There’s also the fact that they stress they are not investigators. In essence they are observers who usually aren’t going to step in and help you. The Eye still wants to feed on fear and one of the ways the Institute can provide this is by setting up situations in which someone is watching and / or listening to you but not actually helping you or potentially making things even worse.

This idea also connects to the Eye’s themes of knowledge with the Institute driving several characters to seek out the mysteries of the institute or certain statements even if the knowledge hurts them (this is best seen with Melanie King and Jonathan Sims himself). The institute is a pretty good way to tantalize someone’s curiosity and end up aligning with the Eye, either purposefully or accidentally, in their quest for knowledge. There is also the fact that the Eye embodies things you don’t want to know or think about. Something that is reflected in how someone might not want to hear about the statements or how the Archivist can actually force statements out of people and force others to relive / recount terrible things they’ve experienced.

Oh I almost forgot to cover the symbol of the Magnus Institute itself, that weird owl

I feel like the symbolism of the owl is pretty straightforward. A lot of stories associate owls with wisdom and knowledge and owls tend to have big eyes or at least very noticeable ones as well as a really good sense of sight. Which means that they can be good at watching and observing things, especially when they are hunting small prey or far away prey.

It is also shown that there have been a lot of organizations and groups aligned with the Eye that are similar to the MI. There are the sister locations I touched on in China and the U.S. respectively but there are also organizations that came long before it, such as the Serapeum of Alexandria and the collection of Johann von Württemberg among potentially many others.

People who have experienced a seemingly supernatural occurrence can schedule appointments in which to give their statement. Previously this was done in a written form but over time this has been done in audio / visual recording media more and more. As we all know the Eye loves to use things like cameras and other recording devices to stoke fear from being watched or observed. So the presence of this practice is unsurprising. According to Jon the Research Department investigates statements first and then the Archivist reviews them after the fact and determines if follow-up is necessary. The Archivist usually relies on Archival assistants and other members of the institute to check official records and contact people mentioned in the statements along with visiting the sites of said statements. This ties in with the Eye’s theme of being followed. I mean we even see archival assistants do things like sneak into buildings and stuff. We also see Jon track down Kurt Anderson who appears in a statement within MAG 103 (Cruelty Free) to ask him questions about his brother and the monster pig.

Imagine if someone showed up to you asking a bunch of weird questions for an event you don’t want to talk about because you were mentioned in a statement. This also ties into the theme of surveillance as members of certain MI departments sometimes tail someone to get more information on a specific event or to ask them questions. However, after Jon uncovered the statement of Antonio Blake in MAG 011 (Dreamer) he manages to get access to all statements after they’re all made.

Statements are given case numbers taken from the last three numbers of the year it was made in, followed by the day, then the month. The example the wiki uses here is MAG 1(Angler Fish) is #0122204, due to having been recorded April 22nd, 2012. So what happens if two statements occur on the first day? I don’t know, fuck you I guess? The Institute does have some classifications that statements can be put under. For example, in MAG 43 (Section 31) we learn that statements marked "Internal Use Only" can't be referenced or requested by external agencies or authorities, including the police, due to the Institute’s strict Non-Disclosure Agreement policy. I’m not 100% sure if this is just to keep the Institute running as a business by encouraging people to give statements knowing that they will keep their privacy or if it’s some sort of 5d chess level strategy of gathering fear from people being afraid of their statements being leaked or disclosed (a major lead did actually happened to the Institute in 1999 and while this did contribute to the MI having a negative reputation the fear generated from some people realizing that their sensitive statements were leaked and made public probably fed the Eye). Like I mentioned earlier, the powers like the End and the Eye sometimes generate fear by “saving” people and letting them live in fear of what is going to happen if they are caught or when their luck runs out. So the people with statements marked as "Internal Use Only" are probably the people most afraid of having their statements and / or secrets exposed.

It should be noted that while the entire institute is under the power of the Eye the archives department is more strongly affected and tied to it. Things like being unable to quit or be fired, and any attempt to leave the job resulting in sickness and possibly death, is something that only applies to those working in the Archives Department of the institute. The fact that the Archives take the brunt of the supernatural occurrences, artifacts, and attacks leads to the Archives being seen as weird by most other employees and said workers often try to leave the people there alone. Outside of the Archive Department the Institute is described as being normal if a bit weird and unsettling. Its library is also open for research and often used by students researching the paranormal. Something that once again ties in with the Eye’s themes of seeking knowledge and being tempted by information or knowledge. Which is important to think about because the Institute is made to feed the Eye.

The Institute was originally located in Edinburgh but was eventually moved to London. The reason for this is because it was relocated to be on top of Millbank Prison. The Institute is also connected to this prison with tunnels that were part of the prison. This prison is notable because, other than being a lynchpin for the ritual of the Eye, it has a panopticon in its heart. For those who don’t know, a panopticon is defined as “a circular prison with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners could at all times be observed.”

The word panopticon itself derives from the Greek word panoptes, which means "all-seeing." The idea of the panopticon was devised by philosopher Jeremy Bentham with the idea that it would be cheaper than prisons at the time and all cells would be observable at once without inmates knowing when they were being watched. In essence, the idea is that since a prisoner wouldn’t know when they are being watched they would basically have to act under the assumption that they were being watched all the time or at any given time. I shouldn’t have to explain why the Eye would absolutely love this idea. It is a prison that revolves around being watched at all times and I imagine the fear a prisoner might feel from being watched could act as an incentive to act how whoever runs the prison wants them to but it would also be a feast for the Eye.

This Millbank Prison is also notable because in TMA it was built by Robert Smirke. Meaning it is built with a balance of the powers in mind. This is alluded to in MAG 41 (Too Deep) where we get references and accounts of several different powers being present in the odd tunnels of the prison. For example, “It was to have six such areas, arranged in hexagons, giving it from the air the shape of a vast, angular flower” (potentially the Vast with the large shape), “twisting corridors, doors at strange angles, and narrow passages so poorly lit inmates would need to feel their way along” (potentially the Spiral and Dark with the twisting corridors and poor lighting conditions) “Throughout much of the 19th century, it was where prisoners were kept before transportation to Australia, and the brutality of the jailors was said to be second to none. Its position on what was then marshlands hardly helped, with sickness and disease rife within their walls” (potentially the Slaughter and Corruption with the violent jailors and disease) “I turned back, and immediately noticed that the wall opposite me was closer than it had been before. I took a step back in shock, and my feet hit the wall behind me. The passage was getting narrower, though I could not see any movement. I stood completely still and for several seconds there was silence. Then, from somewhere in the darkness, I heard a single word, clear as day: “Leave.” It was spoken simply, without intonation or threat. Just a command” (potentially the Buried and Web with the wall closing in and the strange command that Jon felt compelled to follow (i.e. he was being manipulated / controlled by the Web)), “I hadn’t even been down there an hour, but already it felt like the light it cast was weaker, somehow, and I realized how unsure I was of my exact route back. I decided I would rather cut my first trip unnecessarily short than risk being trapped down there without light. So I turned back” (potentially the Dark with the shrinking light and the Stranger or Spiral with not being sure about how to get back), and “It was almost impossible to retrace my steps. I tried to remember my route using what vague oddities I could remember as landmarks: a burned door, a particularly warped corridor. But trying to find them again was useless in the winding passages”, (Potentially the Stranger, Desolation, and Spiral with Jon’s inability to properly recall much, and we have seen the Stranger’s fear of the unknown include things like not knowing or not remembering who you are or where you were, the burned door references common Desolation imagery and the Spiral could be represented by the warped corridor and winding passages). While I don’t know if MAG 41 references all the power I think all the powers are referenced or mentioned in regards to the prison and or its tunnels at least once within the TMA series but I could be wrong. This balance between the Dread Powers becomes crucial to Jonah’s Eye ritual since he needs to not just bring the Eye into the world but every single Dread Power along with it. So while the panopticon puts the Eye at the center the other powers are present in the structure too. It could have also played into Elias’ plan to have Jon get marked by each entity.

The institute also possesses an Artifact Storage department which houses supernatural items connected to the powers. Sasha worked there for a bit but it was apparently so unpleasant and terrifying that she transferred after only 3 months. This makes sense as all these artifacts are built to gather fear for their respective Dread Power(s) and the Eye is probably feeding off the fear of learning about something you didn’t want to know first hand. Oh yeah, there’s also the fact that people feel like they're always being watched while they are in the Archives, which is the Eye watching people and feeding on the subsequent fear.

To tie what I’ve said so far into a nice little bow it is stated in MAG 161 (Dwelling) by Gertrude that “The Institute serves as a way for it to harvest the fears of the other entities, dragging out the suffering of those who come to give statements and – claiming their terror.” Which is a point that both refers to the role the Archivist plays as a “living chronicle of fear” and the role statements themselves play with how it forces them to relive or recount an event. We also know that the statements end up being tied to various fears due to how Annabelle and the Web use said connection to drag all the Entities into another universe.

There is also one of the biggest reveals in TMA. That someone working for the MI can bypass the magical contract binding themselves to Jonah, Institute and the Eye in order to break free from them. As I mentioned before, I believe that the removal of eyes or missing eyes usually represents witnessing something that hurt you, that what you observed or the knowledge you gained cost you something, or you wanted to avoid seeing something so badly you blinded yourself so you wouldn’t have to look at it. Someone who is aware of the truth about the Institute can escape but they will be hurt in the process. A price will have to be paid for what they know. It should also be noted that apparently Archival Assistants can be freed if the Archivist they serve dies but the point still stands.

There is also the argument that the destruction of one’s eyes actually has to do with Jonah. Someone who we know body hops with his eyes and would presumably die if you destroyed his original set of eyes if we are to believe Peter Lukas. Since Jonah is the boss of the people in the Institute’s Artifact Storage it may very well be that his power sort of metaphorically trickles down or connects to them in some way. So in the same way that Jonah might be cut off from the Eye if you destroy his eyes his subordinates will be cut off from the Eye if their eyes get destroyed. Also, it’s interesting to note that if Jonah dies apparently almost anyone who signed his contract does too so destroying Jonah’s eyes will usually lead to all his employees dying in turn unless they have a strong enough connection to the Eye, such as Jon being favored by it, or some other Entity.

A common misconception I see is the assumption that any Avatar or person in TMA could cut themselves off from the Eye if they destroyed their eyes. There is actually no substantial evidence that this is always the case. Firstly, the Powers work in different ways for different people and different factions. For example, we know that almost all members of the Lightless Flame seem to be granted the ability to transform their bodies into a hot wax-style substance. However, we know that not every single Avatar and monster has this ability so it would appear that how consistently this ability shows up is due to the status of being part of a cult. Additionally, the Archivist is granted a very specific set of powers when they get the position no matter who they are. All Archivists have the ability to force people to give statements and tell the truth and they appear in the dreams of people who take live statements. Making the Archivist another example in which certain abilities are actually more tied to the position. Although, they can be affected by whether the Archivist chooses to embrace them or not. So in all likelihood the eye weakness is tied to the position of working in the MI’s Archives and having signed the contract.

Another example of what I mean is with Melania King and the bullet that infected her with the Slaughter. While infected with this bullet she was presumably aligned with the Slaughter and close enough to it that she ended up giving Jon his mark for the Slaughter needed for Jonah’s plan. However, her connection to the Slaughter dissipates when the bullet gets taken out of her. So are we to assume that every Slaughter aligned is working off the same logic, and that they are all that way because they were shot by a bullet or hit with a weapon lodged within them and once said weapon is removed they’ll revert back to normal? I would say no and I would argue that it’s much the same for the Institute and the contract the Archival staff signed. HOW someone becomes aligned with a power is extremely important or at least something that a I lot of people don’t seem to consider. Sometimes the powers and weakness someone gets is specifically tied to their position, faction, or how they got their powers.

If we look at Avatars in particular, the only thing we know is concrete about every Avatar is that they weaken and sometimes die if they do not feed their patron the respective fear they crave. Other than that the powers, weaknesses, and their nature can actually vary quite a lot, even for Avatars of the same Entity. What I'm saying is we don't really know if the removing the Eye thing applies to anyone not working for the Institute and there is a very good reason based on what we see in the podcast that it may not be a universal rule for all Eye-related stuff. For example, the eyeless man that appears in MAG 23 is very clearly still related to the Eye and can somehow see despite not having them. We have also seen cases where an Eye related monster seems to remove the eyes of somebody which is kind of counterintuitive if that would render them immune to the Eye, although they are also often found dead so who’s to say the Beholding didn’t take their eyes after they died. It's also important to remember that it's not about what the Powers manifest as but how they manifest as. The Powers can manifest as just about anything as long as it helps stoke their respective fear so if manifesting as a blind person or giving a person no eyes helps the Eye gain fear then it can do it.

While I’m sure I could write another several chapters worth of stuff on the MI I am going to cut myself off there since I feel like we went over all of the most important stuff.

People

This finally brings us to the people aligned with the Eye. Understanding who and why people end up aligning with it or becoming favored by such an Entity can potentially tell us more about the Ceaseless Watcher itself. This also applies to Avatars and especially the abilities some of the Avatars have. Now due to how many of the main characters are connected to the Eye I can’t sit here and recap every single moment they had and every action they took in the story. I’m going to need to keep these relatively short since this article is already over 20 pages and we don’t have all day. It’s also important to remember that for some characters it is their personality that tells us more about the Eye and for others it's more so their powers / abilities or narrative beats within the story. So I’m just going to focus on the stuff most important to this article and I’m not going to give an entire character summary complete with all their history and appearances.

Jonah Magnus

First, let’s start with the main pupil of both Robert Smirke and the Eye itself, Jonah Magnus. As an Avatar of the Eye it is mainly his abilities that tell us about the Eye. Although, I suppose his goal of trying to find a way to dodge death or obtain immortality does definitely feed into the Eye’s theme of hunting knowledge. Additionally, he does have the Eye’s signature curiosity in some parts of his character.

Jonah has a couple of really notable powers. First, he has a limited form of omniscience that Gertrude refers to as a form of clairovoyance. What this basically means is that while he does have a form of omniscience and can learn or know almost everything he puts his mind to, it is not a passive ability. He does not constantly know all that is occurring on the planet or universe. He needs concentration in order to focus on the thing he wants to know. He basically has the ability to know almost anything but he sort of needs to “look at” or focus on it if you get what I mean. According to Gertrude, Jonah can see out of any eye or eye-related image and according to Peter, as long as his original body remains in the Panopticon, Jonah can see anything. However, we know neither of these seemingly contradictory statements are entirely true since Jonah’s ability doesn’t seem to be tied to the eyes of other people or objects and when Jon got kidnapped by the Stranger Jonah states he couldn’t see where he was. So his power can probably be limited or warded off by the protection of other Entities, especially often opposing ones like the Stranger or Dark. My personal theory on how Jonah’s ability works is that he can know anything that the Eye knows and / or can see whatever the Eye can see. But I’m not 100% sure if this is an accurate read.

These abilities connect to the Eye pretty well. Jonah’s clairovoyance gives him a way to learn even the most private of secrets about someone or any other knowledge someone would be afraid of him having or someone leaking. The connection Gertrude makes with the clairovoyance and eyes or eye-related imagery helps stoke people’s fear of being watched or observed since he could be watching them from almost anywhere there is something that at least vaguely resembles an eye. I imagine Gertrurde doing things like cutting all the eyes out of the pictures around her house out of fear that Jonah was watching probably fed the Eye (remember that the Dread Powers don’t usually seem to care where the fear they feed off of comes from and plenty of people aligned with a power can still feel fear relating to it). These powers are perfect for filling someone with the constant worry that Jonah somehow knows something or that they are being watched.

Despite having near omniscience, technically this ability comes with the limitation that Jonah’s true body must remain in the Panopticon to use it but since his true body is always sitting there anyway it is active at all times. I also don’t think that it’s a coincidence that his body must be sitting in a prison that’s meant to function off the fear that its prisoners could be being watched at all times.

Jonah also has a limited form of telepathy. With this ability he can put or force information into another person’s mind. This is implied to come with several limitations though. The information has to be true, and he is not capable of “removing” information or anything resembling a memory wipe. It is also implied that he can look into people’s minds with conscious effort and even though the wiki puts this under limited telepathy this last ability may also be connected to his previously mentioned clairovoyance. Jonah’s telepathy is one of the abilities I find to be the most interesting symbolically. Namely, his ability to force information into people’s minds. This power may seem random to some but if you’ve gotten this far you should know that an often overlooked aspect of the Eye is the fear of not wanting to know something or witnessing something you really didn’t want to. An “ignorance is bliss” type of thing. With this ability Jonah can literally force people to know or witness terrible events and information even if they do not want to. This is best seen in episodes like MAG 36 (Taken Ill) where he forces Melanie to learn that her father did not actually die peacefully in his sleep from smoke inhalation at Ivy Meadows Care Home but in actuality suffered a presumably horrific death in which he suffered greatly. Melanie could have gone her entire life thinking that he died peacefully and happy but Jonah permanently ruined that.

The information having to be true probably has to do with the fact that lies tend to lean towards more of being a Spiral thing and the idea here is that the knowledge being true probably adds to the fear for the Eye. If Jonah could implant lies that could mean the things he forces you to know could be wrong and you might not necessarily believe it. It would also make it easier to convince yourself that he is wrong or just lying. The fact that what he shows you has to have happened makes the potential burden and fear of knowing it even greater since it becomes harder to lie to yourself. Of course, he cannot remove the information since that would usually also lessen the fear or torment the target is being inflicted with, and the Eye wants to feed on the fear not lessen the fear. Being able to remove information could also accidentally feed the Stranger and its fear of not knowing more than the Eye.

Jonah’s ability to read thoughts just connects back to the Eye’s themes of secrets being exposed or people knowing things they aren’t supposed to know about you. Jonah also has some sort of limited reality control in that he seemed to be able to doctor / edit / change the CCTV footage of the security cameras inside the MI in order to give himself an alibi during the investigation into the murder of Gertrude Robinson. I imagine similar to the rock eye this ability revolves around the fear of being caught. It seems like the Powers don’t usually care where the fear that feeds them comes from so the ability to mess with photage like this could be the Eye’s way of feeding on Jonah’s own worries of being caught or a way of giving Jonah a way to prey on the fears of others getting caught. This could theoretically be done by providing protection from being caught only to suddenly take it away or something similar. It could also be the Eye giving Jonah just a general buff, like with his body hoping abilities or maybe it connects to the Eye’s themes of perception or Jonah exercising control over the Archives as the boss.

Speaking of body hopping, let's go over that. Jonah can take over the body of another person in order to extend his life. It is implied that this happens by transferring his eyes to the body of another. Jonah’s original body does still actually exist and it is possible to kill or hurt Jonah by damaging the original body. A lot of the Avatars of the Powers have buffs like some sort of extended life or being harder to kill as an incentive for the Avatars to continue gathering fear for their Entity. However, in the case of Jonah I think there is also the addition of the eye symbolism and the victims of the body swapping being forced to witness their own death or having their bodies taken. In MAG 193 (A Stern Look) we get this statement about Elias “Elias has the briefest of flashes, a sudden burst of terror, an image of himself, strapped down, helpless. The vanishing of well-known faces, and the harsh sneers that replace them as they stare at him. He cannot move. He cannot scream. What is happening? What is that he feels deep down his skull? What are they doing to his eyes? The presence, old and rotten, in his mind? He can do nothing but watch.” So there is definitely an aspect of both being judged and watched by the sneering faces as well as being helpless to do anything except watch something terrible happen. You could also maybe argue that part of the idea here is that Jonah putting eyes into new bodies basically allows him to observe things from the perspective of another person’s body or maybe someone who knew the body he is inhabiting could be afraid that whoever is inhabiting the body now knows or saw something they shouldn’t.

Regardless, let's move on to what the wiki describes as “incarnation.” This ability causes Jonah to basically act like the “heart” of the Magnus Institute. In MAG 92 (Nothing Beside Remains) he explains that if he or the Institute dies or is destroyed everyone who serves the Institute’s Archives would theoretically die with him or the Institution. However, it is possible for someone to survive his death while also having signed his contract if they are tied strongly enough to another Dread Power and he speculates that Jon is strong enough to ‘weather’ the effects due to his strong ties to the Eye. My suspicion is that those tied strongly enough to another Power basically have that Power’s favor and protection which could allow them to survive. Jon might be strong enough to weather the effects because we learn the Eye favors him but it could also be because when Jonah mentions this Jon was already an Avatar of the Eye in his own right (an reasoning I find more likely). A status which could have given him the boost / protection he needs to survive Jonah’s death.

This incarnation ability seems to work on all those who signed a contract to serve the Magnus Institute. The final ability is what the wiki refers to as “watcher’s call.” An ability that presumably allows Jonah to call his Archivist to him. Meaning it allows the Archivist to easily find and navigate to him. I think this mostly just stems from the fact that Jonah is the boss of the Archivist along with the Eye’s relation to knowledge. However, there is something to be said about what I mentioned previously in how the Eye loves to tempt people with curiosity or to lure them with the promise of knowledge. So you could argue this is something similar. Someone aligned with the Eye who sticks their nose into things to understand something even if it might hurt them would probably find this ability tempting to follow if Jonah just suddenly starts sending out a weird supernatural beacon for his Archivist to follow. The ability works best on people the Eye often attracts, those who are curious or seek knowledge (like Jonathon Sims himself).

There’s also Jonah’s whole powerplay and schemes within the Archive. Jonah makes it very obvious that he knows things that Jon and the rest of the Archival crew do not, much to their frustration, fear, and dismay. He purposefully drip feeds them information and often avoids giving straight complete answers for most of the series which ties into the Eye and how it embodies the fear that someone may know too much or know more than you and just the fear of what someone knows in general. His drip feeding also helps fuel the curiosity and desire for answer from people like Jon and Martin. From the perspective of the Archival staff Jonah is keeping information that most of them want. Also in MAG 92 (Nothing Beside Remains) Jonah / Elias the statement from Barnabas Bennett involves a letter being sent to Jonah Magnus for help after he pisses off Mordechai Lukas. Jonah / Elias tells Jon in the post statement that Magnus could have intervened and saved Barnabas but chose not to. He didn’t choose not to do so out of malice or lack of caring but simply because he was curious about what would happen to Barnabas and wanted to observe the events. This relates to the fear of not only being watched but the idea that someone is just watching and refusing to help you or even taking some sort of joy or benefit out of your suffering while they do so. Not to mention it ties into the Eye’s themes of curiosity and a drive for knowledge leading to the pain and suffering of either yourself or those around you.

Elias Buchard

I figured it would be interesting to take a little detour before we keep going and talk about the “other” heads of the Institute. Now all the other heads are in actuality just Jonah body hopping but I figured it would be interesting to look at what they were like before Jonah possessed them and if they can tell us anything about the Eye… Which is impossible for Richard Mendelson and James Wright since literally all we know about him is that they were the previous bodies of Jonah before Elias Buchard. As for Elias himself we know almost nothing about him except for the fact that he was a pothead in his university days and a couple of details that I find weird.

Firstly, Elias had a previous encounter with the Eye. In MAG 193 (A Stern Look) we see that Jonah asks Elias if he had encountered anything supernatural only to learn about his encounter with the death of Allan Schrieber, a death that was presumably caused by Allan reading some sort of book. I already went over the book in the leitner section of this article but the reading of this book caused Allan to sob and say things like “It has no eyes”, “so it has to feel its way towards me. But it knows. It knows!” before eventually dying. It is in his death that we have special attention brought to the fact that his eyes are missing and the episode says “But he remembers so clearly what he was thinking as he looked at the what was left of Allan Schrieber: where are his eyes? What did they do with his eyes?”

As mentioned in the Leitner section of this article, I suspect that this book was aligned with the Eye due to the focus on being watched and vision, and furthermore I believe that the taking of Allan’s eyes represents the idea that he saw something he wasn’t supposed to or so terrible it eventually left him blind or him taking his own vision. Jonah specifically focusing on if Elias had any previous encounters with the supernatural ties into things like statements and witnessing things you do not want to. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Jonah specifically went out of his way to choose people with certain experiences. Potentially, maybe even those who had been marked or connected to the Eye in some way. We don’t know if Elias was marked per say but something that’s very interesting is that when Jonah asks him why he even came to the interview. Elias knew no one who worked for the Institute, he couldn’t remember where he saw the job opening at, didn’t even send a CV but received an invitation nonetheless. Jonah proceeds to grill him asking if he was drawn there against his will. Elias says that he was drawn there but not against his will. Leading to Jonah ask “Then why did you heed the call?” to which Elias replies “Because… this is the place I know I should be,” an answer that seems to cause Jonah to give him the job before eventually taking his body.

I think there is some interesting stuff at play. Firstly, Elias just “knowing” he should be there could be compared somewhat to some of the Eye related abilities people like Jon and Gertrude have in relation to knowing stuff they otherwise shouldn’t. However, Elias’ …thing seems different. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Eye, considering its connection to knowledge, had some way of occasionally just implanting knowledge into the heads of people like Elias (which is probably how Jon and Gertrude’s knowing ability works anyway). So in that sense the Eye might very well be “gifting” Jonah with bodies by making sure people come to him at the right time.

Then there’s also the emphasis being placed on the fact that Elias was not forced to come, he chose to. Which points to the idea that he has a sort of burning curiosity. Curiosity like this is something the Eye absolutely loves to foster and as we go through some of the members of the Institute we will see that virtually all of them have high levels of curiosity or originally joined the Institute because of some sort of burning question or need to know. The Eye loves tempting people with promises of knowledge and stoking curiosity. An interesting moment of the interview is that when Jonah asks Elias what he is afraid of his inner monologue tells us “His mind races. He can’t tell the truth, obviously. Elias can’t look this man in the face, and tell him that he is what scares him. That his eyes, the curiosity and judgement that pulses out of them, they terrify him in a way he can’t put into words. He feels that prickly panic building in the back of his skull, that worry that spills through: he knows. He knows I’m high. The thought leaps to Elias’ mind for only a second before he remembers that he’s not. He hasn’t lit up all day, of course not, he’s got an interview. But even so, he can’t shake the familiar paranoia. He looks again at his would-be employer, who seems like he’s about to repeat the question.” This monologue tells us that Elias is very afraid of being judged by Jonah as well as the fact that he knows something he does not want others to which are fears the Eye feeds off of. It makes me wonder if having certain fears, especially those that benefit the Eye, play a factor into who Jonah chooses as his next host.

Also, the fear of Jonah’s eyes foreshadows, for Elias anyway (since we as the audience already know his fate), that Jonah’s supernatural body hopping requires him to use his eyes. Of course, Elias never tells Jonah what he is afraid of (even though Jonah probably already knows) so instead Elias gives a different answer “Spiders,” Elias says quickly. “I’m afraid of spiders.” This could be meant to reference the Web, since spiders often symbolically represent it and just manipulation and pllanign in general, and the Web focuses on manipulating the Eye in particular in order to escape to new universes and it also alludes to the warning Jonah gave Jon in regards to the Web, as he warns against messing with the Web because it usually wins. We see this opinion further reflected in how Jonah saw Jon coming to the Institute, having already been marked by the Web from his childhood encounter with “A Guest for Mr. Spider” as a blessing or “go-ahead” from the Web itself to concoct his plans. Which weirdly, he was technically right about since we learn that the Web purposefully wanted the Eye’s ritual to succeed before the other powers so that it could enact its plan to send all the Entities into the multiverse. In order for that to happen Jonah’s plan needed to succeed.

I know I just said that the Eye might have guided Elias to Jonah but there are some things in TMA that are vague and I don’t want to go around peddling speculation as concrete immovable fact. With this in mind, while it is possible that the Eye guided Elias to Jonah it’s also possible that the Web had something to do with it or that both powers were at work. In fact, after Elias gives his answer we get this “James Wright nods, the smile curling into one of satisfaction, though Elias is sure the man doesn’t believe him. Those eyes break contact for a moment, flicking up to the corner of the office where, at the edge of a bookshelf that sags with age and weight, a small cobweb has started to form.” This brings direct attention to webs implying that the Web might be present in that moment and the fact that the Web is forming on a bookshelf (a common symbol of the Eye’s connection to knowledge) might also hint towards the Web’s manipulation of the Eye.

Jonathan Sims

This brings us to the main man, the big mc, himself THE Jonathan Sims. First of all is Jon’s personality, which is noted within the show itself. I’m not going to go into every single one of Jon’s personality traits here since the main thing that matters here is the fact that Jon is curious. This is highlighted when Jon asks Helen if serving the Eye or other Entities changes someone. To which Helen responds by asking why would the Eye even want to change Jon when he is already doing what it wants. The thing about Jon as a character is that he is extremely curious, too curious for his own good. Like of course the Eye likes him and Jonah used him. The dude can’t stand being left in the dark for more than 2 seconds and wants to understand as much about the Fears as he can.

This curiosity is why he came to the Magnus Institute long after his encounter with “A Guest for Mr. Spider”(he wanted to understand what the deal was with what he saw was) even though some people wouldn’t have wanted to linger on such an event or assumed some other more rational explanation had occured. There’s also fucking season two where Jon, who upon realizing Getrude was murdered, begins to become paranoid and determined to figure out who committed the crime. How does he do this? By spying, i.e. WATCHING and OBSERVING, his coworkers and employees which ends up freaking them out (yeah I’m sure the Eye had a feast with that one). There’s also what Jonah says in MAG 102 (Nesting Instinct) as an explanation for why he killed Leitner to Jon. Jon mentioned Leitner could have helped him to which Jonah says “You? No. To you he offered nothing but the crutch of simple answers. If I hadn’t stepped in he could have significantly stunted your development. Left you defenseless.” The key here is that Jonah is preying on Jon’s curiosity and it's Jon’s curiosity and thirst for knowledge that helps awaken his powers of the Eye. If he gets all the answers too early he won’t be desperate or curious enough to continue going down Jonah’s intended path.

I could probably find more major examples but I think this gets my, and Helen’s, point across so let’s look at Jon’s abilities. First is what the wiki calls “persona.” It is an ability tied to the status of the Archivist that allows an Archivist to take on the voice and persona of the statement giver as well as reading the story with audibly different tones of voice and occasionally changing pitches to match the statement giver's. The Archivist seems to become very focused on or absorbed into these statements and at least Jon seems to often be annoyed when interrupted while reading a statement. In MAG 102 (Nesting Instinct) Jon seems concerned when Martin mentions that he’s been reading multiple statements which could imply the possibility that the statements themselves can affect the reader. Jon says this to Martin “Okay. If you’re sure, just… Make sure the others help you, alright? Statements can be… If you’re not used to them it can… be a bit weird.”

The ability of the Archivist to take on the voice and persona of the user just ties into the Eye’s themes of witnessing something. The fact that the statements themselves could potentially have an effect on the reader ties into the Eye’s themes of knowledge and how merely knowing or witnessing something can corrupt and / or hurt you either emotionally or mentally. Which connects to the fear of things that people don’t want to know or see.

The next ability is something the wiki calls “Recieve Statement.” While reading a statement Jon will automatically know any language needed to understand the statement. The ability also seems to overall give Jon the ability to overcome difficulties that would prevent him from taking a statement. As for how the power connects to the Eye? Well, it connects to the Eye’s themes of knowledge by granting Jon the ability to know everything someone is saying pertaining to a statement which in turn allows him to gather more knowledge and potentially encourages him to go seek out more information since things like language barriers become less of an issue. This ability also connects a bit to the Eye’s theme of observation since it allows you to always understand what it is you are reading or hearing in a statement. In a way it allows you to observe statements clearly.

The next ability is related to the previous one. The wiki calls it “Archivist’s Presence” and it is probably one of the most well known abilities of the Archivist in the fandom. It causes statement givers to be able to eloquently and coherently tell their stories in a narratively interesting way for the statement regardless of their background or emotional state. Part of the reason this ability is so well known is that we actually see what happens when Jon is not present with this ability in MAG 100 (I Guess You Had To Be There). The statement givers we see are unable to give coherent stories due to how their supernatural encounters had shaken them, which was very funny to witness for many TMA fans. The person, Robin, who seemed to have “escaped” or been let go by the Spiral because they remembered that they had dinner with their mom has even become a bit of a meme. By the way, this ability makes statements much easier to receive for everyone in the Archives, not just the Archivist. So anyone who is giving a statement to some member of the Archival staff would be affected by this ability. One thing that is worth noting is that this ability only works if the Eye is aware of the Archivist’s location. Something that is made apparent when Jon is kidnapped by those of the Stranger’s ilk and taken to a place that the Eye cannot perceive due to the strong influence of the Stranger in the area he was taken to.

There isn’t much to say about this ability that I have not said about the last one. It connects to the Eye’s theme of observation by allowing the Archivist to gather statements and understand what the statement giver is saying. It also connects to the Eye’s themes of knowledge by allowing the Archivist to more easily gather more of it and it also encourages the Archivist and their subordinates to seek more knowledge because there are fewer things preventing them from gathering statements from just about anyone.

The next ability is tied sort of closely to the last one, it is called “Compulsion” by the wiki. It allows the Archivist to force others to answer a question or give a statement. We have seen cases where people have resisted this compulsion to varying degrees of success but only in regards to those who are aligned with or favored by another Dread Power or by being an Avatar themselves, such as Jonah Magnus and Peter Lukas. When Jon attempts to use this ability on Jonah he describes being targeted by it as 'quite nice' and 'tingly,’ but due to his strong connection to the Eye I imagine not everyone targeted by this ability would consider it any form of pleasant. I don’t think it's stated specifically why in particular Jonah is completely immune to this ability and he says in MAG 092 (Nothing Beside Remains) “That’s… That’s quite nice, actually. Tingly… but sort of freeing. [Chuckle] You know, even Gertrude never properly tried to compel me. I always wondered –.” It could be because Jonah’s connection to the Eye was great enough to grant him immunity or his status as the Archivist’s boss via magically binding contract is what’s protecting him. It could also be as simple as his status as an Avatar of the Eye.

Either way the compulsion ability ties in with the Eyes themes of being exposed and secrets. It allows the Archivist to force people to give away information or secrets even if they do not want to or are afraid of doing so. It also allows the Archivist to gather this information, which could further scare some people.

The next ability is named “Knowing” by the wiki. The Archivist is able to just know certain things even if they do not have prior knowledge or evidence of them. It usually happens with information relevant to statements or the situation at hand. When Jon purposefully tried to know what an Entity was planning he experienced pain.

This ability ties into the Eye’s themes of knowledge. For one, it encourages curiosity that the Eye loves. If you are wondering about something then you can know about it and seek more answers. It also connects to the Eye’s theme of being exposed since someone could very easily be afraid of the fact that the Archivist could randomly know something they're about to do, a secret they have, where they are, etc.. Of course, this ability probably wouldn’t usually work on Entities just due to how powerful and complex they are and the closest things they have to thoughts might just seem incomprehensible to a person know matter how you slice it.

The next ability is “Understanding.” It simply allows Jon to understand written and spoken languages he has never learned, but it is unclear if he can respond in those languages since he’s only spoken English. For all we know he might only be able to understand them but not speak them.

This ability connects to the Eye’s theme of observation by allowing the Archivist to collect statements and information without issue. Theoretically, I guess it could also be used to eavesdrop and spy on people so that no matter what language they were speaking someone like Jon could always understand them . There’s also once again the theme of knowledge since this ability allows you to more easily gather knowledge from other people even if they do not speak the same language as you.

The next ability is “Inhuman Healing.” It allows the Archivist to recover from physical wounds unnaturally fast but I think this is more tied to Jon’s status as an Avatar rather than as an Archivist. The more powerful the user becomes the quicker wounds heal. When Jon attempts to cut off his finger in MAG 131 (Flesh) in order to create an anchor for when he enters the Coffin he is unable to do so due to his increased healing factor acting too fast. Not even a scar was left behind.

I don’t think this ability really ties into the themes of the Eye in particular. The Entities sometimes grant more basic or miscellaneous powers / perks in order to encourage their followers to keep gathering fear for them, and to punish them when they don’t by taking said powers away. Things like being harder to kill, some kind of resistance, or ways to avoid dying from age are some examples of this. You could maybe argue that the harder you are to kill and the longer you live the more stuff you can know, and experience for the Eye.

Tying into this ability is one nicknamed “Feed Your Patron” by the TMA wiki. When the Archivist records a statement or takes a statement their injuries heal faster. We see this ability is actually pretty potent as in MAG 122 (Zombie) Jon greatly accelerates his recovery process after waking up from a coma by simply reading a statement. However, the occurrence of this event actually points to the idea that it might be tied to Jon’s status as an Avatar rather than just the Archivist. But it could have also become more potent from Jon embracing his powers more than Gertrude. However, this ability does come with some drawbacks. As Jude Perry says in MAG 89 (Twice as Bright) in regards to Avatars feeding their respective Entities “you have to feed it for it to grow strong. Otherwise you’re the one that gets consumed.” What this means is that if Jon doesn’t take or read a statement for too long then he will become dizzy and confused until he reads another one. When Jon stops forcing live statements from people he gets weak and “hungry” and goes into some sort of withdrawal. This “Feed Your Patron” is something we see with a lot of Avatars. For example, Basira grows increasingly weaker and weaker when she refuses to hunt for the… Hunt and John Amherst is killed by Adelard Dekker trapping him in concrete (which prevented him from gathering fear for the Corruption causing him to essentially “starve” to death because of it).

In the case of Jon the “Feed Your Patron” is of course a way for the Eye to encourage Jon to continue to take statements. Which ties into gathering information and observing events. It also encourages Jon to take statements by force which ties into the Eye’s themes of having information exposed or made public. As well as the fear associated with the fact that you may be forced to relive or think about an event you don’t want to.

This ability also ties into one of Jon’s other abilities. Which is nicknamed “Reliving Nightmares.” After someone gives a statement to the Archivist they will frequently relive their experience to the corresponding statement in the form of nightmares, and sometimes they even take on the roles of the creatures or monsters they had seen. The Archivist themselves shares these dreams and is always present and seen by the dreamer, but the Archivist themselves never interferes. Certain Avatars and the employees of the Magnus Institute are exempt from experiencing these dreams. In MAG 120 (Eye Contact) Jonah gives a statement that reveals Jon has these dreams every night. The fact that Jon himself is present in these nightmares ties into the Eye’s focus on observations, stalking, and being watched. This is further emphasized by the fact that the Archivist themselves cannot do anything to affect the dream which means they are forced to watch. The nightmares themselves tie into the Eye’s themes of events and things you don’t want to think about or see. Since each victim is forced to relive terrible events that have happened to them even if they do not want to. Some victims are even forced to witness themselves being targeted by the Dread Powers due to sometimes watching things from the perspective of the creatures that scared or hurt them.

This also ties into the Eye’s themes of knowledge you don’t want to have as you are forced to experience things from the perspective of a monster and watch your own suffering. You could also say that Jon himself ties into this as one part of the statement says “but the Archivist is not afraid. His only fear is that even here, at the center of the world, barreling towards a lightless, infinite tomb, still, he will be watched. Still, he will watch.”

Jon also has a “Knowledge Insertion” ability that seems quite similar to Jonah’s own. We see him use this power to force Not-Sasha to experience the pain and suffering she inflicted on her victims in MAG 165 (Revolutions). “Feel it now. Understand it. You have drawn out so much despair, and now finally, it’s your turn.” This connects to the Eye’s relation to the fear of knowing, experiencing, or witnessing something that you really don’t want to. I’m keeping this short because I already covered this ability in Jonah’s section. In MAG 128 (Heavy Goods) Jon appears to pull information out of what remained of Breekon and Hope and writes it down.

This ties in with the Eye’s theme of gaining knowledge and people learning information and secrets about you even if you don’t want them to. This ability also left Breekon, or maybe Hope (or maybe “and”), running and screaming. Which makes a lot of sense because Breekon / Hope / and was an Avatar of the Stranger, which is the Power that embodies the fear of not knowing or the unknown. We’ve seen on several occasions that the Eye and Stranger often conflict due to their focus on the known versus the unknown respectively and several followers of the Stranger seem to react extremely negatively to the Eye’s presence or when certain Eye related powers are used on them.

Finally is the “Role Reversal” ability. This is an ability Jon only has in the post-Change world and it allows him to shift the Eye’s focus in order to turn a watcher into the watched, the feared into being afraid, and vice versa. This also allows him to kill people since by taking away someone’s watcher status it destroys those whose existence depends on being feared. This is all a bit complicated so let me explain. You know how Avatars need to provide fear for their Entity or else they die. What we see in the Post-Change is that turned up to 11. You are either a sort of Avatar / watcher or a victim. You're either the shepard gathering the fear from the flock or the person being fed on. So since watchers work kind of like Avatars and need fear to live, Jon can basically kill them by removing their ability to provide fear.

Jon can also give the status of “watcher” to someone. Which releases them from the torment of the Change but makes it so they are feeding on the fear instead. The “Role Reversal” ability is also reliant on the Eye and Jon being able to sort of focus on the target. So beings that are constantly shifting forms, such as The Distortion, can be difficult to target with this ability. However, this can be bypassed if Jon focuses on a detail about the target that cannot be changed. For example, Jon is able to recognize one of Helen’s lies and uses that to essentially track her. The Distortion is also an existence built upon lies, Helen / The Distortion is an aspect of the Spiral after all.

These abilities don’t really touch on anything we haven’t touched upon before. Jon’s authority over the watchers and the watched relates to the Eyes themes of being watched and witnessing something you don’t want to. In a way you could view the Eye’s Post-Change world as a massive constantly flowing statement for it to observe.

The wiki also lists “Convenient Tape Recorders” as one of Jon’s powers but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is just the Web tracking Jon with the lighter and other means. The wiki does a pretty good job trying to keep people from accidentally spoiling themselves with major plot threads or twists so I’m assuming this is one of those cases.

And HOLY SHIT. That is all the stuff about Jon. Hopefully the other characters have much shorter paragraphs. First let's start with the previous Archivists.

Angus Stacey

Angus Stacey… who we know almost nothing about him. He was the Archivist that came before Gertrude and his face was unfortunately torn from his skull by a creature of masks and smiles. Which, if I had to guess based on the presence of masks and grins, was a creature that was probably related to the Stranger. This interaction highlights the conflicting fears that the Eye and Stranger embody. The Eye tends to revolve around the fear of knowledge, knowing or someone else knowing / observing and the Stranger meanwhile revolves around the fear of the unknown or not knowing. MAG 167 (Curiosity) says “Angus had been too keen to learn, too ambitious in his academic legacy. He had had grand plans to revise Smirke’s Fourteen, and, in doing so, burned through his resources, his luck, and ultimately all but one of his assistants.”

This tells us that, like Jon, Angus was extremely curious (probably too curious for his own good). Which ties into how the Eye attracts people desperately searching for knowledge and answers and Angus’ curiosity is probably what led to Jonah hiring him. But he ended up being TOO curious to the point where he so desperately tried to learn about the Entities and revise Smirke’s Fourteen he burned through his resources, luck, and assistants in his quest for knowledge. He definitely embodies the Eye’s themes of “curiosity killed the cat.” Or “cats” plural in this case since there were some assistants that were lost too. Considering that Angus was also aware of the Dread Powers he probably had all the standard Archivist abilities.

Gertrude Robinson

This brings us to the baddest bitch herself, Gertrude (motherfucking) Robinson. Man, where do I begin with Gertrude. I mean at first she seems to not really tie into the themes of the Eye all that much outside of some of the powers that come with taking up the position of Archivist. She can force people to answer questions, like with Jon, but tended to avoid using that ability (in order to remain human and probably prevent herself from becoming an Avatar). This power of course ties in with the Eye’s themes of having information exposed or taken from you. She also had the ability to randomly know things like Jon. Which ties into the idea that she may suddenly know things you don’t want her to know.

A thing I think a lot of people don’t consider is that Gertrude seems to have a thirst for knowledge. Not only that but she is probably one of the most dangerous people in the TMA universe because of that knowledge and how well she can wield it. Let me try to explain what I mean by starting off with her curiosity. One thing that is made clear is that Gertrude was pretty heartless. This heartlessness led her to doing things like experimenting on her own assistants. This makes it pretty clear to me that she went through pretty great lengths to obtain knowledge. In the process this also shows a connection to the fear of knowledge and how dangerous it can be since sometimes in order to get knowledge people will take risks that involve sacrificing / hurting others or themselves in order to get it. Also, Getrude throwing her assistants and others to the wolves ties in with the Eye’s embodiment of the fear of witnessing something you don’t want to. Basically, Gertrude was forcing people to encounter or experience something whether they wanted to or not.

There’s also Gertrude’s relationship with Jonah himself. The thing about Gertrude is not only does she seek knowledge even at the cost of others but she is just really good at getting it in general. In 1997 she managed to become aware of the true secrets of the Magnus Institute, including that Jonah was body hopping and where his true body lie, as well as becoming aware of the fact that Jonah was planning to perform a ritual. She also learned that the Panopticon was in the Millbank Prison. Gertrude managed to keep the fact that she knew all of this a secret and let the Archives fall into disarray in order to throw Jonah off. With all this set up Getrude attempted to take down the Magnus Institute AND kill Jonah by burning down the Magnus Institute and then blinding herself to cut herself off from the Eye and prevent herself from dying with Jonah. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that she found out she could cut herself off from the Eye and the Magnus Institute’s weird contract by damaging her eyes and rendering herself blind.

When you lay this all out her ending up with the Eye makes a lot of sense, and she could have probably easily ended up with the Web, Spiral, or Lonely (but this article is more about the Eye then it is Getrude so I’m sticking to the Eye here). It’s this kind of stuff that made Gertrude someone to be feared and someone that a lot of followers of many other Entities began to hate. Think about it. The Eye is all about the fear of someone knowing something, observing you, and being followed. Gertrude was elderly and even with the potential boost the Eye was giving her she probably couldn’t just run in guns blazing. What made Gertrude terrifying was her mind and, as an example, if you were say a member of the Cult of the Lightless Flame you were probably afraid of what Gertrude knew. The Eye has all kinds of ways to supply or encourage someone with the knowledge they need to stop you or interfere with your plans and with that comes the fear of what someone like Gertrude may do with that knowledge.

We can also see how Gertrude stopped a whopping 5 motherfucking rituals. The Eye is often called out for just sitting around and watching but the Eye and the people aligned with it are probably some of the most likely people to know what they need to do to stop the ritual of an Entity outside of the likes of the Web and maybe the End. We also see some more stuff that I think just shows how much of some quality Eye material Gertrude was. When she stops Peter Lukas’ ritual, The Silence, she does it by tipping off a newspaper about Peter Lukas's housing block. So she basically exposed Peter's secret ritual, and the Eye is all about exposing secrets and knowledge.

When she stops the ritual of the Spiral she does it by sending Michael Shelley into it with an impossible map which allowed him to destroy the right mirrors and open the right doors after walking into the Distortion’s door. Of course, this also came at the cost of sacrificing poor Michael but this still ties into the common themes of the Eye. First of all, Gertrude gained the knowledge needed to make an actual fucking map of a quote-on-quote “impossible door” in order to interrupt the ritual. Michael is given this knowledge and trusts Gertrude but this ends up biting him in the ass since he is sacrificed to stop the ritual. In a way the knowledge of knowing what the Distortion really was and then applying that knowledge did end up hurting him.

Gertrude was so fucking good at stopping rituals that when the Extinguished Sun ritual for the Dark failed the the People’s Church of the Divine Host just fucking assumed Gertrude did something. They didn’t even know how they just assumed that she knew something they didn’t and somehow sabotaged them with it. Which in a way she kind of did since she knew no ritual would work if it only attempted to summon one Entity anyway so she didn’t even need to try (you need to summon every single Dread Power into the physical world for a ritual to work). This once again brings up the fear that someone has a piece of knowledge that you really don’t want them to have.

Then there’s also that time Gerard Key died from a brain tumor and Gertrude broke into a morgue in order to take some of his skin and bind him to a Leitner called the “Catalogue of the Trapped Dead” in order to basically bind his “soul” (or at least an imitation of it) to it and keep him around. As we see with how Trevor Herbert, Julia Montauk, and Jon all use him for knowledge, Gerard is a very knowledgeable person to have around when it comes to explaining what monsters are and all kinds of stuff related to the Dread Powers. Once again tying into Gertrude’s thirst for knowledge. She also did this while researching the Unknowing ritual of the Stranger so there’s that idea of being confronted with the unknown and wanting to understand it.

Gertrude also collected artifacts like Leitners and her Ebay username was grbookworm1818. Which ties into the Eye’s symbolism in regards to books and libraries since they are often associated with, and provide, knowledge. Then there’s Gertrude’s interaction with Arthur Nolan, a member of the Cult of the Lightless Flame in MAG 145 (Infectious Doubts). During their interaction she blackmails him and the rest of the cult into not messing with her by revealing that she had done something so terrible to Eugene Vanderstock that Arthur seems frightened just by knowing his fate. This of course ties into the Eye’s idea of “ignorance is bliss” and the fear that knowledge or observing something can bring. I could probably sit here talking about Gertrude all day but I should move on but all you need to know is that it makes sense that she ended up with the Eye and don’t fuck with her. Let’s look at the many assistants that worked for the Archivists.

Martin Blackwood

First there’s the #1 cow spotter in the UK, Martin Blackwood. Since this is an episode related to the Eye I’m not going to be touching on Martin’s connections to the Lonely unless I feel it helps shed light on the Eye itself, or his relationship with it. Martin doesn’t have as strong a thematic tie to the Eye as say Jon or Jonah does but some connections are still present. As an Archival assistant Martin sometimes performs statement follow-ups which sometimes includes questioning people who appear or are mentioned in statements. This ties into the Eye’s themes of following and knowledge. I think it's also ironic that in season 1 he ends up being followed around by Jane Prentiss, which scares him immensely (and rightfully so), which is ironic considering his alignment with the Eye and how he was snooping around to begin with.

Tying into that, Martin seems to be a very scared person in general and even described himself as such by pointing out he is probably like a feast for the Entities. While this could tie into the themes of every Entity you could also argue it leans a bit more into the Eye since this fear probably means that there is a lot of knowledge or things that he sees that scare him. There’s a bigger worry of his eyes showing him too much then with other braver characters and it also means there are probably a lot of things that he doesn't want to see. It could also mean he is more likely to be scared or shaken by things like statements.

In MAG 056 (Children of the Night) Jon gets Martin to reveal that he lied on his CV which ties into the Eye’s theme of having secrets you don’t want to reveal. In MAG 118 (The Masquerade) Martin distracts Jonah by burning statements to which Jonah responds by revealing that Martin’s mother hates him because he looks like his father, who abandoned them. This of course emotionally hurts Martin and ties into the Eye’s fear of information of things one would rather not know. You could also argue that this sort of ties Martin’s mom, and Martin himself, to the Eye in a narrative way since she is being reminded of a terrible person she knew everytime she sees him.

In MAG 102 (Nesting Instinct) Jon seems concerned when Martin mentions that he’s been reading multiple statements. When Jon asks him about it Martin says “B-B… Yeah. I mean, i-it wasn’t fun, but… I mean, if it, if it helps then I –” which shows that it’s taking some sort of toll on him, which also relates to the Eye and the idea of learning about something you don’t want to know or how information can be a burden in a sense. In MAG 134 (Time of Revelation) and MAG 151 (Big Picture) it is revealed that Peter Lukas wanted to use Martin, someone aligned with both the Eye and the Lonely, in order to attempt to gain the knowledge needed to either stop the birth of the Extinction or at least slow it down. The reason it needs to be the Lonely is because said Entity is the one Peter is connected to and the Eye is the Entity that revolves around the fear of things like knowledge and observation so it makes sense that it is the Entity Peter would decide to turn to. This is also another case of the whole curiosity theming that attracts some people, since the Eye is one that has a bunch of information and can provide a bunch of answers. Which a lot of people drawn to it seem to find tempting. Luckily, Martin eventually catches on to the part of the plan that involves Peter making a power play against Jonah to preside over him and the Magnus Institute and doesn’t go along with Peter’s plan. Oh yeah, the plan also involved using the Panopticon and having Martin kill Jonah’s body in order to replace him.

This brings me to Martin’s relationship with some of the other Entities. It is interesting that Martin ends up also being aligned with the Lonely and, in MAG 196 (This Old House), Annabelle Cane mentions that he had an affinity for the Web due to his ability to manipulate people and was only saved from ending up with the Web due to ending up with the Lonely. This is because the Web is all about the fear of being controlled / manipulated so it often attracts those who are good at using things like personal connections and feelings to manipulate others. Something that the Lonely often wants people to cut off. I think that Martin’s connection to these Entities is also very interesting because both the Lonely and the Web have strong connections to the Eye.

In regards to the Lonely and the Eye, in MAG 159 (The Last), Jon states “The Lonely and the Eye aren’t too far apart, are they? Not really. What good’s being alone if you don’t know how alone you truly are.” I’ve seen a lot of people argue that this connection doesn’t make any sense and some people just actively ignore this as some sort of hogwash. This moment is partially what inspired me to make this series. If you were to just see the Eye as being the embodiment of the fear of being watched this wouldn’t make any sense. If you are being watched you aren’t really alone are you? But there’s a couple of things to consider. Firstly, the Lonely isn’t just about being alone physically but also being alone emotionally and / or mentally. Just because there is someone or something with you doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t feel alone. It’s how people can feel alone or have no friends at school despite being surrounded with, sitting next to, and going to classes with at least dozens of other students. You may feel like you’re alone if someone is following you down an alleyway because you feel like no one is on your side, no one is going to help you, and no one is going to miss you if you disappear. We see this alluded to in MAG 48 (Lost in the Crowd) where the Lonely manifests as a faceless crowd of people.

The second thing to consider is that the Eye isn’t JUST the fear of being watched but more broadly revolves around the fear associated with knowledge and information. Things like the fear that someone could learn something about you, that your secrets will become public, the judgement of others, OR that you will come across knowledge that you really wished you hadn’t and how simply knowing something can hurt you. The thing about being alone is that very few people want to think or be reminded of how alone they are. This is also probably why Peter can’t kick Jon out of the Lonely when he goes to search for Martin. I mean Peter is also just worried that Jon will find Martin eventually but it’s important to consider that the Lonely needs that contrast. In order to feel alone you need to understand what it means to have relationships with other people and potentially why people don’t like or care about you. As I’ve mentioned before in regards to the Eye “Ignorance if Bliss.” Something like the physical pain of the Slaughter is a lot easier to understand and fear even if you are ignorant because being stabbed with a blade or shot with a weapon is unpleasant. However, if you don’t even know that you're alone or you’re under the assumption people like or tolerate you then it is a lot harder to feel alone. You could also argue that Jon is potentially feeding the Lonely in that situation because he is afraid of Martin being alone forever. There is also the irony that Peter and Martin both didn’t want to be found because they wanted to be alone. So the fact that someone who wants to be alone, people that the Lonely often attracts, are more likely to fear being followed or watched probably provide a very nice source of food for the Eye.

Then there’s the Web. The Web has strong connections to the Eye because it is revealed in MAG 197 (Connected) that the Web was actually manipulating Jon and the Magnus Institute which is taken a step further in MAG 200 (Last Words) where it is revealed that the Web chose to manipulate the Eye itself. MAG 200 states that this is because of the fact that it considers the Eye to be the most stupidest of all the Entities but I would argue there’s probably a bit more to it. The Eye revolves around information while the Web revolves around control and manipulation. These things go hand and hand. The more information someone has on you the more things they can do to manipulate you, think things like blackmail or emotional manipulation. Part of the reason some people are so concerned about their privacy and information is that they are afraid others might try to take advantage of it in order to do things like manipulate them or make sure they fall in line. In fact surveillance tends to be a great way to control people. A way to let people know that they should behave a certain way because they are being watched. I will go into more detail about the Web’s potential relationship with the Eye later in the article.

One last thing, in MAG 79 (Hide and Seek) Martin and Timothy Stoker follow Jon into the tunnels under the Institute despite him telling them to take a couple of days off in order to figure out what he is doing. So despite how scared Martin is he does have a very curious side, and thirst for knowledge, throughout the series that the Eye seems to love oh so much. Something that ends up getting Martin and Tim in a lot of trouble and trapped in the Distortion for a bit.

Sasha James

Next is Sasha James (the actual one not the NotThem, I’m saving that for the Stranger article). First off, like all the Archival assistants she performs statement follow-ups which sometimes involve her questioning people that appear in statements (blah blah blah Eye, following people, and information being exposed. I’m not going to repeat this for every Archival assistant but just assume it applies to them unless it is stated otherwise). I guess I should also mention that being an Archival assistant increases the chance of coming across the supernatural since you have to look into artifacts, monsters, etc. Which increases the chance that you will see something you don’t want to as part of your job.

Sasha originally worked at the MI as a practical researcher which means she basically acted as a lab rat by personally trying out various artifacts in the Artifact Storage to analyze and investigate them. She hated this and transferred after 3 months. This ties into the Eye’s themes of not wanting to know something or witnessing something you don’t want to as well as how pursuing knowledge can be dangerous as messing with artifacts like this could have easily gotten Sasha hurt, killed, or worse when you think about it (imagine if something like the Buried’s Coffin had been in Artifact Storage).

In MAG 003 (Across the Street), Sasha comes across Graham Folger’s notebooks which just have “Keep Watching” written in them over and over. While the statement is about the Stranger and the Not-Them you could argue that this is foreshadowing to Sasha’s death and replacement as well as connecting to the Eye’s theme of observation to an extent (more so in regards to Sasha and the Institute rather than the Not-Them). Sasha is the first assistant of the original trio to die and, most interestingly, her last words before being killed and replaced in MAG 39 (Infestation) “I think there’s someone here. Hello? I see you. Show yourself,” followed by a scream. I think this connects to the Eye in a sort of ironic and twisted way. Sasha's curiosity leads her to wanting to know who’s there before they are revealed and Sasha sees who they are, which leads to the NotThem killing and replacing her. Something that I will once again connect to the Eye’s “curiosity killed that cat” theme that it likes. Knowing who was there came at a cost. Also being demanded to “show yourself” or be revealed seems very Eye most of the time, especially in regards to a Stranger creature that thrives on the fear of the unknown. Sashsa was also afraid of what she saw and probably wished she hadn’t seen it which probably fed the Eye in its own way. Also, that moment of curiosity also shows a potential reason Sasha was attracted to a place associated with the Eye such as the Magnus Institute.

Timothy Stoker

Next is Timothy Stoker. Tim is actually weirdly sort of like Jon when considering his connection to the Eye. I mentioned earlier that some of the Powers often like to attract people by tempting them with certain things, and the Eye often attracts people who are in desperate search of knowledge, answers and / or understanding. In the case of Timothy Stoker it is revealed that the reason he joined the Magnus Institute was in search of information on what happened to his younger brother Danny. Danny had an urban exploration hobby that ended up leading him to the Covent Garden Theatre, a building designed by Robert Smirke, which is now known as the Royal Opera House. It was there that Danny was presumably killed by a follower of the Stranger, most likely the clown Joseph Grimaldi, and when Danny did not return home Tim went to go find him. When he got to the theater he saw a single figure standing on the stage. While this figure looked like Danny something was not right about his appearance and while Tim remained frozen in place Joseph pulled the skin off whatever was pretending to be his brother. Tim found himself outside the building with no memory of what happened after that but he decided not to go back in out of fear of what would happen to him. Resolving to find out what happened to his brother that night, Tim began working for the Magnus Institute in order to find anything related to The Circus of the Stranger or Robert Smirke.

There’s a couple of things to unpack here. First is someone once again ending up in the Eye’s clutches due to a desperate search for knowledge, which in this case is finding out what happened to Tim’s brother. I also think it's interesting that this all starts because Tim interacts with aspects of the Stranger, the Entity that embodies the fear of the unknown or not knowing something. Which becomes even more interesting when you think about how he ended up involved with the Eye, the entity revolving around the fear of observation and, more importantly in this case, knowledge and knowing too much. Tim is so desperate to figure out what’s going on with the Circus, and potentially stop them, that in MAG 104 (Sneak Preview) Elias (who is Jonah) straight up warns him to stay away from the Unknowing ritual and the Circus as Elias cannot help him or promise his safety (Which makes sense considering how the Stranger and Eye’s abilities and followers often interact as well as the fact that the Stranger seems to have at least one area that is immune to Elias’ / Jonah’s clairovoyance). Tim replies with “So my proposal for you is this: either kill me or fuck off.”

In the statement itself Tim also admits that before learning the Circus came up again he “stopped seriously looking, and started to just… get comfortable.” Of course, once he gets back to tracking the Circus it leads to him dying as he sacrifices himself to stop the Unknowing ritual. Which is noble and all but we later learn that the ritual wouldn’t have even worked even if the team had failed because it was a ritual only meant to summon the Stranger and not every single Entity. Ultimately, Tim is interesting in that his life could have been saved had he remained ignorant and been unable to find more information about the Circus or just stopped seeking them out. Once Tim learns more about the Circus he basically marches to his death. Which in its own weird way is a good display of the Eye’s “Ignorance is Bliss” theme and what Gertrude says about the Eye and the correlation to know something even if the knowledge or search ends up hurting you. Had Tim just remained unaware or not known more information he probably would have lived and it is the knowledge he obtains that leads to him putting himself in danger and acting rather irrationally and angrily (but just to be clear I am not saying his anger isn’t justified).

There is also some narrative justice with Tim stopping the Unknowing after he gets the answers he wants and understands what the Unknowing is as well as how to stop it. Also in MAG 79 (Hide and Seek) Tim and Martin follow Jon into the tunnels under the Institute despite Jon telling them to take a couple of days off in order to figure out what Jon is doing. Which ends up with the Distortion fucking with Tim and Martin. This shows that Tim does have the type of curious side and thirst for knowledge that the Eye often fosters and attracts.

Also, I didn’t mention this for the rest of the Archival staff but basically all of the staff is afraid or annoyed that Elias (Jonah) is keeping secrets from them while also having some sort of mysterious plan which ties into the Eye’s whole being afraid of what people know. I do also think it's kind of funny that Tim’s last words were a sarcastic “I know” in response to Nikola saying “That’s…not…funny!” It could be a coincidence but similar to how Sasha’s last words have themes connecting to the Eye you could argue that this does here with the Eye’s whole knowledge and understanding thing, as well as the fact that Tim knows how Nikola is feeling and is witnessing his fear and despair. Also, Tim is an Archival assistant which means that he performs statement follow-ups, and tracks people down for information.

Melanie King

Melanie King is a pretty interesting character in that I think she embodies some of the themes of the Eye in a single key way. Her intense curiosity and drive to know the truth about the supernatural and the world around her even if it hurts her. First, Melanie clearly has a nearly insatiable curiosity and desire to know that the Eye gravitates towards. Something that is put on prominent display when she joins the Magnus Institute for answers in the first place. Melanie ran a YouTube channel called Ghost Hunt UK that investigated known paranormal events and hauntings. She tended to focus on “war ghosts” near areas of historical conflicts, meaning the creatures and events she looked into were usually of the Slaughter. However, Melanie eventually realized that most paranormal researchers focus on the same few locations that are "confirmed as safe" and she realizes that investigating the potentially more dangerous locations that others avoid increases her chance of encountering real paranormal activity.

In MAG 076 (The Smell of Blood) she also realizes that there was a list of places her colleagues completely avoided without realizing it. She assumes that this was done to avoid drunks and weirdos but then begins to wonder if it's to keep them safe from actual supernatural threats. She also says “After a while, you start to get a feel for the ones that are real or, at least, that the writer thinks are real. They tend to be the messy ones. The ones that don’t really have any sense or resolution, no narrative flow. Where there isn’t even a guess at an explanation, and often you end up just thinking, “Is that it?”” She of course investigates one of these areas which ends up costing her the rest of her YouTube career after she is stabbed by a ghost before being dragged out of a train screaming by security guards and then she ends up getting shot in Amritsar, India by a mound of fused flesh and guns, which infects her with the Slaughter’s influence.

These events show us that Melanie can be too curious for her own good and shows the Eye’s idea of wanting to know something even if it might endanger or hurt you as well as how sometimes searching for answers can end up with you getting hurt. Melanie wanted to understand what was in these places that made people avoid them and she got her answer at a cost. She realized that in order to get the knowledge she wanted she would need to put herself in harm's way, and she even went to let Jon know where she was going in India just in case she died. So she was literally willing to die to know the truth. In MAG 088 (Dig) we also see Melanie following up a statement by asking Martin for some resources to track someone down, which ties into the Eye’s whole following theme. I think it's also funny that in MAG 084 (Possessive) Melanie says “There’s nowhere left for me to go. I don’t know why, but… I just, I just felt that perhaps coming here might help. And talking things out with Jon. I mean, I mean he’s awful, but at least he listens, you know?” which ties into the Eye’s whole waiting, watching, and listening thing.

There’s also Melanie’s very first appearance in the podcast in MAG 28 (Skintight) and in that episode she gives a statement regarding her encounter with Sarah Baldwin, who was probably replaced by the Anglerfish at that point. Which is an being of the Stranger and is once again an example of someone being drawn to the Eye in a search for knowledge after an encounter with the Entity tied to the fear of the unknown or not knowing something. Melanie also ends up joining the Magnus Institute itself. A moment that I think really highlights her possible synergy with the Eye since when Elias / Jonah offers her a job as an Archival assistant Martin warns her not to and even after explaining all the magically binding contracts and stuff she does it anyway.

I think there’s something to be said when it comes to the fact that Elias actually offered her the job and says “I’m sorry to hear it’s no longer running. Your techniques were rudimentary, but you showed surprising promise. On occasion.” This could point to the idea that Elias saw some sort of potential or affinity for the Eye or merely that someone who records supernatural events and is willing to go through great lengths and put themselves in danger to follow leads is very comparable to recording statements and performing statement follow-ups. There’s also the fact that the Eye often manifests as cameras to invoke the idea that someone is being watched, recorded, or listened to and Melanie ran a YouTube channel which is a video platform and her work involved literally using a camera to observe and record the supernatural.

Either way, the point is Melanie joins the Institute because she seemingly has nowhere else to go and because she wants to know what’s happening. Also, funnily enough when she complains to Tim in MAG 086 (Tucked In) about not feeling like part of the team he responds with “You’re suspicious and resentful, right? Welcome aboard.” Which as we have discussed, suspicion and curiosity tend to be things that the Eye likes to foster. It also sort of acknowledges that the immense curiosity and desire to know I’ve been noting is a trait among the Archival staff, albeit in a joking way.

During season 3 Jon asks Melanie to be his “source on the inside” in order to let him continue researching leads by providing him access to the Institute's resources. She also helps him track down Jude Perry. So Melanie is providing information and statements to Jon. In MAG 106 (A Matter Of Perspective) Jonah reveals that Melanie’s father did not actually die peacefully in his sleep and actually died quite horrifically by inserting the information directly into her brain after she attempted to kill him. He also implants how he died into her brain, forces her to see it, and then threatens to shove it so far into her psyche she would see it whenever she closed her eyes. Which ties into the fear of knowing too much and seeing something you really wish you didn’t.

Now, as with Martin, this article focuses on the Eye and in order to avoid getting too sidetracked I am not going to talk about Melanie’s relationship with the Slaughter unless I feel like it sheds a significant light on some aspect of the Eye or Melanie’s relationship with it. Well… the Slaughter is the Entity that embodies the fear of violence and pain. The Slaughter is the Entity Melanie was most likely to encounter when researching war ghosts and it could show how trying to obtain knowledge can sometimes lead you to getting hurt. Melanie also expresses in MAG 106 (A Matter Of Perspective) that the Slaughter took advantage of her frustrations at “being passed over, being disrespected, ignored.” In a weird way her anger partially stemming from the fact that she is being ignored is basically her being upset that she isn’t being noticed or acknowledged. And something that the Eye loves to remind people of is when they are being noticed, acknowledged, perceived, and seen.

Then there is how Melanie quits her job at the Institute upon learning that it is possible to break her connection to the Eye by blinding herself. Melanie does so with an awl from the book repair suppliers in the Archive's library and it works. I’ve mentioned earlier that lacking eyes seems to also be a symbol the Eye likes to use and while sometimes it is just to emphasize something is off by having someone be able to watch you despite lacking eyes I proposed that at other times the lack of eyes is meant to represent some sort of price one suffered for knowledge, something that hurt them from merely observing it, or trying to remove your own eyes after seeing to much. At the end of the day Melanie gets all the answers she wants, the truth about the supernatural and all that, but when she can’t continue it comes at a cost. She gained insight into the truth of the world but ended up having to chose between continuing to server the Eye or giving up her actual eyesight because of it. Also, one could argue she would have avoided hurting herself if Jon never told her that blinding oneself was an option, which could connect to the Eye’s theme of horrible knowledge. Melanie felt obligated to do it because she didn’t want to keep serving the Eye.

You could also argue that there’s an irony here considering her relationship with the Slaughter. The Slaughter is built around the fear of violence and in the end Melanie is forced to commit a violent act upon herself lest she continues to serve the Institute. It’s pretty clear that Melanie would rather hurt herself or others who deserve it (such as Jonah) rather than stay trapped doing terrible things for Jonah and / or the Eye.

Alice "Daisy" Tonner

While Daisy’s most important relationship with the Fears is her relationship with the Hunt I am once again going to be mostly avoiding talking too much about Daisy and Basira characterization from the perspective of the Hunt unless I feel like it also connects to their relationship with the Eye in order to keep this article from getting too long and having to fully explain every single Entity in detail.

At first blush Alice "Daisy" Tonner doesn’t seem to have anything that relates her to the Eye. She is described by Basira as being not good at thinking things through and unskilled in conducting investigations. She instead prefers to just pick targets and pursue them and she is quite ruthless in her pursuit of anything she believes to be monsters (which is ironic given her status as an Avatar. Part of the irony of Daisy is that she’s arguably just as monstrous as some of the Avatars she hunts or at least comparable). Daisy is even compared to a hunting dog, in that she is tenacious, vicious, and loyal to those she cares for but ruthless, violent, and generally her allies tend to just point at problems for her to deal with and she hunts said issue down and “takes care of it.”

However, the Eye and Hunt actually seem to have a lot in common. Both the Powers overlap in the fear of being tailed (I mean when does the fear of being followed by the Eye become the fear of being chased by the Hunt), as well as stalking (the Eye tends to do it in a way like that of a stalker or someone who is obsessed while the Hunt tends to be more like stalking prey). Also, similar to the Eye, the Hunt loves to manifest as tracking and finding things. Which are both things that the Eye often connects to and being tracked / found often connects to the fear of being known and / or seen. The Eye and Hunt also tend to attract people who are obsessed with hunting or tracking things down. In the case of the Eye, people aligned with it tend to be obsessed with finding knowledge even if it might hurt them or others while people aligned with the Hunt tend to be obsessed with hunting other people or things even if it might hurt them or others. One could also say that the Eye encourages a type of hunt, a hunt for knowledge / answers, and sometimes that involves hunting people down and getting the information from them.

Also, the more information you have about someone / something the easier it is to hunt them. While Daisy has been described as being akin to a mindless dog she has still been seen tracking people down and performing interrogations. The tracking ties into the Eye’s theme of being followed or people trying to know where you are and interrogating someone is a way of trying to get information out of them. In MAG 082 (The Eyewitnesses) we see her interrogating Tim, Martin, and Elias / Jonah in an attempt to find where Jon is hiding while he is suspected of murder, and here we can also see a connection to the Eye’s theme of the fear of being found. So when we consider all these overlaps between Daisy’s affiliation with the Hunt and the Eye it actually makes a lot of narrative sense that she might end up with the Institute or why someone like Jonah or something like the Eye might appreciate having Daisy around. Of course, upon attempting to confront Jonah / Elias he responds to her by extracting a statement directly from her mind and proceeds to force her to listen to her own past before Jonah threatens to expose her crimes if she continues the investigation. This scene pulls double duty and not only relates to the fear of being forced to listen to or witness something but also the fear of having information exposed about you and how that can get you in trouble or put you in danger.

In MAG 092 (Nothing Besides Remains) Elias manages to blackmail Basira into signing a contract to work for the Magnus Institute by threatening to reveal the evidence of the various murders Daisy committed to the police force and points out that this information getting out could even lead to Basira being hurt or killed due to be close enough to Daisy to be implicated. Daisy then threatens to kill Elias / Jonah anyway but he explains the supernatural properties of the contract and how killing him would also kill Basira. He says “Then shoot me. Just squeeze the trigger, and watch the only person you care about die screaming. Your last connection to humanity.” The first part obviously relates to the fear of having information being exposed but the second part relates to the idea of seeing something you don’t want to. We see Jonah here threatening Daisy with the image of Basira dying. It is also important to note that Jonah specifically gets Basira to sign the contract and not Daisy herself. If I had to guess this is because, as mentioned before, if you have a strong enough connection to an Entity you can presumably survive the backlash the contract would create from killing Jonah. While Basira and Daisy are both aligned with the Hunt, only one of the two is an actual Avatar of the Hunt, Daisy herself. So with this information we can deduce that Basira would still probably die if Daisy killed Elias / Jonah and that he probably went with Basira just to decrease the chances of Daisy potentially finding out about this loophole and killing him anyway. There’s also the fact that Daisy is described as being like a “loyal dog” so she probably cares about Basira more than her own wellbeing to an extent. Jonah even describes Basira as being the last person Daisy cares about and her last connection to humanity.

Anyway, after this Daisy begins to work for Elias as Archives security and does things like hunt down agents of the Stranger and act as Jon’s escort and bodyguard to prevent a repeat of his kidnapping by Nikola Orsinov. This is another situation where we see the conflict between the forces of the Eye and the forces of the Stranger which only highlights their often opposing fears. In MAG 096 (Return to Sender), Basira helps Jon capture and interrogate Sarah Baldwin about the Unknowing. Another case of the Eye and Stranger coming to blows and the fear of interrogation or having information exposed.

Then there is Daisy and Basira’s role in the police force. They are a part of an informal group within the police force that is known as Section 31. The name of this group comes from Section 31 of the Freedom of Information Act which has a clause that states that details that could interfere with the prevention or detection of a crime can’t be given to the public. In the TMA universe this is often used for cases that are paranormal in nature and officers that have signed a Section 31 form, or been “sectioned,” are informally marked out by others and then assigned work with other sectioned officers in order to handle potentially paranormal cases. Other officers tend to try to avoid these weird cases or avoid being sectioned themselves. If officers feel like something is paranormal then they will wait for a member of Section 31 to arrive in order to avoid the risk of getting sectioned or lumped in with the sectioned officers. Section 31 does end up tying into the Eye in a weird way, first the actual Section 31 is tied to keeping knowledge secret which could tie into the Eye’s theme of having information revealed or the fear that someone knows more information than you. Secondly, the Section 31 officers tie into the Eye’s theme of the fear of seeing something you don’t want to as well as the fear of knowledge or how knowledge can be a burden. Section 31 officers see things that the rest of the officers actively avoid or are afraid to see (the rest of the police force basically doesn’t want to know about the stuff Section 31 deals with). On top of that if an officer gets curious and ever decides to look into supernatural cases they will most likely become sectioned, which can put them in even more danger and / or stress due to their interaction with the supernatural. So in essence an officer ends up being put in danger or stress if they become too curious or know too much and start messing with the supernatural.

Daisy describes Section 31 as a bunch of burned out cops with retirement rates five times the average in MAG 043 (Section 31). Daisy’s extreme drive to pursue criminals and monsters gave her some leeway in carrying out cases that were deemed Section 31 because of the fact that she could handle them quietly and out of sight. Which is something that ties into the idea that the rest of the police force didn’t want to deal with or see / think about what was happening if they didn’t need to. In MAG 91 (The Coming Storm) Daisy manages to track Jon down, which ties into the Eye’s relationship to the fears of being followed and found. Daisy kills Michael Crew but ends up not killing Jon because Basira convinces her that Jon can use his compulsion ability to force Elias (Jonah) to admit to the murder of Jurgen Leitner and Gertrude Robinson. Which means that the only reason Basira and Daisy kept Jon around was because of the knowledge he could provide.

In MAG 120 (Eye Contact) Elias’ (Jonah’s) narration reveals that Jon has visited Daisy’s dreams due to her giving a statement and the fact that it was Basira who signed the contract not Daisy. Meaning Daisy doesn’t have the immunity to Jon’s dream stalking ability that those working for the Institute would. However, due to Daisy being stuck in the coffin during MAG 120 Daisy is absent from the dream and even though Jon looks for her he only sees the Coffin that leads into the Buried. The scene around the Coffin seems to point to the fact that it is supposed to be a memory or dream of when Daisy’s police partner Isaac Masters walked into the Coffin. In MAG 132 (Entombed) Daisy reveals that she was going to kill Jon after they stopped the Unknowing. This is because she kept reliving her memory of the Coffin in her dreams and Jon would be there, watching. At first she didn’t think Jon was really there, and it was just her mind putting her there because she hated him, but one day Jon appeared in the dream wearing a shirt that didn’t fit his style and he came back from the U.S. wearing that exact same shirt, which causes Daisy to put two and two together and resolve to kill Jon. The fact that Jon was watching ties into the more obvious qualities of the Eye and the fact that she was relieving the Coffin dream ties into the fear of things you don’t want to see, know, remember, or think about. She is basically being forced to see the Coffin over and over again, and being forced to watch or hear something is very Eye in flavor.

Basira Hussain

I’m actually going to be skipping over a lot of the stuff in regards to Basira Hussain because a lot of the stuff that I mentioned about Daisy also applies to Basira, for example Section 31 and the fact that she follows, interrogates, and tracks people as well as how Elias blackmailed her into working for the Institute on top of the major overlaps between the Eye and the Hunt. However, Basira is described as the sort of “brains” to Daisy’s “brawn” and even skipping over that stuff there’s still a LOT to talk about.

First off, when investigating the murder of Gertrude, Basira provides Jon with some of the tapes recovered from the room where Gertrude dies. She partially does this to give Jon information to try to solve the murder but the real reason is that Jon himself was a suspect so she was feeding him the tapes in order to prevent him from completely running away. This emphasizes both Jon’s curiosity and how the Eye attracts people who are extremely curious or constantly hunting for more information. Basira is basically using information as bait. In MAG 072 (Takeaway) Basira calls Jon for advice and information before the police move in to assault a compound where Maxwell Rayner (an Avatar of the Dark that we’ll get to in another article) is located. Following this raid she gives a statement and the events shake Basira so badly that she resigns from the police force before advising Jon to do the same in respects to the Institute. The fact that Basira called Jon, who is connected to the Eye, for information just relates to the Eye and information in general and how it likes to attract people by providing answers. It also shows another parallel between the Eye and the Hunt since the Eye providing information makes hunting down and subduing targets easier. The fact that this event shakes Basira bad enough to make her quit the police force connects to the fear of witnessing something so bad that it can mentally hurt you.

This aspect of not wanting to know or witness something actually comes up in an even stronger fashion in Basira’s character because of the fact that we learn she wants to avoid the paranormal in general after her traumatic experiences in MAG 073 (Police Lights). She quits the force and wants to be done with all the paranormal stuff but she ends up being dragged back into it. When Basira is blackmailed into joining the Institute by Elias / Jonah, and is basically being held hostage due to the contract, she actually has an extremely passive approach to her situation (much to Martin’s confusion in MAG 095 (Absent Without Leave)). She takes a great interest in the Institute’s library and spends much of her time reading its books. She sometimes justifies this behavior as an attempt to look for clues while gathering information and infodumping about her readings but she does seem to be genuinely comfortable. Something that ties into the Eye’s idea of simply observing and / or taking in knowledge but not actually doing anything to help yourself or others.

We also know that the Eye does seem to possibly favor Basira like the Hunt does. After Basira kills Daisy in the Post-Change world Jon says this in MAG 183 (Monument) in regards to Basira moving from Domain to Domain “For now, she’ll feed off what she sees in them. As to whether the Eye ultimately gives her a domain of her own… I don’t know yet.” Which implies that the Eye feeds off her witnessing the fear of others in some way.

In the final season of TMA Basira is forced to fully confront her shortcomings and how they contributed to the systemic failings of the police force which you could argue ties into the Eye’s existentialism in regards to realizing or knowing something you don’t want to. In this case the realization we see in MAG 178 (The Processing Line) is that Basira realizes she was never completely helpless and her position granted her a level of power that she actually enjoyed. You could also potentially argue this tying into the Eye’s themes of sadism and people getting enjoyment out of watching the punishment, fear, or pain of others, such as criminals being punished for their crimes.

Michael Shelley

This brings us to one of the characters that was probably done the fucking dirtiest by Gertrude, thee Michael Shelley. Once again, this is an article on the Eye not so much on the other Powers such as the Spiral. So I will only be referencing Michael Shelley’s connection with the Spiral if I feel like it helps emphasize a connection to the Eye.

Michael shared the curious streak and a thirst for knowledge that we see a lot of those who align themselves with the Eye have. In MAG 101 (Another Twist) we are told that Michael saw his friend Ryan get taken by the Spiral. Which ended up driving him to work for the Institute as a young man and he was hired to replace Fiona Law (one of Gertrude’s assistants). This is yet another example of the Eye’s whole “drive to understand something even if doing so will lead you to getting hurt” and how the Institute acts as one of the Eye’s ways to tempt followers and prey to it by offering information and answers. Emma Harvey (another one of Gertrude’s assistants and the one who was responsible for the loss of Fiona) decided to experiment on him in order to see how long she could keep him in the dark. We haven’t gotten to Emma yet but this ties into the idea of someone observing you struggle or suffer and benefiting or getting enjoyment out of it. It also shows how some people are willing to hurt others for the sake of knowledge.

Gertrude never filled Michael in on the truth because she found value in an assistant who was completely ignorant. Michael was brought to Sannikov Land (a place that doesn’t actually exist) in order to stop the Spiral’s latest ritual, The Great Twisting. Michael thought he had gone mad when he saw the Spiral’s ritual (something that parallels the Eye’s themes of how sometimes simply witnessing something can hurt you mentally or emotionally) but Gertrude gave him an “impossible” map and directed him to walk through a strange door (which was the Distortion). With this map and his faith in Gertrude he shattered the right mirrors and opened the right doors which interrupted the ritual and caused Michael to merge with the Distortion. I think that this act also ties into the Eye’s theme of knowledge since the Eye is all about knowing stuff (including what something really is, the horrific truth, and seeing past lies). The map is also a source of information and reveals the true nature of the Distortion (and revealing true natures is something the Eye loves to do), but when Michael follows this map he basically ends up being killed and merged with the distortion. A display of how following what you see or the knowledge shown to you can lead to you getting hurt. Of course, there’s all the lies and stuff but we’ll save that for the Spiral’s article.

Eric Delano

We don’t know a whole lot about Eric Delano but he ends up being kind of important to the story due to being Mary Keay’s husband and Gerard Keay’s father on top of figuring out how to quit the Institute via destroying his eyes. So there are some key details on him.

He was an assistant of Gertrude’s by the way. Eric is immediately shown to have that signature curiosity that the Eye loves so much and in MAG 154 (Bloody Mary) Eric says “I always loved ghosts. They fascinated me. Not the rattling chains and horror part of it, of course, but the mystery, the promise of secret knowledge, of seeing something that no one else was privy to. A secret world that gripped my imagination.” So immediately there’s a clear desire for knowledge and knowing secrets. This fascination eventually led him to apply for a vacant assistant archivist position at the Magnus Institute. Interestingly, Eric did get his “promise of secret knowledge” that no one else was privy to when he met Mary Keay, became romantically involved with her, and when they eventually got married to her. She explained what the deal was with the Entities, their rituals, and Institute to him.

After Gerard is born, Eric does figure out a way to leave the Institute despite the contract by destroying his own eyes, and he eventually does so (blinding himself in the process) which ties in with the Eye encouraging a desire to seek out knowledge even if what you come across could end up hurting you, or others. Shortly after this, Eric’s blindness led to Mary killing him in order to bind his “spirit” (I say spirit and soul in quotation marks because Eric mentions how he’s just more of a copy or memory and not his actual spirit) to a page of the Catalogue of the Trapped Dead by killing him and taking some of his skin to turn into a page in the book. In order to bind someone’s “soul” to a page of the book they need to die before you flay a piece of their skin, and then write a description of their death on said skin before adding it to the book. The skin itself acts as a page. The fact that characters like Mary, Gertrude, etc. had to recount how someone died to bind spirits to pages, and read the account of their death whenever they want to summon the corresponding spirit, is oddly similar to something like the statements that the Eye loves so much. Also, rather interestingly, Eric was forced by Mary to watch her dispose of his body which ties into the Eye’s thing of not wanting to witness certain things or being helpless to do anything but watch.

Also, Eric himself acts as conduit for knowledge by providing Gertrude with the information on how to quit the Institute and avoid the backlash from destroying it or killing Jonah / Elias. There is also some interesting stuff to be gleaned from the relationship between Eric and Mary. In MAG 154 (Bloody Mary) Eric says this about his relationship with Mary: “But d’you know what the strange thing is? Despite the violence, death, even my own murder, I still don’t feel like she… betrayed me. She was what she was. And I knew that,” “She never promised anything, not even in her vows. She never betrayed me. Not like you. She never played dumb when I was stalked by bloated, blood-soaked things, or told me I was imagining it when your friend Adelard dropped a screaming box into the Thames. She didn’t try to keep me in the dark just so I wouldn’t stop being useful; she never made me complicit in a thousand different nightmares, and lives ruined for the sick joy of some otherworldly voyeur… Mary, at least, played straight with me. She knew all about the Institute. And when we were married, when she was sure I could handle it, she laid it all out for me: the rituals, the Powers, all the messy little cogs of the games you play with the universe. She laid out her own plans as well, her dreams of power. In many ways, I suppose they were no better than yours. But at least she didn’t bother to hide behind noble aims. Maybe that’s why I chose her, in the end. At least she was honest. (pfft) Or perhaps I actually was afraid. Terrified of the crossroads where I’d found myself, and I chose the option I thought might keep Gerry safe.” So a core part of their relationship seems to be Mary’s honesty and that she provided Eric with the truth and knowledge. Something that I think ties into the Eye via Eric’s desire for knowledge and the revealing of the truth. Eric chose to stay with Mary, despite the fact that she might hurt him, in part because she provided him with the knowledge he wanted and she told him the truth.

Mary Keay

Since we are talking about Eric we might as well talk about his wife, Mary Keay and then their son Gerard while we are here.

Mary states that she could never be loyal to just one of any of the Entities but she does have a strong connection to the Eye due to growing up with a connection with the Magnus Institute and there’s also the fact that her son and husband were both connected to the Eye, her mother worked part time for the Institute and one of her ancestors (Albrecht von Closen) had a connection to the Eye. So there’s some strong narrative in regards to her and the Eye. I would also like to take a moment to say that I think it’s also weirdly fitting that someone who is interested in all the Entities as much as Mary would be connected to the Eye. Here’s the thing, I would actually argue that out of all the Entities the Eye has the strongest connection to all of them and has the most synergies to the most powers. Which I know sounds like an absolutely mad comment I’m just making for a hot take, especially when you consider that the Eye often conflicts with the Dark and the Stranger while other fears, such as the Lonely, seem to have fewer of these antagonistic relationships. But it’s important to remember a couple of things. First off, all the Powers are connected and have things they overlap in. Even seemingly opposing powers, such as the Vast and Buried, are connected and can manifest in similar ways. While some Powers have more qualities that conflict there are often multiple nuanced and faceted parts of each Entity which means even ones that someone may consider to be “opposite” of each other usually have very specific fears or qualities within them that enhance each other.

This is important because the Eye isn’t JUST about being watched or known (which are the parts that conflict with the Dark and Stranger) but also about witnessing or becoming aware of something you don’t want to or even reliving / remembering events you are trying to forget. It’s the idea of “seeing too much.” The most obvious example of what I mean is the statements themselves that the Eye often uses, which often cause people to recount, talk about, or remember terrible events that befell them. The statements can also be used to force other people to listen to terrible things that have befallen other people. We have seen several cases where statements were used to create negative reactions or feelings in people, such as when Elias / Jonah scared Daisy by recounting her first encounter with the supernatural. We also see Jon’s abilities causing people to relive terrible events they have experienced, even one’s involving other Powers, in the form of terrible dreams. I think that there’s a pretty good reason that the Web chose to use the Eye as the lynchpin for creating a connection to all the fears through the statements. The statements and their connection to all the other Fears are also what let the Web drag the other powers into the multiverse.

Plus, the people who tend to know the most about all the Powers are those with a connection to the Eye, either directly or indirectly (whether they be aligned with the Eye themselves in some way, have a relative connected to the Eye, or wish to have a balance / connection to every single Entity (which would include the Eye)). People like the Archivists, Jonah, and others working at the Archives seem to be more likely to know about the Entities (at least when they aren’t being purposefully kept in the dark). Jude Perry doesn’t seem to know jack shit about any Power that isn’t the Desolation and when Jon questions her she can’t tell him much about the Eye or how it works even when Jon is accidentally forcing her to give truthful answers. The exceptions to this are either people who are part of a long lived family or faction that can inform them on these things, such as Peter Lukas and the Lukas family, or are really old (such as Simon Fairchild). Even then when Peter wanted to learn more about Powers such as the Extinction where did he go to for answers? That’s right, the Institute and the Eye by trying to use Martin’s connection to the Eye. Of course, exceptions do occur but I think it’s still important to point out how the Eye can keep people in the loop and why it can be so appealing.

What I’m saying is that it’s the Eye’s focus on knowledge and experience that connects it to the other Powers. But I’m getting off topic, let’s get back to Mary Keay. What I said earlier about the Eye’s connection to all the other powers connects to Mary’s constant search for books, knowledge, power, and to understand the Entities, and she definitely seems to believe that she can either bend or trick the Entities or their artifacts into serving her own ends if she learns enough about them. This also relates to the Eye’s drive for knowledge and curiosity. Mary was absolutely willing to sacrifice or witness the suffering of others in various experiments regarding things like the Catalogue of the Trapped Dead for the sake of gaining a better understanding of the Powers and some of their artifacts. Mary also forces Eric to watch her dismember and dispose of his body after she kills him. Eric also describes her in MAG 154 (Bloody Mary) as “beautiful, like a – like a shark is beautiful. Every moment she made was deliberate, sharp, and her eyes were always focused on something, always watching. And when she looked at me, I always felt afraid. But there was something else. Something under the fear. Something that made me feel very aware of all my blood. (exhale) I don’t know what she saw in me, not really.”

So Mary definitely has that focus on sight and vision that the Eye often focuses on. Eric mentions that he became aware of all his blood which could be an implication that her gaze reminded him of his vulnerability or mortality or the idea that he was reminded of how she could hurt him. The attention to blood could also have to do something with increased blood flow due to an accelerated heart rate. Eric comparing her to a shark implies how dangerous she is and may parallel the idea that you are witnessing or seeing something that could easily hurt you. When Mary gives Gertrude Eric’s page Eric speculates that it’s basically a final metaphorical middle finger to the Eye. Mary also acts as a provider of knowledge in situations like these and is feeding Gertrude’s curiosity (which the Eye likes to do) and Mary’s obsession with leitners also parallels the Eye’s connection to things that symbolize knowledge, like libraries and books. I think something that is really telling about Mary’s narrative is that Gerard states in his backstory in MAG 111 (Family Business) “Eventually, I grew old enough and wise enough to see her obsession for what it really was: hubris. She lived just carefully enough not to be destroyed by things she studied, but that was it. The things out there, they weren’t like taming fire, they couldn’t be contained or used for light or warmth. The best you could hope for from them, would be that they don’t spot you, and instead my mum chased after them, obsessed with others who had tried to stare at them without being blinded: y’know, Flamsteed, Smirke, Leitner. Idiots who destroyed themselves chasing a secret that wasn’t worth knowing. And the worst thing was, she marked me as a part of that, without my understanding. Or consent.”

If this isn’t the most on the nose shit for all the stuff I’ve been talking about I don’t know what is. 1. Mary’s studying put her in danger of being destroyed by the very things she researched, 2. Gerard points out the best thing you can hope for in regards to the Powers is that they don’t spot you which relates to the Eye’s themes of being acknowledge, perceived, or noticed 3. You know how I said that the Eye’s themes of being blinded or having your eyes removed might relate to the idea that what you saw hurt you or led to getting hurt? That you saw something you shouldn’t have? Here Gerard directly states that people like Flamsteed, Smirke, Leitner and Mary are idiots who blinded themselves in a quest for knowledge 4. They were chasing knowledge and secrets that weren't worth knowing and hurt them in the process, and finally 5. Mary would impart a lot of this knowledge on Gerard without his understanding or consent which basically doomed him to a life of having to deal with the supernatural without having any choice in the matter. It is the knowledge that forced Gerry to live the life he did.

Gerard Keay

Speaking of Gerard Keay, let's look at him some more. Who I will refer to as Gerry the Goth, GG or just Gerry for short (I’m just going to use Gerry), and he is probably one of the most popular characters in TMA.

To start with, similar to Jonathon and Gertrude, Gerry seems to have the weird ability to sometimes just magically know random shit he shouldn’t have anyway of knowing, especially if it pertains to something he is trying to do. This ability is demonstrated in MAG 012 (First Aid) where Lesere Saraki notes “...but he seemed to know the code to the door immediately and strode right in...” It’s possible that he figured out the code beforehand but I would argue probably not since the writers and Lesere put emphasis on how weird it was that he just knew the code. There is also MAG 048 (Lost in the Crowd) where he is able to prematurely warn Andrea Nunis that they are being targeted by the Lonely and that they should remember their mother. I think this is sort of funny because the Eye is all about surveillance in a negative way but here we see someone sort of looking out for someone here and watching their back so it’s an interesting twist to think about. You could also argue that Andrea focusing on remembering their mother could potentially tie into themes of memory. I’m not going to touch on the knowing power itself because I think I’ve already covered it like 2-3 times already with Jon, Gertrude, and Jonah.

Also Gerry has these eye tattoos on every single one of his joints and over his heart that seem to provide some level of protection from the effects of the other powers, such as the Desolation, and in MAG 012 we see this in action when these eye tattoos and a small area around them are the only thing that haven’t been inflicted with burn wounds while he stays in the hospital. I don’t think the protection the tattoos grant is really that special or notable as far as abilities go because basically all the Powers are capable of providing resistance or immunity to the effects of other Entities to a degree as just a nice perk / upside.

In MAG 004 (Pageturner) Dominic Swain comes across a painting Gerry made of an eye. They describe it as “Very detailed, and at first I almost would have said almost photorealistic, but the more I looked at it, the more I saw the patterns and symmetries that formed into a single image, until I was so focused on them that I started to have difficulty seeing the eye itself.” and below the eye there are three lines of fine green calligraphy that say “Grant us the sight that we may not know. Grant us the scent that we may not catch. Grant us the sound that we may not call.” The painting is pretty on the nose because the eye is connected to being watched which = surveillance. You could argue that Dominic having trouble seeing the eye the more he saw the patterns and symmetries ties into a sort of burden that can come with knowledge or being overwhelmed by knowledge. That there’s so much information that seeing the full picture puts a strain on you. It could also represent how the Eye has more knowledge than any normal human could conceivably comprehend, and trying to see it all would just fry our poor minds.

The haiku is interesting and if I think it’s basically a plea or ask for more knowledge, vision, and understanding. As it is asking to see, smell, and hear stuff that one might otherwise miss. This is also a good time to point out that the Eye is about more than just… well eyes and sight. Here we have a crystal clear example of other senses and how they too can be used to gather information, it’s just that as humans we tend to rely on eyes the most when it comes to gathering information and the Eye is mainly born from the fear humans have. There’s also a chance that the haiku represents the fear that can come with witnessing or being made aware of stuff you don’t know about and how the Eye can make it so you can’t ignore those things.

Anyway, let’s talk about Gerry’s childhood because I think it actually gives some juicy tidbits about the themes of the Eye. Gerry talks about his childhood in MAG 111 (Family Business). One thing I think is notable about Gerry’s backstory is that he says “Whenever I tried to run away the ‘real’ world seemed so… ignorant I could never be a part of it.” This ties into the Eye’s themes of how knowledge can hurt you or act as a burden. Gerry’s knowledge of the Powers basically alienated him from the ‘real’ world and left him unable to be a part of it and its blissful ignorance. He couldn’t just forget all the stuff he knew so he kept staying in the much more dangerous supernatural world, and attempted to find a place within his mom’s world by delivering Leitners he hunted down but she was only happy to see the books. Also, in MAG 162 (Cozy Cabin) Gertrude catches Gerry snooping through her stationery cupboard which shows that he has that signature Eye style curiosity since he is looking for potential secrets or information Gertrude might have been hiding. Which ties into the idea of having information exposed and shows why the Eye might have liked Gerry or how Gerry could have generated its respective fear. After Gertrude catches him she says “Curiosity is a very dangerous trait in our line of work, Gerard,” which basically confirms all the stuff I have been saying about the Eye’s themes of “curiosity killed the cat” and how in TMA the more you know about the Powers the more likely you are to get roped into all their dangerous shit. In that conversation Gerry rebuttals Gertrude by saying that ignorance is also dangerous in their line of work and, when you consider characters like Michael Crew, that’s partially true but also incredibly fucking ironic considering that after he dies from a brain tumor Gertrude binds his “soul / memory” to the Catalogue of the Trapped Dead because he was so useful due to his knowledge. Which wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t also know that being stuck to the Leitner is an absolutely shitty experience.

Eventually, the Hunters Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert manage to get their hands on the book and use Gerry’s page like a personal monster manual. Summoning him so they can ask him about whatever monster they are dealing with. Basically, Gerry’s knowledge makes him valuable which also ends up trapping him in a miserable existence for most of the series because people want that knowledge. Also, this is another case that points out the similarities and relationship between the Eye and the Hunt. In order to Hunt something you usually need a desire to find or know about it (which is something that the Eye loves to do). Being hunted becomes a lot scarier when you know whatever is hunting you can y’know actually FIND you. If you know a hunter has no way of finding or tracking you then being hunted becomes a lot less scary.

Going back to the conversation between Gertrude and Gerry at the end of it he asks if he can listen to the statements that Gertrude recorded for her successor or those she found useful. Which… okay I don’t think I need to explain this one like half the people we see that align with the Eye need to take statements, enjoy listening to statements, or gain a benefit from doing so. Obviously, this represents Gerry’s curiosity again. As for Gerry’s job he was a freelance coworker to Gertrude which connects him to the Eye-aligned Magnus Institute, not that he doesn’t already have enough connections to it with Mary, Eric, his powers, and the tattoos. Also, most importantly Gerry is the one who directly explains the Entities with no bullshit and lays everything out for Jon. Providing him with most of the things he wanted to know in regards to them. So Gerry acts as a key source of knowledge, and providing exposition, truth, or knowledge is something the Eye often likes to do.

Albrecht von Closen

We might as well knock out the last member of the Keay family, Albrecht von Closen. Honestly, there’s not a lot to go over with this guy and I don’t want to bore you, or stretch out the length of this piece by analyzing the entirety of MAG 23 (Schwartzwald). Albrecht wasn’t an archival assistant or working for the Magnus Institute, but similar to Mary, he is worth mentioning. Also, he is an ancestor of Mary and Gerry so he is important for that reason.

To keep it short, in 1816 Albrecht sent a letter to Jonah Magnus going over his discovery of the tomb of Johann von Württemberg. Albrecht was taking a walk in the Black Forest of what is now Germany and he came across the the isolated graveyard and tomb of Johann von Württemberg. Albrecht found a bunch of books in the tomb but unfortunately they were presumed unsalvageable due to the moisture and mold with the exception of one single book that was on the floor and a coin with “JW" and "1279" on one side with "Für die Stille (which translates to “for the silence”)." I’m not really sure what JW means if anything and I’m pretty sure 1279 is just when the coin was minted but “for the silence” could imply someone or something was essentially trying to get Johann to “shut up” as it were or the silence could relate to the Eye and how it forces you to witness and hear things you don’t want to and being unable to do anything else but watch. So in that regard the coin could be a plea for all the “noise” and statements and knowledge to stop.

Also, you know what I said earlier about the books being unsalvageable? Well, we later learn that Albrecht lied and in 1831 Albrecht is beset by a mysterious illness. Jonah Magnus gets Dr Jonathan Fanshawe to visit him in MAG 127 (Remains to be Seen) and Dr. Fanshawe sends Jonah a letter that suggests that Albrecht lied. The books were in fact salvaged from the tomb and brought to his library and the books detailed numerous esoteric stories of the supernatural. This highlights the Eye’s connection to sources of knowledge like libraries, books, and statements as well as Albrecht’s extreme curiosity and drive for knowledge. Albrecht sent the books to be rebound / fixed up in 1830 and Jonah conspired with his bookbinder to steal them, returning nothing but blank volumes to Albrecht. Which also highlights Jonah’s thirst for knowledge and the conflict arising over the information that the books contain. Albrecht later dies from unknown causes, related from the books he took from the tomb of Johann von Württemberg, and an autopsy reveals that his internal organs, bones, and inner skin had been covered with eyes. Besides the obvious “eyes to let you know something is observing you” the fact that this presumably happens because Albrecht took the books from the tomb relates to the idea that it is Albrecht’s curiosity and desire for knowledge that led to him getting “infected” and killed.

Albrecht also ties into the fear of having knowledge, truth, or secrets exposed since he seemed really concerned about keeping the truth of the books he found in the tomb a secret. So much so that he lied to Jonah Magnus. Ironically, I can’t really blame him for lying though since he probably knew Jonah would want to get his hands on those books since the second Jonah realizes Albrecht has them he uses a trick to steal them. There’s also something to be said that it is the knowledge of what Albrecht has being exposed that leads to Magnus taking them. So far it may seem like Albrecht is purely a victim but the wiki says he was aligned with the Eye and this is reinforced in the events of MAG 127. First off, while in his residence Dr. Fanshawe had trouble sleeping because he felt like he was being watched and when he did finally manage to fall asleep he awoke to his feeling of of being watched having been intensified immensely. He was certain someone was in the room staring at him and lit a match that revealed the face of Albrecht looming over him. Albrecht appeared sickly and kept repeating the phrase "Leg sie alle zurück (Put them back)." The match eventually burnt out and when Fanshawe lit another one Albrecht had disappeared. Anyway Fanshawe doesn’t fall back asleep all night and does the ballsy move of asking Albrecht what the fuck that was all about. Surprisingly, despite being in a horror story, Fanshawe isn’t killed and manages to find him in the library (something the Eye is often associated with). Albrecht apologizes and begins to talk about how he had his books rebound, so we can only assume that when Albrecht was saying “put them back” he was referring to the books Jonah had stolen.

Albrecht then begins to recount some of the stories he read while sitting opposite of the doctor even as Fanshawe insists they talk about Albrecht’s deteriorating health. Dr. Fanshawe gives a pretty interesting account of the event “...he took the seat opposite me and started to tell me a story. And then another. And another. A stream of strange tales began to pour out of him, and I just sat there, transfixed, desperately wishing I had the strength of will to leave, but all I could do was listen.” The fact that Fanshawe just wanted to talk about Albrecht’s health and that he could only listen while being unable to leave connects to the fear of witnessing terrible things or gaining knowledge you don’t want to know. We also get a description of some of the stories Albrecht told. “He told me of a seamstress, who laced her body with fine black thread, and when she pulled it all out in a single swift motion, her skin dropped away like a loose shift. He told me of a man so scared to die he spent a year weaving a rope blindfolded, so he would not know the length, and could not foresee the moment it would tighten around his neck when he finally threw himself into the void. He told me of a fire that burns so hot and fierce that to even know about it is enough to burn a man’s tongue from his head. He told me so many terrible things.” The seamstress is probably a reference to the Stranger, the man and the rope to the End, and the final one is probably the Desolation but I find it the most interesting. This is because it’s described as a fire that burns so hot and fierce that simply KNOWING about it is enough to burn a man’s tongue from his head. This actually has some serious themes relating to the Eye since the Eye is all about how sometimes simply knowing something can hurt you. Sometimes the ways it hurts you are emotional but at other times knowing something can put you in physical danger and when you drag supernatural shit into it the knowledge itself might directly hurt you physically or drive you mad. While one could argue that the fire relates to the Desolation and the fear of loss in regards to losing your tongue it could also relate to the Eye and its themes of knowledge. The story of the man and the rope clearly relates to the End and the fear of death but it also connects to the Eye in that he weaved the rope blindfolded because he was scared to know the length and did not want to foresee the moment it would tighten around his neck. That story also has a connection to the fear of knowledge or things you would rather not know.

As his eyes dart to the books around him, Fanshawe asks Albrecht where he read these stories. Albreach answers with a laugh and places his hands across a spine that was simply labeled ‘A Warning.’ Fanshawe says that for a moment it looked like Albrecht was going to throw it into a fire but Albrecht doesn’t and turns towards Fanshawe saying in German “You do not understand, I do not read the books. They read me.” Fanshawe decides not to ask any more questions and goes to get the key to his room making sure it is locked as he slept this time. The fact that Albrecht says he did not read the books but that they read him sounds almost exactly like the small gray book Michael Crew came across. As Michael Crew describes the book as “trying to read him back.” This could point to the fear of having knowledge exposed by the books trying to quote unquote “read” you or the books forcing knowledge into you.

The fact that attention is brought to a book called “A Warning” could relate to the idea that it was the stuff in the books and the knowledge they had that led to Albrecht’s deteriorating mental state. Fanshawe not wanting to ask anymore questions relates to the whole “you don’t want to know” theme of the Eye.

Fiona Law

With the Keay family out of the way we can get back to the Archival assistants. I want to cover Emma but in order to fully understand Emma we kind of need to address Fiona Law.

Fiona is immediately made apparent to be a weird case and basically all we know about her is from MAG 167 (Curiosity). She is described to possess both great curiosity and cowardice. The curiosity part is something the Eye likes to foster and I already talked about cowardice and the idea of “seeing too much” with Martin. Fiona is a special case in that she was Angus Stacey’s last Archival assistant and technically Fiona could have safely quit her job when Angus died but her burning curiosity led her to staying around and work for Gertrude, something that continued to put her in danger and until her luck ran out and she got trapped in the Coffin.

The thing about Fiona is considering how all her previous colleagues died and her extreme fear acting like a five course meal for most of the Entities is that she probably should have died several times over. The one thing that kept her alive is that she would faint whenever she was terrified. While there are plenty of things in the TMA world that can kill you even if you're unconscious the Entities are born from fear so they usually want their monsters and followers to feed them fear not necessarily the lives of people. Due to this, there are a lot of monsters and creatures that don’t get any real satisfaction from killing someone not awake enough to even know what’s happening or be afraid of anything. Right here is where we pause and come back to what I said about the idea of knowledge and witnessing horrific things. The Eye is pretty interesting because the thing that connects basically every fear is on some level you need to have a certain degree of awareness or knowledge about what’s happening around you in order to have a significant amount of fear. It’s kind of hard to be afraid of a car crash if the possibility of it doesn’t even cross your mind, and from this lens seeing a car crash can help put that into your mind and ties into the themes of the Eye. Fiona reflects this point since by going unconscious so she can’t fully experience the dread and fear the Entities want her to feel. From this perspective the Eye can seem like a sort of weird fear foundation from a certain perspective. Even for entities like the Stranger (the fear of the unknown) because in order to be scared of the unknown you usually have to understand that there are things you do / did know or comprehend.

The Eye and the Stranger have a necessary contrast that I will get to later. Back to Fiona though, we are told that Fiona never got deep enough into the mysteries that plagued her, probably partly due to the fact that she would have probably fucking fainted whenever she got close because you need to remember that the Entities are fucking embodiments of fear so a lot of the shit regarding them probably isn’t going to be smooth sailing as far as emotions go. To Fionna’s coworkers she is described as seeming like “something of a joke, a middle-aged chatterbox who told stories of the Blitz and jumped at the long shadows in the corners of the Archives.” Her penchant for telling stories probably ties into the Eye’s habit of having people expose stories or statements. The fact that she was so jumpy at the long shadows in the corners of the archives probably references an encounter she had with the Dark and relates to the Eye’s idea of fear created from witnessing something (which is emphasized with someone so jumpy).

Emma Harvey

This brings us to one of Fiona’s coworkers and fellow Archival assistant, Emma Harvey. Someone we have so little information on that there isn’t even a wiki page on her (which makes my job easier so I don’t know why I’m complaining). So, like with Fiona, we are just going to have to go off what we are told in MAG 167 (Curiosity).

The thing we are made immediately clear about in regards to Emma is that she’s an asshole. Emma is described as having a sickness. Not a mental sickness or some viral disease but the plague of curiosity. That desperate grasping need to know. This immediately emphasizes her Eye alignments and the idea of curiosity and getting knowledge even if it hurts others or yourself. Emma was also Gertrude’s confidant, and Emma was the only one who knew of the bond between Gertrude and Agnes Montague (which connects to idea of knowing secrets). Anyway, Emma was curious like Fionna but unlike Fiona she recognized how dangerous curiosity can be in the Archives and the TMA world in general which led her to wonder how someone like Fiona had not died yet. Her experiments were simple. Whenever a statement was close and real enough that finding its source was possible Emma would volunteer herself and Fiona to go investigate it. She managed to do these experiments under everyone’s noses because Eric was somebody who didn’t mind being left out of expeditions and Gertrude had far better things to do than worry about the comings and goings of her assistants (so she trusted Emma to arrange things as she pleased). Once Fiona and Emma came near the location Emma would always make sure Fiona was ever-so-slightly ahead to make sure she was first through the door. Then Emma would close the door behind her. Unfortunately, Fiona never caught on and genuinely believed that locking doors were a tell-tale sign of the supernatural. Emma then did her best to observe from safety, making notes, and only retrieving the unconscious Fiona when the danger passed (which ties into the idea of being watched and that someone might be watching you suffer and benefiting off it or enjoying it). You could also argue this is Emma forcing Fiona to see or witness things she doesn’t want to. This went on for decades until they encountered the Coffin that led into the Buried and such a place was not something that could be escaped by fainting or running away.

Emma came to tell Gertrude what happened with the Coffin but lied about all the experiments and Emma would find cobwebs in her own hair, which she had to wash away every morning for the rest of her life. It’s pretty clear that this is probably the influence of the Web and that Emma’s manipulative scheming nature had attracted its attention. Which forces me to address the giant monster spider in the room.

Similar to the Hunt and the Eye, the Web and the Eye seem to share a lot of similarities or have a decent level of synergy with each other. In MAG 197 (Connected) it is made clear that both the Eye and the Web have a whole “watching, listening, and waiting thing” going on. Something that is not only reflected with how Basira assumed the tapes were aligned with the Eye but also with how the Web is often symbolized with spiders. Creatures that are associated with careful patience since they spend many hours just sitting on their webs waiting and watching for the perfect moment to catch their prey (I guess they also have a lot of eyes). There’s also the fact that the Web is the fear of manipulation or being controlled which ties in well with the Eye’s knowledge and observation. First off, using the threat of being watched or surveilled is a common tactic used to get people to act in line or in a certain manner. From using security cameras to make sure no one steals, to using the idea of an omniscient god to get people to not sin, all the way to telling a child that Santa knows if they're acting nice or naughty in order to keep them on their best behavior. The act of simply being watched or recorded also causes people to behave differently, even if subconscious. For example, if my religious grandma is looming over my shoulder then I’m probably not going to swear like a sailor even if I do when I’m alone or with friends. Heck, one could argue that this means that the very act of watching someone is in of itself can be a form of manipulation or exerting control if it causes people to act so differently. You also have things like governments or police states exercising control by putting surveillance anywhere they can and helicopter parents doing the same for their kids. Surveillance can often be used as a form to exert power which in turn exerts control.

Knowledge and information play a pretty key part in manipulation. The more information someone has about you the more likely it is that they will be able to manipulate you and influence you. In fact, things like blackmail show one of the easiest ways to use information is to manipulate others. I would honestly argue that probably part of the reason the Web chose to manipulate the Eye the most out of all the Entities is because of its vast quantities of knowledge and surveillance.

But let's get back to Emma. There was Eric but Emma didn’t want to mess with him and it’s implied that the reason for this is because she didn’t want to cross Mary. Eventually Fiona was replaced by a young man named Michael Shelley, who Emma was eager to experiment on. This time the experiment involved keeping Michael in the dark as to what was really going on for as long as possible (which turned out to work until Michael died). This time Gertrude did actually have an inkling as to what was going on but she had other conflicts to deal with and she thought that a truly ignorant assistant could be useful. Eventually, Eric disappeared due to all that blinding himself stuff and Gertrude didn’t know that he managed to quit the Institute (and might’ve been killed by Mary at this point) so she couldn’t find him and believed when Mary said she had not seen him. Gertrude could’ve used her archival powers to know the truth or at least force the people around her to tell the truth if she really wanted to but it was easier to make it another pillar of her crusade. Which relates to the idea of not wanting to know something and also just Gertrude wanting to keep her humanity by not wanting to rely on her powers too much.

Sarah Carpenter

Then came Sarah Carpenter as the next Archival assistant. As you can guess Emma went right back to her bullshit and proceeded to experiment on her by having her do things like jump into caves of deep darkness, and read strange astronomy books while charting the stars. However, eventually Sarah was killed by what we can only assume was a creature or avatar of the Desolation that “burned on the inside.” Instead of doing the sensible thing and getting the fuck out of there Sarah’s last words were “Hello? I’m from –” before “...it was over. He split open like a flower bud blooming, and inside there was only the most terrifying heat. She had no time to run, and by the time she thought to scream it was too late as the thing enveloped her, closing tight, until she was simply more ash, trapped forever inside that charred and hollow shell” and then Emma ran away, realizing that she might have gone too far.

Sarah’s last words are interesting because I think it alludes to the fact that she was probably about as curious as most of those who work in the Archives of the Magnus Institute and the fact that Sarah didn’t immediately run away but tried to interact with the creature. It also speaks to Emma’s curiosity that she didn’t run away until after seeing what came of Sarah (but in fairness the episode points out that they didn’t notice things like the steam and thin lines with dull orange light coming from them so you could argue it was just ignorance on their part. However, in that case Emma didn’t become scared until she knew / saw what happened to Sarah so there’s still themes of the Eye there. On the other hand the man they saw was just sitting in the burnt ruins of an old farmhouse so perhaps they should have been more aware that something was up). I should also point out that it’s stated that the reason Gertrude probably hired her was because she had a “fire” that we can only assume was the fire of curiosity, burning desire to know, or some other sort of passion.

Gertrude returned to the Archives from having sacrificed Michael and began to suspect the truth about Emma. Gertrude was filled with ice-cold rage at this betrayal and Gertrude contacted Agnes who seemed to have known what happened to Sarah (which considering her importance to the Desolation and the Cult of the Lightless Flame does make some sense). Feeling betrayed, Gertrude then killed her last and most trusted assistant in a fire that Agnes probably had something to do with. Apparently, Jonah / Elias allowed this to happen as long as it didn’t take place in the Archives itself (which relates to the Eye’s theme of someone watching but doing nothing). Also, Gertrude being betrayed by the person she confided in the most could relate at least in part to Emma’s lies being exposed (since she still tried to hide them from Gertrude) and knowing / realizing that someone betrayed you (and yes I know betrayal is usually a theme of the Spiral and that’s definitely here (the Distortion even mentions it had rarely seen a better liar than Gertrude) but my point here is the pain that comes from knowing a friend or the truth of their lies and behavior. Even if not trusting anyone becomes a theme for Gertrude’s character after this moment).

Rosie Zampano

So let’s talk about the assistant and receptionist of Jonah / Elias, Rosie Zampano. As far as Eye themes go, I feel like Rosie is very on the nose and a summary of all the stuff I’ve talked about so far.

One thing that’s made pretty apparent about Rosie is that, like most of the people we see working in the Archives, she is extremely curious. In MAG 192 (An Appointment) this is made apparent from the fact that she had the childhood nickname of “Nosy Rosie (which she got from her tendency to snoop through the belongings of others),” and if there’s one thing the Eye loves to do its creating fear by having people stick their noses where they don’t belong. It is also revealed that Elias / Jonah would always leave files, such as the one on Peter Lukas, in conspicuous enough locations for Rosie to find. MAG 192 even says “She knew he’d been preparing her. She didn’t want to let him down. Or did she? Rosie didn’t even know anymore. At the very least, he’d never lied to her, never failed to validate her suspicions or indulge her snooping. As afraid as she was, he seemed to understand her,” which heavily points to the idea that Elias / Jonah was purposefully trying to encourage and cultivate this behavior for the Eye (similar to how he cultivated the curiosity of Jon).

Despite the face Rosie puts on, she is very judgy and critical of those around her within her head. The ironic flipside of this is that she is paranoid and often worries that people think poorly of her or are making jokes at her expense. Both of these are two sides of the same coin in that they relate to the fear of being judged (with Rosie being both the perpetrator and the victim of who is being judged, and as I’ve mentioned before the Fears don’t generally care about where the fear they feed on comes from, only that it does). We learn that during Jane Prentiss’ attack of the Archives Rosie refused to go anywhere, even as Sasha ran by talking of worms, until she knew what was happening despite it being clear that there was some emergency. This event also causes her to remember when she crept towards a rotten board in her parent’s attic as a child, dying to know what was behind it, only to reveal a squirming nest of half-dead insect bodies. Implying that this might not be Rosie’s first encounter with the Corruption and highlighting the fact that she has a drive for knowledge so strong it will sometimes even come at the expense of her own safety or the comfort of others (as we see with her snooping).

Like the Archival staff, Rosie does get the feeling that she is being watched by something in certain parts of the Institute, such as the Archives, but she doesn't know what the Eye is. So she knows that someone or something is watching her but doesn’t know enough about any of the Entities to suspect or know it has anything to do with the Eye. Rosie is also suspicious of Elias / Jonah and suspects that he knows a lot about his employees and that he is evil and selfish. Which is confirmed after Elias / Jonah confesses to his crimes. While, she is aware that the depth of knowledge Elias / Jonah has on his employees and we are even directly told “She knew the sort of information he had on everyone, and now she knew what he was capable of, what he might do if he thought Rosie might be a threat. She was just going to sit there, watch, and hope to go unnoticed. And a small part of her, almost wanted to see what was going to happen.” This parallels the Eye’s recurring theme of observing but being unable or simply choosing not to help as well as the idea that someone may watch you suffer out of curiosity / enjoyment.

Rosie also definitely wanted to figure out what was going on in the Institute. She continues to show up for her shifts even after Peter is killed and the Magnus Institute is attacked by Trevor Herbert and Julia Montauk, leaving many dead, she still keeps showing up until she can find out what’s going on. So Rosie keeps waiting at the desk until the Eye’s ritual succeeds and the Change occurs. In the Post-Change world Rosie still has most of her memories but she cannot recognize the people she once knew, such as Jon. She acts as the receptionist and assistant of Elias / Jonah still and while she doesn’t know it is specifically the Eye watching her she knew she was being watched by something and in order to cope with the immense unease she assumed was being caused by her paranoia she wears a fake smile in order to appease whatever is watching her (clearly tying into the fear of being watched). Rosie knows that Elias / Jonah is somehow responsible for the Post-Change world and wants to stop him but she is immobilized by fear. Interestingly her station at her desk is not a Domain but the Eye feeds off the fear and distress she feels while being torn between her sense of responsibility to act and stop Jonah and the fear of being subjected to the horrors of the Post-Change world and its many domains if she confronts Jonah (which ties into the theme of being afraid to witness something).

AND HOLY FUCK that is all the people I wanted to go over, or at least all the people on the TMA wiki pages but if I sat here going through every MAG and statement for every single Eye related individual this article would probably be literally twice as long.

Rituals

Fortunately, the ritual sections should be way shorter since we are only privy to 2 of the Eye’s attempted rituals.

The Watcher’s Crown

The Eye’s ritual is known as “The Watcher’s Crown.” A name that obviously conveys the idea of being watched and surveillance but also points to the idea that Jonah wanted to perform the ritual to put himself in a position where he could escape death. It could also simply refer to the Eye being made the “king / queen / ruler” of the Post-Change world and watching all the suffering unfold.

The first attempt at a ritual failed due to Jonah not understanding he had to summon every Power into the world for the ritual to work. The reason for this is twofold. First of all, all the Powers are connected and part of some bigger… thing. When metaphorically explaining the powers to Jon, Jurgen Leitner likens the Entities to body parts by saying in MAG 080 (The Librarian) “Imagine, you are an ant, and you have never before seen a human. Then one day, into your colony, a huge fingernail is thrust, scraping and digging. You flee to another entrance, only to be confronted by a staring eye gazing at you. You climb to the top, trying to find escape and, above you, can see the vast dark shadow of a boot falling upon you. Would that ant be able to construct these things into the form of a single human being? Or would it believe itself to be under attack by three different, equally terrible, but very distinct assailants?” In this example it seems Jurgen is referencing some of the Entities in his example, with the staring eye representing the Eye, the vast dark shadow of a boot representing either the Vast and / or the Dark, and the huge fingernail representing… Honestly, I’m not 100% sure. Maybe the Buried or maybe the Desolation? But that’s not the point. The point is that attempting to summon a single Entity is like the equivalent of trying to invite someone into your house but only letting their arm or specific organs enter the building and not the rest of their body, or making a tiny hole that someone can fit their arm through and trying to pull them in through the hole by grabbing on to their arm. In order to actually get them into the house you need to have a big enough door that allows them to walk through the door in their entirety.

Gerard compares the fears to colors, with them often bleeding over, mixing, and overlapping, and I think this actually hammers the point home. Trying to summon just the Eye for example is like trying to summon a world that is every shade of blue and also lacking a single shade of every other color. Someone might point out that they can imagine a place that is just blue but then comes the question of “Where do we draw the line in regards to what is and isn’t blue? Let's say you have a little turquoise, well congrats now you also have aspects of the Hunt in your world and the hunt is basically trying to get dragged in too but your ritual hasn’t compensated for that.” In MAG 160 (The Eye Opens) Jonah ponders “You see, the thing about the Fears is that they can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?” This is something that is further reinforced by the fact that in the Post-Change world we some Domains are equally connected to more than one Entity.

The second reason you can’t just summon individual Powers is that they need to have a sort of contrast or balance. In MAG 160 Jonah says “Even those that seem to exist in direct opposition rely on each other for their definition as much as up relies on down. To try and create a world with only the Buried makes as much sense as trying to conceive a world with only down. Every ritual tied itself so closely to a single power as to render itself impossible. They could bring their patron close, but never sever it from the others, and eventually it would be violently pulled back into the place next to reality where they dwell.” A lot of people seem to sort of dismiss this because they don’t fully understand it so let me put it in a much simpler way: Light cannot exist without shadow. For light to exist it will by its nature cast a shadow, and many would see shadows as the opposite of light. Also, darkness doesn’t mean a whole lot if there is no light to compare it to, be it conceptually or literally. This is why I feel like people who say things like “If the Stranger succeeded in its ritual it would probably kill the Eye” sort of missed the point. First off, if we go back to the earlier body part analogy that would be like the equivalent of chopping off your own limb or pulling out an organ to enter a house (remember the Entities are one bigger thing). So based on the evidence we are given I don’t think any power really has the ability to completely or directly destroy another even with a successful ritual. I also find the conclusion that a successful ritual from the Stranger would destroy the Eye or any of the Entities extremely dubious because we literally see what happens to opposing Entities when one of the Powers performs a successful ritual. Lets not forget that the Post-Change world was ruled over by the Eye but despite this the Stranger wasn’t removed or anything. Heck, not even Avatars and monsters of the Stranger were directly killed unless someone like Jon came by and killed them. What happened is that their existence was simply miserable due to the Eye’s concept of being known clashing with their desire and nature to be unknown. So if there was a world where say the Stranger won what would probably happen is that most Eye Avatars and monsters would find existing in such a place to be miserable or even painful but they would probably still be around and so would the Eye. And as I’ve mentioned the Entities themselves don’t usually care where the fear that feeds them comes from as long as it keeps coming. So I don’t think that the Stranger or Eye would care that their followers are miserable as long as they keep getting fed.

Secondly, as both me and the show itself points out, contrast needs to exist and applies to not just to Entities like the Vast and the Buried but also Entities like the Eye and the Stranger. The Eye is the fear of knowledge and the Stranger is the fear of the unknown which means in most cases they are direct opposites. However, this is basically like my light and shadow metaphor. In order to have a concept of what it means to know you are by default going to have the concept of the opposite, the unknown. In order to know you usually have to understand that there is the possibility you don’t know something or at least didn’t at some point unless you’re some weird metaphysical god-like being. Which, unfortunately, most humans and animals are not. There’s also the fact that in order to be afraid of the unknown you need to understand that there are things you do know or things you can know. If there is something unknown but your entire existence and universe is literally just the unknown anyway that would be like trying to create a shadow in total darkness with literally no light of any kind or to create a universe with only light and not a single shadow or place where a shadow could occur (honestly I kind of feel like TMA actually beats you over the head with this concept but a lot of people seem to miss it). To attempt to summon only the Stranger or use it to destroy the Eye in a ritual is sort of a contradiction since it would be like trying to make a world where literally everything is unknown. But I guess you wouldn’t know that you don’t know something since if you didn’t know anything about everything then not knowing anything probably wouldn’t really matter since you would literally have no way to know any better anyway… aaaaand you see what I mean at this point right?

So let’s get back to the rituals. The Eye’s first ritual was "The Watcher's Crown." I actually can’t find a lot of information on this ritual other than it failed and some of the simple details in regards to how it worked and that it was performed somewhere around February 13th, 1867. Jonah managed to convince Smirke to work on the Panopticon in the Millbank prison, and Smirke would design the prison as a temple to all the Fears in equilibrium, ignoring Jonah’s suggested modifications. These modifications probably had something to do with attempting to lean the building closer to that of the Eye but I don’t believe it’s ever directly stated.

As I mentioned earlier in this article the panopticon was the ritual place for the Eye and that makes perfect sense. A panopticon is a type of prison that is defined as “a circular prison with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners could at all times be observed,” and the name / word itself derives from the Greek word panoptes, which means "all-seeing." The idea of the panopticon was devised by philosopher Jeremy Bentham with the idea that it would be cheaper than prisons at the time and all cells would be observable at once without inmates knowing when they were being watched. In essence, the idea is that since a prisoner wouldn’t know when they are being watched they would basically have to act under the assumption that they were being watched all the time or at any given time. I feel like at this point I shouldn’t have to explain why this screams Eye.

You could also argue that the panopticon being equally connected to all the powers, despite being theoretically intended for the Eye, could allude to things like statements and documents recording the terrible experiences people had with other fears. It could also relate to the fear that someone is just watching you suffer and enjoying / benefiting off of it. The ritual itself involved years of preparation by gathering the dread of all the prisoners and suffusing their fear into the prison. It took so long that Jonah was an old man by the time he made his first attempt and when he finally performed the ritual he sat in the center of the panopticon, in its watchtower, with the great rings of cells encircling him like a coronet (if you don’t know what a coronet is it’s defined as “a small or relatively simple crown, especially as worn by lesser royalty and peers or peeresses,” hence the name Watcher’s Crown).

Of course, as we know, the ritual failed due to all of the rituals (including the ones invented by Smirke) up until this point being flawed because of the focus on singular Entities. All the inmates died from the power released by the ritual and the building almost shook to pieces as Jonah attempted to harness said power. However, despite the failure, Jonah was left with a gift. He could see everything he turned his mind to or focused on and he discovered that he could use vessels to extend his life. He eventually realizes that the reason the Watcher’s Crown failed is not because he fucked up specifically but that there was something wrong with the very foundation of the ritual itself. Eventually, he realized he needed to summon every power into the world. Of course, the Eye would still be in charge. I think this realization could tie into the Eye’s concepts of horrific knowledge or witnessing something terrible as by dragging in all the fears you are also giving the Eye a buffet of terrible experiences to feed on as the Entities go ham in squeezing every last drop of fear that they can out of the world.

Mass Ritual

This brings us to the second ritual. Which is only informally known by fans as the “Mass Ritual.” A name it gets from the fact that it was designed to summon every single Dread Entity into the world. We learn in MAG 160 that the Archivist themselves are supposed to act as a living archive of sorts. A “chronicle of terror.” Someone to witness and feel the terrible fear caused by things such as the Entities. Jon isn’t supposed to administer the fear but preserve the record of fear. In that way, you could argue that the Eye is potentially feeding off the fear of Jon and other Archivists themselves. Which ties into the whole observation and witnessing theme of the Eye. With this in mind Jonah needed to have an Archivist “marked” by each of the powers in order to experience their fear. The Archivist in question had to be marked both mentally and physically.

Marking the Archivist mentally is fucking easy since all you need to do is give them statements to read in regards to each other Entity. However, physical marks are a little more complicated and they mostly seem to take the form of injuries or attempted attacks. You also want to make sure you don’t overdo it (especially with Entities like the End or Slaughter) since you could end up just accidentally killing the Archivist. Jon didn’t need to be marked by the Eye because he worked at the Magnus Institute as the Archivist and became an Avatar of the Eye on top of that so let's look at how Jon was marked.

The Web marked him as a child after his encounter with “A Guest For Mr Spider.” Something he only survived when his bully basically accidentally took the bullet for him. He was marked by the Corruption when a worm from Jane Prentiss attempted to burrow into his body before being destroyed by CO2. Jon’s mark from the Spiral came from both when he walked into the Distortion door and when Michael Shelley stabbed him. The Hunt’s mark came from his encounter with Daisy and Basira, as well as Trevor Herbert and Julia Montauk. The Desolation’s mark came from when Jon’s hand was burned by Jude Perry and the Vast’s mark came from when Michael Crew affects Jon’s perception of the world and forces his senses to believe he is falling. The Slaughter’s mark is from when Melanie King stabbed Jon in the shoulder when he attempted to remove the bullet that infected her with the influence of the Slaughter. The Stranger was from when Jon was kidnapped by followers of the Stranger and moisturized by Nikola Orsinov (also he was present for the ritual of the Stranger itself). The End’s mark was from when Oliver Banks visited him while he was in a coma (I think this mark ended up counting because it was a near death experience and Jon could have died while this happened). The Flesh’s mark was from when 2 of Jon’s ribs were taken by Jared Hopworth. The Buried was from when he went into the Buried’s coffin. The Dark’s mark came from when he gazed upon, and subsequently destroyed, the Dark Star in Ny-Ålesund. The Lonely’s was from when he followed Peter Lukas into the Lonely to search for Martin.

All the marks relate to the Eye’s themes of experience and the fear of knowing or witnessing something. In this case the setup for the ritual requires Jon listen to statements detailing encounters with each Entity (tying into the the idea of knowledge or knowing about the Entities) and he must gain a physical mark from each of the Entities (tying into more strongly into witnessing or experiencing something you don’t want to).

Then comes the chant. Jonah tricks Jon into reading a statement containing the chant needed to complete the ritual. Despite Jon’s attempts to stop he cannot stop himself from repeating the chant as Jonah’s recording says it. The chant goes “You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right. Come to us in your wholeness. Come to us in your perfection. Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies! Come to us. I – OPEN – THE DOOR!” I think the fact that Jon cannot stop performing the chant once he started relates to the fear of witnessing something you don’t want to and a sort of curiosity. Firstly, Jon is witnessing himself bring about the apocalypse despite the fact that he really doesn’t want to. Here we can also see the Eye’s theme of observing but being unable to do anything but watch with how Jon must repeat the chant Jonah gave to him despite not wanting to. There could also be themes of knowledge since Jon knows what will happen and is terrified to see it happen but is forced to complete the ritual anyway. It could also be the Eye forcing Jon to finish the statement, to “know” how it ends.

The chant itself contains allusions to other powers. “You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right” is the Eye while “all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies” refers to the Corruption, Buried, Dark, Vast, Spiral, Lonely, Stranger, Web, Desolation, Flesh, Slaughter, and End respectively. Just to make what I’m saying clearer here you go- “all that is the awful dread that crawls(Corruption) and chokes(Buried) and blinds(Dark) and falls(Vast) and twists(Spiral) and leaves(Lonely) and hides(Stranger) and weaves(Web) and burns(Desolation) and hunts(Hunt) and rips(Flesh) and bleeds(Slaughter) and dies(End).”

Domains

Post-Change World

But what’s the point in talking about how the apocalypse was brought about if we don’t also talk about the resulting apocalypse itself. Before we dive into specific Domains I’m going to cover the Post-Change world in general, as it is a world literally ruled over by the Eye. All the Domains and rules that exist are meant to feed the Eye.

Space and time don’t flow normally in the Post-Change world. While the Change did occur on October 18th, 2018 it is also equally accurate to say that the new world is one in which it has always been the Post-Change world in a sense. Oliver Banks, an Avatar of the End, describes the Post-Change world as “On the first and last day of the age of the Beholding” in MAG 168 (Roots). Which would probably imply that any given time can be considered both the beginning and end of the change in a sort of weird way. This isn’t to say that time doesn’t flow at all in the Age of the Beholding but more like the Post-Change is one moment that is stretched nearly indefinitely. Almost like everything is frozen in time, or at least moving infinitely slow, as the Entities gather fear. This is reflected in how people don’t age past a certain point either, so that the Fears can feed on their terror for as long as possible. In MAG 163 (In the Trenches) Jon says that he and Martin walked for 14 hours and 23 minutes even though he says “Yes. I – don’t think it means much out here, though.” This would imply that you could at least sort of translate how much time you spend doing something in the Post-Change world and say things like “If this was the normal world we would have walked for 14 hours and 23 minutes.”

Along with time, space is also warped. The Panopticon, despite being located in London, can be seen from literally anywhere on Earth and it is stated that trying to journey from Scotland to London in the Post-Change would be the same no matter if you walked or drove, and presumably how long the trip would take would be the same no matter what method of transportation you took. There’s not much to say in regards to the narrative of the Eye here other than that these are just meant to make suffering unavoidable. However, the fact that the Panopticon can apparently be seen from just about anywhere could metaphorically represent the presence of the Eye, Jonah Magnus, or whoever is chosen to be the pupil of the Eye at the time as they drink in all the fear. There’s also the fact that the Panopticon is a prison, and as mentioned earlier, the idea behind it is that people in this prison have to be under the assumption that they are being watched at all times. So in this sense the Post-Change world could be seen as a sort of “panopticon.” A supernatural prison you cannot escape and one in which you are being watched at any given time all the time.

Then there’s also the Domains themselves. Jon states that the Domain Not-Sasha resides is “objectively” half a mile in diameter but it would still be possible to walk around the domain for days without getting back to the start. Domains make up a majority of the world Post-Change but, as we see with Rosie’s desk, not all of it. Domains are pocket dimensions and the form they take is dependent on specifics of the people inside them in order to create the environment needed to create specific fear(s) to feed on. These Domains will then warp to accommodate the specific fears needed for their respective Entities (and so the Eye can watch them of course).

Most Domains are aligned with an Entity but the categorization of Entities isn’t so neat and perfect and it becomes even less so after the Post-Change. For example, in MAG 176 (Blood Ties) Jon and Martin come across a Domain of the Hunt that feeds on the fear of your pack turning on you. Which is odd because the fear of betrayal is usually something associated with the Spiral. It is important to mention the fact that what we are seeing here is the idea that your pack could turn on you and begin to hunt you at any moment as well as fear of witch-hunts or people otherwise trying to get you, so the concept isn’t completely divorced from the Hunt and all the Fears have overlaps including fears like the Spiral and Hunt. So some fears would end up looking quite similar even if they are connected to different Entities depending on the fear(s) in question. Martin also says “Besides, I thought the Hunt was meant to make you go faster,” to which Jon says “Depends on the type of pursuit. (exhale) Besides, the chase isn’t really the point of this particular place,” and “Because this place focuses on that worry, that fear of your own pack turning their claws on you.” Martin then asks “Is that… really a Hunt thing?” to which Jon replies “Can be. The old divisions don’t mean as much these days. Maybe they never did. The domains are… smaller, more – personal than the powers. They don’t just feed on the worst fears of the people trapped there; they’re shaped by them, too. It’s enough to fear the domain itself, if not the entire power behind it.” So basically part of the reason Domains can get kind of weird is because they can actively adjust in real time to the fears of the people within it. We also see Domains that are relatively equally aligned to multiple fears (such as The Colony being connected to both the Corruption and the Buried and Martin’s Domain is described as a swirling mix of the Eye and the Lonely).

It should also be mentioned that some Domains are not physical places but more abstract or metaphorical. For example, in the case of Basira and Daisy it is said “Daisy carved through the domains of others. Basira, well… in a very real way, she was a sufferer in Daisy’s domain. Maybe the only one. Hunting, following, hurting. Now Daisy’s dead… she’s free. Sort of. She’s inherited something of Daisy’s ability to move through the other domains.” It appears that in order to travel through each Domain Jon needs to take a statement or “experience” them which ties into the idea of being forced to witness something even if you don’t want to. Something that we know sort of applies to Basira too since in MAG 183 (Monument) Jon says “For now, she’ll feed off what she sees in them. As to whether the Eye ultimately gives her a domain of her own… I don’t know yet.” Which implies that the Eye feeds off her witnessing the fear of others in some way.

We also know that people can be moved from one Domain to another. This is alluded by the fact that in MAG 168 (Roots) when it is revealed that in various Domains relating to the End, such as the Corpse Roots, people do actually die and when such Domains run too low on victims they will acquire people and animals from other Domains who would then presumably die and be replaced only for the process to repeat itself until there are no more sources of fear. Jon’s plan to permanently trap and kill the Entities also hinges on speeding up this process by shuffling more people towards some of the End’s Domains to cause the Entities to run out of sources of fear even faster. A lot of factors seem to vary from Domain to Domain depending on the fears they subsist on. Things like how fast or slow time seems to flow, or how space and physics within the Domain works. Also, each Domain is apparently separated by a wasteland.

As mentioned earlier in this article, there are some more general effects on the world. For one, apparently the sun has been replaced with the Eye in this world in the form of an eye of course. This appears to have become a literal manifestation as rain is mentioned to consist of the Eye’s tears in MAG 166 (Worms). More specifically it says “The rains fall here as they do so many places in this new world. Thick and oily drops that taste of bitter salt, torrential tears plummeting from the watching sky, thumping and squelching onto the thirsty soil in which the worms writhe painfully towards a surface that does not want them.” However, for the sake of transparency I am not 100% sure if the tears thing means that all the rain of the Post-Change world is the tears of the Eye or if that only applies to certain Domains. Either way, the sun being replaced by the Eye shows the ceaseless ever present gaze of the Beholding and the tears coming from a giant eye in the sky is a good way to remind you of its watching presence. Some Domains do seem to contain normal sunlight however, as seen in MAG 175 (Epoch), so at the end of the day there are a lot of aspects of the Domain that vary on a case by case basis depending on the fear the Domain is trying to squeeze out of people. So I would try to avoid getting too caught up in absolutes of how the Post-Change world is outside of specific cases such as the “Watchers” and “Watched.”

As mentioned previously, all beings in the Post-Change world are forced into the categories of “Watchers” and “Watched.” Basically, everything regarding Avatars, monsters, victims, etc. in TMA is pushed up to 11 and simplified. As Helen puts it in MAG 166 (Worms) “there are now exactly two roles available in this new world of ours: The Watcher, and the Watched. Subject, and object. Those who are feared, and those who are afraid. And Jon, well – he is part of the Eye. A very important part. And he’s able to, shall we say, shift its focus. Turn the one into the other. And for those of us whose very existence relies on being feared, well: to be turned into a victim destroys us utterly. And very, very painfully.” There are some people who don’t quite fully understand how Jon is able to kill people in the Post-Change world so here’s my explanation (again). Basically if you are an Avatar, monster, or some other similar existence that is completely reliant on your respective Dread Power(s) to survive then you need to provide them with fear and if you can’t provide them with the proper fear you basically “starve” and die. Which means that if you are a Watcher who can generate fear for your Power than you can continue living if you’re an existence like Helen or Not-Sasha but if you are made into the Watched / cattle you can no longer produce the fear for your power so you sort of just instantly starve and die. Interestingly Jon does say to Jordan Kennedy in MAG 184 (Like Ants) “I can put you back if you want. You could become a victim again? Rather than complicit,” after turning him into one of the Watchers in a Domain of the Corruption. Personally, I don’t think Jon has a reason to lie or just make a point here so Jon might have a way to turn people back into being the Watched without killing them. It might also depend on the state of the existence of the person in question since it’s possible that not every Watcher is an existence like an Avatar or monster. It is possible for people who weren’t Avatars before the Change to get their own Domains if a Power likes them enough, such as with Martin.

Either way the Watched / Watcher dichotomy is a very on the nose representation of the Eye’s influence on the world. You are either helping the Eye by acting as a Watcher to drink in the fear and knowledge or you are the Watched, the ones the Eye is gathering information from or feeding off of. It is also implied that as a Watcher or Avatar of a Domain you usually can’t do much to ease the suffering of others but can only actively make it worse due to some supernatural Fear bullshittery. Of course, most living things, such as people, are trapped in their respective Domains and unable to leave. Avatars and / or monsters are described as ruling over their domains but most of them seem to be unable to leave their respective Domain. However, unlike other inhabitants of their Domain, these beings are not subject to being tortured by it and are immune to its negative effects. However, they are unable to do things like help people and are only able to make things worse. It should be noted that Domains do not need a ruler to function as we see rulers get killed by Jon and it is stated that the Domains continue to exist and we see that the respective Domains do not just vanish or anything.

The Distortion appears to be able to leave its Domain but well… it’s the Distortion so it likes fucking with natural laws and the door was able to appear just about anywhere before the Change occurred. Jon is able to freely wander and can protect Martin from being pulled into Martin’s own respective Domain, which we know Martin rules over despite not being an Avatar because the Eye likes him due to his position in the Magnus Institute. However, Martin becomes vulnerable to being affected by Domains and stuff if he wanders too far from Jon. Some people are not trapped in a particular Domain for various reasons, for example Melanie isn’t due to being cut off from the Eye and Georgie due to not feeling any fear (so I guess the Entities didn’t see a reason to put her in a Domain). The two even managed to pull some people out of the Domains. The tunnels under the Institute also seemed to protect people for a time, similar to the pocket created by the camera Mikaele used, but eventually monsters and stuff came and dragged people back into the Domains. This could tie into my point earlier about how the Eye may provide people with ways to hide in order to feed off their fear of being caught or noticed while hiding. Considering that Melanie and Georgie’s followers were eventually dragged away back to their Domains that could have also been what happened here but it could also be because Jon went into the tunnels and he is connected to the Eye.

Some of the Hunt’s Hunters seem to be able to move freely between Domains, as seen with Daisy, but I’m not really sure about the specifics here since Daisy and Basira are described as being in a more metaphorical Domain via Basira’s quest to kill her and Daisy’s endless hunt. So I’m not sure if it’s that aspect that allows Daisy and Basira to wander various Domains or if it was because Daisy was stoking fear by hunting down various people. Based on the information we have, my personal assumption is that Daisy had the ability to traverse Domains in order to create fear by hunting people down while Basira could do it because she was supposed to follow and hunt Daisy in turn. Martin was also able to pull himself out of the Lonely in MAG 170 (Recollection) by remembering his love for Jon but it is unknown if this is due to his relationship with Jon specifically (since Jon is the Archivist and a very powerful person in the Post-Change world) or if it's because of Jon’s powers protecting him. Of course, there’s also the area created by the “old camera with a broken lens” Mikaele Salesa had. Which was an area unaffected by the change as it hid the area from the Powers themselves. The Archivist’s powers do not extend to places such as this and humans need to sleep and eat. It is unknown if any other such Artifacts existed but it is definitely possible since it would be kind of hard to know when such areas are invisible to Jon’s knowing powers and the Eye.

Then there is the state of humanity itself, which is also a bit weird. In order to keep as much fear going as possible, no new human beings are born and human adults don’t age and people do not need to eat, drink, or sleep. However, since this IS supposed to be a hellscape fueled by fear there are plenty of domains where people can at least still feel hungry, thirsty, or tied.

People are also a lot harder to kill in general in order to keep them and their fear around for as long as possible. Typically, upon being killed a person will simply be reborn but there are a few notable ways in which someone can be killed permanently. Firstly, the Corpse Roots and presumably many of the other Domains aligned with the End have ways of eventually killing the people in them. Jon can also kill people with his Beholding powers by shifting their positions as being Watchers and Watched (something we already went over). It is unknown if there are any other Eye avatars, or beings similarly affiliated with the Eye, that could do this. Jon’s ability to do this could specifically be related to his status as the Archivist but it’s never stated if that being the Archivist is the only way to have these abilities. Hunters aligned with the Hunt also seem to be capable of permanently killing people. Which sounds simple but gets a bit weird when we look at Domain the Hunter Trevor was in within MAG 178 (Blood Ties) as when Martin asks Jon if Trevor could kill him Jon points out “He could, yes…If he were still a Hunter…No. Right now he’s prey.” I think this is due to the fact that in the Domain Trevor was in it revolved around being betrayed and having your allies hunt you down, and it is stated that whoever is being hunted down at the time is the “prey.” So, if I’m understanding the logic right, then Trevor was prey at the moment due to how the Domain worked as his allies had betrayed him. So if he was still one of the Hunters then he could have killed people like Martin.

Also, like with the Fears themselves, the Domains are described as working off of “dream logic.” Which is to say that there is an emphasis on symbolism and someone can be killed permanently if the way they die is symbolically appropriate in some way, such as Basira killing Daisy or someone dying in the End’s Corpse Roots. A lot of the Watched in the Domains seem to have only vague memories of their life before the Change and in many cases the victims don’t really fully comprehend what’s going on. In MAG 176 (Blood Ties) Jon says “They’d have no interest in us. We’re not one of them.” while walking through the Domain Trevor was in and in MAG 163 (In the Trenches) Jon says “They don’t even know we’re here. We’re not part of their nightmare." This would imply that in a lot of Domains people can’t be interrupted or interacted with if it would interrupt or lessen their fear. Some people seem capable of noticing and interacting with people like Jon but I imagine this depends on the specific nature of the Domain and / or that person’s place in the Post-Change world. Similarly, whether or not some can remember their life before the Change and to what degree I would imagine depends on the specifics of the Domain and whatever frightens the victim(s) in question more.

Outside of the Domains there appear to be other supernatural phenomena not tied to any Domain in particular. For example, the cabin that Martin and Jon stayed at is described as a malicious being in MAG 162 (Cozy Cabin) and Jon says things like “There, within the thing that pretends to be a cabin, is the one you love. You hold each other whisper words of reassurance, but the place knows this comfort to be a lie, and laces upon it instead the awful fear of losing what you have.” and “This is your home, and here you can be safe, as you putrefy, body and soul. This place wishes to be our tomb. But the Eye does not wish that.” Honestly the cabin itself gives a lot of Corruption vibes with descriptions like “It is only a moldy treasure to be clung to. Something to fear the loss of as you hold it so tight that it withers and warps. It is a rotten sanctuary of lonely companionship”. This could be the Corruption trying to prey on the negative aspects or feelings Jon and Martin have about their relationship, but the Corruption's connection to toxic love and other disgusting relationships is something we’ll get to some other time. The point being that even a lot of things outside of the Domains seem to be built to generate and feed off of fear. Unless you want to subscribe to the theory that maybe the cabin was some sort of weird Domain in its own way or something.

Of course, the Change was eventually undone by pulling the Entities through the crack in reality at Hill Top Road in MAG 200 thanks to the machinations of the Web. With the general stuff out of the way we can now look at some of the specific Domains. Like with the artifacts sections, I will be focusing specifically on Domains tied to the Eye or Domains that I think have a high likelihood of being aligned to the Eye even if it is not directly confirmed. I’m going to start with the Domains that are confirmed to be aligned with the Eye and then moving on to the more speculative or unconfirmed ones.

When speculating about Domains it is important to remember that Domains can be equally tied to multiple Powers or not be tied to any particular Entity at all. I’m going to try to go through these Domains from most obvious in regards to the Entities / Entity they are connected to and then move to the least obvious. So I’m starting with the Domains that are stated to be connected to certain Power(s) before moving on to the ones that are most likely to be, or heavily implied to be, connected to certain Power(s) before moving to the Domains that are most up in the air for what Power(s) they are connected to and if there is extremely little information on said Domains I may even speculate on what the Domain itself is trying to do.

Part of why I find Domains interesting is that the Powers have always manifested and been associated with locations. People could get thrown INTO the Lonely or go INTO the Buried despite the fact that the Entities are “living”, or some equivalent, beings. This can also be seen in how architecture can have a massive effect on how the Entities and their artifacts manifest and in MAG 138 (The Architect of Fear) Smirke says “I would find myself in nightmares of strange, far-off places: a field of graves, a grasping tunnel, an abattoir knee-deep in pig’s blood. I believed then, as I still believe now, that these places I saw were the Powers themselves, expressed in their truest form, far more entirely than any “secret” book can claim.” He also says “And if, as I came to believe, the Dread Powers were themselves places of some sort, then surely with the right space, the right architecture, they could be contained. Channeled. Harnessed.” We know Smirke might have not been 100% correct but he was at least on to something with the idea of the Entities being like locations in some aspects.

The Panopticon

Let’s start with what is technically one of the most straightforward and obvious Domains, the Panopticon. Presumably the panopticon in Millbank prison became this Domain but I don’t think it’s actually ever directly stated or implied specifically if that is the case so it is possible that the Domain just takes the form of a panopticon or is simply based on the one in the prison.

The Panopticon is an Eye-aligned Domain that takes the form of a massive tower that can be seen from anywhere on Earth in the Post-Change world. Its outside is made completely out of one-way mirrors and the inside has a very long staircase that goes all the way to the top. The stairs of the Panopticon are surrounded by a bunch of the previous Archivists who apparently don’t look like they are in very good condition considering that in MAG 192 (An Appointment) Martin mistakes them for corpses upon first seeing them. I can only assume they probably look like the mummy seen in MAG 64 (Burial Rites), who was also a previous Archivist being kept alive through supernatural means. Jon is able to get himself and Martin past the old Archivists by using his own Archivist powers and saying “Ceaseless Watcher, see your servants approach. Herald their arrival and bid them welcome into your sanctum.” Once one makes it up the stairs of the Panopticon they will eventually make their way to Rosie Zampano sitting at her desk working as Jonah Magnus’ receptionist. Since we already touched on Rosie previously and because this article is getting kind of long I’m going to skip over that for now.

Jonah magnus resides in this Domain and presumably acts as its Avatar and is stated to be a “pupil of the eye.” Something that seems to have to do with how Jonah sits floating in this Domain watching all the Domains in the world and feeding off the fear they create while constantly spouting out everything he is witnessing in the form of some weird never ending statement. In MAG 193 (A Stern Look) Jon states that Jonah has become one with the Eye itself. Making his status as “pupil of the Eye” a pun that we’ll get back to later. In MAG 192 (An Appointment) it’s implied that the Domain might have been made to belong to Jon or that at the very least the Eye wants Jon to rule over the Domain as Jon describes to Martin how he feels like there is something slightly pulling him towards the top of the tower as they climb the stairs. Of course, eventually Jon does kill and replace Magnus as the “pupil of the Eye” in order to enact his plan to starve the Entities by shuffling everyone towards the End’s Domains. Something that would eventually lead to all the people dying and subsequently all the fears that the Entities feed off of vanishing. This would imply that being in charge of this Domain or being the “pupil of the Eye” gives one control over some key aspects of the Post-Change world. I would suspect this is most likely because being this Domain’s Avatar seems to literally make one a part of the Eye itself, and the Eye rules the Post-Change world. It seems impossible to straight up just kill whoever is considered the pupil of the Eye as Jon needs to give himself up to the Eye and replace Jonah in order for him to have a chance to kill Jonah in between Jonah being relieved from his station and Jon taking his spot.

Okay, symbolism time. I’ve already gone over what a panopticon is at least twice in this article and I refuse to explain what it is again. If you somehow skipped past both instances of that, don’t want to hit ctrl + F to find it, AND refused to look up the definition then that’s kind of you. That aside, the fact that the Panopticon can be seen from anywhere in the Post-Change world can be seen as a way of showing that the Eye is always watching and there is no way to escape. In this way the entire universe becomes a sort of metaphorical panopticon as everyone becomes imprisoned within their own worst nightmares while the Eye constantly watches all the suffering of its “prisoners.” The fact that the Panopticon tower itself is made completely out of one-way mirrors means that if someone or something is watching you from the other side you would have no idea when or for how long it has been watching.

Then there’s also all the previous Archivists hanging around the stairs. This seems like a good time to cover them and the mummy we see in MAG 64 (Burial Rites) appear to be at least similar to the ones around the Panopticon. First off, when we first see the original mummy it is when some people are illegally snooping around a pyramid in a search for new pyramids, artifacts, historical information, etc. So the curiosity that the Eye likes to prey on is present in this statement. We know at the very least that the statement giver Donna Gwynne was searching for new knowledge, discoveries, and information. She even states “See, the thing is that there’s a lot of very valuable stuff in the ground. Ancient artefacts, forgotten knowledge, all that good stuff…” We also know that the group was searching the site illegally and would be in trouble if they were caught. Which is a straightforward connection to the Eye and one of the fears that feeds it.

But what about the mummy itself? Well, the mummy actually shares some similarities to both the strange man in MAG 23 (Schwartzwald) and the monster with no eyes in MAG 193 (A Stern Look) seen by Albrecht von Closen and Allan Schrieber respectively in that despite having no eyes it somehow magically “knew” Donna was there and crawled towards her and the group, much to their horror. The fact that Donna puts extra emphasis on the fact that the mummy seemingly knew she was there despite not having eyes points to it being connected to the Eye rather than the End or Dark. Some might assume this mummy to have been connected to the End because of the theme of death and how it wanted to die but there actually isn’t a lot to do with the fear of death in the statement. The mummy actually WANTS to die and there’s even more to consider. Remember the Eye is also connected to the fear of “horrible knowledge” or the fear of merely witnessing and / or thinking about something you don’t want to. Not just being watched but also being the watcher and seeing something else. Prolonged life is an ability almost every Avatar seems to have but in the case of this mummy it becomes a bit more interesting since the mummy wants to die. I think the idea here is the mummy is being forced to experience something worse than death and that is what the Eye is preying on. Furthermore, at the end of the statement Donna states “I cannot imagine what they would have thought of a person who could not die. I can imagine what they would have done to them.” which highlights the fear of thinking about something terrible or being burdened with terrible knowledge / concepts. Not to mention that on top of that the mummy also shares similarities to the strange corpse-like figure we see in MAG 053 (Crusader). A corpse that Gertrude is looking into and suspects is a previous Archivist. Something that is emphasized by the fact that it might be somehow connected to the lost Library of Alexandria (tying into the Eye’s theme of knowledge and library symbolism) as well as the fact that Walter Heller mentions “his eyes were gone, but rather than simply decaying into nothingness, there were ragged scratches around the edge of the socket, leaving messy, hollow pits.” Which connects to what I have said previously about the idea of missing eyes, scratching out your own eyes, and forbidden / harmful knowledge or not wanting to see something.

I feel like a lot of these concepts apply to the Archivists we see in the panopticon too. Strange mummified creatures that seemingly can’t die but can watch and observe others as well as act as a reminder for a potentially terrible fate. I think it’s interesting that Jon gets past them by saying “Ceaseless Watcher, see your servants approach. Herald their arrival and bid them welcome into your sanctum,” since by doing so he is making his presence known and revealing himself. I mean the Eye already most likely knew he was there so I am speaking in a more metaphorical and symbolic sense rather than literal (and the Powers love symbolism). I imagine attempting to sneak past the old Archivists would have not worked for most people and if anything is more likely to empower them and / or the Eye due to the fear of being caught.

We already covered Rosie and the front desk so I’m skipping over her again. This brings us back to Jonah Magnus and his status as the “pupil of the eye.” This is a pun on the English word for pupil because pupil has two very common meanings. According to the dictionary the word can mean “a student in school” or “the dark circular opening in the center of the iris of the eye, varying in size to regulate the amount of light reaching the retina”, both of which apply perfectly to Jonah’s status in the Panopticon. First off, he is a “pupil of the Eye” in the sense that the Eye is Jonah’s metaphorical teacher. And at the end of a day what is a teacher or a mentor other than someone who dispenses knowledge to other people. Something that one could say the Eye also does with its emphasis on knowledge but in a more twisted way. The Eye is also what grants Jonah his clairovoyance and mind reading powers which act as dispensaries of knowledge. You could also argue that Jonah is the Eye’s “pupil” in the sense that he tries to use the knowledge it gives him in various ways. Then there's a pupil as in the part of a literal eye. Jonah’s role in the Post-Change is basically to sit in the tower and witness all the fear and terrible events in each Domain.

This is comparable to a really long and fucked up statement but also a pupil. A pupil is the part of the Eye that light passes through to get into the eye, and likewise Jonah is metaphorically something that fear and experiences pass through in order to feed the Eye in a manner comparable to light entering the eye. Also, presumably he is also observing all the things he talks about as he sits in the Panopticon so there is a more literal sight metaphor there. There is also the fact that Jon states Jonah’s position has made him literally part of the Eye. So the status of pupil is a pun in the sense that Jonah is now literally one part of the Entity referred to as the Eye as well as the Entity that is most heavily connected to observation and watching.

I’m not going to go over Jon here since, while he does replace Jonah, everything I said about Jonah in regards to this status basically also applies to Jon when he takes over the position. However, the fact that Jon feels a pull towards the Panopticon ties into his status as the Archivist. Remember, according to Jonah in MAG 160 (The Eye Opens) the true purpose of the Archivist is that of a living archive or “chronicle of terror.” Someone to witness all the fears of others for the Eye. This would imply that it is quite literally Jon’s job to witness stuff for the Eye which would explain why he felt a pull towards the Panopticon. Because at the end of the day that is the ultimate role of the Archivist. Sure the Eye may have favored Jonah but his position is not that of an Archivist or living “chronicle of terror.”

Martin’s Domain

Going from Domains that we might know too much about we come to a Domain that we also know a lot about. That being “Martin’s Domain.” Before we dive into how the Domain works it is important to stress how important this Domain is because it directly confirms that Domains can be strongly tied to more than one power and just not one. When describing the Domain in MAG 183 (Monument) Jon says “...a small domain. A swirling mix of The Eye and The Lonely” before he goes into further detail by saying “Inhabited by a few lost souls whose fear is not of their isolation or their agonies, but that no-one will ever know of them. That they shall suffer in silence, and be mourned by nobody. That’s why you can’t really see it. It’s why even if we do travel through it, you won’t be able to see any of the people trapped there.” I think what’s interesting here is that Jon actually specifically states that their fear is not of isolation but of never being known. This might seem contradictory at first and point to the Domain not having really much at all to do with the Lonely but let’s take a step back and look at what I have said about the overlap between the Lonely and the Eye in this very article.

Firstly, Jon himself has stated in MAG 159 (The Last) “The Lonely and the Eye aren’t too far apart, are they? Not really. What good’s being alone if you don’t know how alone you truly are” and as pointed out previously there are two major things to consider here. First of all, the Eye also embodies the fear of knowledge in general which includes things you don’t want to think about, and it is very often the case that people don’t want to think about how Lonely they are. There is also the fact that it’s much easier to understand how Lonely you are the more you know about the world around you and what people might think of you. The Eye also embodies the fear of being judged and being judged can often lead to you being alone. Secondly, the Entities represent metaphorical fears just as much as they represent literal ones. The Corruption isn’t just about things we find physically disgusting but also morally, spiritually, or mentally disgusting (hence the theme of toxic or unhealthy relationships) and the Lonely isn’t just about being physically alone but also emotionally or mentally alone. The idea that you might be surrounded by people but no one is on your side, no one cares about you, or no one wants to help you.

So with these points in mind let's look back at Martin’s Domain. First off, when Jon says “Inhabited by a few lost souls whose fear is not of their isolation or their agonies, but that no-one will ever know of them. That they shall suffer in silence, and be mourned by nobody” I think what he is getting at is the fear isn’t coming from physically or literally being alone. Rather the loneliness we see is a more existential or emotional / mental one. It comes from the idea that no one will ever know them and by extension no one will ever care about them, and this also extends to the idea of no one understanding them. It is also mentioned “That they shall suffer in silence, and be mourned by nobody. That’s why you can’t really see it. It’s why even if we do travel through it, you won’t be able to see any of the people trapped there“. Which basically means that they will suffer alone. There is also a cruel irony in the fact that the Eye revolves around the idea of being known but the people in this Domain fear that no-one will ever know them. To put this Domain in another way, I think the aspect of the Lonely comes from the idea that no one will ever think you are worth noticing or caring about. On the other hand I think the aspect of the Eye probably comes from the fear of being judged or horrible knowledge (the fear of judgement is something I’ll dive into later). But it’s also important to note that things can get really weird with the Domains. For example, there is a Domain of the Hunt that focuses on the act of betrayal and yet it doesn’t seem to have any direct connection with the Spiral. So it’s possible that the traits of the Eye here are more divorced from what we are used to seeing.

There is also how the Eye has also been described as embodying the drive to know and understand even if what you find out may hurt or scare you. So in a way one could argue that the people in this domain have a drive to be known and spill all their secrets even if it could potentially hurt them. The idea that the Eye’s influence comes from the people in the Domain being forced to think about themselves and the situation they are in is something that is potentially alluded to by two things. First off, when Martin himself enters the Domain he is confronted with another version or embodiment of himself or his inner thoughts that forces him to reckon with all his thoughts and emotions. When asking about this other Martin the “real” Martin even asks if the domain and the other Martin is “Some sort of cosmic joke about ‘being alone with my thoughts’, I assume?” Something that the other Martin responds with “I’m here because you’re trying very hard not to be alone. To resist the comfort.” Which points to the idea that the Domain has aspects of confronting things you might otherwise avoid. Furthermore, the other Martin describes himself as being just like Martin but more open and he appears to be more honest with how he forces Martin to tackle his emotions and thoughts. Something that ties into the Eye the idea of being forced to know something or deal with some harsh truths. Other Martin also talks about the experiences of other people in the Domain in a manner that resembles statements. However, using this moment as evidence for how the entire Domain itself works is debatable since the other Martin even straight up states “This is our domain. You’re not supposed to suffer here. Well, not like the others… you know what I mean..”. So while it is very clear that the influence of the Eye and Lonely takes the form of being forced to confront harsh truths in the case of Martin it may apply differently to the victims of the Domain. So we should probably take a look at some of the people other Martin describes in the Domain for more answers.

The first person that is described to us is a man who is “young but has always felt old.” The influence of the Lonely is quite obvious with the man having “always felt tired. He has stood apart from everyone who ever cared for him and never felt the distance.” So while the man was not physically alone he was definitely emotionally distant from a lot of the people in his life. As we continue to listen to the description of the man the Eye’s influence becomes apparent extraordinarily quickly with these two statements especially. “He built a towering wall between them and him. He hid it in jokes and practiced smiles, but on a cloudy day, they could see it. And when he was able to leave his family behind, that wall came with him, following him, keeping out the world,” and “He would walk the streets of the city at night and wish the world away, so it could be just him, with no-one to know him or judge him or hurt him. Sometimes, when the emptiness inside began to bite, he reached out for people, and took a friend or a lover. But when he did, it was only to watch them beat themselves again and again against that wall, until they finally relented, and he was alone once more.” What we see here is one of the fears that we know feeds the Eye, the fear of being judged. Ultimately, that’s why this man is stuck in a Domain tied in equal parts to the Lonely and the Eye. His fear of being judged and known has caused him to put up emotional walls that make him feel distant from other people and thus alone. Something that is further reinforced with this excerpt “But still he keeps walking, keeps crying out, though quieter now. Nobody knows he’s here, and if they did, they wouldn’t care. He has driven them all away, kept them so far from who he is that there is no-one now to see his suffering. No-one who cares.”

The next statement we follow is that of a woman who seems to have fears that are at least comparable to that of the man. Similar to the man it is very clear that she isn’t physically alone but feels emotionally distant with statements such as “She was among this joy, yes, these sparkling friends, but she was not a part of it, not really. She tried to be, wanted so desperately to be a part of their easy warmth, and maybe they thought she was. But they hadn’t known her, not really.” Additionally, we are told “She feels the ice within her still, and knows she never found anyone to melt it. And now? She never will. Those who tried, she gripped so tightly that they couldn’t breathe, and so she lost them anyway.” Basically, the reason she feels alone is that she seems to scare people off by being too clingy or smothering. In her desperate attempt to be known and understood she has driven people away in the past. This seems to have potentially created a fear that if she gets too close to someone they will see the “ice” within her and get scared off. Implying that, similar to the man, her loneliness stems from being judged. Furthermore, near the end of her statement we hear “It is the sure knowledge that nobody remembers her existence enough to even wonder idly where she might be, or to ponder at her suffering.” The idea of certain truth, absolutely knowing, or at least thinking that you know something to be the case and the fear that springs from that is something that can often thematically be traced back to the Eye.

Another thing to note about Martin’s Domain is that on at least 2, maybe 3, occasions it is stated to be monochromatic which is probably just meant to tie into themes of depression, melancholy, and sadness. People tend to associate lots of vibrant colors with freedom, joy, and cheeriness and by extension drab colors or a lack of any colors is often associated with the opposite. So the Domain being monochromatic probably just makes it feel all the more depressing when you're in it. Martin’s Domain also appears to have rain. Not only is it raining wherever Martin and the other Martin are hanging out but both the statements we hear in regards to the other people stuck in the Domain have mention of the fact that it is raining. The statement of the woman also mentions the drizzle being misty but the statement of the man does not seem to clearly state anything of the sort. It is unclear if it is raining all the time but rain, mist, and / or fog is imagery that the Lonely likes to use a lot. I imagine it's because rain is often associated with melancholy, sadness, and crying. I’m sure everyone is familiar with the trope in media where someone walks around sadly as it rains. The thing about rain is that it can also make considerable noise if it is raining hard enough. Which means that rain could drown out the noise of other people and by extension make you feel all the more alone. Furthermore, if it is raining REALLY hard it may become difficult to see things altogether. Which makes it harder to see other people and more difficult to know if anyone else is around. Surprisingly, a lot of the same logic seems to apply to the fog and mist. Both fog and mist are known to muffle sound due to the particles in the air which is part of the reason why foggy days may sound particularly quiet. In such an environment it becomes harder to both see and hear other things around you which can increase the chance that you will feel isolated and alone.

The Necropolis

Okay, so the last three Domains are a bit odd because it isn’t explicitly stated what Entities / Entity they belong to. Similar to the artifact and Leitner section of this article, I figured it would be fun to hypothesize what Entities these Domains might align with. However, there are a couple of… problems with trying to do so. For one, while artifacts aligned with more than one Power are stated to exist they are extremely rare but this does not seem to be the case for Domains. Things are a lot more vague and nebulous in regards to the Entities in the Post-Change world and Domains being connected to more than one Entity seems to be much more common than it is for artifacts. So when hypothesizing about Domains we already have to contend with the fact that any one Domain could very easily be heavily connected to any number of the Dread Powers and not just one. On top of this it is also mentioned that some Domains aren’t aligned to any particular Entity at all. This means that some of the Domains could be seen as being unaligned. Further complicating things, there are Domains that are connected to a single Entity and yet contain themes and fears that might also overlap or otherwise be heavily associated with another. For example, a Hunt Domain where betrayal is a prevalent theme despite the Spiral not being present or a Corruption Domain where the fear of outsiders, strangers, and people you don’t know is present despite the Stranger not being there. This is all to say that this speculation is mostly for fun and while I think we can definitely rule out some of the Entities for some of these Domains at the end of the day the best I can do in most cases is argue what Entities I think are the most likely to be connected to a given Domain. However, the answer at any given time could also simply be all of them or none of them. So what I am saying is that speculation on these Domains is mostly for fun and to look for thematic parallels not necessarily to be the one objective correct answer as for some Domains the answer might be multiple different powers, all of the above, or none of the above so how I am approaching these Domains is really limited.

Due to this article being about the Eye first and foremost I am going to try to focus only on Domains that have a high chance of being a Domain of the Eye or otherwise share strong parallels with some of the Eye’s fears and themes. With that disclaimer out of the way we can continue to our next Domain “The Necropolis.”

The wiki hypothesizes that The Necropolis is most likely aligned with the End, Web, and / or Eye and I think those are all pretty good guesses. But let’s actually go over the Domain itself to see what conclusion I’ll reach and to see how much water the wiki’s hypothesis holds.

The Domain appears to take the form of an above-ground cemetery in a swamp. Jon doesn’t get a chance to explain what fears feed this domain but the statement giver we follow is forced to respectfully mourn someone who abused and attacked them even though they know said person was terrible. There are angel statues who seem to attack those making a scene, not showing proper reverence, or potentially just having improper thoughts. However, whether the angels themselves actually do anything or if it’s just the statement giver being afraid is debatable. There is also a funeral director who forces the statement giver to mourn and speak respectfully of their abuser and there is a crowd of mourning people who at least act like the dead person was a good person, even though the statement giver knows they are not. The Domain seems to be at least big enough to fit a funeral home in it and the statement giver has to make their way to said building. There might be some stuff I skipped over but that’s all the important stuff.

My hot take on this Domain is that I don’t really think it has much to do with the End specifically. This may surprise some people because well… why wouldn’t it be the End? It’s literally a cemetery with a funeral house and the wiki nicknames it the fucking “necropolis” (which is defined as “a cemetery, especially a large one belonging to an ancient city”) it has death written all over it. But that’s the thing. The entities are the embodiments of our FEARS of certain aspects. The End isn’t the embodiment of death itself anymore than the Dark is the embodiment of shadows and darkness. Darkness existed before the Dark and it will continue to exist afterward, death existed before the End so we know it is not the Entities themselves that brought these things into existence but the other way around, as the fears directed at these concepts gave birth to these Entities. This is a long roundabout way to say that the mere presence of death doesn’t mean it’s the End’s doing anymore than something taking place at night or in a dark place would automatically imply the presence of the Dark. As discussed earlier it is not what the Entities use but rather how they use it to stoke their respective fears. It’s not enough to just say death is present, we have to actually see an emphasis on death in the form of fear or terror. If we actually listen to MAG 180 (Moving On) there’s not a whole lot in the way of the fear of death. In fact the statement giver doesn’t seem upset that their abuser died but rather that they are forced to pretend like the abuser didn’t do terrible things to them.

Which brings me to my next point. There are some fears that show up way more than death. For example, we see violence with the abuser’s previous attacks as well as the bite they deliver, and the manipulation with how the statement giver is being forced to act a certain way. However, THE MOST prevalent fears present in this Domain have to do with the Eye and a lot of the themes we discussed in this very article. In fact, the fear of being watched and judged is so prevalent in this Domain I would not at all be surprised if it was a Domain of the Eye and I see very little reason it would fall under one of the other Powers unless this is a weird Domain that just happens to mirror or overlap with the Eye’s themes.

Let’s look over some examples in the statement itself though. Firstly, there’s “The names are carved with steady-handed reverence, and the dates do not make sense, but… bite your tongue” and then “Read the epitaphs quietly to yourself in a respectful, solemn whisper: ‘loving son’, ‘noted philanthropist’, ‘honoured hero’, and do not question them out loud. For these graves, they are not silent – they are listening” in addition to “Stop a moment, and see the stone angels perched above you, staring down from the harsh corners of each mausoleum roof, looking out over the avenues,” which definitely points to the idea that the person is afraid of speaking their mind because they are afraid of being judged or perceived, most notably by the stone angels and even the dead themselves still listen. To further cement the angel point we have this “They keep their eager vigil, desperate for a comment, a word, a breath out of place against which they might strike. Upon each blade the words stand out in stark and silvered letters: NIHIL NISI BONUM.” This moment does have themes of the Slaughter with the threat of violence but I would personally argue that the main focus here is the fact that the angels are constantly watching in their vigil and are waiting for someone to do something they deem wrong so that they may judge them and potentially punish them.

The phrase “nihil nisi bonum” is latin that translates to “Nothing but good,” which further reinforces the themes of judgment. If you are caught doing something out of place or that is seen as evil then they will punish you. “Is that a voice, calling sweetly from beyond the iron gate, telling you that it has something to show you, secrets that it wishes to share? Just knock and ask to enter. Or try your best not to hear, to think nothing but good and admirable thoughts of those who wait in monuments to their own virtue. There now, a face, pale and stained with age and death and sin, no, not sin, never sin. Misjudgement. Indiscretion. Misunderstanding. Never sin. Never evil. It grins and smiles and nods its head, with broken yellow teeth. It is a smile that wants you closer, wants you near. A bloated, purple tongue that tries to whisper reassurance, but can only gurgle promises that smell like sour fruit.” Okay, I’m going to start skipping over more and more stuff but you can hopefully start to see what I mean. It’s basically directly stated here that the statement giver is afraid of being judged and perceived as a sinner or anything less than perfect. They do not want to be caught sinning or thinking certain thoughts about others. Additionally the voice calling sweetly from beyond the iron gate ties into the Eye’s focus on stoking curiosity and potentially learning about something terrible. “Keep it to yourself, though. Don’t mention it. No point making a scene. The angels wouldn’t like it. Besides, those are the tombs with the longest epitaphs, so they must have been good people.” I should mention here that tying into the Eye’s themes of judgment is that the statement giver is not just afraid of being judged but also being caught judging other people to be anything but good. Which could tie into the fear of “horrible” knowledge or simply judgment once again with the idea that you might judge something and in doing so realize something you don’t want to know or come to a horrible truth from thinking about or questioning it. It could also be that in knowing the truth about how terrible some of the people were you put yourself at risk of being struck down by the angels.

I’m not going to re-explain the same thing over and over so I’m going to try to rapidfire some of the quotes from the statement and I’m not going to explain all of them. “How much longer must you watch your every thought, lest it bring a sneer to your lips the angels might take as scorn. It must be close, simply turn at the next crypt and you should see it.” “The funeral home houses only the passing congregations of sycophants and weepers, desperate to cleanse their own iniquities in the salt-tinged flood of gloating tears.” In case you don’t know, the definition of iniquity is “immoral or grossly unfair behavior.” So the reason the people in the congregation are crying is from the sins they feel they have committed. Their tears are also described with the word gloating which means “dwelling on one's own success or another's misfortune with smugness or malignant pleasure”. So my assumption would be that the people feel bad because they are either comparing themselves to someone who is supposedly morally superior or because they feel guilt for feeling satisfaction from the suffering of others.

Then there’s the Funeral Director. The wiki points out this could be an Avatar / Watcher of this Domain and while it is unconfirmed I am inclined to agree that it is at least highly likely that this director is someone who is in charge of the Domain. Then again, the Funeral Director might not even really exist and it could simply be a monster or manifestation of the Domain meant to torture people. We have seen Domains with the ability to basically create something that could be likened to npcs just to fill them out, such as with The Processing Line in MAG 178 (The Processing Line). Either way, my point is that I feel like it's very likely this Director is an Avatar / Watcher even if it’s not 100% guaranteed to be the case and whether he is or not he does seem to be important. When the Funeral Director first speaks we are told “The faceless gaze of each sepulchre angel fixes itself upon you, and you feel yourself turning back towards the house, though every muscle in your body screams at you to run. Instead you nod, and apologise for your lateness. The angels look away. And you step across the threshold.” and later it is stated that “The Funeral Director does not comment upon your reluctance or care, though you know that nothing escapes his eyes”. So this director clearly has a strong connection to being watched or judged and the resulting fear. “One hundred and sixty pairs of misty eyes follow your slow procession down the room, bile rising higher and higher with each row you pass. Fifteen left, you can make out her hair, still the cold grey you remember so vividly. Ten rows left, and you can see her mouth, those lips that hide the grin that now flashes through your memory. Five more, and you can see her eyes. Why are her eyes open? They are lustreless and clouded, but still contain the cruelty you saw when she held the knife.” This further points to how the Beholding uses eye imagery to let you know you are being watched. Also, like with many Eye related statements, when we hear about the corpse of the abuser there is extra emphasis placed on her eyes and how they are open even though they should not be. While the memory of violence is present here that memory is spurred on by the fact that the dead person appears to be watching the statement giver and in this case the memory can relate to the fear of being forced to think about or remember something you don’t want to. The violence is further made apparent when we hear “You feel the cross she once carved into your back open, and begin to weep its own bloody testament.” However, I’m going to make the same argument I made for the End and Dark. Just because violence is merely present somewhere doesn’t mean the Slaughter is necessarily at work. However, there is definitely much more of an argument for the Slaughter here than the End in my opinion. There’s more emphasis on it than the fear of death so one could very well argue that this Domain is some weird mix of the Eye and the Slaughter, the Eye and the End, or all 3 powers. Shit gets really weird and ambiguous with the Domains. My personal belief is that this Domain is mostly connected to the Eye and like with many of the Powers it just sort of overlaps with some of the resulting fears.

Either way as we keep listening we hear “He places you behind the podium, as the mourners stare at you, and you realise with a stab of agonised dread that they are waiting for your eulogy, their faces alight with hungry grief.” and “‘She was…,’ you begin, a heavy pause before your voice betrays you. ‘The most kind and loving person I ever had the wonderful fortune to meet. Each life she touched was left brighter and more beautiful for her presence. She was… an angel.’ The tears are flowing freely now, as your eulogy continues. You cannot turn from the podium, cannot stop the gushing flow of love and forgiveness you vomit out into the nodding crowd. Behind you, a dark shadow moves, a shape that seems to slither from the coffin. You watch it coming closer from the corner of your eye, but you cannot stop your kind words. Not even as the needle-sharp teeth of her corpse begin to dig into your shoulder.” This last part is interesting because while I feel like this Domain’s potential connection to the Eye is really obvious the last part takes an interesting turn. I would at least say that the eulogy still connects to all the points we touched on as it is the fear of being judged that spurs the person to keep giving the speech despite the fact that they know the abuser is a terrible person.

Additionally, the fact that they know how terrible the person actually is could connect to the fear of horrible knowledge or knowing something you aren’t supposed to, not to mention that the eulogy could be likened to say a statement and the fact that they are forced to keep talking and complete the eulogy is comparable to the Eye and situations like Jon being forced to complete the statement that finished the Eye’s ritual. However, one could argue there are themes of the Web here with a person being forced to do something even if they don’t want to but I would at least consider what I pointed out previously in this article in that the Web and Eye actually have a lot of overlap and similarities, and surveillance is often used as a means of manipulating and controlling people. That is not to say that this means the Web is absolutely not present in this Domain, it just makes trying to differentiate between the potential influence of the Eye and the Web a bit difficult in this case.

Then the corpse seems to rise up and bite into the statement giver which is like… really weird. If I had to connect this to the Eye I would say it represents the speaker knowing what a terrible person the abuser actually is or the fact that their fear of judgment is so great that they are letting themselves continue to get hurt because if they do something else they might be judged harshly. It could also represent their abuser metaphorically and literally haunting them after their death which could tie into the Eye’s theme of memory and thought with the bite and pain acting as a reminder of all the terrible things the abuser did. You could also see the violence as an aspect of the Slaughter. Some might argue that the biting could relate to the Flesh but I don’t really see it here because I don’t think the speaker is being eaten or disfigured or anything, they are just enduring terrible pain. Although, there is an argument to be made for the Flesh with some of the victim’s scars and permanent wounds.

Many fans have pointed out that the Eye has many parallels with how some religions interact with the idea of sin. In particular with religions such as Christianity and Catholicism which have an ever present god constantly judging all your actions and tallying up all your sins after you die. And it doesn’t take a lot to point out that the Eye is also an almost ever present near godlike entity watching over and judging people, not to mention it would feed off the fear of being caught doing something wrong or being judged for your sins whether that judgment comes from a person or a god. A confessional that many use to forgive their sins can also be likened to a statement and in cases where you don’t want to confess something it ties into the fear of someone knowing what you did and sometimes not wanting to think about the terrible thing(s) you did. Feeling guilty for sins you committed can also often feed the Eye. This is something that I think is alluded to in both this Domain and MAG 20 (Desecrated Host). Most notably when Father Edwin Burroughs encounters Father Singh who seems to know things about Edwin he should not. “I finished my account, and waited for Father Singh to speak of my penance or absolution. Instead, he paused for a few moments, then said, “No, your sins are deeper than that.” And he began to list them. Every transgression I had made since I was six years old. The disabled child I had bullied in primary school, the time I stole money from my mother’s purse to buy cigarettes, the indiscretions I had had at the seminary. All of them. I had confessed them each before and been absolved, but not to Father Singh, and to hear them thrown back in my face as such a stark list of wickedness rattled me deeply.” Additionally, at one point Edwin encounters a window and says “The church’s large round window shifted as I watched, as though it were a tremendous eye that were turning to focus upon me.” So the theme of sin and the Eye isn’t unprecedented as sin is often connected to judgment. But I should mention that in MAG 20 there seem to be multiple Powers at work.

The Monument

Our next Domain is known as “The Monument” and it appears in MAG 183 (Monument). The wiki speculates that it’s possibly aligned with the The Spiral, The Eye or The Vast but it says the Spiral seems to be the most likely and surprisingly all the wiki’s speculations about these Domains have been at least within the ballpark or done a pretty good job in narrowing the possible Entities in my opinion. So let's see if it continues this trend. I will also once again reiterate that this article is focused on the Eye so while I may point out things I believe relate to other Powers I am more likely to skip over speculation and information that I think does not immediately relate to the themes of the Eye.

So the Monument is a weird Domain in that Jon in MAG 183 describes it as a “homage” or mockery to people like Roberte Smirke. “A monument. To him and those like him, who tried to… categorise the world with themselves at the centre. In so doing, constructed the architecture of its suffering.” Now this COULD potentially relate to the Eye through the lense of a crippling curiosity and desire to understand even if it ends up hurting you. A sort of metaphorical “Icarus flying too close to the sun” kind of thing. In an attempt to understand the Entities people have ended up getting hurt either physically or mentally. Jon also says “Would you prefer I described it as a cascading recursion of shifting arrogance and hubristic dead-ends?”

In terms of appearance Martin points out that the Domain looks very similar to the building of the Magnus Institute itself and Jon says “It makes sense. After all, it was built on the ruins of what Robert Smirke constructed.” This is an interesting parallel to be sure since Robert’s desire to understand the Entities and the resulting invention of their rituals ended up fucking both himself and a lot of other people over. Heck, one could even argue that Robert put the world itself in greater danger in his attempt to understand and categorize the Entities and people like Jonah Magnus tricked him into helping further the agenda of their respective Power(s). In MAG 138 (The Architect of Fear) Smirke sends a letter to Jonah which I think only further solidifies what Jon is talking about. In it Smirke says “This is, of course, assuming you have not taken the path of the Eye that I know has called you, called us both for so long. Even since before we began our work on Millbank.”

So despite the fact that Smirke never aligned with any specific power we know for a fact that the Eye was calling to him and trying to get him to join it. Something that makes a lot of sense when you consider the Eye’s attraction to extremely curious and knowledge hungry individuals as well as one of the previous Archivists, Angus Stacey. A man who attempted to revise Smirke’s 14 and recategorize the Entities. However, he ended up burning through all his resources and manpower so he paid the price for it. Smirke himself also ends up paying his own price since he ends up being haunted by the Eye. “I have been dreaming again, Jonah. The same every night for months, now. I imagine myself a boy again at Aspley. I awake, cold and alone in the dormitory. The sky outside is dark, and I see no stars. I light a candle, to better see my way, and step down the silent corridor. The master’s rooms are empty, the fire in the kitchen is dead. Eventually my steps lead out into the courtyard. It is so quiet that the sound of my feet upon the grass is painful to my ears. I stop, and look up at the sky, that empty black nothing, and I see the edges of the horizon becoming a dull white. I cannot understand what I am looking at. And then the sky blinks. And I awake.” “I have been watched for some time, now, since shortly before the dreams began. It was subtle at first, easy to ignore and dismiss. What possible harm could there be in the idle glance of a footman, staring at you as you leave your home? And no doubt the shopkeeper is permitted to watch whomsoever he pleases within the confines of his own establishment. (inhale) So I have been reassuring myself, as I attempted to ignore my own growing disquiet. But what is not to be dismissed is when your driver, on the long road from London, takes his eyes from the horses and begins to turn his head, slowly at first, but with a clear determination, inch by inch without ceasing, neck cracking and skin stretching, until his whole head seems as though it were placed atop his shoulders in reverse by some careless sculptor. The others in my carriage seemed not to mark this awful sight, but I could scarce look away, and the eyes of this twisted figure locked on my own, tears streaming from their corners. It was such a dreadful spectacle that it took every ounce of my composure not to hurl myself bodily from the coach. The journey was not a short one, and for all those hours the driver did not once for a second look away. The horses seemed to take it all in stride. Since then, I have attempted to avoid such situations, and have traveled primarily by the railway – but, even then, it seems I cannot avoid the ceaseless gaze of those silent figures who gather along the side of the track to stare at me as I pass. I count the billowing smoke as a blessing, for though it sends me into coughing fits, it at least serves to hide me from their relentless eyes. I am choosing to assume that these manifestations are unintentional, Jonah, and you have not simply decided to implore a dark patron to end the life of an old man. I further find myself supposing that they might emanate from your own intrigues and preparations to culminate those plans which we agreed to abandon so many decades ago.” “Laura’s face was inches from my own, her eyes staring into mine, so wide that they seemed to take up half her face or more, bulging grotesquely from their sockets. I screamed. Just once. She gave no response of her own.” “Laura, of course, claims no knowledge of the night’s events, having no memory of even leaving her chamber. The Eye has marked me for something, of this I have no doubt.” Smirke was later found dead from apoplexy which is “unconsciousness or incapacity resulting from a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke.” Which leads me to wonder if, like Christopher Meyer, he might have died from some sort of stress caused by the Eye watching and following him.

I also think there is a sort of narrative irony in Smirke being stalked by the Entity most connected to knowledge and truth. For one, Smirke is probably a prime source of fear for the Eye because Smirke probably lives in fear of the knowledge he has given to people and would by extension fear both the horrible truth of the Entities themselves and the things people know about the Entities. There is also the fear that certain people are perceiving his work and the fact that the reason he ends up being followed by the Eye is at least partially because of his desire to understand and categorize the Entities. Smirke even says “Fourteen powers, with their opposites and their allies, each with an aim no more or less than manifestation. Apocalypse. Apotheosis. I wonder, did my work bring about these dreadful things, or – did I simply develop the means by which they can be known?”. Implying he deeply regrets revealing the truth behind the Entities.

The Eye has also had a couple of connections to dreams. Smirke was in part inspired to create his architecture and consider the connection between the Entities and architecture due to dreams. He says “I would find myself in nightmares of strange, far-off places: a field of graves, a grasping tunnel, an abattoir knee-deep in pig’s blood. I believed then, as I still believe now, that these places I saw were the Powers themselves, expressed in their truest form, far more entirely than any “secret” book can claim.” I cannot say if these dreams are caused specifically by the Eye alone or the other Powers but it at least parallels the Eye since, as we see with Jonah and his ability to beam information into Martin and Melanie’s head, we know that the Eye and some of its followers do have the ability to beam knowledge into the heads of other people and there are cases where we see people like Jon are forced to take statements and “witness” things. Additionally, the dreams can be likened to the dreams that Jon and his victims experience when he takes a live statement. Also, in MAG 200 (Last Words), when Jon relieves Jonah of his position as “pupil of the eye” Jonah describes it as a dream, saying this “[Groggy] Jon? I-I-Is that you? Uh, I, I was having the most wonderful dream…” It is interesting to consider the dreamlike parallel here because we know that Jonah was watching all the Domains in that supposedly dream-like state. So while I can’t say it’s canon or 100% true it wouldn’t surprise me if the Eye was tempting Smirke with dreams and information as it is pretty apparent that doing so is something that it likes to do.

This is the point where I remind you that I am supposed to be talking about the Domain that is the Monument and trying to pin down Eye themes. But hopefully my detour shows you part of the reason why I like thinking about TMA so much. It is so much more intricately detailed and thought out then a lot of people seem to think so it pains me when people seem to overlook or even outright ignore stuff in the series, especially since some of the stuff seems to be laid out or implied pretty plainly.

Anyway, the Smirke tirade does have a point. The Monument is a “homage” or mockery to people like Roberte Smirke specifically. “A monument. To him and those like him, who tried to… categorise the world with themselves at the centre. In so doing, constructed the architecture of its suffering.” So by better understanding Smirke himself we can better understand the Domain itself. I think it’s funny that two characters we know were obsessed about categorizing and understanding the fears, Smirke and Angus, ended up being heavily connected to the Eye or at least chased by it. Most likely due to their drive to understand and know. But just because they might be Eye related doesn’t guarantee the Domain itself is.

In the actual Domain we see it as one where the inhabitants constantly create theories and speculations about how to escape the Domain only to have the maze-like Domain shift in a way that proves them wrong or renders their theory completely incorrect. We see the theorists seem to be incapable of working together with the others as they appear to believe that they have all the answers while the others are stupid or misguided. “‘I told you,’ the professor gloats, ‘that your precious compass-point rubric is nonsense. It’s all about the stone, the rocks that make up this place. You see, here we have the limestone, here the granite. Taste it. No? Your loss..” Highlighting Jon’s point about how characters narrow mindedly try to understand the world and Entities by centering the world around them we see the statement give center himself in the central chamber. “He knows for a fact that this is the central chamber because he is the one sat here. For his observations to make any sense they must be made from the centre of this place, and this is where he is observing from, so it stands to reason that it is the centre. The only firm and solid place in a cacophony of undulating architecture; the only point from which it may be solved.” This would imply that connected to this Domain is the idea of a sort of lack of perspective which is reflected in how the statement giver is unable to see any of the other theorists’ point of view. Something that obviously greatly limits them and their ability to see the full picture. “He has seen the others pointlessly wandering the halls, of course. Simpering pretenders claiming to see patterns when they are only being led by the siren call of their pathetic little biases. Their ridiculous pet theories. Not like him. They’ll remember him forever, the first to escape the Monument.” Basically they’re all thinking “I’m him.” “It doesn’t matter. There will be time enough for names and gloating and awards once his achievement is secured. And now is the time to put it to the test, to prove once and for all that his peers are ignorant amateurs beside him, who can finally boast that he has found the key to the system in which they all struggle.”

So what about the possible Entities this Domain could be associated with? Unfortunately, I don’t really have any sort of hot take or “um, actually” here because in my opinion the wiki is pretty on the money. I can’t cover this Domain in as much detail as some of the others because, like I’ve mentioned before, for the sake of this article I’m mostly focused on the Eye and I actually think this Domain is aligned with the Spiral if I had to choose. But let's go through the likely Entities.

I think the Spiral is the most likely. The Spiral is the Entity that feeds most directly off the fear of being wrong or thinking something was one way only for it to be another. It is the Entity embodying the fear of lies, whether those lies be from other people, lies you tell yourself, or your own senses, equipment, or theory misjudging something. Basically the Spiral is the fear of something being wrong or incorrect. This is reinforced when the statement giver falls after his calculation is proven wrong- “He barely has time to register before he is tumbling, falling, smashing bone and cracking skull on the stairs and columns he impacts on his descent, one after another. But it is not the fall that terrifies him, not the pain of the impacts, but the fact that none of them should be there. That it doesn’t make sense. And it must make sense.” Then there’s his interaction with the professor where we are told “The doctor that lies on the floor has recovered just enough to laugh. ‘You’re still working on mineral theory? How painfully outdated.’ A flash of genuine fear crosses the face of the professor at this dismissal, before he picks up his chunk of granite, and begins to smash the doctor’s head in yet again.” So it’s clear to me the biggest fear present here is the fear of being wrong. It also makes it a little funny that Helen, the Distortion and an aspect of the Spiral, chooses to show up in this Domain but that could just be a coincidence. But let’s at least touch on some of the other potential Powers could be present or how I might be wrong.

I already covered the Eye when I went over Smirke and how the Eye often has themes of wanting to understand and know even if doing so might hurt you. But I would argue the Spiral’s themes are a lot more present here unless you want to argue this is a similar situation to “The Forest” feeding off the fear of betrayal despite being tied to the Hunt. You could also argue that the knowledge the theorists seek and the process of getting it is hurting them since we see at least the statement giver carving equations into his arm with obsidian in order to prove his theory.

The Vast is an Entity that embodies the fear of large things. This can be literal, like large creatures, large objects, large falls, large spaces, etc. but it can also be metaphorical in the sense that something may feel really big in comparison to you or that you might otherwise be small or insignificant. While I am sticking by my point about the Spiral it is important to mention that the theorists have a large ego and clearly want to matter and not be seen as insignificant. They want to center themselves and have the universe revolve around them. “He can not remember his name but he knows that he is a doctor and should always be addressed as such.” “Their ridiculous pet theories. Not like him. They’ll remember him forever, the first to escape the Monument. His name will be hallowed with the greats: Doctor…uh… Doctor…” This is one of those things I can’t spend too much time on in this article but the fear of being insignificant or not mattering is one of the core themes of the Vast so it preying on someone who’s desperate to matter or be remembered makes sense. Although, you could also see the desperation to be remembered as a form of being “seen” or “known” in a way closer to the Eye.

The one thing I will disagree with the wiki on is that it didn’t mention the Buried. In fairness the Buried usually revolves around claustrophobia but it also includes not having enough space in general and being trapped metaphorically. I could see themes for the Buried here in that no matter what any of the theorists do in their desperate attempt for escape or freedom they are trapped in the maze. However, to dispute my own point as mentioned earlier the primary fear and focus here seems to be the idea of being wrong or unable to unravel the logic present rather than being trapped. Yes, the theorists want to escape but they also make it pretty clear that they want to be the first ones to do so and take great pride in the possibility that they specifically will figure it out before anyone else.

Just to get this out of the way, while there is violence here I don’t think the Slaughter is particularly very present since none of the characters seem particularly afraid of getting hurt and only lash out when someone views their theory as wrong near the end of the statement.

Additionally, the wiki also posits that the Domain may not belong to a particular Entity or might be connected to all of them since the Domain is meant to mock everyone who tries to cleanly categorize and understand them. Like with a lot of the Domains, this is definitely a possibility and makes a lot of thematic sense so I’ll leave it up to you but I think this Domain, whether coincidentally or not, shares the most similarities and fears with the Spiral.

The Prison

The last Domain we will be looking at is the one that appears in MAG 185(Locked In). The wiki postulates that “The Prison” possibly aligns with The Desolation, The Eye, The Buried, The Spiral, and/or The Lonely and just like before I am interested to see how much water this actually holds by looking at the Domain.

SURPRISE BONUS ROUND: JURGEN LEITNER!!!

OH GOD DAMMIT!!!! Okay okay okay, it’s fine we’re still near the end of this section. So you’re probably wondering why I’m waiting until now to discuss Leitner, especially considering that he’s so iconic that an entire category of artifacts was named after him. Well the 1st reason is because I actually originally wasn’t going to cover him in this article but he ended up having some themes I want to talk about. The 2nd reason is I didn’t know exactly where to put it and I felt that it made sense to cover him right after talking about Smirke and since both characters have similar themes I wanted to do it while my talk about Smirke is fresh in everyone’s heads.

I actually have a 3rd reason for talking about Leitner here. I know Leitner isn’t really officially aligned with any Entity in particular but recently I saw someone make a Reddit post in which they argued Leitner might have a connection to the Hunt. To this idea I have to disagree and argue that considering all the themes I’ve covered so far Leitner actually has much more thematic parallels with the Eye. I do understand the logic of pairing Leitner with the Hunt. The Hunt seems to connect to not just the fear of hunting down people but the idea of the chase in general and the fear it brings. So we do know that the Hunt can include chasing down things like objects or locations, as seen in MAG 133 (Dead Horse) where we witness a potential Hunt ritual that involves a band of people endlessly hunting for the “Lost City of Z” in the Amazon. However, the Eye and the Hunt actually have a lot of similarities. I’ve mentioned before that both the Entities tend to have an emphasis on hunting and searching. In the case of the Eye this usually takes the form of the searching for knowledge and / or information and the Hunt is more about getting lost in the chase.

So what does this all have to do with Leitner and how does this prove my point? Well first, I would like to point to one of my earlier sections and bring up the fact that while all the Entities have an association with books the one Entity that has the strongest association with books and libraries would be the Eye due to how they symbolize and provide knowledge. And if you ask me the library of Leitner along with the countless dangerous supernatural books housed within them has a lot more in common with say the artifact storage the Magnus Institute gathers and researches rather than anything the Hunt typically does.

It’s also important to remember WHY Leitner even wanted to collect the books in the first place. He isn’t just hunting them just to horde them, because they were valuable, or for the thrill of the chase. Remember what I said about the Eye and its connection to curiosity and wanting to know things even if you hurt either yourself or others in the process. Yeah, well Leitner is that to a T. The entire point of his library was to try to research and understand the books of the Entities and, similar to the Magnus Institute itself, he even had assistants and the like. We also know that some people working at the library got hurt or even killed in their search for knowledge. As noted by Mikaele Salesa, who himself used to be an assistant of Leitner, in MAG 115 (Taking Stock) “My first job was working with Jurgen Leitner, but I got out of that years before the man met his fate. Started looking for the exit about the time that I saw Warren get literally eaten by a book. And before you start cross-referencing, looking for some newly-birthed monster called Warren, I don’t mean eaten like that. It left behind the leg. Don’t know any transformations that leave behind your leg.” So there is definitely the Eye’s theme of being hurt or willing to let others get hurt in a search for knowledge. In MAG 80 (The Librarian) Leitner even says “I was ruthless, I will admit that. I don’t know how many assistants I sacrificed to learn the secrets of the volumes I collected. Dozens, at least. Only a few escaped with their life and mind intact, and even then they were deeply marked. But I was relentless. I saw myself as a guardian, a reverse Pandora, gathering the evils of the world and locking them away.”

This is literally almost the exact same mistake that Robert Smirke made. The only difference being that Leitner was more focused on the books and Smirke was more focused on architecture and rituals. In fact Leitner draws parallels to Smirke himself in MAG 80, “There were several volumes in my possession that, if kept them close to each other reacted… very badly. But Smirke’s writings, his principles of balance between opposing forces, gave me some inkling as to a solution. Today was not the first time my life has been saved by his architecture.” Ironically, Smirke’s knowledge in a way ends up leading to Leitner’s own hubris as it causes him to sink deeper and deeper into gathering these books and the potential safety measures of Smirke’s architecture interacting with the books gave Jurgen more confidence and further fed into the idea that the books could be understood, known, and mastered.

If you don’t take Salesa’s word for it when it comes to Leitner’s focus on knowledge then what about the word of Jurgen himself? Leitner himself states in MAG 80 (The Librarian): “I… thought that I could control them; that I alone had the knowledge to contain them. Back then, I believed they were simply books. Horrifying, powerful, yes, but with rules, limits that could be charted. I was a fool. I had no idea what forces lay behind them, or that they had other servants that might come searching.” Notice how Leitner is emphasizing the knowledge and analysis here. He believes the books can be known and understood. Leitner’s hubris isn’t one of getting caught up in the chase but one of knowledge. Not only did he think his knowledge granted him a level of safety but his curiosity and desire to see knowledge and gather the books also put him in peril.

Now this isn’t all to say that Leitner shares no themes with the Hunt I just feel like a lot of that can be explained as the overlap between the Hunt and the Eye and even in when that’s not the case the parallels to the Eye in Leitner’s arc are much stronger. But that’s not where this ends. You see, the Eye itself seemed to take sort of an interest in Leitner. Once Leitner finished building his library visitors started showing up and he began to become afraid of word of this secret library and all its dangerous contents getting out. As he says in MAG 80 “It started with the visitors. Almost every day, some stranger would turn up at my door and ask to see my collection. Now, whatever my secret ambitions might have been, I was very careful not to let word get out about what I was doing. And these people, they were… wrong somehow. They didn’t move as people should move, and their cadence was very strange when they spoke. They almost always forgot to blink.” What’s that? Visitors who show up to a man who wants to keep his library full of forbidden knowledge a secret? Not only that but they ask for this information and they almost never blinked which means they would have been perpetually staring at Leitner? If this doesn’t scream Eye to you I don’t know what does since the Eye tends to be associated with ceaseless watching as well as the fear of secrets or information being revealed. In this case, these fears are proven to be at least somewhat justified as when enough avatars, monsters, or what have you serving the powers hear about this library a bunch of them attack it which leads to the death of many people and the library being destroyed.

Also, once the library is destroyed many people begin to start hunting Leitner down for vengeance or because he had his name written all over a bunch of cursed books. This forced Leitner to go into hiding and while it is obvious to compare being hunted down to the Hunt the fear of being found by someone or being caught while you're trying to hide is very Eye.

But this isn’t the end of Leitner’s original goal. In MAG 80 Letiner states that “But I think, in my heart, I dreamed of my work becoming known. That “The Library of Jurgen Leitner” would stand as a symbol of courage and protection.” So literally all of the shit he did was in order to become known, to become perceived. Which the Eye ironically was all too happy to oblige in doing for him. But it just caused him to be perceived by the wrong people and monsters and sensitive information to get out at the wrong moment, which ironically led to the library’s destruction. This also adds an interesting narrative layer to Jurgen and how he ends up working with Gertrude who was the previous Archivist and is connected to the Eye. Also, I haven’t seen many people talk about the shared ruthlessness both characters have had in the past when it comes to getting what they want or attempting to learn more. With both willing to sacrifice their assistants for information or tests.

It should also be mentioned that Leitner does say he is good at hunting down the books which at first blush seems like it could parallel the Hunt. But let’s actually pay attention to some of the specifics of how he got those books in MAG 80 “I mean, I had a genuine and pronounced talent for finding items of worth and convincing their owners to part with them,” and “I suppose few walk away from their first encounter with any desire to look for more, if they walk away at all. And of those that do, none would have had my skill at finding them, or my extensive resources.” I would argue that this parallels Eye aligned people like Jon, Gertrude, and maybe even Jonah to know things that they shouldn’t. In the case of Jon and Gertrude it is stated that they will sometimes randomly know things that they shouldn’t and what they suddenly learn often has to do with their current goal or focus. Similarly, you could make the argument that Leitner always seems to know where to find the books and knows what to say or do in order to get someone to part with them. I’m not saying this is a supernatural ability granted by the Eye or anything as it’s pretty vague but I’m trying to point out the narrative parallels present. The kinds of people the Eye likes tend to be curious and people like Gertrude are often really good at finding things or obtaining information.

Domains (Continued)

The Prison (Continued)

The Prison takes the form of… a prison and seems to revolve around the fear of being mistaken for a crime you don’t think you committed. However, it might just take the fear of being arrested in general since while the statement giver doesn’t seem to know why she’s there when Jon and Martin interrogate the Inspector about why he’s in prison he says “Argh! Look, you can’t know if they’re all guilty, alright? It’s just about evidence…”. So you could argue that some people in this Domain suspect or know they’ve committed a crime or that at the very least some think what was considered a crime was justified. This Domain is actually kind of a surprising one in that it’s the first one that I’m actually going to argue probably isn’t connected to any one specific fear or is connected to almost all of them.

We’ll start with the Eye because that’s what this article is about. The Eye is one of the more apparent potential Entities of this Domain as the statement giver is clearly in fear of being judged and the inspector Martin and Jon encounter seems to also be afraid of being judged in a sense. During the statement we hear about judgment from the outside world towards the statement giver “In the shops she had seen them, eyes darting nervously, fingers drumming incessantly on trolly handles, waiting for whatever was coming. And all day, that intense, unshakeable feeling that she was being watched.” “Then the child’s eyes narrowed in sudden hatred as the little girl bent down, picked up a rock and hurled it at the window.” “She clawed her way back up to the window and looked out, trying to see the spiteful little brat, but the girl was now behind her father, who shooed her away with a terror in his eyes, a terror aimed at Tina. And for the briefest of moments she was certain that the man’s fear was mocking her.”

Additionally, we see the police judging Tina and like with some of the other encounters with the Eye they know all about her entire life and about things they should have no way of knowing. “There had been a man, she was certain of it, and he had smiled as he sat across from her. And there had been a file, a thick manila envelope stained with grease and coffee, which held the pages of her life typed out in a small, no-nonsense font. She remembered that she had read those pages with increasing alarm. It had all been there, all of it. Her life, her loves, her choices, her mistakes. No details spared, no nasty inference ignored.”

Another Entity that might be equally apparent or come to mind is the Buried. It’s easy to see the Buried as just claustrophobia but that’s only one aspect of the Buried. More broadly, the Buried is about the fear of not having enough space and / or being trapped. So being stuck in a small prison cell and unable to leave while the pleasant open world you knew is just out of reach feels very Buried to me. “The cell was small and cramped, and Tina kept hitting her shin on the bench. She paused, casting an eye over the rough concrete wall surrounding her, covered in deep grooves and… scratch marks.” “When she saw the world beyond her walls, her heart sank. The world seemed so bright and normal. The sun was high and shining, though none of it passed though the bars, and if she tried to reach through, the light seemed to shrink from her skin.”

Another Entity to consider is the Lonely. The statement giver is implied to spend most of the time in her cell alone and rarely interacts with other people. While other people are occasionally present, such as the police officers, little girl, and the little girl’s father, the loneliness is still pretty emphasized. “The world didn’t miss her, didn’t know or care about what was happening beyond these walls.” Also, as I’ve mentioned previously, the Lonely isn’t just about being alone physically. It also connects to the fear of being isolated mentally, physically, or emotionally. So the idea that you feel alone because everyone hates you, nobody cares about you, or people want nothing to do with you is a very important aspect of the Lonely. We can see in this Domain that loneliness is clearly emphasized to at least some degree.

Then there’s the Spiral. This might seem like an odd choice but it’s important to remember that the Spiral basically embodies the fear that things are wrong or mistaken and that the world is potentially lying to you, you are lying to yourself, or that your own senses are lying to you. So the argument for the Spiral is that the Tina doesn’t believe she committed the crime and that everyone else thinks she did and that there is some kind of mistake. “Tina ignores it as she grabs the hatch and tries to keep it open, tries to tell the guard, to explain what’s happened, that something’s gone wrong, that she shouldn’t be here. This isn’t right! Why can’t anybody see this? This isn’t the place for people like her.” However, one could argue against this point by saying that Tina seems pretty sure that she didn’t commit the crime but even then there are still potentially aspects of the Spiral present elsewhere. Such as with the police Tina encounters ”So when she turned and saw them standing there, so official in their vests and helmets, what else was she to think? Ah, thank goodness, it flitted through her mind as Tina felt herself relax, whatever it is, someone is taking care of it. Because that’s what they were for, to take care of these problems, to shuffle people away for their own protection, and keep the world working as it should be. She smiled, even as the shadowed figure did not remove his hand from her shoulder.” Tina thinking these officers are her allies or someone there to protect her only for them to declare her the criminal, work against her, act as her enemy, and throw her in jail is very similar to some of the aspects of the Spiral. Especially in regards to the Distortion, a being we know is created to feed on the fear of being unable to tell if someone is your friend / ally or not. I would also point to this interaction ““None of these things are illegal,” she had said. The man had laughed at that. It had been a dry and hacking sound that cracked the mirrored glass of the interview room, and made the juror’s ears bleed. He stroked his badge… or had it been that gnarled and bloodstained gavel? The laws have changed.” Thinking the laws were one way only for them to be another would potentially fit the themes of the Spiral too.

The wiki also puts forth the idea of the Desolation being present. A hypothesis that might seem weird so let’s take a step back and look at it. At the end of the day Desolation is basically the fear of destruction or loss. A lot of people ask what the difference between the Desolation and Slaughter actually is and some even argue that they are often arbitrary. Ignoring the fact that one of the key points of the series is that the distinction between the Dread Powers can sometimes very easily be arbitrary or vague, the main difference is the Desolation is the fear of losing something, whether that be losing people you care about to death or having your favorite objects destroyed, or damaged, and the Slaughter is more the fear of violence, such as someone stabbing or shooting you. I will talk more about these Entities in their own respective articles but the best way I can put it is that the Desolation is more like the fear you feel when your entire antique china collection shatters and the Slaughter is more along the lines of the fear you feel when you get punched. If two people break into your house the Desolation is the person stealing all your valuables and the Slaughter is the one threatening to shoot you.

I think what the wiki is trying to allude to here is the idea that Tina at least loses everything due to the criminal charges. She can’t go home and if she had any friends or family they are now gone. So the focus on loss and what she once had is there even if I might personally argue other Powers are probably more present. However, this Domain is actually one of the most seemingly evenly split Domains I think I’ve seen so far so I can’t as confidently rule out the Desolation here.

The wiki’s list of potential Entities ends there but there are actually 3 more Entities I would like to bring up.

First off, is the Dark. While the statement itself contains nothing alluding to the Dark we see Martin and Jon walking through the Domain once the statement ends. During which they encounter the Inspector, one of the people who apprehended Jonah / Elias when Martin tipped the police off. During their conversation the Inspector says “Please, I’m – It’s almost lights out. I can’t be here for lights out. Not again. Please? You owe me!” which I find to be a very interesting comment. As mentioned before, this could be coincidence as the mere presence of darkness doesn’t mean the Dark is there but this man is clearly extremely afraid of the dark either directly or indirectly and he puts emphasis on it. It could simply be he just doesn’t like the dark or something in particular happens in the Prison during the dark. Exactly if this is the case or what happens. if anything, is left completely up in the air though.

Secondly, there is the Stranger. A point that once again comes from the conversation between the Inspector, Jon, and Martin. During the conversation with the Inspector Martin says he has forgotten the man’s name and in response the Inspector says “So have I. I’m just 547 in here.” The Stranger is the embodiment of the fear of the unknown and not knowing things which includes not knowing who you yourself are. In fact there have been a couple of occasions where we see the Stranger connect or manifest as a loss of identity or not knowing who you are. The Merry-Go-Round Domain Not-Sasha inhabited revolved around the fear of not knowing who you were and a lack of identity. In it the inhabitants have no faces by default and would be forced to tear the faces off of others and wear them to have any sort of identity. Before the Change during the Stranger’s ritual, the Unknowing, Jon, Daisy, and Tim, temporarily forgot basically everything including who they are or why they are there in MAG 119 (Stranger and Stranger). So the Prison causing a loss of identity and forcing you into the role of just a nameless prisoner at least parallels the Stranger.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if the Slaughter was somehow present but there isn’t a lot to back it up based on what we see other then some allusions to bruising and blood as well as the fact that the police don’t seem to care about the prisoners all that much so I wouldn’t put police violence past them. The is somewhat of an argument for the Web with the idea of being controlled or manipulated by laws or the police force. The only Entities I would have trouble arguing for would be the Vast and Flesh outside of themes of being insignificant and dehumanized respectively.

If I was forced to pick Entities that are most connected to this Domain I would probably say the Buried and the Eye. However, there are so many different things seemingly going on that it makes me wonder if this Domain is connected to any particular Power or all of them at the same time. The Domain may be connected to a lot of Powers but not all of them. I also don’t think we can rule out the possibility that each prisoner might have a more personalized experience based on their own fears as Tina mentions nothing about darkness specifically but the Inspector seems to be terrified of it and Tina seems to know who she is while the Inspector has lost some sense of self even if he does remember Martin and his life before the Change. It could be possible that Tina has simply not experienced lights out yet or that she will begin to forget who she is in time but it’s impossible to say for sure.

Relationships with the Other Powers

Finally, this brings us to the real reason I even wrote this article. The Eye and how it overlaps and connects to each fear and, by extension, why Entities like the Eye and Stranger cannot simply destroy each other and might have a more symbiotic relationship than at first glance. Out of all the Entities I’ve seen I think the Eye (due to the sheer amount of information surrounding it), Corruption (due to its themes of love), and the Stranger (which is actually pretty fitting for the unknown I guess) have the most misconceptions and wild assumptions made.

I can actually sum up the Corruption’s theme of love pretty easily. Like I’ve mentioned repeatedly in this article, or small book at this point, the Entities don’t only relate to physical or literal things. The Corruption is pretty straightforward in that it seems to be the fear of things that are disgusting or gross. How does this relate to love? Well, not everything we find disgusting is physical. There are things many would describe as being disgusting or repulsive in a moral, mental, emotional or even spiritual way. Sickness and disease is often associated with disgust and we might describe someone we find to have a repugnant personality as “sick in the head” or someone with a terrible personality as someone with a “nasty” personality. So someone being in a relationship many would find disgusting or repulsive, such as wanting to marry bugs, feeds into this theme.

One of the things I figured I’d cover before I start going through each of the Eye’s relationships with the other Powers one by one is why many of the powers actually seem to conflict with the Eye and why a lot of their followers seem to hate it. I’ve seen some people say that this is because the Eye “regurgitates” the fear of the other Entities and this is why they don’t like it. However, I feel like this isn’t completely true or is some weird logic. One thing that is made pretty apparent throughout the series is that besides the Web and maybe the End the other Entities don’t have enough sentience or forethought to really care where their fear comes from or why. They don’t care if you are allied with them or not for example. Part of the reason the Web devised the plan to jump universes in the first place is that the Entities would just mindlessly gorge on the fear of the Post-Change world until all the people in it died and by then it would be too late because there would be no more fear. So I really doubt most of the Entities themselves, if any, would care if the fear feeding them is coming from the Eye invoking that fear in others even if their followers might take issue with it.

If that’s the case, then why do so many people hate the Eye? Well I think the answer is a bit more simple and has less to do with how it gets fear but more with the nature of the Entity itself. See, because the Eye, like the rest of the Entities, doesn’t care where its fear comes from, it's constantly trying to watch everyone and know everything it can about them. I mean let’s take a step back for a second and look at things in a broader perspective. If you are someone trying to create a ritual to bring your patron Entity into the world, say the Lonely or the Stranger, which Entity and its respective followers are the most likely to know when you are performing the ritual? Furthermore, which Entity is most likely to know how to actually stop your ritual as well as have followers that are privy to this knowledge? That’s right it’s the Eye (and the Web, but the Web tends to be a bit more subtle).

This is actually at least somewhat reflected in the series itself because even though we have seen forces of the other Entities stop rituals, such as the followers of the Slaughter stopping the Stranger’s earlier attempt at a ritual in MAG 116 (The Show Must Go On) in the modern day the followers of the Eye appear to be the ones stopping the rituals of the other Powers the most often. This can mostly be attributed to Gertrude and while some may argue Gertrude attempted to stop the Eye’s own ritual and didn’t really want to side with any particular Power she was still an Archivist working for the Magnus Institute and would thus be aligned with the Eye. I also don’t think many of the followers of some of the other Powers would care about the nuances of why someone is aligned with a rival Entity or were privy to Gertrude trying to stop the Eye’s own ritual. So from the perspective of the other Powers’ forces they probably just see this Eye’s Archivist busting in and perfectly countering all their rituals with knowledge she somehow managed to obtain. Gertrude was so good at figuring things out that in MAG143 (Heart of Darkness) Manuela Dominguez just assumed Gertrude knew something and figured out how to stop the Dark’s ritual when it failed.

Let’s not forget that Jonathan Sims himself is involved in stopping 2 rituals which can partially be attributed to Jonah pointing him in the “right” direction. That’s not even getting into the fact that the Eye quite LITERALLY has a guy who is almost omniscient serving under it. Jonah Magnus can quite literally just think about how he wants to stop a ritual and most of the time he would immediately be made aware of it, how to stop it, where it’s occurring, etc. without some really strong and particular interferences. The fact that Jonah can know almost anything at any given time means that you have to walk such an unrealistically tight rope for him to not be made aware of it in some capacity. Especially, since most of the rituals are large events that require tons of people and / or resources as well as fear.

It’s also important to remember that all the Powers and their followers have some level of antagonism towards each other. Each follower wants THEIR power to win if possible and will sometimes even butt heads with their supposed allies in order to get ahead of the game.

While characters such as Jude Perry express annoyance or anger at the fact that the Eye is typically very passive there are a couple of things to consider. First off, as mentioned earlier each of the Dread Powers’ followers want THEIR Entity to win so some potential antagonism towards other Entities and their groups is important to factor in especially when you consider the personalities of the follower(s) in question. For example, Getrude was aligned with the Eye but attempted to stop the Eye itself despite Jonah wanting the Eye’s ritual to succeed. My point is that to some degree when a character is talking about a Power you do have to factor in their personality or beliefs. I mean if two people following the same power can have completely opposite goals or view points then that doesn’t always mean that one person’s experience with a Power they follow is true for literally everyone following the same Entity. Secondly, while the Eye itself does seem pretty passive, if you pay attention you will notice that whenever its followers tend to act shit often seems to hit the fan. The Eye’s ritual was the first successful one, albeit with help from the Web, Getrude stopped 5 rituals while Jon stopped 2, etc. Which means that out of all of Smirke’s 14 categorized Powers the Magnus Institute and the Eye stopped at least 7 or half of them. And setting up a ritual takes a really long time because of the fear and resources that need to be gathered. It can take literal centuries or life time to even have a chance to set up a ritual. So if that shit goes wrong it’s going to take a while to get another shot at it and another Entity could beat you to the punch by getting their ritual off first. Additionally, followers of the Eye tend to be the most aware of what’s going on with all of the Entities. Something that is directly alluded to by Peter Lukas and his plan to use Martin to figure out what’s going on with the Extinction. The reason for this being that Peter wants someone who is connected to the Eye so they can take control of the Institute and its knowledge as well as the Lonely so he can exert control over it as mentioned in MAG 158. Characters like Jude Perry also seem unaware of a lot that doesn’t have to do with their respective Entity and she is unable to tell Jon much about the likes of the Eye even when under the influence of Jon’s truth telling powers.

In fact I would say out of all the powers the Eye was probably one of the most likely to win the ritual race merely because of its emphasis on knowledge and by proxy the knowledge most of its followers would be privy to. The Eye’s factions would be the most likely to have the best understanding of the rituals and what possibly went wrong with previous rituals with exception to the likes of the Web. An Entity that also seems to have an emphasis on information, was manipulating the Eye, and it’s emphasis on control would mean it could probably coordinate people better or even just trick or force them to enact a ritual when it was ready if it really wanted to. But this is just my opinion at this point.

Something else I would like to point out is the Eye’s relationships with the other Entities in a more general or broad sense. My take on the Eye is that out of all the fears it is probably the most interconnected between the most different Powers and often the fear it embodies can act as a strong foundation for most other fears.

I’ll get to some of the specifics as I go through each fear but this take might seem off to some, especially when the Eye seems to often conflict with 2 of the other Powers in the same way the Vast and Buried often conflict. But it’s important to remember that even conflicting Powers have a symbiotic aspect to their relationship and overlap does exist. Not to mention that they are all pieces of a larger whole. Additionally, what I am getting at is if you have read this entire article by now you should be well aware that broadly speaking the Eye is ultimately the embodiment of the fear of knowledge. Well, fear is actually quite reliant on knowledge. At a certain point if you are unable to comprehend why something might be scary or are just too stupid to think about it then you are less likely to be afraid or have the nuanced fear that some of the other Powers crave. And the Eye is happy to provide you with the knowledge of all the things that should or could scare you. To put it another way, let’s take a car as an example. Cars are quite scary because if they hit you you might die or otherwise end up seriously injured, and when driving one you can end up in a serious accident. However, if you are unable to comprehend this fact as a possibility then you are less likely to be afraid of cars. It’s hard to be afraid of something like death if you have no concept of it and never consider the fact that you or someone else could die. Why would you be afraid of the Dark when you never even stop to consider what could be in it? This along with the fact that the Eye often makes people witness or relive terrible things gives it what I often call a “2 for one deal” in many cases. Where it is probably ending up feeding multiple Entities at once via things like statements. But it is important to remember that it is actually very rare to feel one of the fears in complete isolation. When looking at any specific fear a lot of the time there will be additional fears that are at least somewhat present. For example, the fear of being hunted is often accompanied by the fear of being found, violence, or killed, and the fear of falling to your death can relate to the Vast, End, and Desolation a lot of the time.

If you still don’t get what I mean in regards to the parallels between knowledge and fear the best example I can think of is the story of Adam and Eve from the Bible. For those who don’t know, the story of Adam and Eve revolves around the first humans in the Garden of Eden. In the story Adam and Eve basically lived perfect peaceful lives in the Garden of Eden. In this garden there was a tree and God told them to not eat of its fruit as the fruit was one of knowledge but it would give them knowledge of both good and evil and he warned them that should they eat it they will die. A serpent tricks them into eating the fruit by promising that the knowledge they would obtain would make them sort of like God in the sense that they would have his knowledge of good and evil. Upon eating it they gained the knowledge of both good and evil but immediately became ashamed as they realized they were naked and without clothes. Something that I feel hammers in my point, and the fear of exposure ironically relates to the Eye. Adam and Eve would not have felt afraid or embarrassed about being naked if they hadn’t obtained the knowledge because they would have had no concept of clothes. Also, by eating the fruit they no longer knew only goodness but also knew evil which meant that they were no longer innocent in a sense. Since they now had evil knowledge and could comprehend evil actions they could also perform them to themselves or others and comprehend more ways in which someone could perform those actions on them. I would say that in a weird way some of the themes of Adam and Eve can tie into the Eye and one could argue that at a certain point suffering comes with knowledge. It’s basically the whole idea that “ignorance is bliss.”

Hopefully, you’ll begin to see more of what I mean as we go through the Eye’s relationship with each power 1 by 1.

The Hunt

So let’s dive into some of the other Powers by starting with one that I think shares the most similarities with the Eye, The Hunt.

I already touched on the overlap earlier but for the sake of a metaphorical balance of this article I’ll touch on them again.

The Hunt and the Eye actually have very VERY synergistic fears, The Hunt is ultimately the fear of being… (well) hunted, pursued, or chased. The Eye is the fear of knowledge. Basically, the more knowledge someone has on you the better they can actually hunt you down. If you know the exact location, behavior, and traits of something it can make hunting something a whole lot easier. Not to mention, if you don’t know where something is it becomes a lot harder to hunt it if not completely impossible. Being hunted doesn’t mean a whole lot if whatever is doing the hunting can’t actually find you. Properly hunting usually requires a certain level of knowledge or information that the Eye can often provide.

The Powers also just display a lot of similar behaviors as they both encourage their followers to hunt and track things even if it comes at the expense of themselves or others. The Hunt encourages hunting down things in general, typically people or animals since they will produce fear, while the Eye encourages an insatiable hunt for information and understanding.

There’s also some of the overlapping fears. For example, both the Eye and Hunt overlap in being followed and being chased. When someone is chasing you or following you they are likely to have an idea of where you are or are at least trying to find out about you or where you are going, which fits into the Eye’s themes of being perceived and known. Also, usually when someone is pursuing something they are trying to find it which creates yet another overlap between the Hunt and the Eye. Additionally, if something is hunting you it is probably watching you. When deer run away from you looking at them it is because predators often watch or track their prey and being observed and followed is often the precursor to a hunt.

I didn’t have too much to say about the relationship between the Hunt and the Eye because so much of it is straightforward and the fear the Entities embody doesn’t seem to conflict that much. However, one thing I thought would be fun to help show the overlap between the Entities is to make our own fan Domains and hypothesize what some of the Domains between the fears I’m talking about might look like based on where they overlap. Since we know Domains can be equally connected to multiple fears maybe we can come up with Domains where even seemingly contradictory fears can get along, and by extension we can understand some of the situations where the fears might play off each other

Considering what I’ve gone over, creating a Domain tied to the Hunt and Eye should be easy. We just need to make sure that they don’t blend together too much so that it’s easy to tell they’re both present.

The first Domain I’m thinking of I will call the “Surveying Forest.” This hypothetical Domain takes the form of a forest. The forest is inhabited with the unfortunate victims put into this Domain along with the creatures and Avatar that inhabit it. The creatures in this forest have no eyes but the forest is filled with cameras and motion detectors. The creatures cannot actually see or detect a person very well normally so they just walk around aimlessly unless they're close enough to smell or hear you. However, they are capable of perceiving things such as sight and sound through the cameras. So the monsters don’t have a very good idea of where you are until one of the cameras detects you. Once a camera detects a sound or a motion they will swivel and try to track the source of the disturbance and a bright red light will turn on to strike fear into the person and let them know they are being recorded. If they catch a person within their sights they will lock into it and the monsters themselves will come running to hunt down anything a camera has detected and once one camera detects you they all begin to try to watch and track you, making actually hiding from both the creatures and the cameras borderline impossible once you’ve been seen. Not only will the cameras begin to try to track you directly but they will also pay attention to even the smallest bit of evidence to determine your location. Things like footprints, bent blades of grass, broken branches, etc..

The Avatar of this Domain acts as an extension of the camera system and their eyes have been replaced with cameras while their ears have been replaced with the speakers of a device. They essentially act as a moving camera, making their way through the forest and honing in on any victims they can find so that the monsters may chase them down once they are aware of their location. The Avatar seems to usually keep their distance and while they can feel pain or be wounded temporarily they heal supernaturally quick and cannot normally be killed permanently. Attempting to fight the Avatar or wounding them will cause them to release an ear piercing shriek that will draw all the creatures in the Domain to their location and cause all the cameras to train on the nearby area. So trying to fight or stave off this Avatar will usually lead you to being caught.

When a creature actually catches someone the person in question will begin to scream and divulge countless secrets that will be played across the Domain via the speakers on the cameras. The audio is of terrible quality but just clear enough for people to understand what they are saying and despite the noise coming from cameras the audio will sound like the person is talking through a loud mic or megaphone. Some people will also experience headaches as the terrified face of the person in question will flash in their minds. Once this process is over the beast’s prey will have their eyes removed and replaced with cameras but they still keep their mind. These cameras never blink and force the afflicted to remember literally everything they witness. Plus, it makes them a danger to everyone else since they are now a part of the camera system so if they go near other people and see or hear said people it will attract the monsters. This makes other people afraid of that person and said person afraid to go near people because they are afraid they will hear and / or see someone. This will cause some to attempt to gouge their new “eyes” out in desperation. Which is actually possible but it will leave them blind. Not to mention that if they are hunted down again they will have cameras reinserted into their eye sockets once again. Others however, will have a desire to understand the Domain and its inhabitants and will attempt to track other people down and watch them, endangering them in the process.

The idea behind this Domain is that it feeds on the fear of being hunted down once you have been seen or known. Once the Eye gazes upon you and knows your location the Hunt follows up with a chase. As long as you are known you will continue to be chased so people in this Domain are afraid to be seen or noticed because any attention brought to them will likely lead to them being hunted down.

Additionally, once the Hunt catches someone they become another one of the cameras and become afraid to even hear or gaze upon certain things as doing so will endanger other people. Which fits into the Eye and the fear of how sometimes witnessing something can put people in danger. Additionally, the fact that the people with camera eyes remember everything they witness with perfect clarity and cannot forget means they will perfectly remember the terrible experiences of themselves and others. The forced confession the monsters subject people to parallels the statements and having your secrets revealed and it is possible to escape the terrible fate of being a “cameraman” by removing your own eyes which relates to some of the eyeless imagery I touched on earlier and how sometimes the things you might witness are so terrifying you would rather blind yourself metaphorically or literally.

I know some people are going to say something like “this Domain doesn’t make any sense because removing your eyes cuts you off from the Eye.” To which I have two responses. First, that is simply how this specific Domain works and it could be that specifically getting your eyes removed by this creature is what’s causing it. Not every Domain works 1 to 1 with each other Domain and some seem to have their own physics and metaphysics outside of more general ones like Jon’s status or symbolic deaths. Additionally, I already touched on the removal of Eyes earlier in this article and considering we have seen victims of the Eye who have had their eyes removed and people still connected to the Beholding even without eyes I do not see why a Domain connected to the Eye could not also revolve around something similar.

To reiterate: “A common misconception I see is the assumption that any Avatar or person in TMA could cut themselves off from the Eye if they destroyed their eyes. There is actually no substantial evidence that this is always the case. First, the Powers work in different ways for different people and different factions. For example, we know that almost all members of the Lightless Flame seem to be granted the ability to transform their bodies into a hot wax-style substance. However, we know that not every single Avatar and monster has this ability so it would appear that how consistently this ability shows up is due to the status of being part of the cult. Additionally, the Archivist is granted a very specific set of powers when they get the position no matter who they are. All Archivists have the ability to force people to give statements and tell the truth and they appear in the dreams of people who take live statements. Making the Archivist another example in which certain abilities are actually more tied to the position. Although, they can be affected by whether the Archivist chooses to embrace them or not and whether the Archivist is actually an Avatar. The only thing we know is concrete about every Avatar is that they weaken and sometimes die if they do not feed their patron the respective fear they crave. Other than that the powers, weaknesses, and their nature can actually vary quite a lot even among followers of the same Entity / Entities. What I'm saying is we don't really know if the removing the one’s eye thing applies to anyone not working for the Institute and there is a very good reason based on what we see in the podcast that it may not be a universal rule for all Eye-related stuff. For example, the eyeless man that appears in MAG 23 is very clearly still related to the Eye and can somehow see despite not having them. We have also seen cases where an Eye related monster seems to remove the eyes of somebody which is kind of counterintuitive if that would render them immune to the Eye, although they are also found dead a lot of the time so who’s to say the Beholding didn’t take their eyes after they died. It's also important to remember that it's not about what the Powers manifest as but how they manifest as. The Powers can manifest as just about anything as long as it helps stoke their respective fear so if manifesting as a blind person or giving a person no eyes helps the Eye gain fear then it can do it.”

The Web

Next up is the Web. Another simple one to explain because, like the Hunt, it actually shares many similarities with the Eye. In terms of fears the Web embodies the fear of being manipulated or controlled which is something that often goes hand and hand with knowledge. The more you know about someone / something and how they work the better you can control or manipulate them. Additionally, surveillance is often used as a form of control or to help exercise control. For example, a police state or Big Brother type of figure will often use the threat of surveillance and always being watched as a way to keep people in line. People in general also just tend to act differently when they are being watched and the threat of being watched can often be used to get people to behave in a certain way. Plus, the Eye also embodies the fear of being judged and the fear of being judged by society or the masses can often cause people to act in a way that said people or system wants. Which one could argue is a form of manipulation or control. We can also look at things like laws. Laws are meant to be a way to keep people in line and often the fear of being caught breaking a law or being judged for breaking a law adds to the power laws have.

In terms of behavior MAG 197 (Connected) makes it clear that the Eye and the Web have a whole “watching, listening, and waiting thing” going on as pointed out by Basira when she assumed the tapes were aligned with the Eye. Which makes some sort of sense because both gathering information and manipulation often take time, and the more time you have the more you can understand something or the person you’re manipulating. Manipulation often also takes a lot of planning, forethought, and some level of knowledge. While it is possible to manipulate people in more shortsighted ways, such as with emotional outbursts, usually the best and hardest to detect manipulators are those who are patient and / or analytical. We also know the Eye also tends to love people who are analytical or otherwise crave to know more.

Then there’s the Web. The Web has strong connections to the Eye because it is revealed in MAG 197 (Connected) that the Web was actually manipulating Jon and the Magnus Institute which is taken a step further in MAG 200 (Last Words) where it is revealed that the Web chose to manipulate the Eye itself. MAG 200 states that this is because of the fact that it considers the Eye to be the stupidest of the Entities but I would argue there’s probably a bit more to it. The Eye revolves around information while the Web revolves around manipulation. These things go hand and hand. The more information someone has on you the more things they can do to manipulate you, think things like blackmail or emotional manipulation. Part of the reason some people are so concerned about their privacy and information is that they are afraid others might try to take advantage of it in order to manipulate them or make sure they fall in line or behave as expected. In fact, surveillance tends to be a great way to control people. A way to let people know that they should behave a certain way because they are being watched.

The Web’s relationship with the Eye is probably one of the most interesting out of all the Entities. In part because, with exception to the End, the Mother of Puppets has a sentience more comparable to ours and it plans ahead in a way we can grasp and understand to an extent. We also learn that the Web has been manipulating the Eye for a long time. MAG 200 states that the reason the Web chose the Eye is because of the fact that it considers the Eye to be the stupidest of the Entities. I find this reason to be weird because out of all the Entities the Eye isn’t necessarily dumber or less aware than the other Entities besides the Web and End. In fact it seems the Web and the End are the only Entities who possess awareness that is seemingly above that of the other Entities. So what would make the Eye any dumber than the other Entities that just blindly crave fear like the Buried, Desolation, Stranger, etc.? Technically, it’s behavior isn’t THAT different from most of the other ones in terms of desires. It just wants to gorge itself on the respective fear(s) it is born from. So what sets the Eye apart here?

Well if I were to hazard a guess I think it might have something to do with the Eye’s connection to knowledge. Out of all the Entities the Eye seems to revolve around knowledge the most and thus has the most ways of getting it as well as probably having the most raw information and data. It’s possible that since all the Entities are connected they might also be privy to the information the Eye has to a degree. However, in MAG 200 it is stated that when the Web planned “It would not, could not tell its other parts, for were they even able to understand such things…” which would imply that even if the Entities are aware of some of the information they do not comprehend it or care. However, one thing that is often noted about the Eye is while it is constantly drinking in information it never actually comprehends what it’s observing. In MAG 089 Jude Perry says “The Eye, Beholding, Ceaseless Watcher, whatever you call it, that’s all it does, it watches and knows, sitting bulbous and comfortable in the ignorance of infinite knowledge.” In MAG 200 when we hear about the Web’s plan it is stated “The Great Eye, the most unwise of all the fragments, forever seeking and consuming knowledge that it could not comprehend.” I suppose it’s like how your leg does not have the same idea of a sense of self that your brain does and cannot think about what it’s doing. Likewise, your eyes can only process what they see for our brains to interpret and they cannot think themselves. All the Entities are in their own way like body parts with different functions and the Web and End could be seen as the most comparable to an actual brain that creates thoughts and interprets information. Although, the Web seems to have less control over the other Entities than we might over our limbs. It’s sort of like how we can’t control that we start sweating when it’s hot, our allergic reaction, the dilation of our eyes, or what our white blood cells decide to attack.

This all leads me to believe that what makes the Web, and other people, consider the Eye “stupid” even though it’s technically about as aware as 12 1/2 of the other Entities is that in terms of raw information and knowledge it has the most out of all the Entities yet it is not aware enough to comprehend it or use it. So basically, beings like the Web see the Eye as stupid because it has this knowledge but it cannot seem to actually do anything long term with it. It cannot scheme or use forethought like the Web and who knows if it even understands why it is gathering knowledge other than the fact that it makes people afraid which feeds it. The other Entities might almost all be about as aware as the Eye but unlike the Eye they do not squander so much knowledge because they are not as focused on gathering it. For a being built around the fear of planning, schemes, and manipulation it makes sense that the Web might find something not using its inhuman amount of information for anything as stupid or a waste.

Additionally, it makes sense that the Web would manipulate the Eye since it can piggy back off the Eye’s information to better plan and predict for the future. Annabelle even points out at one point that one of the things the Web can’t do is see into the future. I’m not saying that the Eye can see into the future either but what I’m saying is all the information the Eye has would let the Web better plan for it and weave more schemes.

But I think even besides this there is still yet another reason why the Web chose the Eye specifically. Remember earlier how I mentioned that the Eye often acts as the foundation of fear and connects the most to all the fears due to its emphasis on knowledge and comprehension? Plus, there’s all the statements of the other fears that the Eye is constantly taking in? Well, let’s not forget that the statements themselves are actually a MASSIVE part of the Web’s plant. As explained in MAG 197 (Connected) the Web’s plan involves using the Eye’s statements and their connection to each of the Entities to metaphorically drag them along into a new universe. “We inscribed them on shining strands of word and meaning, and used them to weave a web which cast itself out through the gate and beyond our universe. So that when the Fears heard that voice, and came in their terrible glory, they might then travel out along it.Or be dragged. Is she talking about the tapes?” Considering that the tapes are used to mark Jon mentally with all the Entities it doesn’t surprise me that at least some of them are also connected to or marked by other Entities in a more symbolic or metaphysical sense.

Another facet of the Web’s plan is to avoid starvation. It understood that if one of the Entities won and their ritual succeeded there was a high chance all the Entities would be stuck in a Post-Change world until all the inhabitants that feed them fear die in certain Domains causing them to starve. I think this is part of the reason why the Web made sure that the Eye’s ritual succeeded too, something we see in how it manipulates Jon with things like the lighter and Annabelle, and it should know that Jon is the linchpin for the Eye’s ritual. There’s a really strong implication that the Web has a stake in keeping the Archivist, the key to the Eye’s ritual, alive and I have little doubt that if the Web REALLY wanted to it probably could have removed Jon from the equation. I would argue the reason the Web wanted the Eye to succeed specifically was because of what I pointed out previously in how strongly the Eye overlaps with so many of the other Entities. Not to mention, the Webs plan revolved around the Eye’s statements. Considering what we know it’s possible the Web was afraid that if one of the other Powers got their ritual off before the Eye it might not have a way to escape and even if you wanted to argue that since all the Entities are connected there still might have been a way to escape it still might have been much much harder or less likely. This is also why I think the Web didn’t go for its own ritual. Considering how adept the Web is at manipulating and scheming it’s one of the Entities that probably would have had the easiest time getting its ritual off. Especially, when you consider all the subtle and overt ways the Web can manipulate people and things. However, I would argue the Web specifically wanted the Eye to win due to its statements and how it connects to the other fears. In my opinion if the Web could have done this all by itself it probably would have just set off its own ritual and then jumped ship after the Change occurred. So it makes the most logical sense that the reason it wouldn’t do this is because if the Web won there’s a good chance it would be just as stuck as it would have been if any of the other Powers besides the Eye won. Even if there’s a way it could’ve won and pulled off its plan then at the very least the Web didn’t seem privy to that, and probably didn’t want to take the risk on the off chance it made a successful ritual only to end up trapping itself. It’s also possible it didn’t perform its own ritual because it was just stalling for time.

Like with the Hunt, I think it would be fun to imagine a Domain connected to the Web and the Eye. I also feel like this should be generally easy because I’m just trying to show some of the ways the Powers overlap and I’m not trying to necessarily create a mind blowing Domain.

The Domain I’m imagining is one that revolves around how surveillance or being watched causes people to behave differently even if subconsciously. This Domain takes the form of a college and is split into teachers and students. The “students” are the poor victims of this Domain and the “teachers” are Avatars, monsters, or Watchers.

The teachers have weird eyes that seem to glow constantly, like that of an animal in the dark when the light hits it just right. Their mouths are full of cobwebs and they spend most of their time doing things like teaching lessons and patrolling the halls. Also, all the teachers look the same but what they look like to any specific person varies outside of theor reflective eyes and cobweb riddled mouths. Which means each person will see the teachers take the form of different people. When the teachers looks at a student or locks eyes with them the student will feel compelled to confess to what they did wrong, if anything, or do what the teacher says. Likewise, even when they're not looking at you the teachers always seem to be aware of what’s happening. One can tell when a teacher is looking at them because they will feel like they’re being watched and like a bunch of spider legs are crawling along the area being stared at. The goal of the teachers in this Domain is to get their students to behave and they do that by watching them. If a student is caught breaking a rule or doing something wrong a teacher will follow them around seemingly forever to make sure they are behaving properly and acting as intended.

Tl;dr what happens in this Domain is that if one of the teachers catches someone doing something wrong they will follow them around so that they behave correctly. Basically, the Domain relates to the Eye’s themes of being watched and the Web’s theme of being controlled. The students live in fear of being caught by a teacher and when / if they are caught they have their privacy violated and the teacher is trying to get them to behave in a very specific way or perform specific actions. Something that I think is befitting of the idea of the Eye’s focus on being known and the Web’s whole being controlled schtick.

The Lonely

The Lonely is another Entity that seems to be extremely close to the Eye despite the seemingly conflicting fears at first glance. In regards to the Lonely and the Eye, in MAG 159 (The Last), Jon states “The Lonely and the Eye aren’t too far apart, are they? Not really. What good’s being alone if you don’t know how alone you truly are.” I’ve seen a lot of people argue that this connection doesn’t make any sense and some people just actively ignore this as some sort of hogwash or misunderstanding on the part of Jon. This moment is actually partially what inspired me to make this series. If you were to just see the Eye as being the embodiment of the fear of being watched this wouldn’t make any sense. If you are being watched you aren’t really alone are you? But there’s a couple of things to consider. Firstly, the Lonely isn’t just about being alone physically but also being alone emotionally or mentally. Just because there is someone or something with you doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t feel alone. It’s how people can feel alone or have no friends at school despite being surrounded with, sitting next to, and going to classes with at least dozens of other students. You may feel like you’re alone if someone is following you down an alleyway because you feel like no one is on your side, no one is going to help you, you have no friendsor family, everyone hates you, and no one is going to miss you if you disappear. We see this alluded to in MAG 48 (Lost in the Crowd) where the Lonely manifests as a crowd of faceless people.

The second thing to consider is that the Eye isn’t JUST the fear of being watched, but more broadly revolves around the fear associated with knowledge and information. Things like the fear that someone could learn something about you, that your secrets will become public, being judged, OR that you will come across knowledge that you really wished you hadn’t and how simply knowing something can hurt you. The thing about being alone is that very few people want to think, or be reminded, of how alone they are. This is also probably why Peter can’t kick Jon out of the Lonely when he goes to search for Martin. I mean Peter is also just worried that Jon will find Martin eventually but it’s important to consider that the Lonely needs that contrast. In order to feel alone you need to understand what it means to have relationships with other people and potentially why people don’t like or care about you. As I’ve mentioned before in regards to the Eye “Ignorance if Bliss.” Something like the physical pain of the Slaughter is a lot easier to understand and fear even if you are somewhat ignorant because being stabbed with a knife or punched is physically unpleasant. However, if you don’t even know that you're alone, or you’re under the assumption people like or tolerate you, then it is a lot harder to feel alone. You could also argue that Jon is potentially feeding the Lonely in that situation because he is afraid of Martin being alone forever. There is also the irony that Peter and Martin both didn’t want to be found because they wanted to be alone. So the fact that someone who wants to be alone, a type of people that the Lonely often attracts, are more likely to fear being followed or watched, which probably provides a very nice source of food for the Eye.

Additionally, the Eye also embodies the fear of being judged or having secrets exposed which overlaps very nicely with the Lonely. Sometimes people end up alone because they or are afraid of reaching out because they are also afraid of being judged. Additionally, some people have secrets that if revealed could ruin their social life and / or social standing and lead to them ending up alone due to losing all their friends and / or family.

I questioned if I should make a hypothetical Domain for the Lonely and the Eye because we already have Martin’s Domain. Which is a Domain I already covered earlier in this article. But one of the goals of this series is to help show all the different ways the Entities are connected as well as dispelling any general misconceptions about them. So I think it helps to think up some new Domains anyway in order to show that there isn’t just one way a Domain with multiple fears could manifest.

For this Eye and Lonely Domain it revolves around the fear of losing friends because they learned some sort of secret or horrifying aspect about you. The inhabitants of this Domain start with having tons of friends. More than they should be able to even keep track of, but they seem to remember each friend perfectly nonetheless. However, the inhabitants of this Domain are absolutely nervous because each of them has a secret. A secret so great that if it got out they would surely be damned to a life of isolation and loneliness. Over time something changes in each of their friends. Some of them stop blinking, that’s how it always starts. Then something else happens. Sometimes a few minutes later and sometimes days later. Instead of blinking with their normal eyes they will begin to blink with a second pair of clear crocodile-like eyelids.

When this happens for the first time the victim will always notice it and the friend will suddenly recoil as if they just came upon a horrible realization before excusing themselves. One by one each friend will disappear in the same manner and the city the Domain takes the form of seems to get foggier and foggier to the victim. They will attempt to call their ex-friends and even go looking for them but no matter how hard they try to search they can never find their friends. As they walk through the city people will side-eye them and whisper rumors among themselves and even newspapers and channels seem to be talking about the horrific true nature of the victim.

The idea is that this Domain feeds on the fear of losing your friends because they realize some aspect of your past or nature. The Eye is present in how the friends are capable of randomly knowing secrets that they shouldn’t as well as how people judge the victim. Meanwhile, the Lonely manifests as the victim slowly losing all their friends and the social isolation they feel from their secret having got out.

The Vast

The relationship between the Vast and the Eye is an interesting one. A lot of fans seem to believe the Eye and the Vast have a relationship that is comparable to the relationship between the Eye and the Lonely. This is actually something that I feel is probably an accurate assessment, especially when you consider that thematically during the podcast some of the people we see helping the Eye aligned Magnus Institute directly is Peter Lukas (an Avatar of the Lonely) and Simon Fairchild (an Avatar of the Vast). We also know that the Lonely seems to be very synergistic with both the Eye and the Vast.

Now, one person working with the allies of another power doesn’t automatically mean their respective Powers get along well since you need to take into account personal motives and goals outside of only that of the Entities they serve. It’s interesting that no one makes similar arguments with say the Spiral or Desolation with the Distortion and Agnes respectively in regards to the Institute but there are a couple of things to consider. First of all, the Distortion revolves around the fear of questioning if someone is your ally or friend, so basically betrayal, and Agnes was forcefully bound to Gertrude using a Web artifact. Even if you wanted to argue something else for those Entities I think what people are honing into is how the Eye and Vast are both connected to the Lonely but I think that’s very surface level and questionable logic on its own, but I also think there’s more to it. The Vast, at the end of the day, is just the embodiment of the fear of big things. Big places, big creatures, big falls, etc. However, like with all Entities this fear can be more symbolic or metaphorical. In the case of the Vast this means something being big in comparison to you or the fear of being insignificant or small. For example, the sheer size and scope of the universe might mean you and your lifespan mean nothing in the BIG scheme of things.

While all Entities have a more existential and more primal side to them some fears clearly lean harder into it than others. For example, the Hunt tends to be a pretty basic primal fear but something like the Eye tends to be a more existential one. As I pointed out there are still more existential parts of the Hunt and primal parts of the Eye, for example with the Hunt’ ritual, the Everchase, we see some people becomes obsessed with hunting down a lost city and in the case of the Eye there are plenty of animals the dislike eye contact or being watched, especially flighty ones like dear. But the point I’m getting to here is that some Entities definitely lend themselves to existential fears more than others.

The Entities that lean into more existential fears tend to often seem to synergize better with the Eye. Something that I think makes sense because the more existential and nuanced the fear then the more knowledge and comprehension you will need to actually be very afraid of it. This is where I think the Vast and the Eye overlap. There’s an aspect of the Vast that’s very existential. A part of it wants you to fear your insignificance and just how small you are in comparison to the universe, the world, a creature, etc.. Something the Eye can supplement because the Eye leans the most into knowledge and comprehension. The Eye is there to let you know just how small you actually are and comprehend the true scale of the universe, world around you, or creature you see. At a certain point the big existentialism of the Vast doesn’t mean a whole lot if you’re stupid or don’t have the knowledge to actually comprehend the full scope of what the Vast is trying to show you. There’s also the idea that there is so much knowledge / information that it ends up incomprehensible or overloading your brain because it's just too much for anybody to handle. To point out what I mean I would point to the idea of the “Library of Babel.” Which is a thought experiment that involves a library containing all the possible books in the universe. This means that this library contains literally all the information in the universe however, because it contains all possible books, much of the content the books contain ends up as gibberish or meaningless. This library contains every coherent book that ever exists but also ones that are completely gibberish. just slightly off, or factually incorrect. So while the library must have useful information, the fact that there ends up being so much of it would drive most people mad and render most of the information obtained useless or dubious.

So with that in mind what would a Domain born from the Eye and the Vast possibly look like? Well, I think the part where the Eye and Vast overlap the most is the existentialism parts of the two fears, with the Vast showing how truly large something is or how insignificant you are and the Eye pouring in knowledge about the true scale of everything.

I think with this in mind it only makes sense to look towards the sky. The Domain I’m imagining takes the form of a large station with a massive telescope. A telescope so massive that it shouldn’t exist. All the victims of this Domain know that there is something written in the stars. Some form of knowledge that would revolutionize their studies and surely put them down in history as one of the greatest scientists ever. But there’s only enough room for one person to gaze into the telescope first. In a desperate attempt to be the first, to see what’s in the telescope, to have all their research validated, to matter, to have their name written in the textbooks for all eternity, the various scholars and scientists fight amongst each other. Using everything they can to get their hands on to stop anyone who looks like they're getting ahead and slowly make their way towards the telescope, fighting the whole way.

Occasionally, sometimes the stars align. Maybe the fighting becomes too great and the horde of researchers thirsty for knowledge becomes too focused on brawling to notice someone else, or maybe someone just gets unlikely. Either way, every once in a while someone makes it to the telescope. Sometimes limping, sometimes crawling, occasionally walking, or even running but they make it nonetheless. When they do, they pull out their book, notes, sketch pads, scraps of paper, whatever they have, some even use their own skin, ready to write down the information and go down in history. Surely they will not be forgotten. As they gaze into the telescope they learn everything. Not just about their work but EVERYTHING. Everything within the universe, every star, every placement of every atom and molecule, the experience of every person, how they will die, and their tiny mortal mind cannot handle it. It shatters into thousands and then millions of pieces as their brain tries in vain to wrap around it. To see all of it in its entirety. To truly know and understand.

One of two things always inevitably happens. Some simply break down as they come to the realization that they do not matter and no matter what they do they will be forgotten as an insignificant speck in the universe’s history. All their theories and all their calculations are pointless. Others have stronger wills and refuse to yield. Attempting to parse through the information. But alas, the information they sort through is more information then any one person could sort through in a billion different lifetimes. They slump over as if dead while the gears of their mind spin for eternity endlessly sorting through the information they have seen. Inevitably, their limp body gets thrown off the chair of the telescope when someone else makes it there. Unable to move or think about the situation before them, limp bodies surround the chair of the telescope and they might as well be dead to all their colleagues. Not just dead, but failures who didn’t matter. Failures who couldn’t handle the vast truth. Failures who couldn’t properly see the universe in its grandeur.

The presence of the Eye here is reflected in a thirst for knowledge as well as how the knowledge the scientists eventually obtain drives them mad or causes them to realize a horrific truth. The Vast is reflected in the scale of the universe and the knowledge the researchers want. There is just too much information about the massive universe for any of the scientists to handle. Additionally, the Vast also feeds off the fear of being insignificant or not mattering so the scientists are all fighting because they want to go down in history as someone who matters. The Eye’s fear of knowledge is also present here because all the scientists want to be the first ones to write their discovery down and are afraid that someone will beat them to getting the knowledge and thus ruin their chance to go down in history or matter.

The Buried

The Buried is the fear of being trapped or not having enough space. At first, this seems pretty unrelated to the Eye even if it doesn’t particularly contradict the fears of the Eye either. But it is once again important to remember that the Entities also embody their fears in a more metaphorical sense. So the Buried isn’t just the fear of being trapped or stuck physically but also mentally or metaphorically. For example, being trapped in debt or feeling like your life isn’t going anywhere, being unable to escape a situation, etc. So where the Buried and Eye probably overlap is in the idea of being watched or surveilled and being unable to escape the resulting gaze. Think of the sinking feeling that you can never escape the nigh all seeing gaze of the Eye or that you are being watched and there is nowhere to hide. Additionally, if you want to focus on the fear of being trapped physically, usually the smaller the place you're in the less places there are for you to hide if you're being watched. If you are being monitored it is not completely uncommon for whoever is doing the monitoring to want to put you in a small room so you can’t hide or run anywhere (such as a small cell or interrogation.

I honestly thought I would have more to say about the Buried and the Eye but the connection is more intuitive than I thought.

The idea I have for the Domain is a simple one. The Domain is filled with countless separate rooms, each one taking the form of an apartment style escape room within a seemingly endless hotel with various cameras hidden within them. All the inhabitants have barred windows that let them just barely see the outside world and every time they look outside their heart cries for freedom. In the hallways of the hotel staff patrol. However, despite being the supposed staff they seem to function like guards and a wet mud constantly leaks from their glowing flashlight like eyes. These staff occasionally slide food through a weird opening. Honestly, it feels like a prison more than a hotel or apartment. Some of this Domain’s victims feel fine at first but the monotony slowly gets them and they feel their mind and lives begin to stagnate.

Their routine is the same over and over and over. They gaze outside the window seeing the colorful world and the freedom that lies just beyond their dreary drab room. Some of them try to mix things up and add some variation to their lives but they are being watched. Cameras lie throughout the room making sure its occupant(s) stays on task. How folding one’s own clothes and watching the same show for exactly three hours every day is staying on task or qualifies as any sort of job is beyond them but it becomes more and more mind numbing each day. Whenever the cameras catch one doing something off task the room begins to rumble like an earthquake and shrink ever so slightly. Those who break the rules too many times will find that their room has become nothing more than a glorified closet that they are forced to live in with all the stuff they managed to shove into it.

Some grow tired of the dreary life they live in their tiny rooms and attempt to escape. The cameras are not all seeing and sometimes in the dead of night one or two people manage to sneak away out of view of the cameras. Most of the time these attempts don’t go anywhere as they will run into dead end after dead or the hallway they are traveling through will grow smaller and smaller until they can’t even crawl through it. At this point some turn back but others end up stuck in the ever shrinking hallways or dead ends until one of the guards finds them. One can only pray the guards don’t find them because if they catch someone trying to escape they shove the victim into strange moving cases or boxes and drag them back to their room. Once put back into their room this way one will find that their room has shrunk significantly and become more claustrophobic. Each time the room shrinks their life becomes more and more miserable. Not only do they run out of space, sometimes with so little they have to throw out their belongings just to make space, but everytime the room gets smaller there’s less places to hide from the cameras, and one less spot for them to catch a break or let their guard down. Eventually there will be nowhere to hide and they will be trapped within the everpresent judging gaze of the cameras in their room.

The point of this Domain is that it feeds off the fear of both being trapped and constantly being watched. It also feeds off the fear of being caught doing something because whenever one of the cameras catches a victim doing something they're not supposed to the room shrinks, which gives them less space and less room to hide. Eventually, the room can end up so small that the person in it can barely move. The window is there to remind people of the freedom they lack and if they try to escape they will find themselves trapped again and again. Of course, all the themes of being trapped tie into the Buried and are meant to manifest both literally with the shrinking rooms as well as the boxes / cases the staff stuff escapees they find in and metaphorically as the people in the Domain are trapped performing the same routine over and over. The Eye manifests as the surveillance in the room and the fear of being caught while having fewer and fewer places to hide.

The Spiral

The relationship between the Spiral and Eye is somewhat comparable to the relationship the Eye has with the Lonely in that at first glance they seem to sort of conflict with each other until you look at the respective Entities and what they embody a bit more. The Spiral is the Entity that is probably the most associated with lies and it embodies the fear of being wrong or incorrect, whether that wrongness comes from someone lying to you or your senses / mind misinterpreting something. Meanwhile, out of all the Entities the Eye seems to be the one that is the most related to the truth. It is the Entity most connected to the fear of being caught lying, having a truth be revealed, or secrets getting out. In fact, I would say that one of the ways in which the Eye often tempts people into following it is by promising knowledge and clarity about what’s happening around them (such as information about the supernatural and the other Entities).

However, I think where the Eye and Spiral tend to overlap tends to be in some of the more existential aspects I touched on previously. Like with some of the other fears the Spiral tends to require a certain level of awareness and comprehension to fathom that something might even be wrong in the first place, your senses can be mistaken, or that people might tell a lie to you. Some might find that reasoning a little shaky but that’s not the only place where the Spiral and Eye overlap. See, at the end of the day where the Spiral and Eye bounce off each other is where they contrast. The Spiral’s lies don’t mean anything if you have no concept of truth to contrast it. Truth that the Eye likes to expose and cultivate and the lies the Spiral creates can probably sometimes benefit the Eye because the Eye truths to expose and the Spiral fear upon realizing something was a lie or could be lying to you.

Additionally, the Eye is also about horrible knowledge. So consider the idea that you may come across a horrific truth that makes you realize someone has been telling you a massive lie, someone else wasn’t who they said they were, something you thought was right was actually wrong, and that your entire life might be a lie or a facade. The Eye sits there feeding people knowledge and sometimes that knowledge could be the realization that things aren’t at all like the way they thought they were. The Spiral in a strange way often relies on a certain level of truth and that truth is something the Eye can provide in spades. I would argue that this specific kind of certainty is what separates the Spiral from the Stranger. The Stranger is basically the fear of the unknown and while it often overlaps with the Spiral the Spiral itself is more like the fear of the idea that you thought something was one way only to figure out that it was actually a different way. For example, if the Stranger shows up with a car that has a strange paint job what is probably going to happen is there will be a focus on being unable to identify the color or the color being something you’ve never seen before. Meanwhile, if the Spiral did the same thing the focus would probably be more on thinking the color of the car was blue only for the color to somehow actually be red, then green, then maybe yellow, and so on and so forth.

As far as Domains go, I think the easiest point we can hone in on is uncovering a piece of knowledge that reveals a lie that runs deeper than you thought.

For example, there could be a Domain that takes the form of a strange maze-like library. The inhabitants wander through the library looking for a book. The dimly lit spiraling and befuddling shelves, walls, and stairs inevitably lead to them being lost as they desperately look for this book. Sometimes they will read the directions of various signs and posters on the wall but everytime they look back the maps and arrows have changed. “What? That arrow was clearly pointing left and was that map mirrored now?” Some of them grow bored and attempt to read a book for any sense of clarity or hints about their direction but they provide none, the words within them jumbled into strange optical illusions that strain the eyes and every time someone thinks they’ve figured out how the books are organized something throws them off. They often seem to be following some sort of pattern until they encounter a seemingly random new pattern. Wait no… it’s not random these books are sorted by color.. Of course.. No wait… that’s not right either. Are they sorted by size? Maybe you're just mistaken and someone misplaced the book. Every once in a while one of the strange scribbles in the books will look like the reader's name or a passage detailing where they lived or someone they knew or a closely guarded secret and they’ll give it pause only to realize it was a trick of the mind. Yes, of course. How would a book possibly know this anyway?

However, no matter how lost they seem to stumble across the lobby, where a librarian, the overseer of this domain, sits quietly reading a book. It’s only a matter of time before someone gets tired of searching for their book in this library’s twisting corridors but despite the librarian’s judgemental stare they are forced to ask for some directions and, considering that there doesn’t seem to be another staff member in sight, they make their way to the librarian.

As they make their way towards the desk they can feel the glare of the librarian burning into them. Judging them for every wrong turn they’ve made and every time they’ve passed through this place not getting anything done. As they get closer and closer some of them will begin to realize that the whites of librarian’s eyes glow ever so subtly and everytime the librarian blinks the color of their iris changes ever so slightly while their pupils seem to fidget in anticipation.

“Hi, I’m looking for a book” the victim asks, but before they can continue and give a name the librarian reaches under the desk and pulls one out. “This one?” They ask. How did they know, was it that obvious? “Is that the right copy though, y’know the right edition or something?” as doubt inevitably creeps into the mind of the poor soul. “Hold on” the Librarian will respond and they will begin to read it. As they do they begin to read out things they should not know. Where the victim has been, who their friends and lovers are, all of it. But as they keep going the listener’s excitement fades as the book reveals maybe something they’ve always suspected. Everything they knew was a lie, their friendships, their loves, the personalities of their coworkers, all fake facades. Twisting lies and distortions of the truth at best. As they listen in shock it will eventually become too much and they will just ask for directions out of the library. “You passed it did you not?” says the librarian and the victim will recall having seen it and begins to search for it only to find it is not there. Maybe they misremembered it and should have turned around? There it is! Wait… wrong door, it’s hard to read that muddled sign. Wait, were they supposed to look for the exit or the book? They can’t forget about the book right? Well, does anyone want them to leave anyway?

The poor lost wanderer will inevitably end up back at the librarian with the strangest sense of déjà vu as the librarian’s piercing gaze judges them more harshly than the last. “You’ve been here before” the Librarian will say. “No I haven’t.. Right?... Not that can’t be right.” The Librarian responds by wordlessly pulling out pictures of everytime the victim has passed by the desk and walked by the librarian. “No that’s not right. How could I have forgotten I passed through here?”

The point of this Domain is that it's supposed to mix the doubt and confusion provided by the Spiral with the judgment of the Eye in the form of the Librarian, as well as the revelation of horrible truths. I was trying to go for the idea of horrible knowledge or truth in the sense of realizing your entire life was a lie.

The Stranger

Okay, so originally the Stranger was going to be the last fear I covered here. The reason being that I wanted to vaguely organize each of the Entities and their relationship with the Eye from the ones that have the most overlap with the Eye to the ones that have the fewest. But it has become pretty apparent to me that there are a lot of misconceptions around the Stranger that I need to address now in order for this article to flow better and to prevent a bunch of questions or confusion as I continue going through each Entity and their connection to the Eye. I guess it’s weirdly fitting that the Stranger seems to be the Entity people seem to know the least about, even if there is plenty of exposition and hints to what it actually is.

First of all, the Stranger basically embodies the fear of the unknown. For some reason I have seen people claiming that the fear of the unknown in general is more closely connected to the Dark and I can’t for the life of me understand why that conclusion is so common even if I can sort of understand its source. First off, I think if I had to pick which Entity is more closely connected to the fear of the unknown I think I would go with the one that has the ritual that is literally called “the Unknowing” and gets its name from the word stranger over the Entity named after the Dark. Stranger is a word that is defined as “a person whom one does not know or with whom one is not familiar,” “a person who does not know, or is not known in, a particular place or community,” and “a person entirely unaccustomed to (a feeling, experience, or situation).” All three of these definitions have to do with the unknown, whether that be an unknown person or a person in an unknown or new situation.

I’ve seen some people try to argue that the Dark is associated with the unknown in general while the Stranger is more associated with unknown intentions and the uncanny valley. I think this is a massive misconception and I have 2 major points to dispute this. First off, this seems to be born from a misconception of how the Entities work. It’s important to remember that Entities can overlap in their fears so what I think is happening is people are noticing the Dark has some fears related to both the unknown and the darkness. But this is more of an overlapping fear and just because multiple Entities happen to feed off of similar fears that does not mean none of the other Entities can ever relate to that fear. For example, the Eye is the fear of being followed while the Hunt is the fear of being pursued or chased. However, just because both Entities involve the fear of being tracked or followed in some fashion that does not mean the other one isn’t fed by that fear. The fear of falling to your death probably feeds the End just as much as the Vast and the fear of dying from a violent attack probably feeds the Slaughter and the End. The truth is that all the fears tend to overlap or take advantage of the synergistic fears of the other Entities to get what they want all the time. The harsh truth about the Entities and the fear they relate to is that it is extremely rare to feel a fear in complete isolation without at least one or two others arguable being present. For example, the fear of being hunted or chased will often include the fear of the Slaughter’s violence, the Eye perceiving you, or just being killed by the End among others.

So people see the Dark and how it relates to the fear of things hidden in the dark and argue that since such the fear of unknown environments could only relate to the Dark when in reality what we are seeing is an overlap in the fear that birthed these Entities. It’s also important to note that this is not the only fear that feeds the Dark and the Dark is also fed by just the general fear of darkness itself which is what separates it from the Stranger. It is even stated in MAG 200 “Then came minds that knew it differently. They grew slowly, over the millennia; inch by inch they found new things to dread. The fear of their own end, of the things that lived in the darkness, became a fear of the darkness itself.” Also, not everything relating to darkness has to do with the unknown. Sometimes you know for certain that something is in the dark and can even see it quite clearly or know exactly what they are. I think part of what the Dark is getting at is that darkness is also just generally associated with evil and bad things (such as a dark presence or dark lord) but additionally you have things like lighting. For example, even if you can clearly make things out, stuff tends to look creepier in a darker or more dimly lit setting or situations where shadows are exaggerated.

(Picture sources: https://pixabay.com/photos/skull-demon-monster-shadow-horror-535745/ and https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/silhouette-row-of-businessmen-sitting-in-meeting-room-gm637867656-114015519)

Shadows and darkness are often used to convey malicious intent and even locations often become thought of by most as creepier at night. Which is sometimes in part due to not knowing what’s in the darkness and things hiding but at other times it has to do with the fact that people are just less active at night so things appear more dead and alone. On the other hand sometimes the fear comes from the fact that you know certain people or things are more active at night than during the day. Such as certain animals, shady people, etc.. Presumably the Dark would also connect to the fear of things like creepy shadows and the like.

Some people seem to believe that the Stranger is specifically the fear of unknown intentions or people which doesn’t make a lot of sense based on how we see it behave in the podcast. First of all, this point ignores the fact that the Stranger has literally been flat out stated to be the fear of the unknown on at least several occasions. In MAG 200 it is stated what fears gave birth to the the Stranger “And as they learned to know their friends and kin, so too did they learn to fear the unknown figure, the coming of the stranger” while the origin of the Dark is described as “They grew slowly, over the millennia; inch by inch they found new things to dread. The fear of their own end, of the things that lived in the darkness, became a fear of the darkness itself,” in MAG 092 (Nothing Beside Remains) Jonah tells Jon “We thrive on ceaseless watching, on knowing too much. What we face is the hidden, the uncanny, and the unknown.” and in MAG 111 (Family Business) Jon says “The Stranger is the unknown. The uncanny.” and Gerard doesn’t correct him like he did when Jon asked about the Slaughter and whether it was a part of the Desolation or the End. Instead simply adding “That kind of creeping sense that something’s not right. That guy you saw that might be following you, might mean you harm.” While this does confirm that one of the aspects of the Stranger is the fear of unknown intentions and the uncanny, that's not the only thing it’s about. Something that is also reflected in how the Stranger is also associated with forgetting something or losing your identity. Basically the idea that you no longer know something or don’t know who you are. This is something we see in the Domain that Not-Sasha watched over. It was a Domain that took the form of a Merry-Go-Round and revolved around people fighting over faces and upon tearing them off someone and putting on said face they would regain their identity until they inevitably lost it to someone else. Additionally, during The Unknowing, the Stranger’s ritual caused Jon and his allies to forget who they were and why they were there.

The Stranger embodying the unknown is also why it is connected to the fear of the uncanny. Uncanny is defined as “strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way.” So uncanniness definitely has an association with mystery and if you look at things like the uncanny valley I can only assume that the idea is that eventually something becomes so uncanny that you can’t quite tell what it’s supposed to be or what it’s trying to be, or the uncanniness creeps you out but your can’t quite place your finger on it.

If you need even more evidence one of the Stranger’s other names is literally just “I Do Not Know You.” Someone, could argue that a lot of these example still relate to people in some way while the Dark seems to be a bit more environmental but I would still have some arguments against the notion that the Stranger purely has to revolve around people. For example, in MAG 156 (Reflection) the park within some sort of “mirror world” could potentially be the work of the Stranger. Even if you want to disregard this at the end of the day the reason the Stranger associates with the people more than the Dark is because of the nature of the fears themselves. The Stranger’s fear of the unknown has a wider umbrella that can include people and environments while the fear of darkness is usually related to the environment, such as a dimly lit room, dark area, or what have you. Usually the only reason you would be afraid of the Dark in relation to people is if someone was operating or hiding in the dark but not every unknown person is skulking around in the shadows. Additionally, not every unknown location is one steeped in shadow or darkness. A new place you are unfamiliar with, an unknown location, or simply getting lost somewhere and having no idea where you are or what you’re doing are all very Stranger.

This is an argument to be made that the Stranger and Dark could have been the same Entity and that the association darkness has with evil could be seen as an aspect of uncaniness but before we try becoming the next Robert Smirke I think it is important to understand the difference laid out in the story of TMA itself and why each Entity is separate in the first place. A lot of people try to slap Entities together and merge them without actually understanding why they are even separated and that some actually have a good reason not be combined. I’m also trying to explain what is given to us in the show. To me it is very clear that the Dark and Stranger are separate and the Dark is stated to be fears relating to darkness while the Stranger is the fear of the unknown in general, and not everything relating to the dark has to do with the unknown and not every unknown thing is something related to darkness. Trying to twist some of this stuff around is like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole and raises way more questions about what the narrative is trying to say. I’m not going to go into any more detail about this topic because this is an article about the Eye not the Stranger or the Dark but I will cover things like Stranger related symbolism, artifacts, avatars, and monsters when I get to its respective article.

I would like to say this next part is going to be short but there’s also a lot of misconceptions about the Eye and its relationship with the Stranger. It is true that the Stranger and Eye don’t usually get along. As I’ve pointed out the Eye is the fear of knowledge and the Stranger is the fear of the unknown. The Eye is connected to knowing something and the Stranger is all about not knowing stuff. You can see why they would often butt heads. However, the thesis statement of this series is that all the Entities are connected and actually somewhat need and bounce off each other. They’re all parts of a bigger whole. I’ve seen people who assume that the Eye and the Stranger have literally no connection some theorize that if the Stranger’s ritual succeeded it would kill or hurt the Eye. However, we actually know this is most likely definitely not the case because, for all the dream logic of the Entities, one of the things the series beats you over the head with is that you cannot just separate the Entities. Exactly when the Stranger ends and the Eye starts can be just as nebulous as any other fear depending on the specific fear you are talking about. For example, the fear you are being watched but you have no idea where you are being watched from or who’s watching you. The fear that someone is following or tracking you but you don’t know why or what they plan to do when they catch you and the idea that someone knows something they shouldn’t but you don’t know what it is exactly they found out. These tie into the Eye’s themes of being watched and followed but contain the Stranger’s themes of not knowing something.

Additionally, it would make no sense that the Stranger would kill the Eye if it won because we literally see the Eye, the Stranger’s borderline polar opposite, win and in theory that should kill the Stranger because the Eye is opposite to it. But it doesn’t, heck it doesn’t even kill any of the Stranger’s monsters or Avatars and Jon has to do that himself. If anything, based on the information we have, if the Stranger won the Eye would still be around but its followers and monsters would probably just have a miserable existence like what we see with Not-Sasha and the one half of Breekon and Hope in the Eye’s Post-Change world. What I’m saying is that if the Stranger won it would definitely suck for the followers of the Eye, and people like Jon would have it rough, but they wouldn’t just cease to exist and the Eye wouldn’t vanish because that literally contradicts one of the show’s core themes and points.

We also know that even seemingly opposing fears need each other for contrast. As Jonah points out in MAG 160 “Even those that seem to exist in direct opposition rely on each other for their definition as much as up relies on down. To try and create a world with only the Buried makes as much sense as trying to conceive a world with only down. Every ritual tied itself so closely to a single power as to render itself impossible. They could bring their patron close, but never sever it from the others, and eventually it would be violently pulled back into the place next to reality where they dwell.” Basically, what Jonah is saying is that light cannot exist without darkness or shadow to contrast it and light by its very nature will cast a shadow. So even if people say light and darkness are opposites they are really two sides of the same coin and need each other to exist as distinct concepts. The concept of darkness cannot exist unless you have light to compare it to and vice versa.

Saying one Entity doesn’t need or could kill another because they usually conflict would be like saying predators don’t need the prey they feed on because they usually fight each other. The Entities are less like a Pokemon type chart where one Entity always beats another and more like a complex ecosystem of fear. That’s also ignoring the fact that where one Entity ends and another begins is often pretty nebulous and Jon himself even points out that categorizing all the Entities doesn’t always make sense even if sometimes Smirke’s categorizations can prove useful. If an Entity tried to completely destroy another that would probably be akin to one of them shooting their own arm off in the process and would require them to kill any parts that overlap with the “opposing” Entity. Which could very well end up with just both Entities dying as one drags the other along. I’m sure if an Entity like the Web had an easy way to cut itself off from the other Entities it probably would have done so in a heartbeat. However, as I’ve gone over previously, all the Entities are actually part of one bigger whole and they operate more like individual parts and organs of a larger body rather than completely distinct and separate existences.

This is all to say that there are clear metaphysical limits of the rituals and the Change but it’s important to remember that all the Entities are part of one larger being to begin with. The light and darkness metaphor is also pretty apt because it perfectly gets across the contrast and necessity of the Eye’s knowledge and the Stranger’s unknown. Trying to create a ritual with no Eye would be like trying to create a world where only what isn’t known exists. But what would the unknown even mean in a world with no concept of what’s known. That’s what I’m trying to get at here, in order to have a concept of what is unknown and what you don’t understand you need to have a concept of things you do understand and that there are things you can know. This also goes both ways for the Eye, and it’s why the Stranger is still present in the Eye’s post change world. In order to have a world where almost everything is known you must have a concept that there are things you might not know or didn’t know at some point. Even in the Post-Change world the Eye doesn’t know literally everything because it cannot see outside of the universe it’s in and there are certain areas, like the underground tunnels of the Institute, that it apparently cannot see. Also, specific artifacts like the camera Mikaele Salesa and Annabelle Cane use can seemingly hide people from the Eye, and for all we know that might not be the only artifact with such an ability. Also, Jon states he can’t see into the future but can only guess and predict based on what he knows. So neither Jon or the Eye are truly all knowing and there are things even they don’t know or can’t see, for example Jon didn’t even know the Change could be undone until the plan of the Web was revealed. The concept of knowledge can be thought of as a metaphorical light since once you have the concept of knowing something you by proxy create the metaphorical shadow of not knowing something which I think is important for understanding the relationship between the Eye’s known and Stranger’s unknown.

For more synergistic relationships between the Eye and Stranger I would point to the Dunning–Kruger effect. There’s a certain point where you know so little that you don’t really comprehend how much you actually don’t understand. However, the more you understand something the more likely you are to realize just how much you don’t know. This can actually be seen in TMA itself with Jon trying to figure out what’s happening with the Entities only to usually realize there’s another layer to them and what Jonah is planning until he makes it to the very end. So in that way, despite being contradictory, the Stranger and Eye actually supplement each other since the more knowledge you have the more likely you are to be aware of what you don’t know or understand.

Additionally, the curiosity the Eye encourages often leads to people confronting scary unknown things that may then frighten them in turn, such as the other Entities in the TMA world as seen with Jon and most of the staff in the Archives. This idea can be seen with Tim and his brother as well as how Breekon and Hope deliver artifacts tied to other powers to people as a way to feed off the fear of those people not knowing what is going on with these strange objects. I don’t think it's a coincidence that the Stranger is one of the Entities that the Institute is forced to confront the most. This relationship also works in reverse too, with the strange unknown fears of the Stranger sometimes encouraging people to look for answers and knowledge from things like the Eye even if the knowledge may then frighten them in turn as they learn the true horror or scope of what’s actually happening.

Hopefully, by now you can see some of the ways even seemingly completely contradictory fears can supplement, overlap, and merge with each other. If that’s the case then we should be able to hypothesize a Domain tied to both the Eye and the Stranger. Well, a very simple idea for such a Domain is one that feeds off the fear of realizing how much you actually don’t know and the worry that you might be suffering from a Dunning-Krueger style effect.

So the victims of this Domain are in a strange studio. They are all artists. They don’t remember who they were or at least who they were before their art. They are their art and their art is them. Without their art they don’t even know who they are. They can’t quite remember their names but as they work away at their piece(s) it slowly comes to them. Letter by letter and they continue working, even as their knuckles and other joints swell and ache, out of fear that they will forget their name once again. For they are nothing without their art. But every once in a while they hit a roadblock. Their technique is just not right and the piece isn’t coming together right. Their name is slipping away. Their tired red eyes look up and gaze around the room for solutions.

A “proctor” or “judge” of some sort walks slowly around the room gazing upon each piece and verbally tearing it to shreds. As their words cut into the piece the victims feel their very identity being cut into. There’s also a row of books containing all manner of information about art. Some of the artists frantically flip through the books before the proctor gets to them drinking in all the information they can but it never ends. Each answer leads to more and more questions and the more they understand the more they realize just how little they understand about art. What even is chine collé? No, they should know what that is but they're certain they don’t.

The proctor seems to take notice of one of the students fumbling her way through a book, his gaze burning into her. “You should know what that means y’know.” he says coldly. Yes, she should but she doesn’t, none of them do. They were taught this in class merely hours ago but for the life of them none of them can remember, none of them can recall. None of them remember, they have forgotten, they do not know. So in response they begin to flip through the pages once again only to come across more words from the previous chapters that they can’t quite remember. As they keep flipping, more words appear. This isn’t a dictionary so how are there so many words?

Some of the artists inevitably give up and while some go back to their art others try to watch their peers. Hoping for some sort of inspiration or clarity. The best artists grow nervous as a gathering group of people begin to watch over their shoulder and their linework becomes shaky. The worst artists become envious as they fear they have been forgotten and will be doomed to a life of obscurity. Occasionally, an artist will ask one of their peers about the technique they are using but the one creating can never seem to recall the exact explanation even as they’re doing it. They always seem to know something the others don’t and no one seems to understand how.

The proctor is strange. They wear a mask that obscures their true face and it seems to be an extension of their face. Every artist always knows that the proctor will eventually come to check on their work but they never seem to know when exactly until it’s too late so they dread it. The proctor’s form is always shifting and they blend in with the other artists moving throughout the studio so it was impossible to know who they are until you felt their scrutinizing gaze as they stared at your work while your heart rate began to soar.

No matter how perfect the art seemed, the proctor would find things you didn’t even know were wrong with your art and used terms so complex that the artists never completely understood what the proctor was getting at, only bits and pieces. However, they understood just enough to know something now seemed off about the work. The proctor’s words made them realize their proportions were just a bit off or maybe it looked just a bit uncanny. Most of the time they couldn’t exactly place together what was wrong with the piece or what they did wrong they just knew that something was wrong with it and they would destroy their art in a rage and grief before starting again only for the process to repeat all the same. Because at the end of the day they always knew something was wrong but never knew what, and everytime they found an answer it would only reveal just how much they didn’t know.

Aspects of the Eye are mostly present with the “proctor” and the fear of being judged or watched. In this case in relation to your art. The Eye is also present in the books some of the artists look through as obtaining knowledge only leads to more questions and the horrible realizations about all the stuff the artists should know but don’t. There’s also the proctor’s judgment in relation to the phrases and terminology that the artists should know. Some of the students also grow nervous from all the people gathering around and watching them.

The Stranger has a presence that is a lot more obvious. Firstly, it takes the form of forgetting who you are or your identity. Here it takes the form of how the artists fear that they won’t know who they are without their art. Their entire identity revolves around their art so losing their art would be like losing themselves. They also have trouble recalling things like the definition of words and have forgotten what they are or mean. The proctor’s form is ever shifting and they weirdly blend in with the crowd so you can never know when they're going to arrive until it’s too late. Some of the students also fear being forgotten or falling into obscurity or the unknown.

When it comes to both Entities one way they’re both represented is with the idea that some of the artists know information that the others do not even if the others do not know exactly what that information is. The proctor’s critiques act as a form of judgment but also horrible knowledge as the artists begin to realize all the stuff they don’t know and mistakes they made. Causing them to realize just how off or uncanny their art is.

The Dark

Well, since I’m throwing order to the wind I might as well just get the Dark out of the way now. The Dark does have a lot of similarities to the Stranger and even has overlapping fears specifically in regards to unknown things potentially hiding in the darkness. However, like I touched on with the Stranger, the Dark is ultimately an embodiment of not just the fear of what lies in the dark but also just the darkness itself.

Some things are scarier in the dark even if you know what they are or can see them clearly and things such as dim lighting or exaggerated shadows can make things appear much scarier than they otherwise would be eben if you can quite easily make them out. Additionally, darkness is also just associated with bad things in general and not just the unknown as it tends to have an association with evil or cruelty.

There are also certain things that are more active at night or in the dark than other times of day and if you want to get more fantastical there are many stories of things like a monster that appears under people’s beds or comes out from under them specifically at night or in the dark. I haven’t gotten around to researching all the stuff for the Dark for its respective article but the Dark comes off as one of the most straightforward Entities even if like, with all Entities, there may be some nuance or metaphorical aspects to the Entity.

Honestly, I don’t have much else to say about the Dark because most of what I wanted to say was covered when I was talking about the Stranger. It’s pretty obvious that the conflict between the Dark and the Eye is usually due to the Dark thriving not just off the fear of darkness but also what could be lurking in the dark, which can also often overlap with the Stranger and the fear of the unknown. It’s important to mention here that different Entities can have overlapping fears. For example, the Eye has the fear of being followed and the Hunt has the fear of being chased and where exactly one Entity ends and another begins can sometimes be like asking when grains of sand become a pile or where an ocean begins and a beach starts. My point is that both the Dark and the Stranger seem to have aspects of the fear of the unknown. It’s just that for the Stranger it’s just the fear of the unknown in general because not everything that’s unknown has to do with darkness and with the Dark it is specifically the unknown in relation to darkness.

I know this still might not be a satisfying answer to some so let me put it this way: The Hunt is the fear of being chased. But what if you were being pursued in the dark? Would that count towards the Hunt or the Dark? The answer is quite simply 1. It sort of depends and 2. It usually falls under both Entities not just one or the other. However, as mentioned before the fear of the dark is a really common fear and what ends up setting it apart is the fact that it also embodies the fear of darkness in general, not everything having to do with darkness is unknown, and darkness is often associated with malice or evil. Think of a “dark” spirit or “dark” lord. I imagine that the fear might also extend to things like the night. Something that can occur because it’s harder to spot shady dealings in the dark or just because more people are asleep at night and fewer people are active.

So the Dark and Eye conflict for many of the same reasons that the Stranger and Eye conflict. But as far as overlap goes the Dark and Eye are much more obvious than the Stranger. The most obvious overlapping fear would be the fear of something in the dark watching you or watching you from the cover of darkness. There’s also the fear of being followed as someone following you tends to come off as a lot creepier or malicious if they are following you in a dark area or sticking to the shadows.

Similar to some of the other fears, there is also a more existential aspect to the Dark. The more you know or can comprehend about the darkness, what could be in it, and the things people, animals, or monsters are more likely to do to you in the dark the more terrifying it becomes. Which fits in very well with the Eye’s theme of horrible knowledge or terrible truths.

This Domain is a very simple one. It takes the form of a city that is mostly composed of strange alleyways. Surprisingly it starts off on a bright sunny day. However, as people work, play, or what have you, the victims eventually look up to see the sun setting. They notice it moves through the sky at an unnaturally fast rate and they can see it physically inch through the sky towards the horizon. As they make their way home the shadows of the city grow longer and longer and longer. As they make their way home they see one of the shadows move out of the corner of their eye. Not a bird or animal but a strange shifting humanoid. They look behind them expecting a friend or a pedestrian but see no one as the now orange light of the sun begins to dim. Just a blank street and more distorted shadows.

They turn around and continue to walk and hear the sound of footsteps behind them as a piece of trash is kicked out of place. This time they catch a glimpse of the figure’s shadow being cast along the ground just before it disappears among one of the many alleyways. They’re being followed by someone or something. They begin to walk just a bit faster, but so fast that they arouse suspicion. As they move faster and faster the speed at which the sun sets begins to speed up in turn. It isn’t long before the last of its light has sunk behind the horizon and fear begins to grip the victim. What if the light of the day was the only thing keeping their followers from doing something terrible? What if they were waiting for the night to enact some dark deed.

They glance behind them once again and they see a shape. They can’t quite make it out as it melts into the surrounding darkness except for a pair of eyes that glow like an animals as the light from a nearby street lamp just barely hits it. However, even though its eyes glow like a cat or deer’s they most certainly look like the eyes of a human or person. The eyes watch and process the person they are following. The victim begins to panic and starts to run and they watch as the pair of eyes begins to quickly fade into the darkness as space is made between them and the shadow. However, they quickly get the feeling that they are being watched and hear a noise to their left as pebbles clack against the concrete and footsteps shuffle somewhere nearby. They look for help and only see the cold uncaring gaze of some nearby cameras attached to street lights. But the cameras have a human eye instead of a lens and stare directly at the victim unblinkingly. The idea that the area is being monitored should bring comfort but it does not because no one is here to help.

As the victim continues to run they start hearing more and more noises and occasionally they catch glimpses of strange figures watching from the unlit windows of the cityscape. Some look like they are holding cameras or have camera lenses for eyes while others undulate in a manner that might be some poor imitation of laughter or mockery. They didn’t help… just watched and some even shined lights to get a better view of what was unfolding as more and more pairs of glowing eyes appeared in the darkness as the shine of the lights reflected off them.

Eventually, the victim makes their way back home and their sense of relief suddenly turns to dread. They made a mistake. They led who knows how many people and… things to their house. They begin to hear a slow knocking at their locked door but upon looking through the peephole they see nothing but a massive eye staring back at them. They attempt to turn on the porch lights to try to get them to leave but the lights refuse to come on no matter how many times the switch is flicked. A blackout maybe? They try to turn on all the other lights in the house but the result remains the same. They look around and see a pair of glowing eyes gazing through the window

They scream and begin to close all their curtains and blinds before locking all the doors in their house. The knocking at the door persists and some strange distorted voice begins to ask if it can come in. The victim hides in their room and after a while all is silent. Then they hear something. The shutter of camera snapping a picture and the sound of something zooming in and adjusting, but in the pitch black darkness of the house they cannot see where it's coming from. The light of a vehicle driving down the street outside occasionally casts a light from outside for just a moment and reveals the dark silhouettes of someone or something sitting behind the curtain. It is in the light that the victim notices something stretching from under the door. A shadow. Is it someone outside the door to their room or a living shadow stretching from under it? All the victim can think to do is to hide under their covers and hope the prying eyes and cameras in the shadows cannot find them. They pray that it will be day soon but darkness has swallowed the sun.

This Domain is pretty simple and feeds on the fear of something watching you in the dark. All the weird figures in the darkness represent both the Dark with their emphasis on darkness and shadow as well as the Eye with how they watch the victim. Additionally, the Eye is also present with the cameras and all the strange people and silhouettes that watch the victim as they run through the city. Of course, the fear of the night and wanting to get home before it gets dark and the fear of darkness in general go hand-in-hand.

The Eye also feeds on the fear of being followed, which is really apparent here, with all the strange shadows and creatures following them home. The fear of being known is present with the victim realizing they led all the beings to their house and the fear of being observed and followed is once again present with the strange camera sounds and figures sitting outside of the house. Additionally, there is also a fear of shadows present.

The Corruption

The Corruption is an Entity that is born from the fear of things we find disgusting. Whether that disgust comes from physical things like rot and disease or, as mentioned earlier, less physical things like certain relationships, morals, behavior, etc.. For example, wanting to marry and kiss a beetle is probably going to come off as gross and weird to most people.

I feel like there are a lot of fans that overexaggerate the conflict between the Corruption and the Eye because if you actually look at the fears each Entity represents they don’t really directly conflict all that much. Where I think a lot of people’s perception about the relationship between the Eye and the Corruption comes from is this comment by Jane Prentiss in MAG 032 (Hive) in which she says “But whatever it is that calls to me, that wants me for its own, it hates you. It hates what you are and what you do. And if it hates you, then maybe you can help me. If I wanted to be helped. I don’t know if I do. You must understand, it sings so sweetly, and I need it, but I am afraid. It isn’t right and I need help. I need it to be seen. To be seen in the cold light of knowledge is anathema to the things that crawl and slither and swarm in the corners and the cracks. In the pitted holes of the hive.” This isn’t an article on the Corruption so i can only dive so deep into this but I don’t really see how the Corruption would usually inherently conflict with the Eye and it’s important to remember that a lot of Entities and their followers seem to have some level of beef with the Eye because it’s a fucking know it all and it’s followers are almost always stopping the rituals of others in the modern day, or at least since Gertrude.

If I had to assume what Prentiss is getting it I would say that it’s hard for the Corruption to sneak around and scheme when it’s being constantly watched and analyzed. We also learn it planned to launch a sneak attack on the Archives, and could have been even trying to concoct a ritual at the same time, and it becomes a lot harder to do things in secret when the Eye is around. I also don’t really buy that being watched literally prevents the Corruption from festering or growing because we see it doing so in several statements and in a Domain or two. Also the definition of anathema isn’t poisonous, counteractive, or deadly but “something or someone that one vehemently dislikes” or “a strong curse.” So at least the worms and maybe the Corruption dislike it but it’s not like it automatically counteracts it. It’s probably more so pissing it off. It could also be the Hive that’s specifically upset about the Eye but I’ll look into that more for the Corruption article.

But I’m getting off topic. Even if the Corruption did have a relationship to the Eye that was closer to that of the Stranger or the Dark there would still be some overlap in the fears just like with the two I just mentioned. The first overlap that stands out to me is the fear of judgment. The Eye is the fear of being judged while the Corruption is the fear of gross things so there’s an immediate overlap with the fear of being judged and found disgusting because of said judgment. Whether that is because people find someone disgusting physically or because they find something disgusting about one’s behavior and / or personality.

Additionally, the Corruption does have a knowledge component to its fear. The best way I can put this is that the reason that say a dog might eat out of the trash is because it in part doesn’t understand how disgusting the act is because it probably doesn’t know about all the bacteria in the trash, where the trash came from, or the various ways the trash will probably make it sick or feel gross later. The more knowledge you have the more you realize how much disgusting stuff might be around you, all the germs on various surfaces, what that weird stain could be, all the gross stuff your body does to function, etc.. So the more knowledge and awareness you have the easier it becomes to understand why something is disgusting outside of just tasting bad and how some things might be disgusting. Someone who is too naive or stupid might mess around with something gross without realizing it or caring because they don’t realize how it could come back to bite them in the ass later or why they should avoid it.

Plus, sometimes the horrible knowledge that the Eye revolves around can cause someone to realize that something is disgusting or the knowledge itself might illicit disgust. I’m sure many can relate to being told a fact that they really could’ve gone without knowing and made them feel gross or just say “gross” in response.

Anyway, here’s the Domain concept. The victims in this Domain walk in shame as they know how disgusting they truly are. Every morning they look into the mirror and see it. The writhing worms just below their skin are a testament to their sins and dirty deeds. They drive to a building where they must perform their work and they try to act normal. However, whenever someone looks at them they can feel it, the wriggling masses just below their skin and the judgemental eyes of their coworkers turning to disgust.

So they try to run and hide but they cannot hide forever. Someone will always find them, usually their boss, and demand they get back to work. Demand that they just get over it and face their peers. So they give up on trying to act normal and begin to put on layer after layer of clothing to hide the true form that lies just beneath the surface of their skin.

The facade works at first but the coworkers and their boss always inevitably catch on. “It’s so hot today why are you wearing 3 jackets?” Sometimes the temperature of the room will be pushed to sweltering hot temperatures. The victim will inevitably ask if someone can turn the temperature down but even as sweat trickles down the face of their coworkers onto their keyboards and papers they will deny the heat. “Hot? It’s not that hot. I mean maybe you wouldn’t be so hot if you took off those big jackets” they say. Claiming that the heat of the building is unrelated but it’s pretty obvious that they want to see the truth behind what lies just below the victim’s skin. Rumors have begun going around the work place of their wriggling skin and people mutter amongst themselves about what horrific disgusting truth that weirdo is hiding.

And the victim… oh the poor victim, they cannot hide the truth forever. They can always tell when someone is looking at them because their worm-like form begins to painfully writhe and undulate underneath their skin in response and living bile tries to claw its way out of their throat. They have to struggle to hold themselves together to keep the truth from vomiting forth onto their desk. They usually try to avoid making eye contact with their fellow workers but they can still feel their judgemental presence and their eyes look just like the eyes of the victim. As if the eyes of the victim were staring back at themselves in harsh contempt and judgement.

Feeling kind of sick feels quite manageable at first but the symptoms get worse and worse as the grotesque disease tries to claw its way out, and people become more and more curious. The victim’s sweat slowly becomes tinged with yellow and begins to reek and their skin slowly begins to gain a greenish tint while the worms beneath it begin to thrash about more and more. Their coworkers begin to avoid them, side eyeing them with disgust as they pass through the hallway, and whenever anyone talks to them they’re only concerned with trying to pry at what the victim is hiding. Yellow tears begin to well up in the victims eyes and eventually an uncontrollable crying starts and begins to stain the carpeted ground. One day while in the bathroom mirror the victim notices something flick in their eye. Some sort of larva gestating in their pupil like an egg. They wear sunglasses in shame but the glasses cannot hide the tears or the stench that flows from them.

They will repeat this process over and over as the sickness takes root and festers from the virulent disgust of the victim and the countless watching eyes and listening ears. Eventually they can’t take it. They can’t hold it in. Their disease, their true form, erupts out of their mouth and slowly breaks their jaw open as it does so. Living yellow bile, sweat, tears and rotted blood spill onto the ground along with a mass of disgusting wriggling worms. The victims eyes wriggle and pop as the tear stained insects within them finally burst forth and and crawl their way towards the mass as of worms. The insects have eyes on them so that the victim can look at their own disgusting visage and witness the disgusting stares and screams of all their coworkers. The hive quickly takes a form resembling a shameful sack of a vaguely human shape and cries out in a desperate plee to disappear. To go unnoticed. The coworkers scream, panic, and even vomit in disgust and the hive that was once a person is dragged out by security and tossed into the street. They are forced to painfully and shamefully crawl back home as the people on the street gaze upon them in utter abhorrence. So bad is the hive’s stench and so bad is the squelching and sloughing noises they produce as they crawl along the ground that nobody wants to even stay on the same side of the street as them. Even the dogs avoid them and the flies refuse to come near.

Eventually they make their way home and crawl into their bed so that they can be left to rot away in peace. Away from the judgmental all seeing gaze of the populace outside. Every once in a while they will feel peace as they feel their mind rotting away only to be brought back to reality by knocking on a door or people outside talking of the disgusting person that lives in the rotting house with the messy yard. Occasionally, the hive will sleep but when they do they dream only of the countless people in the city talking about them. All the rumors that have spread and the dirty secrets laid bare for all to see.

This Domain feeds off the fear of being disgusted with yourself and other people both judging you and in turn finding you disgusting. The fear of disgust or being disgusting ties into the Corruption, while the fear of being judged and people wanting to find out about the victims’ secret ties into the Eye.

The Flesh

Okay, the Flesh is kind of a weird fear because despite all the different kinds of fears that each Entity embodies there’s usually a simple connecting theme that allows me to get the gist of the Entity’s fear across in 1 to 3 words. For example, the Eye is the fear of knowledge, the Web is the fear of being controlled, the Slaughter of violence, the Desolation of loss and destruction, the Corruption of disgust, the Stranger of the unknown, the Spiral of being wrong / mistaken, and so on and so forth. The Flesh is like the fear of being killed for meat as well as being eaten in addition to body horror and dysmorphia. And these all make sense in general as an Entity composed of the fear of having your body mutilated but there’s also a theme of basically being dehumanized or seen as just an object or resource with the Flesh. Whether that be in the form of food to be eaten or meat to otherwise be harvested and used.

I’ll worry about diving deep into the Flesh’s fears some other time but right now let’s just focus on what it has in common with the Eye. The most immediate overlap is the Eye’s fear of judgment with the Flesh’s theme of body dysmorphia, bodily mutilation / imperfection, and general insecurity and self-hatred related to one’s own body. Imagine people judging the imperfections or abnormalities of your body which in turn heightens any potential dysmorphia or desires to change your body. Also, feelings like dysmorphia are more likely to be present or manifest the more knowledge you have, because the more knowledge you accrue the stronger and more nuanced your sense of self becomes and this information allows you to become more self aware of both yourself and your body. There’s also the Eye’s horrible knowledge or witnessing something you don’t want to which could further tie into bodily dysmorphia or dissatisfaction. You can have things like being disgusted or scared about how your body looks when you see it in the mirror or thinking about how other people might see your body and its imperfections as they watch you. The Flesh also has fears relating to being dehumanized and being treated more like an object or resource to be consumed, such as food or meat, and someone dehumanizing you often includes a form of judgment or seeing you as lesser.

There’s also the idea of insults or poking at someone’s insecurities. Someone who is good at observations or knows something about you may be able to do things like make fun of your body or call out physical insecurities.

Like with some of the other fears, the Flesh does seem to have an existential component to it with the knowledge of what people plan to do with your body when they mutilate it or eat it. When it comes to being harvested for meat, having the knowledge of what tools and machines are used to harvest flesh can also heighten the fear if the knowledge is in the hands of the assailant it can give them more ways to hurt you.

This is one of those fears that I was sure I would have more to say about its overlap with the Eye but it ended up being kind of straightforward. So let’s just jump into the Domain.

I… I think I see it. A Domain… A distant one. It’s made up of countless mirrors as its victims wander its corridors. They try to look away but the mirrors and the horrible visage reflected onto them surrounds them. Some attempt to close their eyes but this only leads to them stumbling around in circles. Some even crash into mirrors and in response the mirrors break themselves apart into countless pieces so that the poor victim stumbles around blindly in shards of broken glass until they are forced to open their eyes to have any chance of finding their way out. No matter how many times a mirror is broken there always seems to be a another mirror behind it, staring back in perfect condition.

Those that see the mirrors or are horrified. At first they feel fine but then they see their reflection distorted ever so slightly in the mirrors around them, like some sort of cruel funhouse mirror. No… something isn’t right… it’s not the mirror that is wrong it’s their bodies. Shins just a little too tall, some joints bending ever so slightly at the wrong angle. They feel their stomach twist with discomfort at their own appearance in the mirror… Or are they mirrors, maybe they’re windows? Because occasionally some of them see their reflection staring back at themselves but sometimes it’s a brother or a sister, a friend or a coworker, and sometimes it's a mother or father. They stare at the victim with a judgemental glare. Your haircut looks terrible, why is your nose off, is your arm broken, your chin looks a little small or maybe too big...?

Some run through the reflective corridors crying while others shatter the mirrors in rage, even as the glass cuts their skin while the distortions and cracks on the reflection begins to appear on victim’s own body. If the mirror falls to pieces the victim will feel their organs turn and shift as their very bodies begin to become twisted out of shape. Their eyes sink to their chin and their fingers begin to droop like ropes while cracks worm their way up their suddenly dry skin. But they can still see ever so clearly countless eyes in the pieces of the broken glass staring back at them. Teachers, children, students, each one they can recognize.

Some scramble to fix their distorted forms as tears stream out of… well who knows where now, can you even call these eyes? Most attempt to reassemble the mirror in the hope that it will restore their previous form. Bloodied hands moving, fitting each cutting piece of glass together like a terrible jigsaw puzzle. But it’s never right, there's always something just off. Sometimes pieces disappear, while others reappear. Sometimes there are one too many pieces and sometimes just a couple too few. Each time their body reflects the imperfections revealed by the mirror and the victim is forced to stare at their own terrible visage. Some cast the mirror aside and begin to plunge their hands into their own bodies. With a satisfying yet painful snap their joints break into place and they begin to claw at their eyes and push them into sockets that no longer exist. But all the while they can still see the people in the mirrors staring back at them and for most their body will never be how it was once before. Those that by some miracle manage to piece everything together properly will be forced to watch their body become warped once again when they see themselves pass by another mirror and will have to repeat the process over and over.

Some of these victims are so distorted they can’t even recognize each other or what a human is even supposed to look like. They will encounter other survivors in the corridor and in the terror of coming across a monster they will run as they feel the same scared judgemental gaze burning into them from the other person.

The Eye is present within this Domain in the form of judgment and being forced to look at yourself while the Flesh manifests as body dysphoria, having your body disfigured, and body horror.

The Slaughter

The Slaughter is ultimately the fear of violence and it’s one of those fears that doesn’t seem to immediately conflict with the Eye but it also seems pretty unrelated too.

As mentioned before one of the themes of the Eye is that of sadism. The idea that someone is watching or observing your suffering and reveling in it or just refusing to help you as they stand by. This theme of sadism is where I think the fears of the Eye and the Slaughter can very easily overlap. The idea that someone is purposefully performing a violent act towards you or hurting you in order to watch your suffering and pain, or maybe there’s a third party that just wants to see you suffer and doesn’t lift a finger to help you as you're attacked. There’s also the fear of seeing a violent act and how witnessing violence might end up scarring you mentally or putting you in danger.

You can also make a connection between the Slaughter’s themes of violence and the Eye’s themes of judgment. One thing judgment can end up incurring is violence. If someone judges you to be a certain way then they might use that judgment or presumption as a reason to hurt you.

Simultaneously there’s also a connection to knowledge that comes with the idea that there are people and things out there that can and will enact violence against you if given the opportunity or just for no particularly good reason. There’s also the Eye’s fear of someone knowing too much or someone just knowing something you don’t know which could connect to an idea of understanding or knowing that someone is planning to hurt you or that the person in question knows how to hurt you. Then there’s also the Eye’s whole being seen and perceived. Usually if someone wants to commit a violent act towards you they are going to want to find and / or perceive where you are. The relationship is somewhat comparable to the hunt in that way. A lot of the time when someone is trying to hurt you they are watching you or at least want to know where you are. Whether it’s someone staring through the scope of a gun at you or someone calculating a location to bomb.

I would also argue that there’s an overlap with weapons and information. Something that factions or people may fear is the idea of new weapons or people otherwise gaining new knowledge or information that allows them to hurt others and enact violence more easily or on a larger scale. For example, bombs allow someone to commit more violence than any single person could alone and the invention or discovery of new bombs and weapons could be a cause for alarm, especially if they are more effective in what they do.

So the Domain is probably going to be pretty simple. In fact I think I see it right now… yes, I see it. A Domain that’s a boody mix of the Slaughter’s violence and Eye’s observation. I-I think I can even see myself in there.

It’s some sort of research facility. I fancied myself a scientist y’know but I always felt a little bad about it. My job involved weird things like the Schmidt Sting Pain Index and seeing how animals reacted to pain and how violence could have long term ramifications on mental health. I mean that all sounds scientific and some part of me convinced myself that it was even a noble goal to understand the nature of pain and violence.

At first the experiments were fine. Maybe give a mouse an electrical shock or two to see how it affects its behavior. But they just kept ramping up, getting weirder and weirder. Some of them seemed… unethical and I began to raise concerns but I was immediately shot down. “Is it not worth making sacrifices in the name of science?” the others would say in their bloody lab coats. “Just think about all the people we could save in the future.” “It’s just an experiment.” They seemed to only intensify the experiments, and equipment became stained with blood. Eventually the other scientist became dissatisfied with the pain of animals and began to test the influence of violence on people. They claimed it was a “success” on mice so it was only natural for people to be the next step. I have no idea how the tests they were performing could “succeed” but my objectings were shot down.

It was small things first, like shocks to see how we reacted but then things became weird. They would start releasing angry blood red hornets into the room and simply watch from the window door as we writhed from the stings and blood oozed from them. I banged on the door screaming for help but they only watched with vacant unblinking blood red eyes. Drinking in all the pain and scribbling notes into their blood stained notebooks and folders without breaking eye contact from inside the room. Once they let me out they would ask things like “So if you were to rate your pain on a scale of 1-10 what would it be?” as if it was no big deal.

I would have left long ago if I could but I can’t. Guards patrol the compound armed to the teeth and anyone who tries to leave ends up riddled with bullets and ripped apart by dogs. The amount of blood that poured out of their bodies… no human body should contain that much blood. But somehow, despite all the blood loss, they would always still live. Writhing and screaming in pain as the guards slowly and painfully dragged them back inside across the sharp gravel and broken glass. I tried to come up with excuses and reasons but they never bought them. They talked about some new government law or order that I didn’t understand.

Every day the facility became more and more like a cage and the staff became more and more violent. When I say like a cage I’m not being metaphorical either. Every morning I woke up the building became more like a cage and more like the mazes that we used to send our rats running through. Windows were slowly replaced with metal bars and the hallways became more confusing and maze-like; some of the tiles started falling from the ceiling and when I would look up sometimes I would see a bloodshot human eye or camera staring down from somewhere above the compound and the noise of notes being scribbled down onto paper.

The rules of the facilities became stricter and stricter. If you didn’t wake up on time even once or you were caught having one hair out of place they would drag you away and strap some sort of electrical collar onto you and it would shock you every time you even thought about doing something wrong. I have no idea how it actually detected when you were about to do something. It didn’t seem to have a sensor and its shocks weren’t normal. The electricity felt like a thousand blades were being stabbed through my flesh everytime it ran through my body. Whenever one of the scientists or guards saw me writhe in pain they would smile and ask me to rate my pain like it was some sort of sick test. Sometimes they would send us running through the halls like rats threatening to experiment on anyone who did less than first place. A promise that they almost always upheld.

I don’t know how long it's been anymore and I can barely even sleep. What was once a place of science is now flooded with the cries of people and animals alike… I can’t even tell them apart anymore… maybe there was no difference…

The idea behind this Domain is that it focuses on the idea of violent and painful unethical experiments. It merges the Slaughter’s violence and pain with the Eye’s thirst for knowledge and desire to understand even at the cost of other people. Something that is reflected in how the people and animals experimented on are constantly being watched and having their actions judged as well as the violence and physical pain that is constantly inflicted upon them. With the experimentation might also come new ways to hurt people and animals too. Violence is also used within the facility to keep people from leaving and getting them to behave and participate in experiments.

The Desolation

The Desolation is the Entity that embodies the fear of loss, typically by destruction or damage. Similar to the Slaughter, while the fears it embodies don’t seem to conflict with the Eye they don’t seem to inherently have particularly anything to do with the Eye’s usual schtick.

But, I think a lot of the Desolation’s overlap with the Eye can be comparable to the Slaughter’s. First off, with the themes of sadism and the fear that someone might purposefully watch you suffer or make you suffer so they can watch and the idea of bystanders refusing to help you as they watch. In this case maybe someone is purposefully taking away the things you care about or destroying them because they know it gets to you or causes you misery and want to watch.

You can also make a connection between the Desolation’s themes of loss / destruction and the Eye’s themes of judgment. If you perform an action that people deem to be wrong one of the ways you might be punished is by having things taken away or discarded. People might also take things away from you if they deem you unworthy of having them.

Simultaneously, there’s also a parallel with the Eye’s idea of “knowing too much.” What I’m getting at is that in order for you to usually fear losing something or someone you have to care about them and the people that can take advantage of that the most are people who know or understand what you care about in the first place. If someone has no idea what you actually care about or can’t find the things that matter most to you then the Desolation’s fear wouldn’t be as strong. Like with a lot of the other more human focused fears, the Desolation also has a more existential aspect to it that I would argue overlaps with the Eye. As beings accrue more knowledge they can often have more complex emotions and understandings of the world and things around them and thus they might grow more attached to the things around them. For example, an animal usually won’t care about a painting being destroyed because it has very little meaning to it but a human is more likely to care about the painting because even if the painting does not immediately contribute to their survival or have monetary value the person is more likely to ascribe emotions to that painting or understand how valuable other people find that piece of art. The Eye brings a sort of understanding about why the things you are losing matter and why that sucks.

You could also argue that similar to the Slaughter there might be an overlap with things like weapons and the knowledge one requires to make them. The more knowledge people have the more advanced weapons they could theoretically make and a lot of those weapons can end up much more destructive and consistent than certain natural disasters. Things like bombs can cause people to lose lots of things and lead to lots of things becoming destroyed.

Here’s the Domain idea.

I don’t know how she finds it. She’s a dog with eyes that burn like fire. She never acted like this when she was a puppy and everyone in the apartment complex remembered her being such a sweet dog. I mean, she was a bit unruly but surely the complex’s owner would get around to training her. She started off as a golden retriever or poodle or something of the sort but within months, no days, it began to double in size and one day something lit up in the pupils of her eyes. A small flame like a lit candle or cigarette that could be seen glowing in the dark. Once that spark was lit something changed in the dog. She was always unruly but she became truly malicious and, just like her owner, sometimes her flesh burned and melted like wax. Waves of heat would radiate from her body and her body would shift and undulate ever so slightly when she moved.

The dog smelled like burning smoke and on at least several occasions people would panic as the dog patrolled the halls, believing a fire had started. They would grab all their important belongings and try to get out before they realized what was happening. Upon seeing the treasured objects the dog would begin to pull objects from the arms of those who ran and they would be torn and burnt apart in her mouth as people wailed from the burning despair of a beloved object being damaged or destroyed. Some would try to pull stuff from the dog’s mouth but they would find their hands burned or bitten and some would even lose a finger or two. Occasionally, while the pandemonium ensued the apartment’s landlord would be patrolling the halls and would take anything that she found touching the floor for even a second. Grabbing hold of them with an iron grip in her burning red hot hand and taking them to be confiscated. Some people would plead, beg, bargain or try to explain the sentimental value and how “it was the last thing their partner gave to them before they died” or something. It never mattered though. The landlord would just silently march with all the objects she collected in tow. Those objects never to be seen again.

As time went on something changed in the landlord. She became more vigilant and scrutinizing. While the dog originally patrolled the halls alone the landlord began to patrol alongside the dog. If the dog smelled anything suspicious the landlord would follow her to the source and confiscate whatever the dog found because it was too “smelly” and violated some obscure apartment law. All these “smelly” things always seemed to be things that the owners found to be one of their most treasured valuables. People began to try hiding the stuff they cared about but the dog would find most of them anyway.

However, some managed to successfully hide their valuables but somehow, someway, the tlandlord realized people were hiding secrets. So she began to perform surprise inspections and would search rooms with her dog, making a mess and breaking things apart the whole way. The residents would watch paintings get torn apart and glasses break as tears welled up in their eyes. Eventually, the landlord would find what she was looking for, she always did as a flame burned in her eyes. Sometimes, when she was really mad, she would make an example out of what she found by destroying the supposed “contraband” right in front of the tenants. Some would try to stop it but they would just be met with burning pain and sometimes a lost finger or too. How the object was destroyed varied, sometimes it was burned, or smashed and other times it was frozen so cold that it would crumble to pieces. Sometimes people would desperately try to piece their treasures together even as their hands were cut by shards of broken glass or burned by the scolding object.

But this wasn’t good enough for the landlord. She began installing cameras in order to make sure nobody was carrying any “contraband” and at this point it was pretty clear that the “contraband” was anything the residents considered to be of great value. Sometimes that value was monetary, and some suspected that the landlord was selling any expensive objects, but most of the time it was sentimental. The once vibrant halls eventually fell quiet save for the occasional patrolling of the landlord and her dog as well as the screams of an unfortunate resident or two having both their valuables and dreams smashed. Some people talked of leaving and rumors went around but everyone knew that they couldn’t leave. If they did they would lose everything. Sometimes the residents would see them through their windows. Former inhabitants left with nothing wandering around the street while everyone on the block just watched, pointed, and laughed at their misery and misfortune. Leaving meant all their belongings would be stuck in the apartment since the tenant definitely wouldn’t let them take anything with them. It was on the signed agreement after all. So the tenants were forced to wait and pray that they wouldn’t be left with just nothing.

This Domain is meant to be a mix of the Desolation and the Eye. The Desolation manifests in the form of losing one’s treasured belongings while the Eye manifests in being exposed or having the stuff you care about found by the tenant or her dog, and the idea of someone finding your stuff so they can take it away. There’s also a little bit of the idea that someone might take your stuff away if they catch you doing certain things. Such as dropping objects on the floor or hiding them.

The Extinction

Alright, the final and most talked about Entity, the Extinction. A lot of people probably aren’t going to expect me to have a lot to say about the Extinction but I actually have more to say about it than many people think. Despite what a lot of people seem to presume even if we see the Extinction very little we are actually dropped a lot of hints and implications about it’s true nature. If you actually care about my entire analysis of the Extinction you can actually read an entire article on Tumblr here (https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/717929126195003392/what-would-avatars-of-the-extinction-be-like-a) and on a Google Docs here (What would Avatars of the Extinction be like?: A TMA Speculation) (I’ll link the article again at the end of this article if you want to read them after reading this one).

To make a long story short however, the Extinction is actually an Entity that encompasses more than just the fear of extinction and more broadly seems to be an Entity embodying the fear of change. This is reinforced in MAG 134 (Time of Revelation) when Adelard Dekker says this in regards to his theory about the newly emerging power: “But now the fear is not of a rapture or a revelation. It is of catastrophic change. Mankind will warp the world so much it kills us all, and leaves only a thousand years of plastic behind. Technology will strip us of what it means to be human, and leave us something alien and cold. We will press a button that in a moment will destroy everything we have ever been. Animals are witnessing the end of their entire species within a single generation.” Additionally, one of the names for the Extinction is “The Terrible Change” and “The Future Without Us.” It also explains why the Extinction is so heavily connected to mutations, technology, and the post-apocalypse. Mutation is literally a form of random change, technology is heavily associated with change and progress, and the post-apocalypse is what the world theoretically looks like after a massive post-apocalyptic event which is a form of massive change. If you’re curious to know more of the nuances of the Extinction and what sets it apart from fears such as the End and the Stranger I recommend my previously mentioned article because unfortunately I don’t want to bog this essay down with another potential essay’s worth of material. But the short answer is that the Extinction doesn’t always revolve around death, but change in general, and the End has more of a focus on finality while the Extinction seems to focus more on what happens after you remove, change, or add something from the picture. For the Stranger, while the fear of the unknown and change often go hand in hand, sometimes you know what change is about to occur and know exactly how much it will suck, but I’m getting off topic.

So what does the Eye have in common with the Extinction? Well, the fear of change, similar to the Vast, can be a very existential one. Usually the fear of change at its strongest requires an ability to comprehend and have knowledge about the future and what could happen. If a person or animal is unable to conceptualize the future and only lives in the moment then it would theoretically be harder to fear the Extinction. The Extinction has a certain level of understanding cause and effect that I think can pair really well with the Eye’s knowledge and information. The idea that you know you did something wrong and even if it isn’t hurting you right now you still know for a fact that one day it could or certainly will.

There’s also of course the fear of witnessing change in general and being unable to do anything or seeing how horrific it is that can overlap both the Eye and Extinction. One could also argue that the more information people have then they are more likely to know how to enact a catastrophic change. As an example of this I would point to technology. The more knowledge people accrue the more advanced technology becomes and this technology can very easily be used to enact change or revolutionize things for better or worse. In fact, a very common fear is workers being replaced by technology or rendered obsolete by machines and I would argue that fears like this are why the Extinction has such a strong connection to technology and man-made stuff.

This Domain takes the form of a massive mix of a horrid factory and city. Pollution has rendered all the land and water around it inhospitable so the inhabitants are forced to stay in this one solitary factory city. They all remember a world that once was. It was once vibrant and green but things changed. Technology advanced and giant machines ate away at entire mountains as the exhaled smog and spat out oil into the seas and skies. Everyone watched as the land soon became barren and the survivors were forced to live in the factory city.

Honestly, it wasn’t that bad at first. Unlike the surrounding city it was actually surprisingly clean. But everyone had to contribute to the factory and while the city itself was clean it continued to pump smog and waste into the already barren wasteland. Still, at least everyone had a purpose. It was common for the inhabitants to have strange dreams of the world that once was. A world that was beautiful and vibrant before everything changed and most of the animals went extinct but that was a long gone place and time. So they would wake up and go about their day. However, little by little things began to change. The city’s “boss” or “mayor” or “overseer” or whoever they were began to walk through the city with a careful eye. They would ask what everyone’s job was and question how important each machine and person was. They began to blast the noises of crying animals and humans that had died to the pollution outside long ago throughout the city. “It’s to remind you what life would be like without this city” they would say.

The overseer’s appearance slowly began to change. Bit by bit they would start incorporating odd machinery into their body and soon they looked more machine than man. They would become one with the city they claimed. They would transcend humanity and know all there was. Strange machines began to patrol the city gathering information for…. who knows what.

But that purpose soon became clear. One day one of the workers on one of the many assembly lines, one that stretched literally kilometers along, was told by one of the machines that she had been fired. Fired? In this place? Everyone was a worker and no one, not even children, were wasted labor. What did it mean by fired? “You have moved 2.02% slower than your previous average” it robotically explained “It is clear you are no longer needed, you are now redundant.” The woman pleaded and begged for she needed to support herself and she had nobody else to support her. The robot appeared to… think or maybe it was whatever or whoever was controlling the machine that was doing the thinking. Either way the lens of its single unblinking eye continued to stare at the assembly worker. “You have two choices 1. Become obsolete 2. Become upgraded. Pick your number.” “T-two” the woman nervously responded. “You have selected 2, that is correct” “Y-yes” responded the woman once again. “UNDERSTOOD” boomed the machine.

For a second there was silence but some indescribable part of the atmosphere changed and with it so did the assembly worker. A cracking noise echoed from their body…. Bone?… But wait, it's way too shiny to be bone. It gleamed like metal. Everyone watched in horror as the worker began to contort as if a machine had begun growing within her body. It continued to grow and started sprouting out once it grew too large. Various cables and legs or arms or some sort of grabbing apparatus made their way to the surface of her body. Once the mass of worker and machine reached its proper size it began to change and move and shift around. Wires and limbs began to move into place and what was once a sentient assembly worker had been replaced with some sort of machine. The device looked like a horrific maah between machine and organic but despite the organic parts it appeared lifeless. It’s eyes dull and distant. Without a word it began to work efficiently and silently on the assembly line.

The message was clear, anybody who wasn’t meeting the overseer’s expectations had 2 options. Become turned into something more fit for the job or become replaced. But in reality the choices might as well have been an illusion. What it boiled down to was each worker would be replaced the second they were deemed no longer useful and the only difference was if you experienced the change first hand or had to watch it from a distance. Some tried to test their luck by selecting the first option that the women rejected but they were quickly fired and replaced with the exact kind of machine the first assembly worker had been turned into. Forcing the worker that was replaced to live a life of poverty and destitution without a job. They had no purpose anymore, they were obsolete. Some even tried to scratch out some sort of life outside the factory city but it always ended up terribly. Some of them died in the now alien environment but the unluckiest were those that lived. The environment had mutated and changed them somehow, giving them a grotesque appearance and horrific existence. To all those within the city desperately slaving away at their job the mutants appeared inhuman and monstrous. In truth the mutants maintained their mind but their new bodies and appearance could not properly communicate or express it. Some would try desperately to reenter the city or find their loved ones but nobody recognized or accepted them. Their changes had rendered them unrecognizable.

The mayor’s surveillance grew and the second any worker was caught slipping up or faltering for even a moment by any of the surveillance they would be given the ultimatum of being fired or becoming forever changed into something horrid. Eventually, only a handful of workers remained working in silence. Despite how much they tried they knew it was only a matter of time before they would be rendered obsolete. The standards for their productivity had only been raising more and more with each grotesque machine created. They could feel the gaze of their mysterious boss peering through the lenses of countless machines and even the devices that once called themselve people felt as if they were watching and listening despite their dead and lifeless eyes. Looking for one thing to fall out of place so that someone could be replaced. Maybe once the last of the workers were gone things could finally truly change.

This Domain is kind of on the nose and the Extinction is present in the form of the various changes occurring with it. The world used to be idyllic and now it is a wasteland and the city factory the people work in has been advancing with the introduction of new machines from its overseer. This new technology has led to people being replaced or transformed and those who try to leave only find themselves changed so drastically that they cannot return to their old life, causing those within the city to fear trying to change things even more lest they risk the chance of incurring the same fate.

The Eye is present in both the observation present by many of the machines and the city’s overseer as well as the judgment present with said surveillance. Since anyone who does not meet the standards of the overseer will end up being replaced.

I imagine that in a way this Domain ends up feeding off of the fear of a sort of inadequacy as well as the fear of jobs being taken over by machines.

Conclusion

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! If you read through this entire thing I’m astounded by your level of patience. This is basically everything I could think of in regards to the Eye short of just combing through every single MAG and statement one by one and pointing out specific characters and themes.

I will confess that part of the reason I made this article is because I feel like there are a lot of weird misconceptions and assumptions about the Entities and how they work, but I think what the Entities actually represent, how they manifest, and how they interact with each other is actually a lot more cohesive and coherent than people give credit for and if you actually step back and look at the Entities as a whole they form a very interesting bigger picture. I think in particular some of the Entities that have the most misconceptions are ones like the Eye, Desolation, Slaughter, Corruption, Stranger, and Extinction. So I guess it makes sense that I covered 2 of those Entities already. However, the next article will be on the masterful mother of manipulation itself, the Web.

If you liked this article you can read my articles on the Extinction on Tumblr here (https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/717929126195003392/what-would-avatars-of-the-extinction-be-like-a) and on Google Docs here(What would Avatars of the Extinction be like?: A TMA Speculation). Even though a lot of the article is speculation I feel like I did a good job covering some of the more concrete aspects and details regarding what we see in TMA as well as what truly sets the Extinction apart from Entities like the Stranger and End.

And with that, all I have to say is congratulations. By reading this article you have seen the truth of the Eye, and it sees you…

#tma #themagnusarchives #theeye #thebeholding #magnus institute

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