#anyway. thinking about the tma video i was going to make and have a full written script for but simply havent gotten to record it

[grayeyedandroid]

my toxic trait is i have like 30 creative projects and have zero work done on any of them

[pamela-lntt]

undefined

TMA if it was a video game with multiple dialogue choices that lead to different endings.

- CREDITS -

+ sfx: Slapping Everything (YouTube); cognitu perceptu (Pixabay); AldebaranCW (Pixabay); kbism (mechanical keyboard simulator)

+ music: Chosic (website)

everything was animated in ClipStudioPaint EX (yes, including the text)

This is Tumblr, so I can actually write my full idea yippe ! (read it all under the cut)

I have no clue on how to make a video game, but for some reason this whole story/idea manifested in my head like a video game, so...

Here’s the story:

Post-MAG200, Jon gets sent back to Season 1 but his only memory of the events of the podcast are feelings of deja vu on certain events followed with gut feelings that something is wrong.

He keeps this all to himself until (or if you choose a different dialogue option, he never shares) he asks Martin if this has happened to him too while they’re trapped in Document Storage. “I feel like I should [tell you about the deja vu], like you’ll understand.” and he learns that Martin does understand, that this has been happening to him too. “When Prentiss trapped me in my flat, my first thought was ‘not again!’ But, as far as I know, I’ve never been trapped in my flat before!”

Anyways, in short, the game would have 3 paths:

1- play exactly how it goes in the podcast, the events, consequences, and dialogue are exactly the same.

2- through bad dialogue choices, make the whole cast die (like the beginning scene i animated, that’s a bad dialogue. Sasha would be angry and her anger would get the better of her and might knock Tim down a bit too harshly and then run off to Artifact Storage to escape Prentiss. Tim wouldn’t be able to think as clearly, so when he escaped to the Head Archivist office, he wouldn’t find the extra CO2 canisters, etc etc.)

3- everyone survives thanks to Jon’s intuitions and the player’s knowledge of the events

As you can see, at the moment I only have in my head how it would go in Season 1... I think the game, if it ever existed, would only tackle the main events of each season because there’s a lot that happens in the podcast (S1: Prentiss attack, S2: Destroying the Table and Not-Sasha [if Sasha dies] + Leitner meeting, S3: The Unknowing, The Dream [when Jon is in a coma], S4: Getting Martin from The Lonely [if he works for Peter Lukas, I think there’d be past choices that could influence his decision]) All of these would happen differently, or not at all, depending on past choices and endings for each Season.and if by the end you either die in one of the events or cause the eyepocalypse, then the game rewinds like a tape and you can start over. The good ending would be that the Eyepocalypse doesn’t happen at all and everyone survives, because you coud have the Eyepocalypse not happen but Jon being the only survivor (which is influenced by relationship statuses that derive from choices you make, if someone dislikes Jon, they’re more likely to die)

Anyways... yeah that’s pretty much it at the moment. Again, I have no experience making video games so don’t expect this to be a real game any time soon. Most I will do is make more “fake screenrecordings” of this game if I ever get more ideas (and notes on my phone or sketchbook on dialogue and story which I do have, but won’t share unless I decide to animate them or write a fic instead)

Okay! thank you for reading all of that if you did and I hope it was at least a good way to pass the time! Back to actually doing my college work-

[rosy-cheekx]

“You’re such a dork.” for the emotional writing prompts! I don't know anything about critical role, really, so for TMA :)

I spy, with my little eye, Bryce’s attempts to shove her own interests into her fics. Anyways, I am an American in college so I was basing this on my own experiences oops. Enjoy!

Date night was Wednesday evenings. Jon and Martin both found it preferable for a variety of reasons; it was the most likely nights for happy hours at the pubs in town, guaranteeing a cheap drink, and keeping to a weekday night minimized the chance of Jon seeing one of his students out. He hated seeing his students. Not that he hated them of course, he really rather liked them…not that they would ever know that. Being a professor, of parapsychology of all things, was rather rewarding. He knew the content inside and out (it felt good, using the mark of The Eye to actively work against it, to pass along information instead of consuming). And they didn’t seem to mind him either.

That was the thing about university students. They really didn’t care about who he was or where he came from. The fact that he was a scrawny, scarred Englishman in a lecture hall in Scotland didn’t matter to them. In the classroom, all they cared was whether he taught the material well (he did) and was kind to those with late assignments (he was. He had been a university student once too; he remembered the anxiety and depression that took him and his mates in waves). He was a good professor; Jon knew that objectively in the marks his students received. But in the subjective? His student had decided they liked him.

This had dawned on him at the end of his first semester; when he was inundated with emails of sincere thank-you for a great semester, for being such a helpful teacher, for taking the time to help review, et cetera. Martin had grinned at him, poking a tongue out his mouth and making some remark about teacher’s pets coming full circle (Jon was never a teacher’s pet though. He had always asked too many questions. He welcomed those questions with open arms now, to be the teacher he hadn’t had.)

The next semester it had been more obvious that students liked him now that he knew where to look. It was in the open “good-mornings” and questions about his weekend plans, and in the fact that he had the best attendance records of his department. It was in the way they asked genuine questions about his material and the waitlists miles long to get into his sections. Later on, it was in the gentle ribbings about his looking tired and the grey hairs even as they celebrated his fortieth birthday with him, bringing in cupcakes and sneaking in between lectures to decorate his office and the sincere questions over his scars, his life, his relationship with Martin (his introductory lecture always featured Martin and Her Regency, their thick orange tabby). To make eight wonderful semesters short, he was familiar with his students, and they weren’t afraid to be familiar back. Which was wonderful in the classroom and all, but not when he was trying have a relaxing evening with his husband.

Which brings them back to Wednesdays. Wednesdays were the days least likely to have students out in town, he had learned from Dr. Kerrigan, the positive psych professor, because Thirsty Thursdays started off the weekend’s partying and drinking for the undergraduates. Wednesday was the day students, in theory, buckled down to finish homework and give themselves a free weekend.

So here they were, Martin in a collared shirt, printed with tiny flowers, and jeans, hair bleached white from the Lonely and curling softly at his temples; Jon in a slouchy ribbed turtleneck and high-waisted pants, his own thick curls half-piled atop his head. Jon was listening intently as Martin spoke animatedly, talking about his own day as a guidance counselor at the local primary school.

“…and I swear Jon, if it wasn’t bad enough that Kimmy has decided never to speak to Lawrence again, now Lawrence has confided in me that he is positively in love with her.”

“Did he say that verbatim? In love, I mean.”

“I mean, no, but he said he was willing to give her all his Squishmallows for a playdate. Squishmallows. That’s real eight-year-old commitment, right there.”

Jon barked out a laugh and put on a puppy-eyed expression, grinning all the while. “Martin Blackwood, do you hereby take Jonathan Sim’s stuffed animals, to have and to ho-”

A gentle swat to the knee with Martin’s shoe cut Jon off. “Oi! Respect my children. They may be fools but its not their faults their brains aren’t developed yet. And yes, I know, ‘they’re not developed ‘til twenty-five and you can argue that your students’ brains aren’t developed either.’ But it’s different. They’re babies.”

“And I’m the All-Knowing One,” Jon mused thoughtfully around a forkful of food, earning him another love-filled kick.

“Speaking of,” Martin pointed to Jon with his glass, eyeing him deliberately. “Midterms next week, yeah? How do you think it’ll go?”

Jon shrugged, scratching at the back of his neck. “Alright, I hope. First exam went well but could’ve been better. I’m worried about Avonni, honestly, he’s nodded off a few times in class and I’m not confident he has someone to get the material from.”

“He has you.” A pointed, snow-white eyebrow.

“Right, but sometimes students don’t want to ask for notes because they think I’ll say no. Maybe I should email him. Speaking of email! Did I tell you what Suzanne sent out?”

“Oh no, what?”

They carried on like this through their meal and into dessert, and not for the first time Jon was struck by the sheer normalcy of it all. His greatest concerns were Suzanne’s passive-aggressive emails and his students, not the inevitable destruction of reality as they knew it to be. They were scarred, inside and out, everyone who had escaped The Magnus Institute was, but they were safe and free and happy. In defiance of everything that had happened to and because of them.

“Dr. Sims!”

Uh oh. Spoke too soon.

Bite of lava cake halfway to his mouth, Jon squeezed his eyes shut, rolling his eyes back in his head and willing there to be another professor with the surname Sims in the restaurant. When he opened his eyes, Martin was valiantly trying to suppress a smile as he eyed something, someone, over his head. Jon twisted awkwardly in his seat to see—

“Parker. What a surprise.” His voice was warm but carefully measured, and the dark-skinned boy waved, shit-eating grin on his face. “I have told you that you can call me Jon.”

“Yeah, I know, but you earned that doctorate! And “Doctor Jon” sounds awful, like you should have your own show or something.”

He hadn’t earned that doctorate, actually, but Martin’s expertise in lying and the disastrous apocalypse that had left everyone disoriented meant it had been easy to exaggerate some of Jon’s CV and manufacture a fake diploma.

“I do have my own show. Monday and Wednesday mornings, where I teach a bunch of caffeinated undergrads parapsychology,” Jon replied easily. “You’re welcome to tune in.” He liked Parker; he was a bit of a class clown, liked to ask off-topic questions or pretend to sneak a look at Jon’s answer sheets, but he was sharp and knew his stuff. Jon respected that. He reminded Jon of someone he dearly missed.

But Parker had already turned his attention to Martin, who was watching the interaction with mirth in his eyes. “Hello sir! I’m Parker McMichael, Jon’s favorite student.” Martin shook the extended hand and nodded in mock seriousness.

“Of course. Pleasure to finally meet you. Are you the one with the essay on ESP or the one on psychokinesis?”

“Neither,” Parker shook his head proudly, short dreads swaying gently with the movement. “The Validity and Continuity of Near-Death Experiences,” he made a mock marquee with his hands, arching curved fingers to indicate the title hanging in the air. “Researching any consistencies in near-death experiences stories, whether they’re legitimate, and what they mean if they are. But-” Parker shook his head and turned his attention back to Jon. “That’s not why I’m interrupting.” He took his phone out of pocket idly as he spoke. “I’m afraid I’ve come to settle a dispute among the 11 a.m. section.”

Oh no.

The Ceaseless Watcher whispered to him, unbidden, the dispute in question. Jon generally knew how to suppress the powers, and they were weaker than they had been, once upon a time, but when he’s caught off guard with the desire to know, to Know, it could still overtake him.

“This you?” A blurry screenshot of a Youtube video is shoved under his nose, a part of a text chain titled Sim’s Spoopy Spirits, captioned by many text bubbles expressing disbelief and objections and a variety of emojis. Jon took the phone and examined it, the truth already sure in his chest. Yes, that was him, dressed in his Jonny d’Ville costume, eyeliner streaked and eyes closed, mid-ballad. God, he wished he could be rid of those Youtube videos.

Jon’s gaping silence must have been enough of an answer for Parker because he whooped a little too loudly for the restaurant they were in and pumped his fist to his chest before typing very quickly on his phone. “I knew it! Take that Sabina,” he was mumbling to himself, lost in his texts for a moment.

Martin took the opportunity to clear his throat. “Sorry, uh, no one’s asked so I will. How did you know to look for him-us-here?” Jon frowned, He hadn’t thought about that.

“Oh, a couple of my mates work here and mentioned seeing Dr. Sims and his husband here a lot on Wednesdays and I dunno about you so much, but Dr. Sims is pretty habitual. Figured it was as good a guess as any. Some things can’t wait til Monday.”

“..an email. Parker. You could’ve sent me an email.” Fingers ran over scarred face, as if he could wipe the irritation (and Martin’s poorly-hidden laugh) from existence.

“But then I couldn’t do this.” His phone was back up again, level with his own face and he twisted so both his own and Jon’s faces were in the shot. “I’m here at 7:02 pm on Wednesday the 26, here to make a very important announcement,” Parker spoke to the camera with confidence. “Dr. Sims just confirmed to me that he is the one, the only, Jonny d’Ville.” Parker held the camera to Jon’s voice. “Anything to say to your adoring fans?”

Jon sighed and tugged on an errant curl. “Don’t forget, reading due Monday.” He wasn’t genuinely upset with Parker, just filled with fond embarrassment.

Parker sent the video off and clapped the back of Jon’s chair. “Well, Dr. D’Ville, its been a pleasure. Everyone’s really excited to get a confirmation on your status of coolest teacher. Any plans for the evening?”

Jon sighed through his lower lip, stray curls framing his scalp flying upward in the sudden burst of wind. “Watching a documentary and trying to forget—wait. What?”

“Oh yeah no, everyone thinks it’s badass. You’ve got a super nice voice and the stories you told were really interesting, if a little buckwild.”

Jon felt his cheeks flush and Martin grinned slyly at him from across the table. “Y-Yes. I guess we were rather good.”

Parker gave his farewells and Jon’s shoulders sagged (he had immediately righted his posture on seeing Parker, his grandmother’s voice in his ear reminding him of his manners), turning his full attention back to his husband. Martin had maintained that grin and was eyeing him intensely, like he expected Jon to say something.

“What, Martin?”

“God, you’re such a dork.” The words were soft, expression fond, and Jon could feel the radiation of unadulterated love Martin gave off in his smile, the one only ever used for Jon. “You really love your students, don’t you? You know how much they love you, right?”

Jon grumbled, but he couldn’t quite sweep the smile off his face either as their waiter made his way over with their check.

“No comment. But we are switching to Tuesday date nights.”

[scholarhect]

2 3 15 babey

HI BRO ILY

2. what’s your taco bell order

crunchwrap supreme. maybe a burrito, idk. i had a bean burrito today but i thought it was gross. plus the red freezy thing (starburst flavored, i think). except today i had baja blast and it was pretty good

i want you to know that this question is the entire reason i made this post. this was the germ, the mustard seed. “ask game: what’s your taco bell order”. and the rest was history

3. tell me about that one thing you wish someone would ask you about

(spoilers for tma if anybody’s gonna listen someday, i guess. literally major spoilers for seasons 1-4. turns out i don’t know how to shut up. thanks for indulging me)

okay. okay i’m gonna talk to you specifically. listen to me, i am talking directly into your ear now. i wish for the opportunity to tell you about ms melanie king. you’ve already heard about her as the inspiration for my haircut and also my fishnet outfit from that time i dragged you to that thrift thing, but she is such an icon. first of all she’s a YOUTUBER. (not like a vlogger, i guess, she hosts a show on youtube. but a youtuber nonetheless.) she hunts GHOSTS. on YOUTUBE. so, she shows up at The Magnus Institute, London, to tell them about that time she saw a ghost (but it was like ... a weird ghost. not a normal ghost. you know). immediately she insults the guy’s shitty old tape recorder that she is expected to speak into, in the year 2016. so they get snippy with each other and end up in a full-blown “The Girls Are Fightinggg” passive aggressive argument because they both view each other as pathetic, fake, not-respectable paranormal investigators. (and they both have A Thing about being respected & taken seriously.) like it turns out that the institute has a fucking laughable reputation in The Academic Community because they’ll just take a statement from anybody about their supposed supernatural experience. meanwhile jon thinks the people on ghost hunt shows are charlatans because their goal is entertainment and, yes, they “do ham it up a bit for the cameras.” ANYWAY. she’s all dragging the magnus institute and he’s like. “but you’re here.” it’s very funny. turns out she can’t tell the Serious Academic Community about her experience because it’s so wild that they’d laugh her out of her career. so she’s here. so she’s got no choice but to tell her story. so the episode continues, and ends, okay, and you’re like, “wow that was a fun and iconic one-off character. right?” WRONG.

season two... she’s BACK baby! after her experience at the military hospital, she wants to do research on War Ghosts, but the magnus institute wouldn’t let her in bc she didn’t have the Academic Clout for it, so the only way is to get an employee to vouch for her. so. she goes to jon like “please you’re the only friend i have here i need help” and they DO fight again but he does agree to help her (because they’re the same person. they are *spiderman pointing meme*). so, later, she’s back. she did some research on War Ghosts and broke into an old train graveyard (which is a thing apparently) and got stabbed by the ghost of an army medic and she got caught and arrested and she was screaming about how She Got Stabbed By A Ghost and somebody took a video and posted it online and then she BECAME A MEME for a couple days and nobody wanted to associate with her anymore. rip. but now she likes jon and she’s here to say goodbye (because she’s going to india) (she also sets off the climax of the season because she just happens to be that one person who can see that the monster pretending to be a major character is not, in fact, that character. she’s like “oh, which sasha? the new one? or the old one?” and jon’s like “what the fuck” and she’s like “there’s definitely two sashas. are you trying to gaslight me.” but whatever)

ok this is literally less than half her arc (i’ve covered. three episodes.) but this is long as fuck so i’ll wrap it up. “what a cool reoccurring character,” you may think! “i hope i get to see more of her!” well GUESS WHAT. she comes back from india (she’s been SHOT BY A GHOST) she wants to talk to jon but he’s not there (he was unfortunately in very close proximity to a murder and he’s on the run so he doesn’t get framed. double traumatic experience, very fun. anyway he’s staying at melanie’s friend’s house, whom she has conveniently namedropped a couple times so far (in the last episode she was like “she actually has nice things to say about you, why didn’t you tell me you knew her” and he’s like “we didn’t part on the best of terms”) because she is his ex-girlfriend, so, though he literally was just pretending that he didn’t know her, he now knows that she doesn’t hate him so he shows up at her place and she hides him from the cops because she’s literally the only person he knows outside work. but this isn’t about him.) so melanie has no job so elias is like “you want a job” and she’s like “sure?” so now she’s an archival assistant at the magnus institute (i realized i had to explain that. i don’t think you even know who elias is. head of the institute, everybody’s secretly evil boss, currently lowkey framing jon for the murder he committed. but lowkey) her coworkers don’t want her there because they’ve realized that their job is evil and they Physically Cannot Quit so they’re like “great now she’s stuck here too” but she doesn’t know that so she’s just like “why does everybody hate me. are you misogynists” because her Disrespect Alarm is going off in her head. and then they have a Department Meeting where jon comes back with an open knife wound on his neck and demands elias tell everyone about the TWO murders and then there’s a standoff situation where somebody wants to shoot elias but he’s “knife cat”ing at her and very dramatically forces her codependent friend slash partner (in the cop way not the gay way) to sign a contract as an archival assistant so that daisy (the cop with the gun) can’t hurt elias because, oh yeah, if he dies supposedly they all do too. so melanie is ... thoroughly disillusioned. and she becomes sullen, too, kind of. and she begins to try to murder elias. queen

things get worse (in a supernatural way. she gets Angry Knife Powers. there’s a Ghost Bullet from India lodged in her leg pumping murderous energy through her body and while she’s asleep jon removes it, it’s all very terrible.) but then she starts going to therapy because she wants to get better and she ends up making the difficult journey to Being Okay. (she also literally blinds herself to escape the institute, and that doesn’t really sound analogous to therapy out of context but it is, okay) and her arc is over and she’s the only character in the story who is currently Okay. we’re proud of her. her last appearance (so far. who knows what s5 has in store. hopefully not much) jon, who is in some deeeeep shit by this point, shows up asking for help, and she’s like “i can’t help you bc i can’t get dragged back into all that, but you’re always welcome in my life as a friend” which is not great for him at that point because he is kind of having a breakdown, but it’s still <3. much better than the beginning part of s4 when she wanted to kill him on sight. also she’s dating jon’s ex now lol

15. if somebody irl you didn’t know asked you how you feel about mcr what would you say (this question isn’t quite asking you how you feel about mcr, but it’s not not asking that)

i’d be like “yeah they’re pretty cool. i like them”

[fearfearer]

more thoughts about the magnus archives as i reread the transcripts

i was thinking about how gertrude robinson was really an extraordinary person (not extraordinarily Morally Sound, but extraordinary) just because of who she was, whereas the only extraordinary things about jonathan sims are things that have been arranged for him (i.e. his role). i don't mean this as a diss for jonathan, as i'm not extraordinary either. it's just striking that gertrude was so driven and confident compared to jon. of course, now we know that basically everything she did was in the pursuit of a moot goal (i.e. killing people in order to stop rituals that were already doomed to fail) so maybe my point is somewhat moot as well.

i've been doing some rereading of episodes on my phone (i.e. away from this text document on my computer) and i'll have a realization like "right, i should note that down when i get back to my computer" and i have forgotten all of them now that i am back at my computer. suffice it to say there are quite a few things i misheard/misunderstood on the first listen, unsurprisingly.

reading through the first 20 or so episodes i'm surprised by how well i remember each of them, considering i was listening like 4 episodes a day when i started. then again, it was only a month or two ago that i even listened to them, so one should hope my memory is at least this good. anyway the first episode i'm re-listening instead of rereading is 22 bc that's the first one where we hear martin's voice, i'm pretty sure

i've also noticed some errors in the official transcripts, which aren't a big deal because obviously what matters most is the audio, but still... some of them have been simple typos. magnus archives hire me as your official transcriptionist and i'll make all your transcripts 100% error-free bc im smatr

(reading through the rest of the transcripts and my standards went way down in terms of grammar/stylistic consistency, as most of the later ones are fan transcripts by several different people. i found quite a few mistakes, but obviously i have no particular way to help fix them short of sending an email to the tma transcripts fansite person like “hey there’s all these mistakes. upload my good version instead?” bc i’m not that much of a dick)

the whole reason martin went to the spider guy's building was because he didn't want jon to be disappointed in him for not doing Due Diligence. he says so twice. then he went back for the same reason. it seems the fandom joke is "jon asks his assistants to do crimes for him" but in this case martin is like "oh no maybe i didn't do enough crimes to satisfy jon"

jon was doing his archivist voice HEAVILY in season 1, huh?

tim's first appearance is so jovial compared to how he ends up...

if this boat lady is speaking spanish in brazil, then it doesn't matter if it was "bad spanish" or not. anyway now i understand why we already knew peter lukas was serving the lonely by the time jon mentioned offhand that peter lukas was serving the lonely. it was my whole “let’s not bother noting down any FREQUENTLY RECURRING names”

well i guess robert smirke was a real person. should i feel dumb about this? idk. it’s such a fictional-sounding name, to be fair. but i guess that set the precedent of using a real person as an important historical figure in the fiction that we see happening again when edmund halley is referenced later on. also episode 35 has foreshadowing for the separation of 14 powers, and people thought it was 13 because they mention 13 halls PLUS the one they came through.

totally forgot about tim goofing around in episode 39... he was really not having the worst time at this job before bad things started happening and he realized he was trapped, huh

the worms were trying to make a doorway into the Worm Wealm

ep 40 jon's like "I need to hear it. I need to record it. Or else I can't finish." (lightly abridged)

listening to the season 1 Q&A for the first time and EARL BIGMAC

also good to know there's only going to be 5 seasons. very good to know. this seems like a good kind of series to write with a fixed endpoint in mind, as it's very easy to do an episode that has effectively no bearing on the MetaPlot but which is still a short story in itself and therefore doesn't count as "filler"

jonathan sims performs with a mythical space pirate music cabaret. so he IS a ham

jonny says, "no rude words. i could say bums, maybe..." (alexander j newall does a laugh while i do the exact same laugh irl) "...but i won't."

some dumbass writing into the Q&A to ask if the background music is diegetic... get a podcast brain, ya fool. though for my part, i have to say that one of the most striking things about this podcast when i first started listening (though i never made a note of it before) was the Too Spooky Music, and i didn't like it at all. the reason was that i am, and have been, vulnerable to Getting Spooked about irrational things at night, such that it becomes really hard to fall asleep... and one of the things that has an outsize effect on my level of Spookédness is spooky audio. so if i was watching a video at night and i was worried it would Get Me Spooked, i would just turn the sound off, and it would turn out fine. but obviously you can't turn the sound off on a podcast. and i've been listening to podcasts after work, i.e. after 5pm, and i go to bed at like 8 or 9pm because i'm old. so the way it turned out was that even if the actual subject of the podcast wasn't that scary to me, the music would amplify it in an unpleasant way and make me more likely to have trouble sleeping. also i think most of the episodes would have been fine without the music, or maybe with some less intentionally-disconcerting background music.

this just in: i seem to have totally missed episode 50 on my first listen-through, despite having gone in linear order. bc i'm listening to it now and i've definitely never heard this before. fortunately it doesn't seem to have much of a bearing on the rest of the series, so it's not like i missed any crucial information. tbh the only worthwhile bit was a brief moment of tim being a ham, which was good. i hope i didn't miss any other episodes the first time... still don't know how i managed to miss this one.

the official transcript said [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER] ...

so gertrude and leitner WERE played by jonny's parents <:3c i'd thought as much when i saw the cast names but i like that it's confirmed. his mom is a really good actress too. i always find the gertrude episodes to be striking in a certain way

"it's Fine working with your parents. it's Fine." as someone who worked with my mom for like a year i can confirm this

i'm tickled to find that the official transcripts have a sense of humor. i wonder who is behind them. i also wonder, what is the excuse for not having a full set of official transcripts when it is a script-based show? surely you know what is going to be said beforehand, and you have it written down, and if someone ends up saying something different in the final recording, surely it wouldn’t be too hard to give the original script a little edit, and bam! that’s a transcript. i wonder if this approach is not feasible for some reason.

whenever martin reads statements, he says something about jon... whenever he talks to someone, he says something about jon

i think episode 110 is an instance of the tape recorder turning ITSELF off... at the end of the episode. because they walk away, and they say something distantly, and then it turns off. lots of other times, there had to be a diegetic reason for the tape recorder to turn off at the end.

i noticed something which i missed last time, which was that there is a rumor between melanie and georgie and basira that implies that jonathan is asexual. worth noting, i think. [side note added in later: yeah it’s canon. cool]

also i listened to episode 103 again and yes. i had thought-- i had been SURE-- that the person interrogating the traffic cop (using the asky ability) was martin. but it was actually jon. how did i possibly manage that mistake? i'm not great at distinguishing voices, but i'm not THAT bad. the only possible answer: when i was listening to the episode for the first time... i must have been eating a crunchy snack.

"it doesn't have to make sense! alex has to make it sense." (jonny sims re: writing the spiral)

glad to know that jonny sims regrets using his own name for the protagonist. doesn't make a difference either way at this point but yeah

YES i knew episode 100 was improvised. and i see, all the statementers had actually had supernatural experiences, but because the archivist was absent, their statements didn't have the coherence and clarity normally lent to them by the eye (in exchange for becoming cursed). i think melanie or basira actually said pretty much that in the episode itself, but i still couldn't be sure that all of those people had something real to talk about.

"in the same way that tim is dead, michael is helen." good shit

the archivist is canon a bit of a drama queen. the first bullet point in my first tma notes document is vindicated

jonny sims mentions another podcast (apocrypals) that sounds 100% up my alley, so that is appreciated, i will add that to my list i think. (listened to episodes 0 and 1 of apocrypals and i'm heavily struck by how VERY clearly i can hear the smiles in chris sims's voice. i did not know smiling could be so audible, truly.) (listened to quite a few more episodes of apocrypals and it’s certainly entertaining at times. i should’ve been reading along though. maybe some other time)

I DIDN'T LISTEN TO THE SEASON 4 TEASER THE FIRST TIME AROUND.........................................

i must confess something that people who know me well may already know: i hate when stories have a bad ending. an unhappy ending. a painful ending. a hopeless ending. bittersweet is the furthest in that direction i can tolerate. my perspective, which is pretty deep-seated, is that there's no point in getting to know and love characters if you're only going to be hurt by that connection to them when the end turns out to be bad. if i have even a mild inkling that a story is heading toward a bad ending, i make a conscious effort to regard all characters from afar and not develop any strong attachments. this is not so much "how i think all stories need to be," but rather, "the characteristics a story needs to have to appeal to me personally." so i understand that my view is very subjective and mostly based on my own mental weakness. but i can't help but apply it to the media i consume. and the idea that someone would do something like "make characters very human and strongly developed" IN COMBINATION WITH "heading toward a bad end" makes me upset. like, picture a horror movie. think about the characters in a horror movie. with the exception of a main character, if there is one, there's no guarantee that anyone is going to survive to the end of the film... BUT... the characters generally aren't fleshed out and very sympathetic. i wouldn't go so far as to say they're disposable, but you're not SUPPOSED to cry when they die; you're just supposed to get scared. their purpose is as objects of fear, and you never expect or even hope for a happy ending. but in the magnus archives... all i'm saying... is that i would cry if any of the remaining members of the main cast died. and it seems clear that we're not heading to a happy ending. so i'm somewhat afraid, and not in a good way. i don't know how much i can trust jonny sims to give me the story i want, and obviously, i'm not entitled to it.

if your name is jonathan and you want to shorten it, the short form is jon. it ain't john, no matter what the official transcripts say. where'd you get that h, huh? stole it from someone else's name? are you shortening it like JOnatHaN? you can’t just be that sneaky!

i listened to scrutiny again and it hits so hard. now, in heart of darkness, when manuela begs jon not to force her statement, it's really heavy given the direct context of the previous two episodes where we see how compulsion works and how it hurts.

also when jon was talking about how to destroy the dark sun and he was like "i just need to see it," when i first heard it, i assumed he meant something along the lines of, "by seeing it, i will learn how to destroy it." but now i understand that the mere act of the eye seeing it destroys it, because being known is what the darkness is weakest to.

the magnus employees who work in the library probably at least have a LITTLE BIT of a feeling that they work in an almost normal place, given that jon and all his assistants were able to have that impression before transferring to the archives. so i wonder how the magnus library people feel about their institute's director getting arrested for double murder and now the big boss is a completely unrelated ship captain who seems to want nothing to do with the place but simultaneously is trying to continue business as usual

on second listen, listening to jon ask helen when the guilt stops (wrt hurting people in order to feed one's patron fear) is pretty chilling. because it seems like he's definitely accepting that he will have to hurt people, and what he's concerned about is how bad it makes HIM feel. of course, helen then answers with precisely what i just wrote, so...

i should've read the transcript for episode 159 instead of relistening because i forgot that peter lukas's actor got so gravelly and hard to listen to in this one. anyway, time to re-listen to the season 4 finale... then i'll listen to the season 4 Q&As and stuff... and then the new episode. (DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI)

i heard in the Q&A that the voice of peter lukas did multiple takes for episode 159?! but it was because of technical difficulties. right. because i can’t imagine the way it turned out being deemed the best take. sorry

ok, things i missed last time i listened to 160: daisy and the other two hunters are missing. also jon mentioned "magnus's body" and martin mentioned "an old man's corpse" and at the time i took this to mean (somewhat unthinkingly) that when jon and martin returned from the lonely, they killed elias/jonah's body. which would be a weird thing to happen "off-camera," so to speak. so i think i must have been wrong? slightly confused. ok, no, i'm now sure that elias survived, so i must have misunderstood. definitely alive.

as martin leaves and jon is about to begin the statement, he sounds so peaceful and satisfied. that's good acting.

by the way, in one of the previous few episodes, i noticed that jonah seems to have body-swapped by switching out his eyes into his preferred body, which i'm pretty sure i missed the first time.

i like that jonny sims checks reddit to see whether people have solved the mystery. that's just a really funny way to do things, sneaking a peek like "hmm how mysterious is my mystery? let's see who has figured it out..." and for the record, i wasn't even close to figuring it out. but to be fair to myself, i didn't try. like i said from the beginning, i started listening with the intent of going along for the ride. plus the mystery had already been solved before i started listening to the series, so it's not like i had a lot of time in between updates to contemplate whether elias was jonah, etc.

JON'S AMERICAN ACCENT FOR THE IONIZED YEAST AD

ALEX WAS THE VOICE OF JARED HOPWORTH?! i mean it was so messed up it could have been anybody but god

ALEX DIDN'T LET GERTUDE CACKLE

i've listened to the bloopers (including a gertrude cackle?) and the season 5 trailer (martin seems slightly cavalier about the end of the world but maybe he's just trying to keep his shit together for jon) and i'm going to listen to the new episode Soon.

final conclusion on rereads/relistens: i had pretty poor comprehension of some important happenings. i’m realizing just how easy it is to mishear/fail to hear exactly what is happening in a podcast when you’re doing other stuff at the same time. there are still a couple things i don’t quite understand, but i think i’ll have a look around the wiki one of these days.