#dad!magnus

[qc-wiggles]

niche tmaposting GO!! heres a gift for ginger on discord for the tmi server gift exchange. i saw their prompt about jon's parents being involved in the institute/fears and went wild!!! imagine being descended from not one but two cunty office workers!!!!!!

[viva-pluton511]

"The Magnus Archives has some pretty good casual queer representation. It's not that big a deal, just some side characters and references."

I lied. They're all queer. They are all either cannon, implied, or have the queerest character design known to man. I have lured you into a false hetero security of a horror podcast only to reveal a gay horror podcast. Haha!

[kohdono]

:)

[fandom-geek]

btw, the violinist in tmp 4? he's probably james smithson, of "founder of the smithsonian institute" fame

so what do we know about our violinist? he grew up in alnwick abbey, he was illegitimate and had legitimate full siblings, a father "certain of his celestial significance", and he has a nephew to whom he leaves his violin

and smithson? well, his father restored alnwick abbey in the 1750s, which was in ruins up until then. smithson was the only illegitimate child of any of the dukes there in the 1700s, which is when the statement is set

smithson also left his estate to his nephew after his death, with the condition that his fortune would establish the smithsonian institute if his nephew died without any children.

here's a point of divergence, however. in our timeline, smithson was a chemist and mineralogist. in tmagp's timeline, he was a violinist. however, as u/New_Helicopter836 pointed out to me on reddit, when smithson's body was disinterred by andrew graham bell, his right little finger was such that it suggests he played "the harpsichord, the piano, or a stringed instrument such as a violin"

looking at smithson's life, he left for university in 1782, so it's likely that tmagp 4 is set around the same time. it might be a bit earlier since the royal court orchestra moved from mannheim to munich in 1778 (putting smithson at about 13), it might be another point of divergence, or smithson is describing it this way to call back to its earlier significance. i'm not sure, but it's weird either way.

all that said, i'm not terribly sure why smithson describes his father (sir hugh smithson/percy, duke of northumberland) as "certain of his celestial significance", especially when the only other time he says celestial is to describe the violin's music. the user i mentioned before found that sir hugh, a major patron of architectural projects, had an observatory built, but i find smithson's language too specific. is his father an avatar too? mannheim is only a bit north of schwartzwald, after all, and this is about thirty years before tmag 23 where albrecht writes to jonah magnus.

let's look a little at smithson's bequest to found the smithsonian institute in the first place. smithson asked for it to be "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men". the magnus institute, notably, is described in the arg as a place of education, and it was founded in 1818. although smithson died in 1829 and his nephew in 1835, the original smithsonian (the columbian institute) was granted a charter by the us government in 1818.

the letter is strangely absent of any names for the violinist or his family, and i can't help but wonder if this is why. and if it is because this is smithson - is this related to why the magnus institute exists instead of the magnus archives? the smithsonian, before it was renamed, was originally granted a charter by the us govt in 1818 - the same year that the magnus institute was founded in tmagp.

this is set 30 years before we know anything of jonah magnus, at least in tmag, so is it possible that he persuaded smithson to fund his educational institute focusing on the supernatural? the changed course of smithson's life from scientist to supernatural violinist would certainly be conducive for that, not least to mention the strange absence of his fortune from his letter to his nephew.

[katakaluptastrophy]

What do the Fifth House actually do?

Sure, yes, ghosts and tradition and the Heart of the Emperor, and Watchers Over the River - but none of those things give you the kind of assets that mean you can dress your cavalier in a coat that "probably cost more than the Ninth House had in its coffers" for a dinner party.

It's made clear very early on that the Fifth are a power to be reckoned with. When they first receive the letter about the Lyctoral pilgrimage, Gideon assumes it would be on the Third or Fifth. Harrow, meanwhile, has frequently-repeated anxieties about the Ninth being subsumed by the Third or Fifth, to the point that she worries that the anniversary party invitation may be an attempt to wipe out the other Houses. Teacher describes the Fifth's relationship with the Fourth as "hegemonic". The Fifth loom so large in the cultural imagination, they even inform the name of the made up porn magazine that Gideon offers to Crux.

The links between the Third and the Fifth that both Gideon and Harrow make seem to reflect both the fact that these two Houses have particular power and influence, but also that they frequently cooperate. Judith writes about the close cooperation of the Second, Third, and Fifth, a relationship which becomes a source of tension as the scions seek to establish authority after the Fifth are murdered. Judith says:

“The Fifth are dead. I take authority for the Fifth. I say we need military intervention, and we need it right now. As the highest-ranked Cohort officer present, that decision falls to me.” “A Cohort captain,” said Naberius, “don’t rank higher than a Third official.” “I’m very much afraid that it does, Tern.” “Prince Tern, if you please,” said Ianthe.

Which makes it sound as though Abigail might technically have been considered the highest ranking person at Canaan House (likely because she was head of her House and not an heir in waiting like Judith or Coronabeth), and that following her death there is some question as to whether the Second or the Third should take control, but notably no suggestion that anyone else might.

We know what the Second do: they are the leaders of the Cohort and the Bureau, the military and intelligence that forms the core of imperial expansion. Most of the information that we get about the other Houses talks only about their cultural or ritual roles in the empire - we get very little in the way of gritty details of what happens outside of the Dominicus system.

We know a little bit about what the Third does - according to Tor they are cultural trendsetters and players in soft power, but the one detail we get in GTN itself is revealing: when Gideon imagines her glorious future in the Cohort, one of the assignments she considers boring is the prospect of being "in some foreign city babysitting some Third governor." Which makes it sound rather like the Second are conquering the planets and the Third are then running them. But the books are even lighter in details about what the Fifth do, beyond ghosts and manners.

However, there is one suggestive detail: an important topic in HTN is stele travel - the necromantic FTL used by the Nine Houses. And Mercymorn, in describing a stele, specifically states that Fifth House adepts are required for their construction. Which rather makes it sound like the Fifth have a monopoly on the manufacturer of the technology required for FTL travel. Now that in and of itself could be the basis of their enormous wealth - selling aerospace tech to an ever expansionist military is probably quite lucrative.

But there's another element of House imperialism that only gets mentioned in passing that doesn't seem to be entirely accounted for, which Judith describes in As Yet Unsent:

"Their other line of attack is the business contracts. They claim that the services asked of them by the Emperor were set down in lifetime contracts by previous generations, who assumed the contracts would be terminated upon the Emperor’s death."

There are obviously some unanswered questions about the imperialist project of the Nine Houses - both Augustine and Coronabeth question quite why it works the way it does - but from the above it sounds like in many respects it functions exactly as you would expect an empire to: as a vehicle for the exploitation of others' resources.

Perhaps the Cohort themselves administer these business contracts. Perhaps they fall under the purview of the Third House planetary governors. But if you're exporting resources from the living planets of your empire to the mostly desolate planets of the Dominicus system, you're going to need some FTL ships and a whole lot of bureaucracy.

And if there's one other detail that we get about the Fifth, it's that there is something significant about the political power of their bureaucracy. As Judith puts it: "Quinn himself is a Fifth House bureaucrat with all that entails."

Are the Second, Third, and Fifth so close and so powerful because they form the bedrock of the empire: the conquest, control, and exploitation of planets beyond the Dominicus system?

[yardsards]

do people who have listened to taz balance but not graduation Know that it was HEAVILY IMPLIED that lup and barry eventually adopted a lil sorcerer child who got disowned by his family for his natural necromancy magic, and they taught him how to use his powers for good and were overall great parents that he looks back on fondly

(and said child grew up to be a dimension-hopping lich, caretaker of the dead, and very sweet adoptive father of a major npc)

[mikeystrawberry]

Finally caught up on both Magnus Archives and Protocol!!!

Plain screen version and closeups on Norris and Chester screens

[gammija]

Celia: "I have a baby. Jack. He’s just over a year old now."

Sam: "Cool."

Celia: "And before you ask, no, there’s no dad on the scene, not even sure who he is. I had a… couple of wild years after I moved here. It was a really weird time for me, but somehow I got lucky enough to come out of it all with him."

Considering Celia seems to be waking up next to a motorway on the regular, im inclined to take this extremely literally. in that she got teleported around a lot and somehow ended up holding a baby that she felt responsible for as a fellow dimension-hopper

[ashes-in-a-jar]

Can you imagine if we were to meet this universe's jurgen leitner?

I can totally imagine him being some random conspiracy blogger who accidentally stumbles upon some information the oiar crew need but when they go visit him they are suddenly compelled to start beating him up, seemingly out of nowhere

[siltslut]

if i was jonathan sims and and someone got a look at my fucked up chest that was missing 2 ribs and caught in an explosion that literally killed me, and they ask what happened i’d be like “yeah don’t smoke. it’s really bad for you man.”

[lurafita]

Alec has a silent laugh with himself whenever people are talking about how distinguished and regal the high warlock of Brooklyn is.

No one would believe him how many dad-jokes his love makes on a regular Basis.

Like yesterday, when Magnus rolled Chairman Meow into a towel and told Alec it's a "Purrito".

[flipperbrain-awakes]

Shadowhunters 3.10

[compaculaaa]

Local mechanic tries to explain to the king and prime minister about organic culture 4089 colourised

(Click for better quality)

[katakaluptastrophy]

OK, so we've discussed Jod's apparent faux concern when Harrow comes to him desperately begging to be protected from G1deon:

"Harrowhark, when was the last time you slept?"

We later learn that he asked G1deon to "fix or put down Harrow". He thought putting her in desperate circumstances would somehow activate her Lyctoral powers.

It all feels particularly awful because elsewhere we've seen him imagine Harrow as his daughter: "You’d make a hell of a daughter, Harrowhark."

And yes, this is Jod's love of being perceived as a nice man and his tendency to make everything about him. But also...

They’d all expected me to go nuts. A— kept saying, Are you sleeping, are you okay, are you taking any Class As, you know you can tell me.

I wasn’t trying to be a dick. I think I hadn’t slept for two days.

I wasn’t operating on a lot of food or sleep.

I’d stopped sleeping and I wasn’t eating much, I was keeping my body going just by fiddling with the processes.

That last one is John 1:20. You know, the chapter where Jod finally unlocks the full potential of what he can do (with just a little help from a planet and 10 billion deaths) and becomes god?

Jod sees himself in Harrow. And he knows being hounded and sleep deprived was what worked for him.

[advisortotheadvisor]

kinda of funny how magnus projected his need for a father figure SO HARD onto blitz and hearth that ppl genuinely forget how old they and think they're in their 30s

anyway I propose this happens to magnus himself. like when you're 14, four years does feel like a significant age gap + he is so clearly desperate for a parental figure that he just kind of assigned those roles to the first two older people who were nice to him

cut to him telling Alex he sees blitz and hearth as father figures and Alex is just like ??? they're twenty???

[brettanomycroft]

I didn't have "Sam enters DILF territory" on my Protocol bingo card and YET-