#is that your guys’ extended sounds of brutal pipe murder?

[imtoolazytoo]

If The Magnus Archives is a work place comedy then what kind of comedy is Malevolent?

[f0xgl0v3]

How does one Elias Bouchard hold his Pipe/The overall murder scene

Tw this like entire post is about the proper way to hold a pipe if you wanna effectively hit someone with it several times repeatedly :3 also spoilers for MAG 80

Guys I am simply a writer and this is just for writing and thought experiment purposes, none of this shall or should be applied to real life and it’s just for the haha extended sounds of brutal pipe murder-

What has come to my life-? I’m talking about Elias Bouchard and how he holds the Pipe to murder people- I, there will be actual Percy Jackson stuff soon. Maybe talking about Camp Jupiter and armor and gear and stuff or something however,

Everyone draws Elias with really weird hand positions on the pipe-? That’s a weird thing to say and the art is fantastic but if your beating someone with a Pipe then there seems to be a way I always thought in my head-

Let’s, for the sake that I’m halfway through season 4 consider the only Pipe murder I am currently aware of would be Jurgen Leitner’s, we can work with this. Elias is standing over him at the other side of a desk while Jurgen is seated I believe-? There are a couple ways we can go about this,

1) Elias hits him while they both are in the neutral position at the desk

2) Elias walks over to Jurgen’s side during the conversation and hits him then

3) Jurgen stands up from his chair and then Elias hits him.

I have had to listen to the sound clip so many times for this- I- okay. So, the beginning of the murder still is Jurgen talking, I think audibly a bit worried. I’d like to make the assumption that while Elias is like “bird stuff always a risk about death” that is when the pipe is revealed, Jurgen is taking the moment to try and reason with him and I think 2 and 3 are the most viable due to the sound they use. In 1’s scenario Elias wouldn’t get enough strength in that first swing (due to the desk being in the way, and Elias most likely having to lean over the desk to try and get a strong strike.

Then, the sound- I believe Elias initially hits Jurgen from the side of the head, think like the same ‘row’ that your temples are on, that vague side of the head. Jurgen is heard with a grunt by the first hit; we don’t hear him fall or anything (which makes me suspect it could be a situation of Elias walking over to the other side of the table) and it doesn’t really sound like Elias moves where he hits very much- continuing to strike that original spot; otherwise we’d likely hear the crunch of bone. Am I making the assumption that the sound design would include the crunch and that I would know what hitting a skull with a metal pipe is, oh yeah totally.

Now, that settles how I think this entire thing played out, Elias revealing the pipe as he walks over to the side, Jurgen looks up in old sad man still seated and is trying to reason with Elias, maybe he even attempts to get up and that is when Elias strikes in the right side of his head (just what makes sense to me, it could be the left either it wouldn’t matter much) and repeatedly hits there 11 times (yes I counted the strikes we hear, no I don’t have anything better to do with my time because I’m putting off writing a script) before like dipping or whatever.

Now, the pipe posture if you will. I see so many drawings of Elias’s hands like this,

Raised, and for all intents and purposes from an art sense it’s rad. It’s a dynamic pose and stuff, and of course this is not a critique on artists (who are way better than me) and how they want to draw this fictional man hold his pipe. However this is my brainrot talking on the ‘hey I think this is how he’d get the most effective swing’ because I’ve listened to two seasons back to back and I no longer have a brain.

But; Elias Bouchard wants the most bang for his buck so to speak. I think holding the Pipe like the tried and true baseball bat would provide this. Elias holding it like in my very bad diagram is good if he’d want to poke or stab someone with the pipe, but it’s really effective if you can get that swing in. So yeah, baseball style; hands together near the end of the pipe and over a shoulder or even over his head if you want to be silly with his posing.

Uh, haha okay. I’m sorry but the rot is all consuming and I’ve been thinking about him a lot, also like Peter Lukas and a bunch of the other sillies but this kinda- forced itself out while I was looking at art of the scene. I, uh, :3 that’s all. I like thinking about the mapping and layout and planning of scenes like these and how the visuals might’ve looked if there were visuals. I promise I probably won’t make any more posts like this for a solid while (however, talking about Bryce Lawerence and my thing in SoN are-imagining that he was the one to kill Gwen… maybe.)

[origami-butterfly]

I JUST FINISHED SEASON TWO OF TMA WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUCK

I'm so sad I liked Sasha :( I noticed that her voice was different at the start of season 2 but thought she had just gotten a new voice actress and ignored it lol.

I'm still conflicted about Elias, I don't get the sense that he's 100% evil? However the fact that the transcript reads "extended sounds of brutal pipe murder" is so fucking funny and i can't stop snickering about it.

MARTIN I LOVE YOU AND YOUR MEDIOCRE POETRY also it's so hilarious that he and Tim fully believe Jon beat a guy to death at this point and Martin is STILL down bad.

Omg this means I can expose you to the leitner rant now. You?? Didn't realise about not!Sasha??? Not with the end of season one? I do know someone who didn't realise because they didn't notice the voice change, but the fact you noticed and thought nothing of it is so much funnier lol. Elias is.... tbh I think the fandom likes to make him eviler than he is, although he has done [spoilers]. Extended sounds of brutal pipe murder is a fandom favourite, and we celebrate it every 16th of February (I think that's right). And yes, Martin is still down bad. For some reason.

[thearchivistsmanyeyes]

jonny sims really tries to act like his podcast is Professional and Serious and Prestigious but bro. My guy. Your season 1 villain was Worm Lady. Your season 3 villain was Clowns. Your season 4 villain was Old Sailor Man. The two most competent people in this story remain to be a pyromaniac old woman and a goth with a shitty dye job who have both been dead for years. The avatar who represents literal insanity is a perky real estate agent. Sasha James was fucking possessed to death by an ugly antique table. There was a homophobic vase at some point?? Don't even get me started on Jurgen Leitner and Mikaele Salesa, aka Evil Book Guy and Evil Antique Collector Guy. The big bad villain is jimmy magma, the slutty Victorian body-hopper. The apacolypse was essentially triggered by some very intense slam poetry. Everyone is named Michael for some reason. Background antagonists include the two evil deliverymen, sexy spider lady, meat man who steals your bones, the ugly antique table, a cult of dumb fire people made of wax, vampire hunters, the woman who wanted to kill the sun, and John Amherst. "It is remarkably easy to buy an axe in central London" ?? [Extended sounds of brutal pipe murder] ??? Simon Fairchild exists? The main character is named after yourself? Sir I hate to break it to you but your podcast is ridiculous

[iwillsithereandtrytocontribute]

Things I learned about The Magnus Archives but didn’t get until I listened to it.

- The homophobic vase

- Fuckhands mcmike (took me ages to understand also why are there so many michaels)

- Why everyone hated Elias so much, why he was always a smirking twink in art, and why everyone gleefully called him a bastard

- Why the twink and a sea captain were in love???

- Why are the twink and sea captain constantly getting divorces even when they aren’t married

- [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER] (I have found the words of god and it’s that sound effect description)

- Eyes. So many eyes. Always around Jon and the twink and sometimes around the others

- Everyone’s love of Gerry (it’s okay I get it now)

- Lydia Nicholas with a knife

- What the Girlfriends (Up until I heard Georgie I was like whomst? Why is this the ship name while the main and canon relationship is literally their names put together)

- Breekon and Hope (they’re actually great okay??? Breekon’s “statement” hurt)

- Martin loving arson... (speaks for itself I think)

- Jonathan “Jon” Sims, Jonathan Sims, and Johnny d’Ville (who are they all? why are they so similar in name? why are two of them played by the same guy who is in that list of three? help)

Edit: WORMS

Feel free to add on yours as well as any fandom memes, I’m very new :) 

[vonlipvig]

WOAH ok ok another episode with a lot to talk about let's go:

-i LOVE the space episode GOD they're so horrifyingly delightful, FUCK the vast tho holy shit

-i don't understand the connection between this astronaut guy and gertrude. like when she was thinking about how to stop the buried she mentioned him? did his experience with the absolute vastness of the universe somehow help to stop the fear that deals in claustrophobia? also he disappeared after giving his statement, and from what i've listened so far of gertrude....i don't know what to think :/

-THE GIRLS ARE GOSSIPPINGGGGGG

-CANON ASEXUAL JON YES!

-ELIAS MOTHERFUCKING BOUCHARD I SWEAR TO GOD I'M GONNA BREAK YOUR KNEECAPS, i thought the extended sounds of brutal pipe murder were bad, but gOD DAMN that was on a whole nother level of cruelty. i'm still a slut tho, still a slut.

-melanie king i would like to hold you gently :(

[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.

[i-swear-this-is-for-homework]

TMA characters as John Mulaney Quotes

The Archives team reacting to literally anything that happens in the never-ending horrific tragedy that is their work environment:

s1 Jon accepting his new job: I was just shiny and dumb and easy to trick.

s2 Jon: I’m feeling sort of existentially insane, but I’m trying to hold it together.

s3 Jon: Late at night, on the street, women will see me as a threat. That is funny, yeah! It’s kinda flattering in its own way, but at the same time it’s weird because, like, I’m still afraid of being kidnapped. 

s4 Jon:  Do my friends hate me or do I just need to go to sleep?

Martin: I try to stay a little optimistic, even though I will admit, things are getting pretty sticky.

also Martin: None of us really know our fathers. Anyways...

Tim: You know how I’m filled with rage? 

Sasha: Nah, sister. You’re not getting me to no secondary location!

Not!Sasha: Shut up! You’re all gonna die! Street Smarts!!!

Basira: When I saw the perp approachin’, I chewed up a tab of Alka-Seltzer I carry with me at all times. This created a foaming-at-the-mouth appearance that made it look like I had rabies. Now I’ve thrown him off his rhythm. 

Daisy:  Hey, do you want me to kill that guy for you? Because it sounds like he sucks and I will totally kill that guy for you.

Melanie:  Oh, I get it. So rather than violate these meaningless politeness rules, I’ll just go to bed in a smock like goddamn Ebenezer Scrooge. Why don’t you give me a candle for looking in the mirror and a floppy hat and I’ll tremble off to bed in my long Victorian nightgown?

Georgie: God, I guess they’re finally going to kill us all. Alright. This is younger than I thought it would be but I guess we’re all pretty big assholes.

Gerry: Was there ever even a ghost, Mother, or was the dead victorian girl you saw me all along?

Elias: He was a man most acquainted with misery. He could look at a child and guess the price of their coffin.

also Elias: [Imitating French accent] “Oh, the things I have Seen, you cocksucker”

Peter Lukas: In terms of instant relief, cancelling plans is like heroin.

Gertrude: Brush your teeth. Now, BOOM, orange juice dynamite! That’s life.

Leitner: When I was younger I thought the world would be simple and nice. But now, at the end of my life... [extended sounds of brutal pipe murder]

Helen: Oceans 11 would never work with women, because two would keep breaking off to talk shit about the other nine. 

Jared Hopworth: You kids have no upper body strength.

Robert Smirke @ Jonah Magnus: You have the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair. 

The Entire Fandom:  I think eventually everything’s going to be okay, but I have no idea what’s going  to happen next. except maybe everything won’t be okay

[yszarin]

see below for thoughts on Monologue

- it’s been so hot Martin, please make it go away

- sounds like he’s going to get eaten by Isolation and no one’s going to care

- this guy is so punchable I keep forgetting we aren’t in a RQG special

- the monster is really cool though, the bit with the stick underneath was Nasty

- I wonder if the extent to which Martin experiences The Nopes after a statement is related to which power has a hand in it? Isolation and Beholding seem fairly friendly at the moment. that or he’s gaining some sort of tolerance. I’ll need to relisten to all the Martin statements. such hardship.

- oh no he’s scared of Tim, end me. hopefully that’s scared of him in the for him sort of way?

- oh no Melanie

- Martin, please tell Jon things. maybe he doesn’t need to be distracted, but he also needs to know what sort of state home’s in? like you were just the other month having this conversation with Tim about how concealing the monsters doesn’t make anyone any safer, and Elias being even more of a monster than previously anticipated, in the general direction of those people Jon cares about, is relevant information. anyway I hope he’s back soon too.

- whatever this is, it can fuck off right now

- I will try not to be too saddened by the scepticism in Martin’s voice when he thinks it might be Tim. I am failing.

- MARTIN, SWEETHEART

- you had better not hurt him. I haven’t prepared myself emotionally for him to be hurt. my soft toy camel is in a different room.

- I guess Martin’s approach of “just sort of go with it when monsters” is resulting in a lot less bodily harm than Jon’s “sass the monsters”, but Peter Lukas is kinda sorta friendly.

- you don’t sound too sure of that, Martin? might just be the whole “talking to a monster” thing that’s leading to the question inflection. surely he can’t be at the “just sorta knowing things” stage already, Jon’s only just got there. Unless Jon’s Archivist-y development is linked with the others’ somehow?

- Elias I will meet you in the parking lot

- did he just notice that he hadn’t been mean to Martin yet this month and decide to go for the full bingo card of upset assistants? hopefully it’s that and Martin’s not going to end up Isolation-ed.

- not sure if I want Martin to never be alone with a monster again or for him to be alone with all the monsters?

- “your advice would be less murder”

- ... is Peter Lukas going to give Elias his own performance review? to be a fly on the wall [errant tape recorder on the desk] of that conversation

- “woooooo” that’s amazing, Basira I love you. also “oh dear” is a mood. a constant one.

- yes Basira please explain the plot you are An Angel

- yeah maybe don’t plot against Elias with the tape running? I’m glad other people are Worried About Melanie, hopefully they’ll be able to help her out, but also I really don’t want them to do anything that might get them hurt by the not-yet-omnipotent extended sounds of brutal pipe boss.

- anyway looks like I’m continuing in my now-permanent state of “worried about these archival disasters”. still. monster-hunting next week?