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douglysium · 1 year ago

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Episode 5 TMP Quick Thoughts

Housekeeping and Prologue

Hello, this is Douglysium and you might not know me as that guy who wrote over 100 pages of analysis on the Eye (which can be read on Tumblr here (https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/735599414228484097/the-relationships-between-the-dread-powers-the) or Google Docs here (The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss)) or as that guy who wrote an article on the Extinction (which can be read on Tumblr here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/717929126195003392/what-would-avatars-of-the-extinction-be-like-a) and Google Docs here(What would Avatars of the Extinction be like?: A TMA Speculation)). Suffice to say I might be a bit of a TMA fan. Also, spoilers for TMP up until episode 4. You can read my ramblings on the last episode here (TMP Quick Thoughts 4).

However, Protocol offers a very unique opportunity and experience for me because I didn’t actually get into TMA until after it was over and I binged all of it. So this is my first time experiencing something even remotely similar to what the original TMA fans probably experienced when waiting for each episode week by week and slowly having to put everything together with the limited information they had. So I decided to throw my hat into the ring since this might be my only chance to do something similar. However, I’m working on some longer form TMA content so I can’t spend as much time on these articles giving a bunch of super detailed thoughts. I will try to keep these short and that inevitably might mean some could have questions about why I think or predict certain things and in those cases I would probably recommend you read at least some of the two articles I mentioned above to get a better idea of where I’m coming from. This also means I won’t be giving you a play-by-play of every single thing that happens in the episode so I encourage you to listen to or read them yourselves and feel free to comment if you feel something is important.

These reviews are probably going to end up focusing mostly on the Entities and their manifestations as they are what I have thought about the most and spent the most time interpreting and there’s been a lot of… interesting theories floating around about how the Entities are manifesting that I want to go over.

Finally, I’m just going to say it right now, spoiler warning for all of The Magnus Archives. I know that Jon and co said one could start with Protocol and be fine, and while that’s probably true, media like this tends to be made in conversation with or take into consideration what came before it in the irl chronology in order to connect them. While I’m sure you could skip The Magnus Archives, I don't really see the point of skipping over it when we are already getting characters from TMA showing up in TMP in Protocol. So to me it’s pretty clear that if we want to understand the full picture of TMP and all the things it is trying to say then we can’t just try to pretend TMA doesn’t exist or scrub it away. Just because you could understand what’s happening without the context in broad strokes doesn’t mean you're getting all the nuances.

These articles are meant to be quick and short so sorry if there’s typos and if I don’t address every possible question or possibility. I don’t want to repeat myself too much in this series outside of the prologue so be sure to skim some of my other articles.

Episode 5 “Personal Screening”

If you ask me, the statement in this episode is almost definitely Eye aligned and it’s one of the most Eye flavored statements I’ve seen in a while. But let’s try to slow down and walk through some bits of the episode. Like always it may be an act of hubris to view TMP through the lens of Smirke’s 14 (and potentially The Extinction if I feel it comes to it) but even if I’m wrong I still find this to be fun and the parallels interesting.

Like always, we are hearing the story of TMP from the perspective of something / someone listening in via device and the transcripts clarify that this time we are listening through a landline.

Sam enters Lena’s office to express his worry about Colin’s paranoia and says “Well, today I found him crawling along the corridor, yanking out wires and muttering to himself.” and points out that Colin has “added all those locks to his office door and he refuses to even go near a camera now…” I feel like this mirrors TMA in how we see a coworker becoming worried about another coworker's increasing paranoia. And, similar to Jon, Colin’s paranoia in part seems to be coming from the feeling that he is being watched or monitored by something. I maintain that if the Entities are present then the O.I.A.R. is at least partially connected to the Eye and we see Colin is even becoming afraid of being seen by cameras and the like.

I think it’s also interesting that Lena says this “Right. Well firstly, thank you for raising this with me Sam. It’s important we don’t keep secrets here.” which feels a lot like some ominous foreshadowing we don’t yet understand. The Eye is all about having no privacy and exposing secrets and Colin seems to indeed be keeping some sort of secret. Not only that, but considering what Gwen saw last episode Lena is also keeping at least one secret.

There actually seem to be a lot of parallels or allusions to TMA structurally or thematically. Many of the statements sure but also the roles certain characters play. Sam is too curious for his own good like Jon and may be here to look into a previous encounter with the supernatural, some have pointed out that Alice and Tim both seem to cope with jokes, and Lena is a shady boss like Elias / Jonah. Just to be clear I’m not saying these are 1-to-1 or are meant to be alternate versions of each other or something. Rather that either The Eye tends to attract certain people, that this is meant to be a reference (Sort of like how how Part 7 and onwards in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure have many direct references and parallels to other characters even though they aren’t always the exact same person / personality or one-to-one), or we are going to end up with some extrapolation, divergence, and / or commentaries on these similarities (either directly or indirectly).

However, long story short, Lena dismisses these claims and basically tells Sam not to worry, schedule a meeting next time, and mind his own business before we cut to one of the computers Sam and / or Alice work at to catch the rest of the story. Alice mentions “Ah. Yeah, Lena isn’t exactly known for her diplomacy.” which points to the idea that Lena probably isn’t the nicest person, or at the very least doesn’t sugarcoat things. Sam finds that Alice left some papers on his desk and she explains “I had a nosey while you were in Lena’s office. Looks like it’s for your Response Department one to one.” One thing I mention a lot about The Eye is that it tends to attract people who are very curious and / or want to know things, such as “Nosy Rosie,” Jonah, Jon, etc.. This scene shows us that Alice might be more curious or nosy than she lets on in some aspects. Of course, in typical Alice fashion when Sam expresses worry about the paper and the Response Department she tells him to basically just ignore it and throw it away but Sam decides to fill start filling it out anyway.

I wonder if this is similar to the magically binding contract from TMA and if Sam just accidentally tied himself to something. Alice does also say “Just chuck it. I told you, I’m pretty sure the Response Department doesn't even exist anymore. It's just the system spitting out dead paperwork. Happens all the time.” so we can’t even be sure that this is coming from the Response Department. In fact the paperwork coming from the Response Department could be The Eye or some other Entity and / or supernatural occurrence. We also continue to have Sam’s curiosity hammered into us when he says “And I’m going to fill it in any way. See what happens.” Sam notes that the paperwork asks strange questions when he says “Uh huh… They want my last seven addresses. I don’t know if I’ve even had-” This could point to the idea of the paper wanting a suspicious amount of information since it not only wants to know where you currently live but the last seven places someone has lived.

(Probably rather luckily) Sam gets interrupted by a statement as Alice manages to convince him to stop as CHESTER gives us our statement for the episode.

This statement is about Tom and the blog he is running. On it he reviews horror movies and even says “Hey all you sick freaks out there, Tom here, your gruesome guide to the most twisted horror films of the world wide web!” He also says “I can’t believe this blog’s still up. Was looking for somewhere slightly less confrontational than social media to post my film thoughts, and I remembered starting this back in, what, 2009?” As I’ve mentioned before The Eye is the fear of being perceived and known which also involves the fear of being judged for things. To put it even more broadly, The Eye seems to be about the fear of knowledge in general. Not just the fear that someone / something might know too much about you (or a specific secret) or is just gathering information by watching you but also the fear that you yourself might know too much or have seen something you wish you hadn’t. In MAG 200 we are told in what order the Powers emerged and what led to their birth and for The Eye we are told it came from the fear of one’s eyes “showing them too much.” In essence, that they saw something they didn’t want to. A more direct example of this is Jonah being able to force information into the minds of other people like Martin and Melanie. Jonah mentions that this information has to be true and it points to the idea of forcing someone to know something against their will.

We also get “That first post... Fourteen years old and convinced I was the edgiest writer on the web. Might keep it up for posterity, god knows the kid went through enough” which implies a rough childhood. Considering what happens with the movie I would also like to point out that tying into The Eye’s whole “seeing too much” thing is the idea of being forced to remember or relive certain things you don’t want to. The most obvious form this took in TMA was the statements (as they were people recounting what happened to them) but Jon could also force people to give statements (forcing them to recall things against their will) and when Jon takes live statements both Jonah and Daisy point out that when this is done the victim will be forced to relive said statement every night via a dream in which Jon is watching. Sometimes, if there’s a monster involved, the victim sees things from the perspective of the monster (forcing them to watch their own suffering in a way).

Tom explains “I remember I was pretty lonely in those days. Ever since I was a child, making friends has always been kind of a struggle. My interests have always been seen as a little strange... While other kids my age at the time were looking up to football players and other celebrities, I was looking up to Pinhead and Freddy Krueger... It wasn’t in a psychopath kind of way or anything, I’ve just always been fascinated by horror. I can thank my dad for that, he showed me Puppet Master when I was six. ‘oh don’t worry, buddy! It’s just like Toy Story”... He had kind of a dark sense of humour like that.” before continuing to describe how he was really into horror and continues to have a fixation on it. This also implies that it’s possible the young Tom wasn’t always aware of what he was about to see and was tricked or lied to about what it was. Which could tie into the idea of seeing something you didn’t want to if we assume that this poor kid was expecting Toy Story only to get a scary movie. Funnily enough, someone judging and critiquing films on something like a blog could draw a connection to The Eye via the idea of judgment and the like.

Strangely, the next 3 reviews have been deleted. I wonder if they reminded Tom of something or if he just wanted to forget about it? But that would be kind of weird since he still leaves up the announcement that make mention of the terrifying film he watches later, “Voyeur.” It might also be a much weirder reasoning like someone or something wanting people to find this movie and / or post and making sure the post is preserved for a statement. It’s pretty clear Tom has at least some of the trademark Eye curiosity when it comes to horror movies since he seems to put in a lot of effort into finding this specific horror movie in order to watch it despite searches mostly just revealing what is presumably porn. However, in his search he comes across one thing- “The only thing I could find was another old blog with what must have been the shortest film review I have ever read. You can check the link, but I’ll save you some time: all it says is “Voyeur needs to be seen to be believed. The Scariest movie I have ever seen”.”

Of course, if you’ve gotten this far you can probably guess what I’m probably going to say. This is so obviously The Eye or some similar overlapping Entity trying to bait curious people into seeing something they will probably regret. In TMA Gertrude did mention that The Eye is also the drive to know and understand even if what you find might hurt you and we can see this in action. The drive to know and understand even if this movie could mentally scar you. Unfortunately, Tom doesn’t realize he’s in a horror podcast and this just makes him want to see it even more.

In the next blog post Tom mentions “Oh my God. I can’t believe one of you found it! Thank you SO MUCH Cinephobia12220 for the link!” Based on a quick google search I don’t think “cinephobia” is a real word (and if it is it’s super obscure). However, I can take a wild guess at what the username “cinephobia” means by looking at the root words involved. Cinephile basically means “movie lover” and phobia has to do with fear, so we can assume that the term cinephobia would probably mean something like “fear of movies”, “movie fear”, “phobia of movies”, etc.

After doing a bit more digging I found the term “cinephobia” which according to a wikipedia page means “The fear or hatred of films and the cinema.” Whether or not you want to see this as credible is up to you and I’m proud of the logic I used originally so I’m keeping the previous paragraph since it was at least in the ballpark. Either way, this username is foreshadowing since their name literally means “fear / hatred of movies” (ie the fear of a media you would watch).

Tom manages to find a link and a contest that only asks for his name and he somehow wins said contest despite noting that the site hasn’t been updated in years. At this point it’s clear that all the blog posts not relating or leading up to the “Voyeur” have been deleted. What does voyeur even mean? According to google voyeur is defined as “a person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity”... okaayyyyyy wait there’s a second definition “a person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others.” Okay, I’m going to assume the second definition is what’s applicable here since this ties very heavily into The Eye and the idea of a sort of sadism or someone watching you suffer. Of course, this can also tie into statements as people like Jon gain power and strength from literally hearing about and or watching people suffer. So the movie’s title is yet more foreshadowing. The title might also have a double meaning since depending on why someone likes horror and to what extent you could describe them as a “voyeur” in the sense that they like seeing people suffer in movies. Tom is so desperate for horror he might be somewhat close to a voyeur in this sense but maybe I’m reading too much into that.

When Tom wins the contest he explains “I WON THE CONTEST! I can’t believe it! The invitation was waiting when I got home today, in a small black envelope. I don’t even remember giving them my address. The website must have logged my IP and looked it up or something... I’m really not sure how any of that works.” This is another red flag because The Eye is known to randomly give or find information it otherwise shouldn’t know. We see people like Jon had the ability to know things that they shouldn’t and Jonah was borderline omniscient and could know almost anything he actively put his mind towards.

The cinema “Voyeur” is being filmed at is a theater that Tom actually went to when he was a kid. “And I’ve actually been to this cinema before... I used to go all the time with my dad... they would play classic horror films midday every Saturday.” Considering that Tom probably had a rough childhood this could be The Eye setting up a situation where Tom is forced to remember his past (I mean besides watching the movie of course) and I wonder if this is the theater where his dad tricked him into watching a horror movie. We know that the movie seems to actually be about Tom himself and it’s being played in a place he remembers as a child. Also, Tom mentioning how he wants to give his thoughts on this movie could be likened to a statement and someone giving their accounts about various horrific encounters.

Tom of course is apparently live blogging the event and I think that usually The Eye wouldn’t have it any other way. The more people can witness the horrors another person is facing in real time the “better.” The outside of the theater seems like it’s in a sorry state but the inside is beautiful and clean. Tom asks about this while buying food from an employee and we get “I asked about the mess outside, trying not to be rude about it, but he just said “It’s what on the inside that matters”.” This could be foreshadowing to the idea that the movie is about Tom himself. So the “inside” that matters would be Tom’s own memory and / or experiences. Also, this employee is noted to be old and probably doing all the jobs around this theater. He is at least the one running the concession stand, and usher along with the other stuff. But Tom says that the man is in high spirits which makes me wonder if we’ll see him as a recurring character in TMP’s statements and / or in person (sort of like Simon Fairchild and the like).

Then the movie starts and based on Tom’s reaction he clearly recognizes what's being shown “ I can hear what sounds like... beeping. It sounds so familiar but I can’t quite place it. Medical equipment maybe? There’s something [UNINTELLIGIBLE] the screen... Looks like it might be a flashback or something, handheld… looks like it was filmed on an old camcorder... Wait. Is that...? I know that room…. How... How did they get [UNINTELLIGIBLE] This was after the accident. Mum wanted to to film it for my brothers... Dad... I... [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Wait. Who is that? In the corner of the screen, there’s... WHO THE HELL IS THAT?” and the final thing we hear from the blog is

BLOG POST: FILM REVIEW: VOYEUR

Voyeur needs to be seen to be believed. The scariest movie I have ever seen.

It seems like what happened is the movie was a video Tom’s mom had taken of a tragic even but there was something that shouldn’t have been there. This wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened with The Eye. In TMA MAG 193 (A Stern Look) we get an account from the original Elias that details how a friend named Allan Schrieber died from presumably reading some sort of book. Upon reading it Allan started to mentally break down and sob while saying things like “It has no eyes”, “so it has to feel its way towards me. But it knows. It knows!” before eventually dying with his eyes mysteriously missing. A lot of people immediately assume this means The Dark was at play but there are statements where someone / something aligned with The Beholding seems to be missing eyes or taking The Eyes of others. Sometimes the idea is that it’s scary that something can somehow still know where you are or see you and sometimes this is the whole “seeing too much thing.” It’s also mentioned “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?”

If you want a clearer example of seeing something you shouldn't, there's the hand mirror that appears in MAG 060 (Observer Effect). Upon looking into this mirror Rosa Meyers notices a dark figure in the night that only has its eyes visible and she feels like she is being watched / stalked even after dropping the mirror and breaking the glass. So The Eye definitely plays around with the idea of seeing something, noticing a figure that shouldn’t be there, and then things follow you before something happens. It wouldn’t completely surprise me if Tom was even replaced or had his mind and / or body taken over somehow (something that has a precedent with people like Jonah) which could explain why his review is eerily similar to the original one. Maybe the old man is body hopping like Jonah? That might explain the old man’s excitement and maybe the old man is in fact “Cinephobia12220.” Hmmm, such an assertion about body hopping with so little information is a bit of a stretch though since the man could just be happy to have a victim and it would be an oddly specific ability for some random new character (merely one iff background or otherwise) to have.

Obviously, Tom also expresses surprise at this theater having the footage and wonders how they could’ve gotten it which ties into The Eye and someone getting information they shouldn’t. Being forced to relive something like this is also comparable to a statement.

Some Entities that overlap with some of the stuff happening in this statement are ones like The Spiral. I could see an argument for some of its themes with the idea of noticing something you missed before or thought wasn’t there as a sign of your senses being wrong. Maybe also The Stranger since Tom doesn’t seem to know what he’s seeing.

We then cut to CCTV audio and Alice talking on the phone before this conversation happens

GWEN

“Do you remember the IT manager before Colin?”

ALICE

“Who? Amelia? What about her?”

GWEN

“No, before Amelia, before I joined. German guy. Lots of tattoos.”

ALICE

“I mean, I think Amelia mentioned him once or twice maybe? Mostly I remember her complaining about his work, but he’d have been here well before my time. What’s this about?”

GWEN

“Nothing. None of your business.”

ALICE

“What? Seriously?”

GWEN

“(walking off). Yes.”

Once again, Gwen being cagey and weird but this time we have a better idea of why. There’s a chance that this German IT manager may in fact be Klaus. I wonder if being the O.I.A.R. IT manager comes with some sort of drawback or “curse?” Maybe even some weird agreement between whoever has the position and Lena? Who knows

Conclusion

Idk having a blast. Feel free to leave corrections and / or thoughts and I may respond to them and explain if I agree or disagree, or consider why it is or isn’t likely, etc.

#tma #the magnus archives #tmp #the magnus protocol #theory

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arguscallous · 2 years ago

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@nosebleedclub 's March prompts. #28, Ouroborus.

Resurrecting myself again and again, snap crackle pop-ing fingers slip between the cracks of the old headstone, knock on wood and the rotten coffin presents itself, a showman;

"Come one, come all, see the beast Ouroboros! Watch as Past consumes Present, as Tail becomes Maw!"

Line up the beer bottles and grab that old peashooter, one new day for every piece of shattered glass. Pick up the scattered reflections like pulling teeth and isn't that a fun one, white coats and irrational fear.

How long can the body rest before "memory" becomes "theft," how many photo frames cracked, how many repetitions of

that's not me it's not me it's not not me

Catch the double negatives, ball 'em up in your fist with a kiss for good luck, send off the poor fuck they adored and pray with us now

it's not me it's not me it's not not not me

#poetry #vent poem #original poetry #prompted writing #im actually quite fond of this one :D #originally wrote it in docs and had played around with alignment but like #obvi can't do that on tumblr so i tried using different colors to get across the like. disjointed? separated? effect that i wanted #also its fun the color options are such a good feature #i just don't use em here because i worried about eyestrain #i tested how the red looks on most themes tho and it *seemed* fine?

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weconqueratdawn · 8 years ago

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#fannibalselfrec event - Hannibal season one

Thanks to @hannibalficwriters for organising this, I’m looking forward to checking out everyone’s recs :)

I nearly decided not to take part - I have problems with self-reccing, especially when I think something has received ‘enough’ attention. It just seems greedy. But that’s a) stupid and b) I have a story I want to tell about the writing of this fic.

I have literally only one (1) which qualifies. Others have strayed too far into AU-land to count as taking place in S1. That fic is *drumroll*:

Cathexis

Hannibal/Will ~ 57k words ~ Explicit

A Season 1 BDSM AU

Summary: What if Hannibal's sadistic tendencies only find expression through consensual BDSM relationships? Set in a Season 1 AU where Will is allowed to continue teaching, relatively undisturbed by Jack, and seeks Hannibal's professional help of his own accord.

The story I want to tell is how I went from not even thinking about writing, to writing something which juuussst about qualifies as a short novel (if we go by word count) in the same bound. (And how you can too! No, just kidding - I hate those kinds of terrible advice blogs. But stick with me, there’s things in this story which might be relevant for anyone reading.)

Before this fic, I wasn’t writing. Anything. Not only that, but I wasn’t even a frustrated writer who wanted to write but couldn’t. The idea of writing had never occurred to me. Sure, I was a frustrated creative person - I have been all my life, even since I was a very small child. Just before this fic, I had been studying fine art with a load of other adult learners and trying to engage with the contemporary arts scene in a fairly amateurish but genuine way. I would have described myself as an artist. My creative friends are sculptors and printmakers and painters. We had just finished putting on a group exhibition - just to see if we could - and were thinking vaguely of other things we might do together in the future.

Enter fandom. I had come to Hannibal post-cancellation and watched all three seasons breathlessly, then wandered around Tumblr reading meta and finding great fic and thinking WHY OH GOD WHY ARE THEY LIKE THIS in a way which is familiar to anyone who has just Found Hannigram.

My gf is a fandom-savvy individual and we usually talk about our obsessions, whether they're shared or not. We came up with something which we found funny and which you most likely won’t - after steeping ourselves in Hannibal's god-complex we thought it would be hilarious to reduce him down to a common-or-garden bedroom sadist. He would make bad bondage puns and have a dungeon instead of a murder basement. Lololol etc. I even went so far as to refer to this as Fifty Shades of Graham, which if you know me, demonstrates how un-serious I was about it.

I DID NOT INTEND TO WRITE THIS is what I am trying to say. It was a joke, a bad one, and a private one. I never intended to be a writer* at all.

Because apparently, unbeknown to me, that’s what I’ve been all this time. Secretly, under the surface somewhere. And what I think is this: I just wasn’t ready to be a writer before. I wasn’t ready to discover this about myself. The things that I did before - all the visual art, all my academic studies and crap jobs - all have, in differing and subtle ways, all fed into this part of me which wasn’t ready to come out yet.

And I also think that this is happening to all of us. It’s just as true for you as it is for me. We all have hidden pockets of potential, things even the most self-aware of us do not know about, or refuse to look too closely at. Those pockets might not lead directly to anything life changing, they may be paths to other, deeper and more difficult to find pockets. Or simply to activities and interests we find enjoyable, a way of doing something just for ourselves or of meeting people we need in our lives.

A wise person on the internet said “follow the rabbit-holes”. They all lead to the same place anyway, and the easiest path there is the one of least resistance. Follow that strange tug, dive in, see where it leads you without worrying about the destination. You might end up being very surprised.

*It took me maybe six months to start to feel I could use the hallowed word Writer when talking about myself, and now I can even tell complete strangers this without blushing and feeling like a fraud.

18 months later and I can't imagine not planning all my not-work time around writing - I think about it constantly. It nags at me when I’m prevented from doing it by other commitments. My weeks and weekends are based squarely around which project I'm working on and how much time I have until that deadline, self-imposed or not. I have so many projects lined up they are constantly being juggled and re-ordered so I can try to maximise my available writing time in the most effective way. I’m even looking beyond fandom and beginning work on an original novel. And it all started with this fic.

For the really curious, here is how Cathexis got written (under the cut):

I read even more fic (really amazing and intimidatingly good fic too) and even more meta and I thought more and more about Hannibal and Will’s complex dynamic. The BDSM AU became less of a joke and more of a place where that could be explored without getting too tangled up in the difficulties of Will’s relationship with Hannibal. I thought about it often. There was so much discussion and activity in the fandom that the idea of putting down your feelings in the form of a story didn’t seem so strange.

But still, it didn’t seem like that was the route for me. Until, one morning after Christmas, I woke up with dialogue in my head (those moments just before and after waking are so good for weird happenings like this). I didn’t move, didn’t do anything at all, before I wrote it down on my phone. It felt like a strange thing to do at the time - trespassing in a place I didn’t quite belong. It was a compulsion. I just knew I had to do it.

I had no idea if more would follow or if I even wanted more to follow. But more did. I wrote that down to, in the same place (which, by the way, was the note app *not* anything as official as a Google Doc - the very idea :0 !!)

It took me maybe three-four weeks of this to brave the idea of doing something with the snatches of dialogue and scattered notes which had built up. They had become pieces of a puzzle which I needed to solve - until then, I knew I wouldn’t find any peace.

I had been talking with @wraithsonwingsposts about the show and had encouraged her to work on a fic idea she had been playing around with. She returned the favour and was so fantastic and supportive all the way through - and therefore, this is all her fault, as she already knows ;)

The rest of the story was the same for anyone undertaking a piece of writing - one word at a time, much time staring at a blinking cursor, a lot of editing. But overall, I think what got this written and completed was keeping my aims simple. The were 1) see it through to the end (i.e. solve the puzzle), and 2) try not to make a complete tit out of myself.

I know for certain I hit one of those goals.

**************************************

Bonus: for the very-very-very curious, here is the original and un-edited version of the I wrote that morning (a version of which appears in Chapter 8), and the first thing I wrote since school:

"What kinds of things do you say when you... afterwards?" "I thought you found it too difficult to hear?" "I want to know. I can catch the odd word, but the way you say it... I like the way you sound." Hannibal hesitated for a tiny moment. Will smiled and said, "I thought it was for my benefit only you don't say it in English." Hannibal sighed and conceded, "Perhaps it's easier, sometimes." He moved closer to Will, made it almost impossible for Will to escape from what Hannibal had to tell him, and to study his face as he spoke. "I call you my darling, my lovely Will, so precious to me. I tell you how beautiful I find you, how complete my desire is and how abandoned you make me. I tell you that you are mine and belong to me, that I shall never leave you, that you have made me yours. I praise you, for being so very good, for indulging me, and for indulging yourself also. I tell you that you deserve it, and more, and I tell you I love you." Will went very quiet, almost not breathing. He had known what to expect but to hear it stated so simply was almost too much. Hannibal continued to look steadily at him, waiting. Will turned over suddenly, so he no longer could watch Hannibal's face, and pressed himself back into his body. Hannibal moved to accommodate, folding him arms around him and holding him tight. He brought his legs up so his thighs pressed into the back of Will's, and his ankles tangled with Will's also. They lay there for a few moments without speaking, bodies perfectly aligned. Will felt safe again. "If you wish to explore these issues, I have a suggestion. There are things you could wear, even in public, which could serve to remind you of my possession. Something more concrete than a bruise or a bite mark." Will considered how it might feel to have such a reminder, one he could feel wherever he was. An image came to him of a collar made of plain but good quality leather. It could be concealed under his shirts, especially if he wore ties. It would be slim but solid, with one heavy buckle to fasten it. He could almost feel it's weight resting on the back of his neck, like Hannibal had placed his hand there. Will opened his mouth to speak and then realised Hannibal was holding and touching his hand gently. The gesture was so soft and specific that Will had to look, to watch Hannibal's hands. Realisation dawned on him. Hannibal was meditatively rubbing small circles up and down in between the second and third knuckles of his third finger on his left hand. Will turned over to catch Hannibal around the shoulders and demanded, "Did you just ask me to marry you?"

Cathexis on ao3

#fannibalselfrec #hannibalficwriters #hannigram #hannigram fic #hannibal #my fic #cathexis #wow that was a lot of words about me #:0 #writing stuff

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contentmarketingallstars · 8 years ago

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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Forrest Dylan Bryant of Evernote

Is it possible for a brand to succeed at scale with new content marketing tactics?

Absolutely.

For proof, just check out what Evernote is doing.

The organizational/productivity platform has built large audiences across a wide range of fresh channels, including on Medium (100,000+ followers) and with its "Taking Note" podcast (a top five tech news show on iTunes).

On top of that, the company excels in developing traditional content such as beautiful infographics and engaging guides.

So, what's the secret to Evernote's success? How does the firm approach content creation and content strategy?

To find out, we recently chatted with Forrest Dylan Bryant, the company's Director of Marketing Content.

Check out the full Q&A below:

Q: What is your background and what is Evernote?

A: Evernote is a place where you can capture, organize, and share your thoughts and ideas. You can keep all of your notes and docs in one place, so you never have to worry about where they are. Your thoughts are always with you, always accessible, and always in sync, via desktop, mobile, and the web. We have more than 200 million users around the world, so our content reaches a pretty broad audience.

I lead a team of writers, and I’m first and foremost a writer myself. But I’ve worked a lot of different sides of the content landscape over the years, from marketing to strategy to CMS management, for big corporations and startups and nonprofits. I also have a background in book publishing, I’ve written novels, been a music journalist, and I’ve spent nearly two decades in community radio. So I guess I take a big-picture view of content.

Q: What role does digital content play for Evernote? Why are you creating it?

A: I’m so glad you asked me that question, because that’s the question all content marketing should begin with: Why are we doing this? Who is it for? And what is it supposed to do, for us and for the consumer? Some organizations never ask those questions, but they're essential if you want your content to be meaningful and get results.

Here at Evernote, we’re trying to help people manage information — to collect it, organize it, and find it whenever and wherever they need it — so they can focus on the things that matter to them. This company’s mission is helping people do their work more effectively. So our content has to have the same mission. It’s not just about selling the product, because Evernote isn’t just a product. It’s a means to an end.

When you look at it that way, our content becomes an extension of the product. It’s about inspiring people to think better, organize better, and use Evernote better so they can find that freedom to focus. We want all of our content to deliver real value.

Q: What sorts of pieces are you creating? What is effective for helping you achieve your goals?

A: Our content marketing breaks down into a few big buckets, which align with the kinds of pieces our audience responds to the most:

First, there’s educational content that helps people discover Evernote, learn why it might be right for them, and get the most value from it. With that kind of content, our goal is to get people to think about new ways to use the app so they use it more often to do more things. This takes the form of use cases, feature walkthroughs, demo videos, and tips. That’s not completely self-serving. We’ve found that the more notes someone creates, and the more they put into those notes, the more value they get out of Evernote.

Next, there’s guidance and inspiration for becoming more organized and productive. You could call that thought leadership, but it takes a lot of different forms, like interviews with productivity experts and teachers, explainers for popular productivity methods, or looking at the great thinkers of history and how they approached their work.

Third is all the corporate and funnel content that explains new features, tells our story, and builds awareness and gets people to try the product.

In terms of channels, we focus heavily on our blog and social media, but as we branch out we’re seeing the most growth in newer channels. We just hit 100,000 followers on Medium. Our “Taking Note” podcast has repeatedly reached the top 5 for tech news on iTunes, and our series of Facebook Live webinars is getting more viewers and more engagement with each installment.

Q: What do you think is the key to your success with Medium and podcasting? Are there any audience development tactics that have worked especially well for you?

A: I think in both of those cases -- with Medium and the podcast -- one of the main reasons we have been successful is that we have been focused on giving people useful and relevant content. We are really focused in both of these channels on giving people in-depth content that is of use to them, and that they can take and apply to their own methods of working.

With Medium we are very careful about which pieces we post and which we don’t. We take the audience on that platform into account and focus on things that they are going to be able to get something out of, and interact with, rather than just put up content for content's sake.

We also focus a lot on quality. We have freelancers but we don’t farm out our content creation. We keep the pool small. We are very careful about editing. We always want to make sure that we present our content in the best possible light. That includes the way that we edit our podcast; quality is hugely important.

In terms of building an audience, we find strategic use of our email newsletter very helpful. We always try to fit in the right pieces of content which we think are going to resonate with the most people. It’s not just everything we have published; it’s highly curated.

Also, we do a lot of cross-channel promotion. If we've got something interesting on Medium, we make sure we highlight it on other social channels. That helps a lot.

Q: How do you measure the success of your content marketing efforts? Which metrics do you pay close attention to?

A: We look at the fundamentals like clickthroughs and shares, time on page, and that sort of thing, but we’re also trying to dig deeper. Like for an article, there’s a big difference between unique views, average time on the page, and how many people actually reached the end of the article. Those are three totally different metrics, and all basic stuff, but you need to put them together if you want to have a truly useful picture of your content’s performance. And what did the reader do next? Click a link to learn more? Share it? Or just walk away? Reach matters, but engagement matters more.

We always look at comments, not just the number but the sentiment. That’s huge. Only a certain subset of your audience is made up of the sort of people who make comments — the enthusiasts, the passionate, and the cranks — but those are also often the people who care the most, who are most likely to amplify your good content and let you know when you’re not living up to your own standards.

You can also learn a lot from the metrics gathered across your organization, from registrations to customer support tickets to PR share of voice. I want to know how all of it’s doing and why because that tells me where our content is helping and where it isn’t.

Q: Any favorite pieces of Evernote content? What are some good examples of what you guys do?

For the company’s anniversary this summer, we put the spotlight on Stepan Pachikov, the original founder of Evernote. He’s a true visionary and an under-appreciated hero of Silicon Valley, but he also has a fascinating personal story. So one of our writers wrote a long profile that was really a piece of journalism. We wrote it as if it would be published in a prestige magazine like Vanity Fair or the New Yorker. It went deep and didn’t flinch. That piece went onto our Medium channel and became an Editor’s Pick. I was really proud of it.

On a more practical level, we discovered that our customers love being able to save time by using quality, pre-made note templates for specialized tasks, like goal setting or class projects, or even planning a novel. So we assembled an in-depth primer on how to use those templates and provided a whole set of templates that you can add to Evernote with a click. That blog post gathered hundreds of thousands of views in a very short time and people wrote in to thank us for making their days easier. That’s content as an extension of the product.

We also had a crew at the Confab content strategy conference this spring, where we were the official note-takers. Three writers covered every session at the conference, and a notebook full of all of those notes was made freely available to the public afterwards. You can view it even if you don’t use Evernote, but if you do use it, you can save the whole thing with one click and have those notes forever. We did the same thing at SXSW. Again, content as an extension of the product.

But some of my favorite content is when we’re just scrappy. Like when we ran a bunch of Twitter polls and then compiled the results into a fun little infographic summarizing a day in the life of our fans. That’s content as conversation, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Q: Finally, which content marketing trends are you keeping a close eye on? Which formats, tactics, or platforms do you think will have a major impact over the next few years?

A: I find the resurgence of podcasting over the past two years to be a remarkable phenomenon. I’m a radio DJ in my spare time, so maybe I’m just biased towards audio, but what I find most interesting about podcasting is that it allows the delivery of deep content through passive means.

Here’s what I mean by that: reading text or watching a video requires your full attention. It requires an active investment by the audience, not just of time but of focus, and that’s why so many great articles are languishing unread in people's Evernote, Feedly, and Pocket queues.

But a podcast is audio. It’s still a time investment, but it’s passive. You can listen while you drive, or cook, or do yard work. And it’s perfect for the kind of deep thought leadership content that actually changes minds or inspires people to think in a new way. That’s powerful AND convenient. So I’m a big fan of podcasting.

Over the next few years, I’m also very interested in seeing how native social media content evolves. You’re always going to stand a better chance of gaining attention if you go to where the audience already is. And an even better chance if you’re not “going” there at all, if it’s a natural environment for you. So we choose our social platforms carefully and try to suit the content to the people who are there and the ways they like to interact in those spaces. As artificial intelligence and other innovations come to those platforms, they may enable entirely new ways of personalizing interactions, and that could increase the value of social content exponentially. We’re already seeing that a video session on Facebook Live can be far more engaging than a traditional webinar. Just imagine when your content can be chopped up and reassembled to fit an individual’s interests and needs.

And while it isn’t content per se, I think real-world experiences are going to be increasingly important to brands. The more time we spend online, the harder it is for online content to stand out. It becomes background noise. Real, physical experiences like pop-up stores and fun events bring novelty and immersion. You can touch them, take a selfie in them, have real conversations with real people. When it’s well done, an experience like that has an impact far beyond the few people who are actually there. It touches their whole networks in a unique and authentic way.

#cmas #CMAS QandA #content marketing all stars #content #content marketing #evernote #medium #blogging #podcasts #Forrest Dylan Bryant

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bluezey · 8 years ago

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Dissecting the old, beginning from the new

So something happened today. I was watching random internet videos when I came across someone who was rating the five worst animated films of 2016. Among them was Trolls. That I can see, though I haven’t seen the film the trailer does look super bright and sugary and playing on common clichés. Then the interviewer said that he was worried Trolls is part of a trend that began with The Lego Movie, that a film about an existing property did so well that everyone is gonna try to make a film on a property because they think that’s what sells.

That kind of makes sense, until something happened while I was watching Nostalgia Critic reviews while playing Fallout 4. NC is doing Sequel Month: The Sequel and I’ve noticed he has reviewed Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, Smurfs 2 and will be reviewing Garfield 2. Do you see a comparison between these three movies? They are all movies based on an existing property that were released BEFORE the success of The Lego Movie.

So it made me wonder, why is this person noticing this now if Hollywood has made films based on existing properties before? And the only thing I could think of was, because The Lego Movie did it right.

Think back on the existing property films of the last few decades. They all take a property, look into how it works, then for one reason or another they write a film based on film clichés and dated trends that were popular at the time. What you get is a jumbled mess that either flops or makes some kind of profit one way or another. But The Lego Movie was different. It took an existing property, looked into how it works, then wrote a story around it with memorable characters, funny jokes, and made their own jokes and clichés in the process. They made a success over effort.

Then I began thinking what film has made a success like The Lego Movie? What film was based off an existing property AND did well, just like The Lego Movie? I thought very hard, thinking back as far as I could, even back to toys from the 1970s and… I couldn’t think of anything. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough, or maybe I wasn’t that into a specific toy line that had a movie that did do successfully well like The Lego Movie.

But then I realized that there are films that are not based on toys or cartoons, but are based on existing properties. In fact, almost every film they made is based on an existing property. Hell, even their first movie was based on an existing property. That company is Disney.

I mean, look into it. Their very first film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, based on a fairy tale. In fact, most of their films are based on folk lore, stories fairy tales, with an occasional step into mythos, books and history puffed up by fiction. Sure, there is a rarity here and there like Lilo and Stitch or Home on the Range, but every other film was based on something that has existed. I mean, really think about it, before we had toys and cartoons, you could consider fairy tales and stories existing properties. It’s just that now in the day we think of toys, cartoons, comic books, video games and now apps and emojis as existing properties.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Snow White was just a telling of Snow White, they didn’t do anything new to it. Same thing with the other earlier works like Dumbo, Cinderella and Pinocchio. It’s almost as if they didn’t try when it came to story. So how did they succeed when today’s movies that don’t try fail? Because, based on the time they came out, they did try. No one made a full length animated film before, so Snow White and the films that came after it were fascinating and amazing to the audience. They didn’t have to try a lot on story, because just seeing the story move on screen through ink and paint was more than enough effort.

However, even Disney can get caught on following trends. And I know what you’re thinking, timeless Disney films can be dated? Well, let me tell you about the Disney films of the 40s and 50s. First, there were two films about Donald Duck visiting South America and Mexico, how odd is that? Well, this was a product of the time. Due to some things I can’t delve into properly because I’m not a historian, Disney was set to make two films to teach American movie goers about South America and Mexico’s culture, basically sell the country and continent. So, due to the time period of the forties, they did something fascinating but dated. Then there’s two films called Make Mine Music and Melody Time. These two films were a collection of shorts told through story and music, from Peter and the Wolf, Pecos Bill, Hatfields and McCoys, Johnny Appleseed, just to name a few. But among them were also shorts told through jazz music, a popular musical style at the time, but is now considered dated today.

Now I know what you’re thinking, wasn’t there a movie before Make Mine Music and Melody Time that was also about music and wasn’t dated by popular music during the 40s and 50s? And yes, Fantasia, it was the third film Disney made. But despite being the third film they put a lot of effort and originality into it! Fantasia was not only ground breaking by being a movie about music, but it traveled trough road shows introducing something ground breaking that would basically become surround sound. Something that is above and beyond and definitely shows they did more than try, and even shows they can try something new and innovative! Fantasia flopped. I’m not kidding. What was considered a classic today did not make a profit in its first run.

So, long story short, even Disney themselves have had original ideas that flopped, and have followed popular dated trends that still pulled in a profit. Basically, they’re doing what any other film today could do.

So, what’s the correlation? What’s the formula that can make a movie on an existing property work?

Well, I don’t think there is a formula, and I think it stems on the fact that practically every idea has been done before.

I mean, Disney has made movies mostly on stories and fairy tales that existed before even movies existed. And, looking at Dreamworks, Prince of Egypt was based on an existing story from the Bible, and Shrek was not only based on the idea of mixing up fairy tales, but it was also based on an existing children’s book. I’ve seen videos comparing Toy Story to a Jim Henson’s Christmas special about toys coming to life, but isn’t that because toys coming to life have been done before? Hell, kids think about it! And come to think about it, let’s look at those conspiracy stories about films ripping off other films. We can exclude Antz and A Bug’s Life because we know the behind the scenes about that fiasco, so let’s look at some others. Like, Finding Nemo and Shark Tale. Despite different stories and different ideas, people think one is a copy of the othert because they’re about talking fish. But, talking animals have been done since way before Aesop’s fables. Some people think Monsters Inc ripped off a film called Little Monsters because they’re about monsters that live in closets. But, even kids have thought of that idea. Hell, I’ve even heard people say Despicable Me and Megamind are the same film because they involve super villains that become super heroes. First, Gru didn’t openly become a super hero until Despicable Me 2, in the first one it ended with him as a father and his alignment unknown. Second, I’m pretty sure comic books have had story arcs about heroes become villains and vice versa.

Basically, if you cut it down to its basic ideas, every idea has been done. We all think about what toys and pets do when we’re out of the room, that’s why Toy Story and Secret Life of Pets sound so similar. Talking animals have been done so many times, that’s why Flushed Away and Ratatouille sound similar to people just because they both have talking rats. Cars and Doc Hollywood sound so similar because we’ve all heard of the same stories of people getting lost and finding themselves in a small town.

So, what’s my point in my rambling that we’ve done everything? Well, think back to The Lego Movie. They could have done clichés and trends and be every other diluted film based on an existing property. But, they didn’t. They took an existing property and did something different with it. That’s what made it stand out, that’s what made it fascinating, and basically that’s what made it successful.

Another example is Inside Out. Now when we heard of the idea of personified emotions in a person’s mind, we thought at first it was an original idea. Then we looked back and realized it wasn’t. We’ve had Osmosis Jones, which is personified cells running a body like it’s a city. We’ve had shoulder angels and shoulder demons, little cartoon imps dressed like angels and demons that persuade us to do right or wrong. We’ve had Herman’s Head, a TV show about a group of personification of feelings running the mind of a person- holy crap I just repeated the idea of Inside Out by reading the premise of a dull 90s sitcom! It’s been done that much! So, what made Inside Out such a success? What did Inside Out have that these ideas didn’t? It did something new with the pre-existing idea. While the previous ideas were just personifications of emotions, Inside Out used the personification of emotions to explain how the mind works, how memories work, and even something as complex as how life changes can affect and change your personality to kids, as well as explain to kids and adults in a society that is afraid of anything other than bliss and happiness that it’s okay to feel sad. It’s similar to how The Lego Movie was a success. It made likeable, relateable characters, funny jokes, a unique story that looks original but has probably been done before, to only pull a fast one on us by showing us this whole story is about a father-son relationship becoming strained, a story that we know for a fact has been done before! But then it does something original by showing us that, even as adults, it’s okay to drop your guard and become a kid again, just by using another overused trope of saying how everyone is special.

I think the point I’m trying to sum up is we’re seeing trends we’re tired of seeing in movies because, even before movies were invented, everything has already been done. From storyline to the basic elements of a story, we’ve all heard it before. What makes a success these days with movies is to do something different with them. Use the same tropes to tell a different story, use unique advancements to tell the same tropes in a different way, or use the same ideas to explain something in a way that hasn’t been seen in that way before. It’s why Zootopia is the same old movie about talking animals, but it explains something as controversial and complex as racism and society. It’s why Frozen took the same princess story and explained the complexity of anxiety as well as making fun of old Disney tropes while making new Disney tropes. It’s why Sausage Party not only draws a crowd because we still haven’t done enough animated films about cartoons dropping four hundred sexual innuendos and f-bombs in under a running time yet, but it uses the cliché of non sentient things having sentience under our noses to explain the complexities of living with faith versus living for the day. Dammit, I can’t let that go, that’s too damn clever! So, to sum up, I don’t think there’s a trend of bad movies based on pre-existing properties. I think we’ve just become so self aware of everything already been done that we should keep dissecting and reassembling some things old until we come up with ideas that make them new again.

#animation #movies #essay #Trolls #Disney #Pixar #Inside Out #history #Hollywood #trends #cliches #Zootopia #Frozen #Sausage Party #The Lego Movie #existing properties #stories #fairy tales

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douglysium · 1 year ago

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Episode 1 TMP Quick Thoughts

So let’s get started and I’ll try to keep this short with episode 1 “First Shift”.... After I address two common theories first.

Addressing “THE THEORY”

Something I want to get out of the way right now is that to me whatever government O.I.A.R. organization Sam and the gang are working for are clearly aligned with the Eye or some similar Entity. Now, I know what some people are going to start saying. There’s been a popular theory going around that the Entities have changed to new fears or are now based around desires instead of fear but to be honest I heavily disagree with those theories and they are extreme reaches in my opinion.

First off, we are told at the end of TMA by Jon, Annabelle, and The Web itself that according to its plan when the other Entities are dragged to another universe it should end up with them being dragged back outside the universe in the same state that they were in TMA. I’ve seen people argue that the Powers might have been separated, fused, or reshuffled but it’s important to note that the powers have always been heavily connected and nebulous in most aspects.

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.” 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 strictly barebones color wheel and the edges bleed together.

Jon later points out to Martin that the categorization of Entities can’t always be simplified into neat little boxes. These also are important to understanding Jonah’s mass ritual as Jonah states 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.

So I don’t think any Entities are being removed since losing an Entity would be like all the Entities blowing off their own arm if we use Leitner’s body analogy. The chance of the Entities being shuffled isn’t zero but the categories have always overlapped so it’s probably more likely that the new characters may use different categories than Smirke when referring to grouping the Entities. However, that wouldn’t suddenly mean that the Desolation or some other Power doesn’t exist, just that they are being viewed through a different lens than the previous universe.

Now, there has been a super popular theory floating around Reddit that the Entities are now drawing power from desires instead of fear. Which is a theory I personally don’t buy for a single second. There’s the earlier aforementioned point and goal of The Web’s plan sure but I also think the theory makes little sense since nothing about the first few episodes so far has really changed how the Entities have behaved in my opinion.

The truth is the Entities have always been heavily tied to desire, even in the original TMA Gertrude mentions that the Eye is also connected to the desire to know and understand even if in doing so you could get hurt.

We also know that people with certain desires or personalities are more likely to be attracted to certain Entities as they are more likely to intentionally or unintentionally cultivate their respective fear. It goes without saying that a person prone to violence and the desire to attack others is more likely to feed the Slaughter. If you want more specific examples, Jon is noted as being extremely curious and wanting to understand so he gravitated towards The Eye (an Entity revolving around the fear of knowledge, information, having secrets revealed, being found, etc.), Peter was an extreme loner so he gravitated towards The Lonely (an Entity connected to the fear of being alone) and Annabelle gravitated towards The Web and she is noted as having been extremely manipulative as a child.

Desire isn’t anything new in TMA and it acts as the flip side of the Powers that encourages people to hurt others due to specific desires and wants. For example, in TMP RedCanary fits with what we’ve seen of people connected to the Eye and a desire to know / see, and Daria’s desire for physical perfection resembles the gym we see Jared Hopworth running and the people in it trying to get the perfect body in TMA. We even see Daria’s roommate freak out when she sees her so I would say it’s more likely that the Flesh or some other similar Entity was reaching out to her and / or make her an Avatar, and Daria might not have even been the target for the Flesh’s fear but rather her roommate or the people around her. Then again we do get the description of a lot of fear during the tattoo session in the episode and the idea of someone permanently mutilating your body physically is very Flesh.

Hopefully, you understand a bit where I’m coming from now and why I won’t be using some of the common theories floating around as my frame of reference, since I feel like they sort of miss the complete picture or just try to pretend like TMA didn’t happen. So I’m working off the assumption that at most the Powers might be viewed differently but they are still intact enough to ascribe them to Smirke’s categories. This might turn out to be a mistake in the future (especially since this episode seems to be poking fun at those categories) but completely disregarding established information or trying to start from complete scratch is as equally likely to end up being a mistake. I also find the idea that the Fears just did a 180 and started feeding off of desire even though they are acting how they always have to be a stretch. Of course, the uncertainty and guesswork is part of the fun of doing these I suppose.

Episode 1: “First Shift”

Okay, back to what I was saying before. The O.I.A.R organization Sam, Teddy, Alice, and their coworkers are working for is almost definitely associated with the Eye or maybe some other similar Entity. We know in this universe the original Magnus Institute burned down at some point so it’s possible that the Eye looked for a new main center of power or place to conduct its ritual. We know the organization Teddy is working for is a government one and the Eye is also the fear of being watched. A fear that often goes hand-in-hand with the fear of government or something governments sometimes do to keep people in line.

The ability of the computers to play statements by searching through the internet and snooping into various forums, servers, private messages, etc. to find information it shouldn’t and share the with other people is very Eye and ironically in TMA we have seen a website that might have been aligned with the Eye called Sparksfly.com 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.” So it’s a website that revolves around knowing too much.

We also see Sam share a major trait that those attracted to the Eye often have, extreme curiosity. Jon had this trait (which is partially why he was picked as being the Archivist by Jonah) and Jon, Tim, and Melanie went to the Institute for answers about their encounters with the supernatural. Once again, if you want to hear my full thoughts and explanations about the Institute you can see it here (The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss).

Further emphasizing the Eye connections, it seems like something is watching and recording the people working in the facility. This could be The Eye but it’s important to consider that it could be The Web spying on people again for some new plan or in order to manipulate The Eye again. Right now it could go either way because we don’t know if the Eye can watch everyone in this facility like it could in The Magnus Institute so it might need to use devices such as cameras and microphones in this specific instance but it could also be The Web basically posing as The Eye again (like how several characters assumed the tapes to belong to The Eye before it was revealed to be connected to the Web in TMA) while it gathers information if we want to assume that The Eye would already know everything happening in the facility.

The computers in TMP have been pretty interesting. They are pretty old and while Entities can and have manifested as very modern technology, such as cameras, they are noted to be more likely to manifest as old objects (probably because things that have been around longer are more likely to be more engrained in the social conscience and have more associations an Entity can use). It could also simply be to highlight the oddity of the computers. They are too old of models to have any voice reading software yet they do anyway. Which probably implies something supernatural because the reading itself can't be coming from any technology. It could be coming from some sort of person, monster or even directly from the Eye. Of course, the computers are reading out statements. When asked what programs like FR3-d1 (FREDDY) do Alice says “It searches online databases, newspapers, forums or whatever for incidents, flags them, then passes them through to us for assessment.” Which just ties into compiling statements and what I said before about The Eye gathering information.

The job assigned to Sam and his coworkers seems to be to sort through statements which is one of the jobs the Archivists like Jon and Gertrude technically had in TMA. It was actually a major plot point that Gertrude purposefully made the Archives disorganized and Jon tried to reorganize them early in the series. When Sam starts reading the statement given to him he pauses and says “This is…” to which Alice replies “Yeah, they're all like that. At least this one is short, nice easy start for you. So, once you've read it, you get out the binder…” So… the statements are probably just as horrifying as ever and it’s important to point out this has always been one of the major themes of The Eye. The Eye doesn’t seem to just be the fear of being watched but knowledge in general. This can take the form of someone watching you or knowing secrets for sure but it can also take the form of you yourself having seen too much or witnessed something you didn’t want to. This is why Jonah can shove horrifying information into the heads of Melanie and Martin in TMA (he can force them to see or know things they don’t want to).

Additionally, in MAG 200 (Last Words) we learn in what order the Powers were born in and the fears that led to their creation and 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.

So statements aren’t always just the fear of someone hearing a story but the idea of being forced to live / relive or witness something horrifying.

Anyway, after Alice pulls out a binder this interaction occurs

ALICE CONT.

“...And look up whatever’s mentioned most in the case. Looking at this one we go to “D” and… Sam, eyes on me now. We go to “D” and, right, would you say this is more "Dolls comma watching" or "Dolls comma human skin".”

SAM

“(a bit shell-shocked) I- Uh- I mean- I guess the human skin bit is only implied, so... both?”

ALICE

“Nah you can only pick one, Freddy's dumb as rocks. Right, so, after each entry there's four numbers. That’s the DPHW. So, “dolls comma watching” is... 1157. Then you cross reference with the table here, that would be a 2-C, and then you type that into the box here, along with date of incident if there is one and today’s date. Which gives us… Alice’s quickly types.”

ALICE CONT.

“CAT2RC1157-12052022-09012024 and then we hit submit.”

This is actually a very enlightening interaction. Something TMA touched on is that while sorting the Entities can be useful for noting certain interactions or behaviors it can easily reach a point of hubris if one tries to perfectly map and understand the fears. As Jon points out to Martin Post-Change, the categories of the Entities are just boxes and they don’t always fit cleanly into them. The Entities are actually all connected as one larger whole and can overlap greatly or multiple Entities can be at play at once,

In MAG 80 Leitner compares all the Entities to being body parts of a larger whole and the seemingly obtuse way of organizing the statement Sam is seeing are actually thematically very similar to a Domain we see in MAG 183 known as “The Monument.” Jon described the Domain as “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.”

Martin even points out that the architecture looks similar to the Institute to which Jon says “It makes sense. After all, it was built on the ruins of what Robert Smirke constructed.” So while the categories are fun and useful, TMA goes out of its way on several occasions to show that trying to cleanly organize, separate, and / or understand them perfectly is an act of hubris. I’m not sure if the Entities have a sense of humor but considering that an entire Domain was meant to comment on the absurdity and obtuseness of trying to perfectly organize the Entities and range of human fear as pointed out by Jon then something on a smaller scale could very well be possible.

The fact that Sam and company are only allowed to pick a single category for the dolls “wearing skin” or “watching” despite both being present further highlights the oversimplification at play. Wearing skin is something often seen with The Stranger and it has a connection to many dolls because of the fear of the uncanny valley. However, The Eye has a major emphasis on watching and the idea of an unblinking glassy eye fits very well with what we know of the Entity. Also, as mentioned earlier Entities can manifest as almost everything and on top of that we have seen people, Domains, and artifacts connected to multiple Entities at the same time. Martin was connected to the Lonely and Eye, his Domain was connected to the Eye and Lonely, and Gertrude mentions the Key of Solomon being a leitner connected to more than one Entity. There have even been statements with multiple Entities appearing and attacking the same person, such as in MAG 20 (Desecrated Host) with Father Edwin Burroughs. Who at least encounters The Eye and Flesh and possibly even more Entities.

After Sam submits his report he becomes curious as to where it goes but Alice doesn’t seem interested. In this regard Sam is actually quite similar to Jon and many other followers of the Eye and their attempts to understand everything that is happening. I’m not sure if Sam will become an Avatar but I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up pulled into The Eye’s clutches (if he’s not in them already).

We then get a statement from NORRIS which Alice pauses and explains that apparently the voices started appearing about a year ago. There is a rather shoddy explanation about a sound card so I think most likely this was of supernatural origin. The appearance of the voices could potentially mark when the Entities, like The Eye, showed up in this universe but it’s important to mention that we don’t actually know when the Entities showed up in this universe. We know that time can become finicky when traveling from universe to universe. This is shown in MAG 114 with Anya. Interestingly, when she went into the gap in reality The Web was making it was April 23rd 2009 HOWEVER when she came out it was April 9th 2009 and when she gave the statement she said the 23rd was somehow tomorrow which made no sense. So one thing we have to ask ourselves is how parallel does this univere’s timeline run with the original because it seems like different universes may be at different points in their timeline even if this universe is very similar. So much so that one universe may be several days “behind” another as a possibility. So when the Entities got dragged to the new universe we can’t actually rule out that the Entities may have shown up way earlier in that universe than when they left the TMA universe due to these universal “timezones” at play. They could have easily ended up years or decades earlier in this universe than the TMA universe we started in. Heck, it’s not even impossible that they were sent to the beginning of this universe (but that’s less likely than the idea that they just appeared during the stone age or something).

Alice also mentions that Colin wanted to “destroy the computers with a hammer” when the voices started which ties into what I said earlier about The Eye and not wanting to know something via sight or hearing.

Before we talk about NORRIS’ statement it’s interesting to note that there are three voices, with CHESTER and AUGUSTUS being the other two, and NORRIS and CHESTER being the most common. This is an interesting detail and may point to some factor at play that is preventing the voices from being completely random. Maybe they each read different types of statements or statements with different qualities? Maybe they pull statements from different places, different entities, or it’s just that they are loosely based on how much fear the statement might elicit in the listener or even just the length? I can’t say.

Anyway, we listen to NORRIS’ statement from Harriet Winstead and it appears that her partner, Arthur, was at some point taken in the night and replaced with something. When Harriet asks “Arthur” if it’s really him he says “Some of him.” This is almost definitely The Stranger at play. This plays out basically exactly like an encounter with other Stranger related beings such as the infamous “Anglerfish” from TMA. If we believe Annabelle’s explanation from TMA it’s even possible that the Anglerfish got pulled into this new universe due to being part of the Stranger as a monster. The Stranger embodies the fear of the unknown and the uncanny and while this statement does take place at night and mention shadows I can’t really say it relates to an Entity like The Dark all that much. Considering how strangely Arthur is noted to be moving I assume that the Stranger is feeding off the fear of encountering something uncanny (in that it resembles something / someone you know but is noticeably off) or the fear of someone changing so much you don’t know who they are anymore if not just the idea of someone being replaced by a total stranger. It could also be more simply encountering someone who has an issue you can’t identify.

Sam mentioned how upsetting the statement was which ties into what I said earlier and seems similar to the statements on the tapes in TMA. Martin was similarly noted to be rattled or mentally worn down when taking statements on at least one occasion.

Gwen is very interesting since she seems super invested in accurately categorizing the statements, unlike Alice. This obsession with categorizing and understanding the Entities or their manifestations is something we have seen with Angus Stacey (a previous Archivist who apparently wanted to recategorize Smirke’s Fourteen) and even Smirke himself. So this desire to categorize does have a precedent, especially for Eye related people or factions as we see with Angus. Gwen also prides herself on her accuracy.

Gwen is pulled into Lena’s office who confronts her about her behavior from earlier in the episode and Lena says “If you hate working here so completely, you are perfectly within your rights to resign. No one is forcing you to stay here.” to which Gwen responds “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I think this might actually be a cheeky TMA reference since within TMA Jon and company were quite literally being forced to keep working at the Institute due to a magically binding contract. How much Lena actually knows about the Entities or if there’s a similar force at play here is up in the air. Lena could be being quite literal here or sort of challenging Gwen to try it / call her bluff. It might also be ironic that a Bouchard has the option to quit but doesn’t.

Gwen also reveals she really wants Lena’s job which is extremely interesting since we later learn her last name is BOUCHARD in the credits. The last name Jonah took when he stole Elias’ identity. The fact that a Bouchard was the boss of the Institute in the previous universe and Gwen wants to be the boss of this organization is a very interesting parallel. It could point to the fact that Gwen knows something but that remains to be seen.

Sam encounters Colin and Colin eventually explains that he’s been tasked with developing an app and maintaining / fixing the computers but it’s very obtuse and nonsensical as he metaphorically bangs his head against it. This desire to understand a piece of old hardware is actually similar to an Eye related statement from TMA in MAG 148 (Extended Surveillance) involving a “Security Camera Instruction Manual.” Upon reading the Leitner the victim ends up metaphysically fusing with the camera system the manual is tied to but that’s not the important part. The important part is what led to Samson Stiller reading the manual in the first place. Specifically, a desire to understand and fix the camera system. Similarly, we have someone here struggling with an old system of technology that might also be tied to The Eye.

Gwen encounters Sam later and they have this interaction-

GWEN

“So what is it then?”

SAM

“Hmm?”

GWEN

“The awful, terrible thing that landed you here?”

SAM

“Does it have to be awful and terrible?”

GWEN

“Usually.”

This is very interesting because it shows Gwen is recognizing a pattern. A pattern we also see in TMA with characters like Jon, Tim, and Melanie who all joined the Institute looking for answers after strange encounters with the supernatural. It wouldn’t surprise me if, like the Institute that has burned down at this point, the O.I.A.R acts as both a way to feed off the fear of various encounters but also as bait to draw curious people to The Eye who then either give statements or end up aligned with the Eye.

Chester then gives us another statement (2 statements in one episode is quite the treat). This one is about someone named “RedCanary” investigating the ruins of the Institute during some spelunking. The Institute is noted as being “cleared” despite having no pictures which I think ties into The Eye’s relation to the idea of curiosity and wanting to see something even if doing so could put you in danger. When RedCanary attempts to upload the pictures they take they mention that they aren’t uploading. I think this could be The Eye trying to stoke curiosity since the lack of pictures means more people are likely to interpret the ruins of the Institute as not cleared and investigate the ruins in the future. It’s very possible or likely that despite being ruins the Eye still holds a lot of power there. RedCanary mentions that the ruins are in surprisingly good shape and seem like they haven’t been touched since the fire. But if the area is marked as “cleared” I wonder if someone did actually go to the ruins before but since they couldn’t upload the pictures there was just no evidence.

RedCanary says “It's got a really cool vibe, though. Like, if you’d told me it was a Victorian asylum or something before the fire I reckon I’d have believed you” which is ironic given that the Institute in TMA was heavily connected to a panopticon (which is a type of prison “with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners could at all times be observed”). Although, the original Institute wasn’t actually located on top of the panopticon and was later moved to London and built on top of it.

RedCanary mentions picking up a strange box and they are warned to not take it from the site. To which RedCanary says this “I know the rules. I’m going to go put it back, ok? So you can call off the dogs. I don’t need anonymous DMs calling me a thief or threatening me. I can dox people too, you know.” Doxxing is defined as “search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the internet, typically with malicious intent.” which ties in very well with The Eye’s theme of being found or revealing secrets.

RedCanary then begins to act very strangely. They post an image that’s taken down with the caption / description “Canaries should stay above ground.” An image so horrifying it needs to be taken down or people don’t want to see it ties into what I said earlier about the Eye and “seeing too much.” This is further emphasized by FlowersUnderground saying “Gross! Can we get some Mod action over here?” BadGrav31 says “What the hell is that? Are those eyes? Are you alright?” Pointing to this most likely be an incident relating to The Beholding since it likes to manifest as eyes in order to let people know they are being watched. It could be one of the other Entities like The Flesh and its body horror but I’ve already pointed out how much of this statement seems to parallel The Eye the most (and I think it’s rather fitting). It’s even taking place within the ruins of the Magnus Institute. Which was a place that was connected to The Eye (at least in the original timelines).

It’s also interesting that this specific statement plays after Gwen questions Sam as to why he’s here and we later learn Sam is trying to find information on the Magnus Institute. I wonder if The Eye or someone else is feeding Sam this info to stoke his curiosity, like both The Eye and Jonah did to Jon in TMA.

After that whole thing we later get this interaction between Alice and Sam

ALICE

Was it really that bad?

SAM

No worse than you warned me.

Although setting me up like that with the IT guy was

ALICE

Hilarious, I know. It’s win-win - you get a job, I get a fresh victim. It’s all in your contract.

SAM

Don't remember signing that particular bit of the paperwork.

ALICE

Gotta read the fine print, kiddo.

This could be a reference to TMA since Jon and co signed a contract that tied them to the Institute. Making them fresh victims for Jonah and we know that the contract in the Institute wasn’t a normal one. Of course, I’m not saying Alice is being literal, I’m saying this is a moment of irony for TMA fans.

Alice and Sam have another interesting interaction.

SAM

Do you- Is there- What’s up with them? You think they’re real?

ALICE

Alice exhales.

I don’t see how they could be? Mostly I try not to think of them like that, like, things that might or might not have really happened. They're just words on the screen.

SAM

I've no real idea what the OIAR even is.

Alice mentions she tries to not think about them, which ties into what I said about the idea of seeing or knowing too much in relation to The Eye. Just don’t think about it and try not to perceive it, you don’t want to, and ignorance is bliss.

We cut to one of the computers turning on and we hear Colin say this “(slightly manic) You’re not as clever as you think you are. You think you've got us all fooled, that no-one knows you're listening, But I do. I know. I’m going to find you and then… ” So someone or something is definitely listening. Whether it’s the Eye, Web, some monster or person aligned with one or more of them remains to be completely confirmed. Of course, the fear of being monitored or watched feeds the Eye.

Closing

Anyway, that’s my quick thoughts on this episode alongside some of the early TMP threads. I’m going to try to do one of these for each episode as they come out and I’ll try to keep them shorter but that may be hard.

#TheMagnusProtocol #TheMagnusArchives #TMA #TheEye #the entities #Analysis

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