#tma liveblog

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

updated and improved "all the fears want arthur lester carnally" list

(part 2/john-focused list here)

just a general tally of influence/Marks arthur would have received if you were playing by TMA rules. enhanced with further contemplation and with some peer review from @luci-z-wont-shut-up thankyouuu

the eye

VERY dedicated private investigator. consistently more invested in Solving The Mystery than, like, Remaining Alive

has not had a single moment of privacy since the series started bc there's this other asshole parked in his eyes watching and judging him 24/7. granted this never seems to like, bother him overmuch, bc he's usually got bigger problems than whether john is watching him strip, but still

was magic-stalked by the KIY and his cult throughout season 1

also kayne was watching his whole life and taking notes to roast him about his trauma later. apparently

something something metanarrative implications of an audience gathering around just to watch you suffer

scratch in The Nightmare watching his dreams and bad memories with fascination?

the spiral

possessed by a god of madness (twice) (three times?) (possibly more depending on how you count?)

was held hostage in a fake dream-realm mental institution with fucked up architecture so one of the aforementioned madness gods could pry information out of him (which also gets cryptically described as "Here, there, everywhere, nowhere. Anywhere." which is sooo the spiral-coded)

the king’s interference/manipulation in part 18, similar to above

scratch and lillith’s nightmares?

relies on someone else to be his eyes so there's always the lingering background awareness that he may be missing or outright misrepresenting information & consequently he can't trust what he sees

the end

he's died.

multiple times.

there's also the omnipresent threats on his life but mostly just that. like. he's been The Ended. doesn't get much more direct than that

the stranger

i still think "losing parts of your body to another consciousness while they are still attached to you" is VERY the stranger type activities

the king in S1 turning any weak-willed bystanders against him so any stranger could turn into a threat without warning

also, the king and scratch posing as normal people, even people he knows sometimes!

a lot of addison gave the sense of being surrounded by people who saw him as Other and could not be trusted

orbited by a cast of nonhuman Entities remaking their identities into something closer to humanity for one reason or another (john, yellow, scratch, kayne) and frequently not quite hitting the mark (ty luci)

the lonely

general sense of alienation from his peers that started young and—just vibe checking here, just taking a general temperature—doesn't seem to have gotten much better over time

"I want him safe." / "You want him back." / "...Yes." <- guy who can totally handle being alone

john left and he went fully off the deep end in the span of like, a day

it's just one of those things that i think he hates and is terrified of but also is constantly haunted by

the desolation

the whole vibe of the death/destruction specifically of things that could have brought meaning to the world, or people who had a lot to live for and could have touched other lives and had an effect on others, is... um. (gestures vaguely at the. all of them)

the whole “boy playing with matches, escaping unscathed while the house burns down” thing in part 20… also v v desocore both symbolically and literally

will do LITERALLY ANYTHING to avoid losing anyone else.

also pain. i feel like pain takes a thematic backseat but it is still a part of the desolation and good lord is this man in so much pain basically all the time

physically burning an object with emotional significance to a friend and in doing so burning their relationship to ashes out of anger at said friend's happiness (william)

physically burning an object with emotional significance to himself after having intentionally cut someone he cared abt out of his life, sacrificing that last connection to save himself (oscar's letter)

one time he did an arson at an in-progress building site and left a guy bleeding out in the ruins!! desolation come get your juice

also independently invented molotovs so he could use them to kill a different thing which was perhaps divine inspiration straight from the lightless flame itself??

the slaughter

start with parker's death and just work your way down from there tbh

the butcher confrontation "Whose life did you take without provocation, without threat? Who did you kill that was innocent?" vs the slaughter's "random, senseless, unmotivated violence"

also knowing that pain and death are coming but not where or when or how. Yup 👍

just. in general. he has been wading through his own and other people's blood in equal measure since the start of the damn show

got. slaughtered. the s5 finale feels. pretty slaughter aligned. imo.

the vast

timelines! go confront how meaningless your entire life is in the face of the uncaring multiverse! have a quick crisis about it! fuck meaning!

i still don't have a whole lot for this one tbh

he can't stop falling off things obviously but i don't think he's particularly scared of that. i think he's resigned to it. balance is a fickle beast and he has accepted that it does not return his affections.

one time a kraken almost drowned him?

the buried

known claustrophobe!

almost got pinned in a cave, unable to move, on multiple different occasions!

this man and caves in general have a very very bad relationship. they keep making him be underground and then terrible things happen to him down there.

the GUILT. suffocating life-destroying inescapable guilt. that’s buried af

drowning goes here also :)

the dark

"Funny. Before all of this, I used to fear the dark. Not in any crippling way, but – but now it’s… well, now it’s no different." (part 12)

used to be unnerved by the dark and now he is blind. checks out

the whole forest with the dark young in part 49

also, the dark world. it's in the name, baby. that's more john's fear but i think it has to rub off on him at least a little bit

the corruption

eeeeverything that happened with the witch. she tried to use him to breed maggots. now that's what i call Corrupt™

horig, also

mother darkness calls him “pestilence” and “spoils from a rotten tree” when they talk, which. hm.

obsessive, almost self-destructive levels of devotion to an entity that killed his friend and wrecked his life. listen i'm supportive i think they're perfect for each other in an ESH way i'm just saying this probably also falls into the corruption's purview (ty luci)

ESPECIALLY considering john lives in his body like a parasite. not trying to be derogatory here but like, on an objective level. he is stealing his body parts. and arthur loves him. again, incredibly on-brand for the corruption

the web

he Doesn't Like Being Told What To Do >:[

ongoing vendetta against cult shit for this exact reason. the idea of not having fully free will seems to be very actively and deeply concerning for him

"I am the captain of my soul" and so on and so forth

john's (variably successful) attempts to manipulate him over the course of the show

more materially, having your body parts physically taken and moved by another is also sorta the web

patreon decisions... what if the web was a fuckton of tiny lil spiders that just sorta nudged you in one direction or another on occasion

got literally brainwormed by The Creature back in addison (twice!)

the flesh

Michael Fucking Faust.

also, had to bite his own finger off before that. in case you needed or wanted some bonus points

kind of also the witch again, in terms of having your personhood disregarded in favor of simply being Meat to other beings to feed on

the hunt

HOO BOY has he ever been Hunted. so many times by so many different things. take your fucking pick

also: "You are hunting." / "Predators need to be hunted." <- basically an active prayer to the hunt

this man is prey animal rage incarnate honestly. go!! lose yourself in the bloodlust!! kill them before they can kill you!!!!

john would really appreciate it if he was a little Less cozy with the hunt tbh :(

the extinction

i'm actually not counting this one bc it doesn't take avatars and also doesn't rrrreally exist yet

he's lived through a world war and a pandemic. how's that. i think that's as good as it gets.

CONCLUSION: i still think arthur should go shake hands with the vast and get carried off by a bird and hope that gets the rest of these assholes to fuck off. i think it's his best bet atp.

[livingonsugar]

Joshua Gellespie is something else. When facing some disturbing horror literally LIVING IN HIS HOME FOR OVER A YEAR he’s like “it is what it is” and freaking outsmarts said horror. Uses said horror as a FREAKING COFFEE TABLE.

He casually accepts the fact that there could be a dead body in this mysterious coffin, and when something starts scratching against it, he’s like “okay time to turn up the music I guess”

Like, “yeah so then I started sleepwalking - I think the coffin made me do it but whatevs - I would almost open this creepy mysterious scratching coffin so I just froze the key in ice and that worked so I did it everyday.”

This guy is like the advertising poster of what you should do in case you end up in a horror movie. He didn’t open the coffin, tried to ignore it as much as possible, and outsmarted it as it lived in his own house.

What a legend man.

[forcekenobi]

deeply obsessed with the magnus archives episode about the plumber who simply did not notice that people were trying to skin him. like that would be me

[ravelqueen]

I do love all the ladies in the magnus archives, but jeez the other interpersonal interactions have been hard to listen to.

Martin is def on Notice (for a) always complaining about Jon just fucking off and doing dangerous stuff alone only to be doing the exact same thing this season b) being an ass to daisy, like how dare he!!)

I do really wish everyone would lay off Jon a bit more, I mean, it's not like I don't get it, he's clearly become even more Creepy, definitely going into monstrous territory and they are right to be Wary of him and his developing powers, especially since he's hiding it but they are also asking him to use it and he's trying?

please cut the pathetic little man a break, if you're worried he's turning more and more into a monster, fully pulling away from him every time they do find out is not going to make him more likely to tell you going forward and if you want him to keep hold of his humanity you really really need him to tell when he's slipping?

On the other hand: jfc Jon, it is not a good look that you're rationalising away the fact that you've like... Traumatised 5 people bc you were feeling peckish lol

[shadow-the-crow]

NOOO MIKE :'(

Not only did she kill him she also buried him

How dare you do this to my poor sky boi :(

[lune-acracy]

Just a guy live blogging about TMA because I'm trying to finish all of tma before Tmagp is over and it's funny-

Discord screenshots of my discord live shit lmaoo

Currently on 107 we'll see how it goes!

So far Jon's being Jon-

[morganmnemonic]

I'm watching The Magnus Archives for the first time (i think im going to start tagging posts relevant to this with "tma liveblog" so I don't have to keep specifying). I just started season 2, and I've got to say I'm with Jon's paranoia on this one. Martin IS more competent than he's letting on. His soft, sweet, british voice is just so disarming that even hearing him talk about surviving the worm siege, I stilll mentally categorized him as "likely to die first". Sure he survived, but thats because Prentis let him go. If he actually got wormed, he'd probably just perish. Turns out, his initial idea for what would happen if he got wormed was performing emergency worm removal surgery on himself with a pocket knife. He sounded serious too, like he was mentally prepared to go through with it without hesitation if that's what it took. And if we look at what each of the characters did during the worm invasion,

Jon made no judgement calls that significantly impacted group survival one way or the other (+0) and got very wormed at the end (-1) for a grand total of -1 survival points.

Tim didn't notice that Prentis was in the archive and nearly got got (-1), sent Sasha ahead to get help, which resulted in the fire suppression system going off and saving himself and Jon from certain death (+2), got surrounded by worms in Jon's office (-1), and got very wormed at the end (-1), for a grand total of -1 survival points.

Sasha saved Tim from Prentis (+1), successfully got help, saving Tim and Jon from certain death (+2) and died (-1). For a total of 2 survival points.

Martin directed an injured Jon and Sasha to a safe place to hide from the worms and provided an effective tool for worm removal (+2), hid the stash of fire extinguishers that saved Tim from certain death (+1), and kept himself out of mortal peril for the entire duration of the invasion (+1). 4 survival points. He didn't even get injured. He's the only one who survived without intervention by forces beyond his control. Martin didn't play the part of first to die. No, this man was born for the roll of Final Girl.

And I don't think he's evil, and I don't think he killed Gertrude. But I do think that he's entirely capable of murder, if that's what it takes to survive. And I do think he will continue to exert his agency in the story in ways that the other characters and audience forget to expect from him. Not me, though. I learned my lesson. As entirely disarming as his demeanor is, I'm not going to underestimate him a second time.

[kindlingofsorts]

just got to the end of tma s2. what the fuck??

[lavendertrash39]

h. holy hell. so. uh. scrutiny. holy fuck

[monarchetype]

Oh my god I think I just clocked an inspiration for The Magnus Archives

A quote commonly misattributed to Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception is: "There are things that are known and things that are unknown; in between are the doors." (This probably started with the band The Doors claiming it was the inspiration behind their name.)

In TMA, the Eye is the clear representation of "the known", and the Stranger is the representation of "the unknown."

But there's also something in between them, or maybe outside of them, that embodies deception, illusion, and fooling the senses- the flaws in our ways of knowing the world. The Spiral. And what does the Spiral have an affinity with? Doors.

I dunno if I'm a genius or just losing it but my jaw dropped when I put this together.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

i want a tma malev crossover where it's early series tma but later series malev and elias takes one look at arthur and is like "oh goddammit one of the other avatars is stealing my great awesome ritual idea. and they're so much further along than i am. fuck. who is in charge of this guy i have to kill them." unaware that no, nobody is grooming him to be a focal point of anything or whatever, this is completely divorced from any intentional ritual thing, arthur lester is just the universe's least favorite human

[forcekenobi]

picked up the magnus archives again, obsessed with the way jurgen leitner sounds like slightly more jovial eeyore

[tired-nonbinary-rat]

back from bird camp! TMA liveblog resumes!

Jon said he missed himmmm 🥺

[shadow-the-crow]

NOO PLEASE NOT THE CALLIOPE

*shivers in fear*

[lune-acracy]

Tma live blogging pt 2

110 - Creature feature

Martinnnn yay Martin we love our Martin here

I love every episode with Martin so much (Is that probably because of our many Jon headmates that like to listen to tma as well? Maybe-)

[kindlingofsorts]

all i want to do is listen to the magnus archives, unfortunately god made me in his image and i am a fucking coward so when night falls i have to think happy thoughts so the fucking Horrors don’t get me.