hi this is so random but i need to wax poetic. you have no obligation to reply to this. also i do not mean this in a parasocial way at ALL lmao i recognize that idk you trust. i first found ur blog in 2020 as a eighth grader in lockdown that was completely lost. i had lost my uncle to covid during that time and went from being a stellar student to receding into my shell and watching my grades tank. my shit home situation and undiagnosed depression led to me sinking into any form of escapism possible, mainly thru the form of books. i was super obsessed with perry johnson LMAO at the time and had all the time in the world to look into the fandom. this was around the time the unnamed author was just, like, violently and belligerently racist and scathing to any fans that questioned otherwise. being a tumblrina, i went to this site to see people comment on this, only to find you and ur mutuals were the only people openly discussing how he was just plain vile. i remember how sickened i felt seeing how you and other people of color were getting doxxed and threatened for pointing out what i thought was incredibly obvious. as a rlly sheltered person of color, this was the first time it struck me that the world was lying about how much they were actually willing to stick up for us, as before that i was just stupidly optimistic. anyways bc of that i started checking ur blog like EVERYDAY because of how much your words resonated with me. i was in complete awe of just how witty you were, and how you took no shit from people. granted this was a defense mechanism from crazy ass white fandom bitches but it was still weirdly inspiring. i still remember seeing u pull out the yale trap card so often and being like, oh shit this girl is something else lol thats hysterical. for the rest of high school i would keep up to date with u and specifically ur writing and poetry on promethes. kal i need you to realize your words actually rearranged my brain. the poems about your great grandfather, your mother, your pos friend, of being a horror, to love and to be loved is rest, everything EVERYTHING is etched into my memory. i really feel like i stumbled onto the modern fucking plato or something. anyways my critical thinking skills and love of poetry both are strongly influenced by you. i used to be the kind of person that hated everything and couldnt bear the thought of tolerating this world for another second. but your unyielding positivity and optimism, and insistence that kindness being the more difficult choice is inherently more radical really changed me. ik u didnt invent that or yadda yadda but u really made it seem real. im still learning to take each day slower, to breathe in a little deeper, but the beauty of so many things i previously dismissed is so obvious to me now. that post you made about you and ur mutuals educating a whole generation is so true lol. so just thank you. honestly thank u thank u thank you from the bottom of my heart. im a senior now who just submitted my yale application tonight and thought of you and im a little drunk right now so i think thats why i wrote this whole ass essay but just. like idk. u changed me and idek know you. i made my friend who got into princeton a trap card bc urs was so inspiring lol. anyways i truly hope you have a peaceful happy life and a good night. your soul is really such a beautiful thing and you deserve the world pls never settle for anything less

idc if it’s parasocial i love u and want the best for u and know u will go far and i almost doxxed myself by telling u the city i live in so u could look me up if you’re ever here lol. ik im a stranger or whatever but im proud of u idc ur like my adopted little sibling now. also @taumoeba yale card inspiring generations

Tape Recorders and the Broken Camera - A Theory

This came to me yesterday and I then spent ~2 hours writing this out. It’s Incredibly self indulgent and probably a bit ramble-y but sometimes you need to let yourself say and much as you want about your hyperfixation.. as a treat.

Word count is 1.5k, let me know what you think!!

TLDR: The Tape Recorders were able to manifest within Upton House as both they and the broken camera are artifacts of the Extinction. (Reasoning under the cut!)

As a start, I think it’s important to think about how Smirke’s 14 as a categorization system is more or less useless, but only about as useless as the categorization of things in real life. As much as a lot of folks’d like it to be (me included), nothing is really clearcut. In the context of TMA, consider the fear that your life, or life in general, is insignificant. Would this belong to The Vast (Insignificance and being small in the grand scheme of things) or The End (The inevitable end of your life, and the end of your impact in the universe)? Both? I think the answer to that depends on who you ask, honestly. Not only that, but there’s plenty of statements that don’t have a clear entity attached to them. Binary, Thrown Away, and Confession are a few examples of these.

The truth is that Smirke’s list of 14 isn’t as clear cut as we’d like to think. Trying to put things into clear cut boxes is something humans have been doing for forever, and Robert Smirke’s attempts at understanding The Fears are no different. The Fears are really just one amorphous thing, a spectrum (“colours except if colours hated [us]” (MAG111)) that doesn’t really fit any one definition without exceptions.

I think remembering this is important when thinking about how Jon, Martin, and co are going to try to reverse The Change. Using the Web or the Eye or some other plot-important power to reverse the apocalypse doesn’t seem likely to me since these fears don’t Really exist, and are just the names we call aspects of the one amorphous Entity that feeds on fear.

(“the Fears[…] can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?” (MAG160))

This is also relevant now considering how the tape recorders were still able to manifest in Salesa’s oasis, outside of the influence of both the Eye AND the Web.

So how was this possible? For the entire podcast it seemed that Jon’s tape recorders were Eye aligned. I mean, they’re an Eye avatar’s tape recorders for a reason. However, they aren’t a staple of an Archivist’s abilities; there were archivists before tape recorders existed (MAG53), and notably, Gertrude never used them when reading statements for herself (MAG111):

ARCHIVIST: Did [Gertrude] read statements?

GERARD: Sometimes. If she was getting shaky. They perked her up, I think. Feeding the Eye, you know? I’d sometimes hear her through the wall, just reading into the air, feeling it all.

ARCHIVIST: She… she didn’t use a tape recorder?

GERARD: Not when I was with her. She travelled light. Left things behind.

That means the tape recorders are unique to Jon rather than The Archivist as a role.

I’ve seen a lot of theories about the tape recorders being manifestations of the Web instead, but despite how cool these are, I don’t think thats true. For one, how do randomly-manifesting tape recorders listening in on what is happening to you feed the fear of being manipulated or losing control? The recorders themselves are passive; they almost never impact the actions of the characters themselves. In fact, most of the time they’re completely ignored - especially in S5. Though it’s true that Web-touched artifacts like Jon’s lighter often get swept past and left unconsidered to benefit the Web’s plan, that isn’t really what’s happening here. They’re very aware that these tape recorders aren’t normal (MAG161):

MARTIN: Hey – Hey, when did you start recording?

ARCHIVIST: (confusion) I – didn’t. I only brought one, and I’ve been using it to play the tapes.

MARTIN: Oh. (sigh) That’s not a great sign.

ARCHIVIST: No. No, it’s not.

And again in MAG181:

SALESA: Now tell me, do you know why there’s a tape recorder here? I noticed it just now, but I don’t believe I actually own one.

ARCHIVIST: Uh… Not really.

MARTIN: They sort of just… follow us round.

This doesn’t really sound like something that would fit the Web. You could argue that the recorders are the Web’s way of getting information on what’s going on with Jon and Martin, but they already use spiders for that. Also, the recorders were still able to manifest within Upton House (!!!) where supposedly no power could get through. But it’s not like there’s some Other eldritch entity unrelated to the Fears that the recorders could be related to, so how was the recorder able to manifest?

I think it has to do with how Salesa’s broken camera is related to the Fears. It was unclear which fear it was aligned to in this episode, only that it feeds on “the quiet worries that come from living in hiding” (MAG181). That’s why I started this whole thing talking about Smirke’s list. I don’t really know which of the fears that would apply to. Honestly, of the main 14, it could apply to a combination: The Dark (fear of not knowing what’s out there beyond your sanctuary), the Lonely (fear of hiding alone for the rest of your life), and the End (Fear of the inevitable collapse of your safe haven and your death.) I really don’t think it could be any one of these fears alone, only a combination could explain the camera’s existence.

The weird thing, though, is that we’ve never really seen an artifact this complicated before. Most artifacts had a pretty basic, non-nuanced relationship to the fears. Never as vague as this camera.

Unless!

THE BROKEN CAMERA IS AN ARTIFACT OF THE EXTINCTION!

If you think about it, all of the aspects I mentioned above for the fear of being in hiding can be connected to the extinction.

The Dark: The Fear of not knowing what’s out there beyond your sanctuary The Extinction: The fear of what’s beyond your safe haven, what’s changed without you being there

The Lonely: The Fear of hiding alone for the rest of your life The Extinction: The fear of being the last person alive, forced to reckon with the changed world/whatever you’re hiding from alone

The End: The Fear of the inevitable collapse of your safe haven and your death The Extinction: The fear of being the last of what’s left of humanity, with the end of your life being the end of all of us

Not only that, but the camera itself is a manmade device (with the extinction having heavy technological themes). It’s also prime real estate to feed on the fears of those with bunkers/doomsday preppers, and Salesa’s acquisition of it was DIRECTLY related to wanting to survive a potential apocalypse. Even if it weren’t inherently extinction related from the beginning, its current use means that the fear it’s absorbing IS extinction related, whether or not that was the reason for its original manifestation.

So with the broken camera being an artifact related to the extinction, what does that mean for the tape recorders?

What if the reason the tape recorders can manifest within the Upton House is because they share an entity with the camera? And they can exacerbate the fear of being in hiding without removing the hiding aspect that makes it work? (after all, the tape recorders did first manifest again after the change when Jon and Martin were in hiding at the safehouse.)

Same with the creature of the Crawling Rot that paid Salesa a visit, the tape recorders can serve to remind the user of the camera that their bunker is not impenetrable. The reason it’s different from the corruption creature is that the tape recorder was Able to manifest within Upton House rather than just wander in. If it’s not related to feeding the same fear as the camera, why would the camera let it in at a risk of ruining its purpose?

The tape recorders’ connection with the broken camera seems to point to them being extinction-aligned, but they also serve as a form of record of How the World Changed and What is Left Without Us. This concept was a huge aspect of S5’s extinction statement (MAG175) as well.

This raises a lot of questions about why the tape recorders manifest for Jon specifically. Is he an extinction-aligned eye avatar? Are they not Really his, but manifest around him as they recognize his importance in the story of the apocalypse (which would make sense, since tapes have manifested for Just martin throughout S4 and S5)?  What does this mean for the extinction and how the Change can be reversed? I’m not really sure to be honest!! I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Starting at the beginning of S5, though, I thought that the podcast had to end with Jon’s death, as the tape recorders, a part of Jon, are the way we hear what actually happens in the podcast. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case anymore. The recorders, as manifestations of the extinction, wanted to drink in the fear of an incoming/ongoing disaster. It’s extremely likely they wouldn’t care to hear the relief of a saved world.