This draft isn't even actually a draft, it's just me putting down my full thoughts FOR the draft. Why is it already 45 fucking pages long, I'm going to throw myself off a cliff

Hey, I don’t even know how to begin this, but your f/os' list made me research the “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, so now I am… deeply disturbed, but at the same time awfully curious.

How does your relationship with AM works? What is your s/i doing on Earth, what is going on in terms of connection to the original story? How did AM and Juniper met, what is the dynamic, how exactly did AM fell in love with human? Like, what is the lore?

(I’m also curious about your selfship with Elias, especially because researching who he is has finally made me acknowledge “The Magnus Archives” as a highly fascinating concept and a story that is now added to my “to read” list (or would that be “to listen”?), but I guess that would be too many questions to answer for one ask.)

– villain-in-love

this has me shaking like a chihuahua from excitement thank you so much i LOVE being able to talk abt the dynamics of these relationships!!

the main universe where juniper and AM meet is for a fic of mine, where the apocalypse hasn't happened, and instead AM was left in a sort of computer power-saving mode, so to speak. he's been a dormant entity for all these years, believing that he took out his rage on humanity, and the events of the short story are real to it. juniper happens to have a very close friend named dallas who is working on a project to possibly revive AM as a sort of test run of putting a computer into an android body/human-like body, and that's how they meet, because dallas thinks that juniper would be capable of getting to know AM and figuring out how his mind works, essentially. AM reluctantly bonds with juniper, because it needs someone who can be patient with it, and juniper is more than capable of that. the concept is very self-indulgent and doesn't make an entirely huge amount of sense, but the two form a bit of a bond and understand one another after a while, and since he isn't… well, just wires in a "straitjacket of substrata rock" as he states in the game, he isn't as murderous. a lot of how AM is as a character is because humans made it as a weapon, and confined it to the earth, with no ability to create or understand why he exists as it does. AM, in a sense, reminds me a lot of the concept of angels in Judaism, as he is created by a being who is able to create, but it himself cannot, and is jealous of the things that it was made by, aka humanity. when this barrier is removed, and he's able to move around, create things (he helps juniper in their garden, which winds up a good outlet for him), find interests outside of it's original created purpose, and slowly build a connection with people, he has a lot less of that hatred flowing through it. because the very things that humanity did that made it hate, he now doesn't have, and is able to work through the emotions that come from that.

as for elias and francis, their dynamic is really fun because they basically want to dissect one another's brains. elias finds the fact that francis is hiding his true intent for being there very fascinating, especially because it's so… mundane, compared to the reasons many people come to the archives? and while elias could just reach into francis' mind and find everything out, he doesn't, because that would ruin the fun.

also, i'm really glad you got into both of these pieces of media! they're fun to analyze, and TMA can be extremely fulfilling to get into if you like eldritch horror concepts with little bits of comedy here and there. though, i never finished season 5, it got a bit too grimdark and bleak, but i fully plan to pick it up again and finish the series at some point!