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vickozone · 6 months

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The Magnus Archives

-S4 Notes-

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

SOMETHING ABOUT FANART GOES HERE I THINK

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Handwriting translated below:

#121 Oliver. He’s dead and JON! YOU’RE OKAY!

#122 zombies and Jon’s first instinct from waking up from a 6 month coma is to read a statement. Icon.

#123 He just got back and Melanie wants to kill him and something is up with Martin. Also, The Web, I suppose. Coding?

#124 More Simon. What a guy. Also, Jon is… very concerned for Martin…

#125 The Slaughter is back and Melanie! CALM DOWN! MY HEADPHONES ARE ON LIFE SUPPORT AS IT IS!

#126 The Spiral clarity + Martin is being manipulated (SHE STABBED HIM!?)

#127 Another letter to Jonah. AND ELIAS IS JUST CHILLIN IN PRISON. GO OFF, KING!

#128 Breekon is nothing without Hope. The institute and ooo! Jon eye powers!

#129 Guy drowned in grandpa’s house and JON NEEDS AN ANCHOR! Also, very homosexual interaction.

#130 Meat ritual and JON! NO, SELF HARM IS BAD! YOU BETTER NOT DO WHAT I THINK YOU’RE IMPLYING!

#131 AAAA! AAAA! OH. OH NO. Jared is the Boneturner and Helen is an absolute queen <3

#132 Jon saves Daisy!! Yay! She is also The Hunt, but, whatever. The tapes drew him back…

#133 The Hunt ritual, and Basira… has feelingsss. The Hunt is about the chase, not the kill.

#134 The Extinction!? NO. Also Lukas is the worst. Hate that guy.

#135 “Have I ever told you how much I hate the sun?” -Manuela Lol, The Dark, The Vast, and The Lonely funded the space expedition.

#136 Annabelle! Creepy celeb puppet. And Daisy telling Jon he’s not responsible for everything gives hope. Yes! Therapy!

#137 The Slaughter ritual & Gertrude was fond of Gerry :( The Watcher’s Crown??

#138 “And then the sky blinked.” Elias is literally the ‘no need to thank me’ meme and Jonah and Smirke knew about the 14 fears and then he dies or smthn

#139 The life and crimes of Agnes. Jon MAYBE saw Peter’s plan and- PRAISE THE LORD, JON LIKES MARTIN!!

#140 Stupid Maxwell. Also, Santa is working working with the Devine Host (/j) & we’re going on a trip! :D

#141 Salesa statement from boat guy. Oh, Jon, I see why Martin has a crush on you now. 10/10 voice acting on everyone’s part.

#142 JEEZ, JON! You gave this poor woman literal trauma! Goodness…

#143 oh, it’s Manuela! Jon looked AT the darkness and HELEN IS A SAVIOR!

#144 MARTIN! We do NOT talk to people like that! Especially Daisy! This isn’t you! The Extinction is real, I guess, but, come on! Not cool.

#145 Gertrude is COLD. Dude’s head is somewhere in the institute- uh-

#146 5 people? Goodness, Jon. He can’t control it though, can he? Helen got Marcus and Basira is off to meet with Annabelle friggin Cane.

#147 Okay. No, he can control it. I love Anna. I also got Nikola flashbacks. Oh boy.

#148 Not 5 seconds in and Elias gets assaulted. Jon is worried for Martin and he read a statement about The Eye. A.

#149 Concrete Jungle. Oh and Martin is using Lonely powers. Greaaat.

#150 Homophobic endless houses and Melanie really said “nuh uh” to her job

#151 Simon is my new husband. Uhhh. He answered Martin’s questions, yada yada, he has Lonely powers

#152 More of The Buried. Jon and Helen chat more about avatar crap.

#153 Another odd desolation flesh cult, also Trevor and chic is here and he is HUNGRY

#154 Gerry’s dead dad gives a statement. J + M both F bomb, very gay, eye gouging is the only way out. (“It’s pretty drastic.” “What you gotta gouge your eyes out or something?” “…” “…” “…” “Fuck off.” <- funniest conversation in the whole series)

#155 Guy kills others to keep himself alive + MEL IS REMOVING HER EYES- OKAY-

#156 More extinction about an abandoned park and I am very scared for Martin

#157 another extinction- OMG MEL AND GEORGIE! Did… Helen stab Jon?

#158 SO MUCH. Martin played Lukas, Daisy is feral, ELIAS IS JONAH, Not!Sasha is loose, disaster duo is here, Martin is stuck in Lonely, Gertrude wanted ‘Elias’ to kill her. WHAT.

#159 Peter shares his story, is evaporated. “I see you, Jon…”

#160

Look at the sky, Martin. It’s looking back.

I OPEN THE DOOR!

#the magnus archives #tma #the magnus institute #tma spoilers #tma s4 #tma season 4

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somanyfuckedupiftruebooks · 1 year

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Mag 90

Ahh Tim and Elias. What a fun dynamic! We don't get to see these two interacting very often. This will go well probably.

Fuck yes. Tim's so great. Hit da bricks boi.

Yeah, good move Elias. No need to comment on the fact that Tim started mysteriously dying as soon as he started skipping work, that's not something that a normal person/employer would think is unusual.

There's nothing powerfully evil about the Institute!! It's just old!! The fact that no one can quit or escape is just because the building is weird!! That makes perfect sense. I am a normal boss and a normal man. :)

Elias is so fucking funny. Pointless busywork will distract you from the inescapable existential nightmare that your life has become. Don't try and leave again.

Huh, that's weird. Who keeps turning these tape recorders on at perfectly opportune times?

Also poor Martin. He's trying so hard and everyone is ignoring him so much.

It's so wild that Jared transferred from organised crime to an incredibly shifty off-the-books gym. Was this his plan all along? Was he just boneturning to earn enough money to get his small business off the ground?

Haha he has to Frankenstein his clothes together. And he embroiders his initials into them?? That's such a cute hobby for a giant meat man. Jared has major closeted energy.

👀😳👀😳👀😳

#a mag a day #mag 90 #reeah reacts to tma #the flesh #jared hopworth #tim stoker #elias bouchard #martin blackwood

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eliias-bouchard · 2 years

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hi hello

so, by coincidence, almost all the mike crew episodes i listened to were listened to when i was in the Peak of sleepyness due to anti-carsickness medicine and thus i remember like. 4 details about him and 1 of those is "short"

however. i am very Interested in him. so if you would not mind. could you talk about that transgenderism theme/parallel/thing. it sounds interesting

HI. okay so. this is going under the cut because it's decently long

when mike was 8 he got struck by lightning right. and then the spiral tries to eat him for like ten eleven years? Cool Shit.

the spiral is already full of transgenderism btw like the self perception and the changing of your body and the way Everything changes but like yeah. it's basically an allegory for his dysphoria.

so mike tries to find ways to avoid the litchenberg figure (which torments him w/ illusions of storms. could make a connection here between this and imagining himself as a boy).

he fails for like 9 yrs until he finds A Journal of the Plague Year, which infects his house and kills his parents & literally like, iirc, collapses his house from the inside out.

if we make A Journal be an allegory for a binder - helping him fight his dysphoria, but slowly rotting away at his relationships with his parents and eventually destroying the house he's lived in his entire life (could be seen as an allegory for perceived betrayal from his parents pov and destruction of his childhood from his pov)? come on. Come The Fuck On. he's so trans.

so yeah he then finds The Boneturner's Tale, which he then uses to try and remove his scar (oh yeah i didn't mention The Scar That Everyone Sees and Makes Him Feel Like An Outcast? Which Was Caused By The Thing That I'm Making An Allegory For His Dysphoria ??????????) but it doesn't work. one can argue this is him trying to lean into being cis but, again, it doesn't work - it only makes the scar (his dysphoria) worse.

he keeps going after leitners - allegories for ways of dealing with dysphoria - but none of them actually truly alleviate it (except for A Journal, which, as aforementioned, destroyed his relationship with his parents and eventually his childhood home) and he eventually gets rid of them one way or another.

we can see this as a cycling of labels - his experience w/ A Journal (the binder) might've put him off of IDing as a trans guy (due to its destruction of his relationship w/ his parents) and so he cycles through different identities - but eventually finds ex altiora (transness) and successfully uses it to not only destroy his dysphoria but also become something he's happy with. we can use him feeding the vast as an allegory for medical transition - testosterone, top surgery, bottom surgery if he wants it, the whole lot! (although obviously you dont need to kill people or feed them to an eldritch god to achieve medical transition lol)

plus him accepting his transness gives him a whole new community of people who not only understand his struggles (or at least can sympathise with him) but are also going through similar things (in the form of the fairchilds! and just other vast avatars generally).

so . yeah. jon even offends him by asking about his scar which is like. genuinely just how transgender of him. he has a preferred name that he has to correct people about. he probably knew other most transgender character ever gerry keay (btw pls ask me about how gerry is trans. please do it). he's even short. king. i love him

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phantomrose96 · 2 years

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How did you feel about the tma finale? I thought it was fine but after all of Jonny's warnings that "it will be sooo tragic don't get your hopes up" I was kind of disappointed by how mild it was. Nothing against a hopeful finale but it felt a little bit like it fizzled out. Any thoughts as a Tragedy Enjoyer (tm)?

You know I'm just theorizing, but as someone who has only a fraction of a fraction of the audience TMA has and is a Tragedy Writer, I've seen how a portion of an audience can get really intense and antsy about "if this has a sad ending I can't take it." My impression is the TMA audience was both large and had a lot of interaction with the writers so like, I'll bet Jonny heard that kind of thing hundreds of times. I could easily see that becoming like "the safety of my mental health is your responsibility" kind of message from a lot of people, which could really push someone to err on the side of over-warning about the ending.

My overall thoughts on s5 are... hard to pin down? I do think it's my least favorite season, but not because of any quality drop but because I just kind of didn't love the structure of it, I think. The sort of linear "we're questing to London" structure... I dunno.

A number of the stand-alone horror statements were some of the strongest in the whole series, I think! Rosie's statement about working for Elias all these years and Knowing something was wrong but just remaining complicit--excellent, loved that one. Jared Boneturner's one about twisting people's body dysmorphia against them with flower metaphors really hit. The meat processing plant one with the years worth of lines. The hospital that would try to make you better or worse on a whim each day. And I loved the reveal about The Spider pulling the strings all along. I was totally fooled thinking the tape recorders were just The Eye's way of snooping, but the fact that they were The Spider's web all along *chef's kiss*.

Oh also I loved that Jon could smite people. Good for him.

But it's. hmmm. It reminds me a little bit of a problem with later-season Supernatural, where they'd killed off near the entire recurring cast save for like 4 people. Just steadily lost people to be invested in. Sasha's dead. Tim's dead. Daisy's dead. Bigger antagonists like Peter are dead. Eliajonah spent 90% of the season in the gay baby panopticon (and killing him happened... kinda way too fast and short for me? Jonah was really the main antagonist and planned this for 2 centuries and puppeted Jon into becoming The Beholding's Special Little Boy but he didn't have a countermeasure for Being Beholded by said Special Boy?) Helen was fun but then Jon killed her! :< Georgie and Melanie were gone for most of the season too. Basira was the only kinda-regularly-present central character. And you know it's always kinda been The Jon Show, but there was a little more fun in that when Jon was being a stuck-up curmudgeon. He's... understandably... a bit more of a downer in s5. (Also found myself liking Martin a little less this season, but can't pin down why exactly.) Oh and, VERY much just a personal thing: but the way Jon would need to compulsively make statements just sat uncomfortably with me. Basira was joking about the bathroom metaphor but it really was like that.

Also THIS part is inevitable and there would be literally no way to avoid this - so much of TMA was built up as a mystery and now that we have most of the answers in s5 there's just. less to be intrigued about. We have most of the puzzle pieces so there's not much left to theorize about. And besides The Spider reveal, there wasn't really anything in s5 that was able to surprise me. The ending felt very straight-forward. And I figured from just about the beginning of the series Jon wasn't gonna survive to the end so that didn't surprise me. I was kinda thinking it might do one of those "we take the 3rd option!" things where they neither follow The Spider's plan nor Jon's plan but.

Anyway! I relistened to Angler Fish yesterday and it DOES hit much harder with retrospect

#chrissy listens to tma #ask #tma spoilers

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tmabutlesbian · 2 years

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i need to study mike crew's character cause i wanna ship him n integrate him in more of my hc's. this is me, reacting to his wiki page.

love that the only thing they say abt mike at the start of his page is that he's an avatar of the vast. like yh no shit

oh damn we have his date of death, i always forget tma is like. very well dated?? like months n days n shit i always forget, i assume its all very. up to interpretation. some of it definitely is. we dont got no bday tho :((( thats kinda sad

mike is: thin, pale, short, has the iconic scar on his neck n back, n has pale eyes. he also smells of ozone. king <3

ok, age 8, boy got hit by lighting, n then because his life might as well get worse, he gets chased around by a spiral avatar (not the distortion, which is always fun seeing other interpretations of the fears outside of the more iconic or reoccurring ones), that tormented him with illusions of storms, poor guy

omfg????? boy became an orphan by 17 cuz he found some corruption leitner n it killed his parents. king moved on tho n right away wanted to search for more, hoping it would help him with his spiral problem. pretty cool. true that i cant remember how he reacted during his statement, the wiki is just here to inform n shit, but hes very practical in a way. parents die because of powerful book. hes being chased by a powerful entity. theres gotta be some book that can help him. smart n practical, might also be a way to like. quickly move on from his parents' death by just. focusing on a goal. he sure is stubborn, so many years still alive whilst being chased by a monster is amazing

ok, 1996, we dont know how old he is, but he finds boneturners tale, tries to remove his scar, doesnt work cuz he's full of fractals ig so he leaves it in some library with some other books. he probs doesnt like his scar for trauma reasons, might also be for insecurity reasons, we all know how cruel children n teenagers can be

1997-98, he found ex altiora after frequenting some library. he bound the spiral creature to the book n devoted himself to the vast. i mean, shit, me too, u go ur whole life being tormented by some monster, some other power kills it, i too would devote myself to it, if anything for the fact that it can provide some type of protection. again, mike's a pratical n smart guy, but he obviously doesnt rly know know a lot abt the fears, hes kinda winging it, which is. very impressive. all that he's learned has been on the fly (not a pun either)

2005, he becomes a stalker, 2006 he keeps doing it n feeds his god of the vast by freaking one of the guys out. this is in paris, which means hes travelling around. probs already used to doing so on the hunt for leitners, he might as well keep going now that he has funky sky powers

2017 he meets our boy jon. scar is still a sensitive issue, which is valid, so he fucks jon up a bit after he offended mike abt it. he gives a statement but then he is killed n buried which is. just sad. he was so iconic

im gonna go down the statements n add anything else of value.

mag 4: page turner: love that the spiral creature is stuck there on the book, with mike's scarring, its kinda cool. also this was in 2012, statement in 2013. im assuming dominic n mike r of the same age since they used to play together, so i was hoping to see some hint abt his age.

also mike smells of ozone constantly probs due to becoming n avatar of the vast, since the book ex altiora also smelled of ozone. interesting.

mag 46: literary heights: mike is a uni student, or at least looks like one. so im gonna assume he was in his 20s?? during 1998. he also keeps his scar hidden.

books on demonology?? does he think the spiral monster is a demon? kinda fair tbh. also what kinda akward situations arose from mike having to run away from the spiral thingie everytime he smelled the ozone? did he leave in the middle of multiple classes?? did it catch him mid piss one time?? actually what if he was in the bathroom chilling n smelled ozone?? wtf do u do???

ok, mike being a bit of a hermit n staying inside his home for weeks, bunch of latin shit around him, probs from the demonology books. he stole ex altiora n then fled not after herbert found him but when the creature found him n he ran, with herbert giving chase.

mike performs some ritual with latin to bind the creature to the book in exchange for his devotion to the vast. he throws himself out the window with the creature following behind. jon believes the mike was using the book to protect or ward him, which yh seems like it.

ah ok the spiral thing is the lichtenberg figure which is what gives mike his scars ig. interesting how smth so related to the vast can actually be from the spiral depending on what it does n means, with the illusions of storms n what not. we always assume anything sky related is vast but here lighting is very much spiral. thats cool.

mag 75: a long way down: mike is described as a short young man. event happened during 2006, so rly it depends on what young man means for the statement giver. if in 1998 he was in his 20's, in 2006 hes around 28 years old, maybe. hes also wearing a grey faded suit so 1) not much for colors huh n 2) wears shit until they break, same

mike feeding the vast in a pretty chill way, probs very happy to be free of torment n also have cool fear powers. he does seem bored so it could be more of a chore for him than anything else, mike just wants to live basically. also pre leitner mike must be different from post leinter mike, since jon notes ppl change after using leitners. so theres also that. the loss of ur humanity might also do that to u but idk

mag 89: twice as bright: jude is in her 50s!! didnt know that.

mike hangs around with the fairchilds, which is just jude's way of saying hes from the vast. id assume mike wouldnt hang out with them, just feel like hes used to dealing with things alone. also he is closer to jon's lot than hers, which could mean several things. i guess mike did search for knowledge everywhere for a while, even if it was all for survival n not for a need to know.

mag 91: the coming storm: love how jon goes to meet mike n he offers him tea, which means they r at mike's house, he has a home. with tea in it. i wonder if hes good at making it or not. mike likes his privacy n also that jon should learn how to respect others, which tbh just feels like he is older than jon which yh, if this is 2017 n if in 2006 he was around 28, he is around 39, maybe.

theres no lasting damage from his lighting incident the doctors say, except the trauma i guess. "Lichtenberg figures are fractals and while he could not see them, his fingers could feel them on his skin. When he felt them in the dark they went on and on" now thats pretty interesting, no wonder he didnt like his scars much if they felt all weird n funky like that.

i just googled them n see this: "Lichtenberg figures are fern-like patterns that may appear on the skin of lightning strike victims and typically disappear in 24 hours." thats not what happened to out boy!! might been because it was a supernatural thing tho so yh. wonder if his doctors freaked out a bit, also wonder what kind of treatment he got from his unusual scarring. but i also think this might happen, but its rare.

after touching his scars, the spiral thing started chasing him. it tricked him by making him think a storm was always coming, n it never hurt him but it always terrified him, which is fair cuz i mean wtf

ohhh very much avatar of the spiral with the corridors, making him dream of endless lighting corridors. then he woke up, went to his small garden at the back, n he saw an endless dark forest, the branches reached down from the sky n there was a strong smell of ozone. its interesting how this is an avatar of the spiral but its so laden with the vast.

after parents die he understands theres more to the supernatural n starts exploring. "The creature that followed him was a branch of the Twisting Deceit, which had, perhaps foolishly, taken a form from the sky" interestinggggg so the entities can take forms of things related to other entities, this is so cool!!

"he faintly remembers feeling resigned and desperate, though he cannot understand these feelings now" hmm so post leitner n post becoming an avatar he doesnt remember why he felt resigned before doing so, but like, ure giving up ur humanity n shit, n mike did it cuz he wanted to live in peace, like ofc. its like choosing the lesser evil n shit.

he has killed multiple ppl since he says its hard to keep track, but also i feel like his memory is not the best, considering he cant remember the night he became an avatar correctly.

can be punched n killed pretty humanly so theres that as well. might also be because daisy is from the hunt tho.

thats all i have, this was kinda cool. my boy mike <3<3

#tma #the magnus archives #mike crew #tma mike crew #tmalesbeen talks

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themagnustournament · 1 year

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Redemption Round 2 - Match 47

Y'all really did my boy Jared Boneturner dirty in Round Two. Flesh is here with 147 votes from Round Two, and is against Desecrated Host with 132 votes from Round One and 139 votes from Redemption Round One!

MAG 131 - Flesh | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Statement of Jared Hopworth, the Boneturner, regarding his association with The Flesh and recent activities.

MAG 020 - Desecrated Host | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Continuation of the statement of Father Edwin Burroughs, regarding his claimed demonic possession.

#the magnus tournament #the magnus archives #tma #mag 131 #mag 131 flesh #flesh #jared hopworth #the bone turner #the boneturner #the flesh #mag 020 #mag 20 #mag 020 desecrated host #mag 20 desecrated host #desecrated host #edwin burroughs #the spiral #spiral #redemption round two

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ddanmeissu · 2 years

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i need someone i can yell at about my very niche tma au ;w;

(see me playing fast and loose between tma lore and mdzs canon under the cut wheeee~)

this is part headcanon, part drabble, all-around mess. just dont think too hard about it please

the classification of each entity isn’t fully documented yet, smirke’s 14 doesn’t exist, but each major clan has a specific fear that called their founders. there are also some entities haven’t been identified yet so a lot of fears bleed into each other

they’re still cultivators here. they’re cultivating fear.

golden cores are the physical manifestation of your connection with your god within your body. the more you feed it, the more connected you are to your patron, the more powerful you become.

each clan is a powerhouse to a specific entity but their disciples can be touched by multiple entities (and honestly, i cant make everyone a slaughter avatar) only the sect leader needs to be fully devoted to their fear god

Gusu Lan = Beholding, Qinghe Nie = Slaughter, Yunmeng Jiang = Hunt, Lanling Jin = Stranger, and Qishan Wen = Desolation

wei wuxian was once heavily touched by the hunt. his mother a famous Huntress and rogue cultivator and his father a servant and close friend to the sect of The Everchase

jiang cheng’s Hunt core is slightly weaker but its fine because they are of the same pack. they are partners, brothers in everything but blood, and will hunt down anyone who dares to hurt the other.

jiang yanli isn’t an avatar, not marked by the hunt but touched by the Hive, manifesting more on the love/belonging and family aspect rather than the filth aspect

i have more Thots about the family aspects between hive/hunt and how they are both very possessive on who they call their Persons but expresses it different ways that mirror jyl and jc but that’s for a different post

during their time in the cloud recesses they meet a quiet watcher who wwx immediately zones in on him as his new “prey”.

lan wangji is silent and knowledgeable as is expected from a disciple of the beholding, but there is a certain chill around him that other eye avatars do not have

wwx stalks the poor boy, pounces on him whenever he manages to catch him alone, and is just a general disturbance all-around.

he does not feel the Eyes that sometimes watch him when he is alone.

lan xichen does not need the beholding’s power to see the way his brother looks at the young hunter disciple. he is pleased to feel the cold surrounding the jingshi has lessened. shufu seems perplexed and torn.

wwx’s also has his eye on jin zixuan, the pompous plastic peacock that’s engaged to his shijie. he isn’t actually allowed to hunt him down so he settles on dismembering the lifeless mannequins that he uses as servants.

(playing with the timeline here) they get kicked out when a text is destroyed within the Library Pavilion even though it was just a pornography book (any kind of knowledge is still knowledge) and even though it was lwj who destroyed it (the eye had punished him severely for that).

the desolation!wen are attempting to bring The Scourged Earth into the world. they burn down the cloud recesses “in the name of ‘cleaning up the place’ so that it would be ‘reborn from the firelight.’” ( - directly from the mdzs wiki)

the xuanwu of slaughter is an ancient manifestation of, well, the slaughter and cannot be reasoned with.

(”Lan Zhan, can you See anything?” “No. My connection with The Beholding has been greatly severed.” “Oh. well.. Uh, it’s kinda foggy in here huh? Here have my outer robe, you look kinda cold.” “…Mn.”)

lotus pier burns and jiang cheng loses his core. wwx asks flesh!wen qing for help because only an avatar of the flesh (the boneturner, though that isn’t its name yet) is able to carve open another avatar long enough to take something out and place it somewhere else.

jiang cheng immediately becomes a fully-fledged avatar using wwx’s hunt-influenced core. it manifests as strong bloodlust against the wens, fear of being seen as weak prey by the other clans, (and later, hunting down wwx and other end-aligned cultivators.)

wwx gets thrown in the burial mounds. he is dead for three whole months. and then he wakes up.

his hunter core is gone but that’s fine. he is alive not because he wants to but because he has to. when he is awake, he calls upon the dead to exact his revenge. the wens are defeated and everyone is in frightened awe of the new being that he has unwillingly become. when he is asleep, black tendrils of death plague his dreams. He relives the horrible memories of his own and others’ deaths. sometimes he can feel someone watching him but cannot see them in return.

wei wuxian is alive but he is not part of jiang cheng’s pack anymore. he does not follow them out on hunts anymore, doesn’t even bother to stay within the residences. he isn’t part of their pack anymore, abandoned their patron for something else more powerful, and for what? he feels resentment brewing inside him. resentment and fear.

wwx knew not to trust the polished and waxed faces of the jins. all the wen remnants are non-avatars, barely touched by anything other than the fear the jins had instilled by themselves. they do not deserve this cruelty, to be both entertainment and livestock for the rest of the cultivation world. it is true that death comes for everyone, but wwx will not let these people die at the hands of these strangers.

the wens become touched by the End during their stay in the burial mounds. wen ning, with flute music playing in his head, wins an archery game against Death and finally wakes.

one day a cold mist surrounds yilling when wwx takes a-yuan out on a stroll. He loses him but finds him again clinging to a man in white robes that looks like he wants to disappear. wwx feels himself smile brightly at the sight. (”lan zhan! it’s so nice to see you again! It’s been so cold out today but luckily it’s warmer now!” “Mn.” “You really blend in with the fog with those white robes of yours. it’s okay though because i’m sure i can find you wherever you disappear to!” “Mn.”)

qiongqi path becomes a massacre of plastic mannequins and not!beings. the smell of death and manufactured flesh fill the air like an offering to his unwanted patron, and black tendrils surround wwx and his assailants. It blinds him and he can’t see it, can’t control it, can’t stop it as jin zixuan is pierced through his chest and falls to the ground, dead.

the clans are outraged. they speak in fear of him, they hear of his power over life and death and that he, like the wen fugitives by his side, is trying to bring about his patron into the world. they call for an attack, a bloodbath to take him down once and for all.

and a bloodbath it is. the entire cultivation world against a one-man army. fear rings high in the air and all the Entities are well fed in the aftermath, the most satisfied: Slaughter and (paradoxical to their intent) The End.

later, much later, when the siege is over and nothing is left of his anchor other than a small child marked by death, lwj accepts the punishment lashes and then goes into cold seclusion. the jingshi is completely covered by clouds of fog. no one can See him, the elders only get a debilitating headache when they try to pry too hard. not even lxc, who has become the Eye’s most devoted avatar, can know his brother’s whereabouts. only lan yuan seems to able to navigate through the dense gloom.

the world moves on

jin guangyao’s wide smiles are not conspicuous within the plastic faces and painted lips within lanling jin. If his limbs are too long or if his smile a bit distorted or if he disappears through a bright yellow door and doesnt come back then no one makes mention of it.

No one also notices the webs above them hidden in the high ceilings of lanling jin nor the tiny spiders that skitter around the gossiping servants, spinning and weaving threads of thick silk around them.

it takes years for his brother to come out from the fog and lxc nearly weeps at the knowledge that The Lonely had not forsaken another member of his family. still, lwj has changed. there is a certain chill around him now that persists wherever he goes. though he has always been silent since childhood, his silence now is cold and unfeeling, eyes faraway as if not seeing those around him and only floating through the days. He is not completely alone though and that is enough to alleviate some of xichen’s worries.

time abates some wounds but certainly not all. there is still an empty cold pit in lwj’s chest but it does not bleed as freely as it did 10 years before. Before, he would have readily disappeared into the fog when the elders comes to look for him, now he chooses to disappear from the cloud recesses and absconds into night hunts. he goes wherever the chaos is, seeking (but not willing to hope) that he might find something that can stir the deadness in his heart.

tbc ?

#rotating this au hard and fast in my mind's eye #i actually dont know the overlap between the mdzs and tma fandoms but im just assuming there isnt much ???#i kinda got too into it at the end there i didnt know where to stop lmao im sorry im pulling all of this outta my ass dskfjhkdhfk #i still have so many Thoughts for this au and cute lil scenes between these avatar fledgelings #i promise its not all Angst its just that lonely!lwj is a very good source of inspo #is this a fix it? maybe. maybe not.#on one hand i want everyone (except jgs and zixun) to love and be happy #on the other hand lonely!lwj is the entire reason why i thought of this au in the first place #according to the wiki the chinese name for cloud recesses means 'somewhere unknown deep in the clouds'#which is Peak Lonely vibes but i didnt find that out until after i wrote this oops #beholding!gusu lan is staying tho bc i love lonelyeyes!lwj hehe #i almost wrote an entire backstory in the tags about madame lan and how wangji inherited her Loneliness dhsdfkhd #i'll write that on a different post this one is long enough #LANLING JIN IS STRANGER ALIGNED BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL CLOWNS #i was thinking of jzx being replaced by a not!them after qiongqi ambush but hmmm maybe thats for another au hmmmm many thoughts #funfact! in MAG113 decker mentions that only a Hunter can kill an avatar of the End so. do what you will with that knowledge :)#OH HEY I JUST REMEMBERED WWX TOLD LWJ TO 'GET LOST' WHEN LWJ TRIED TO SAVE HIM DURING THE FIRST SEIGE JUST BEFORE HE DIED SO :))))#MY LONELY!LWJ HEADCANON IS GOING STRONG #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #should i tag this as tma? nah #anyways here just take this

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mothsalami · 1 year

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i am thinking thoughts

#ojat so #jared hopworth and mike crew both had the bonrturners tale #they are red and blue alligned #do u see the potential here #do they interact in canon #no #BUT IF YOU THINK THATS GONNA STOP ME UR WRONGD #im calling them the boneturner boys and drawing ship art idc

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girlwholovesturtles · 3 months

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Flesh

JON! What's with that title sir?!

Okay, let's see what utter stupidity you're about to get yourself into.

Uh? What?! Jon? Whatcha doing there honey? Are you cutting yourself?

Okay, Melanie, I'm so sorry this is all going on. You deserve the world sweetie! This is all so bad!

Jon, are you leading up to asking her to cut you open? Maybe don't do that?

This aint a great cooping mechanism there, hon. I love you but the Slaughter almost certainly would have swallowed you whole eventually.

Good call, Jon. Don't give her that- uh, the Boneturner? Don't joke about that... WHAT?! Melanie?

WHAT? Helen? Does the Spiral identify as a she now? Good for her.

Fuck yeah, everything is fake!

Wait. They just had the Boneturner the whole time?

Jon, this is such a bad idea. But I am endlessly curious what this dude sounds like... oh... I do hate that... Stop with the popping and cracking sound please.

Uh, Jon! Maybe don't... oh boy.

Ah, tragic, troubled childhood. Oh, delightful...

Oh, a magic freak who doesn't want to force the world to change. Almost refreshing, actually.

Melanie has never been more attractive to me... my gay little heart may be a little too attracted to aggressive, terrifying women.

"Is it going to hurt." Jon. Do you think it's gonna hurt when this bastard pulls out your goddamn bones? You tell me!

Yep, definitely hurts.

Jon, hon, you are not doing great.

Helen! Did you throw the horrible meat man into a river?! I love and respect you but what happens if he comes back on account of the whole being thrown into a river thing?!

Oh thank god, at least Jon has the good sense to go lay down, at least for a little while. These things simply should not be happening to a bunch of glorified librarians!

Title of this episode should have been Spare Ribs. Would have been funny.

#the magnus archives #tma #live blogging #episode 131

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thisentertaining · 1 year

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Martin and Gerry Foster Brothers AU Part 5

Martin and Gerry struggle to find ways to survive the world of the fears and the supernatural, and make some life-changing decisions without fully understanding the potential consequences for the rest of their lives, but hey, that’s part of being in your late teens to early 20s.

TW: Homelessness, fears, loss of agency

Part 1 Ao3

Being homeless teenagers was… well it could never be considered easy, but Martin and Gerry found a rhythm eventually that managed to keep them fed, and usually clean and warm. It relied heavily on Martin’s instincts, but he seemed to have a knack at knocking on a door and knowing instinctually who would be convinced to give them a few chores to ‘help raise money to go to a concert’ or video game or whatever. The younger boy’s favorite target were the lonely elderly souls who needed a lot of help around the house and would give meals and treats in addition to the money, just so that they had someone to talk to for longer. Meanwhile, as an actual legal adult Gerry managed to get jobs at petrol stations and convenience stores off and on. They were far enough away from their old home that no one seemed to connect their names to anything significant.

However, those jobs never lasted forever. Ever since that discovery in Pall Mall, Gerry had been on the search for Leitners and other cursed objects. Inevitably, there would be a time where he had to disappear for days, and often he looked so bedraggled coming back that his employers were convinced he and his brother were into... well they couldn't be sure but it was certainly nothing that they wanted associated with their business. Gerry would be let go, and would spend a few weeks searching even harder for cursed books to destroy and drawing pictures of tourists for pocket change until he was hired again.

It was a system. It worked for the most part, and the teens managed to shift between cheap hostels and homeless shelters easily enough. They traveled enough during their searches that they became accustomed to sleeping on trains and outdoors on nice nights. They survived on only what they could keep on their backs, though they found ways to live as well. Gerry bought cheap hair dye and got fired from more than one job for using the company bathroom to apply it. Martin got a small electric kettle and a polaroid camera that he loved for it’s low-fi charm and protection from Strangers alike. Gerry turned to music and art, Martin filled notebooks. They lived, and they couldn’t bring themselves to regret the life they had or the past that brought it to them.

However, as the years went on, the pair found exhaustion and paranoia creeping steadily more and more, growing over their lives like infested veins. They knew that it was only a matter of time before they got noticed by something that had a lot more agency than a book. There were only so many Flesh Leitners they could burn before The Boneturner came looking for them, and already they’d seen Breakon and Hope’s van driving towards the Stranger books that they had destroyed mere moments before.

The two boys were very keenly aware that if any of these figures started to target them, they had next to no way to defend themselves. It was a terrifying truth, mortality, and one they tried very hard to ignore as most teens did. Most of the time. Sometimes, after a particularly close call or an especially dangerous Leitner, it pressed on their minds until they just had to say something. The night they returned to London after destroying a children’s book in Bournemouth was one such time.

The book had been too familiar, brought back too many memories.

The pair huddled together in one of the many homeless shelters they were regulars at, whispering among themselves in a far corner. “Seriously, do we know of anyone who is a part of… this who managed to survive long term?” Martin asked softly, swiping away a cobweb that clung to a nearby window with relish. Gerry still knew more than him about this world. The Supernatural ‘sticking’ didn’t work as well for the younger boy, though some things were hard to forget.

“Who isn’t a monster?” Gerry asked, referring to the many Avatars they’d heard of and luckily so far avoided like the plague. Other than Angela, they still ran into her occasionally. The other day she had introduced Martin to her boyfriend, who seemed nice if incredibly naïve.

“Obviously.”

“My Mum?”

Martin’s nose scrunched. “I said no monsters.”

Gerry scoffed. “Fair.”

“What about the pirate dude?”

“Salesa? Yeah, I guess there’s him, but I think he survived because he’s useful to the monster and like, has the money to buy bodyguards and stuff.”

“Ah. Right. Doesn’t really apply to us. Maybe we should see if he’s hiring.”

“He’d throw us overboard when we torched his stock.”

“True enough.” Martin sighed. “Anyone else?”

“There was the priest guy, but I think he’s dead. He worked with someone, but I don’t know much about her.”

“Leitner himself?”

“We said no monsters.”

“Fair. He could be dead too, we haven’t really heard about him in a while.”

Gerry sighed, slouching on the bed, only straightening when Martin jumped up behind him. Without a word he followed his brother’s line of sight, but it was just one of the dozens of old homeless men hiding from the rain outside. Then, he focused on the face a bit more. “Wait, is that…”

“It is!” Martin said with a broad grin. “Come on, we can ask him how he did it!”

The younger, but larger, boy dragged Gerry across the room with no subtlety, so that by the time they were standing in front of the man he was watching them with distrustful uncertainty. “Hullo!” Martin said brightly. “Are- are you Trevor the Tramp? The Vampire Hunter?”

The man bristled, obviously preparing to be ridiculed. He answered a short “yes” as though hoping to avoid further conversation.

“Great.” Gerry said with a nod. “How did you manage to stay alive so long if you’ve been hunting them down like that?”

That threw the man off, he clearly wasn’t expecting the genuine question. “What do you mean?”

“Like, why don’t they come after you? Or send something stronger after you? We keep running into all kinds of stuff and we want to have a plan before they start running into us on purpose.”

“You’ve… seen vampire too then? You survived it?”

Martin shook his head. “Not vampires yet, just a Spider Monster and evil books. A few other items, but not really a lot of living things.”

The man went tense, an eerie straightening with a gleam in his eye that suddenly made Martin feel very afraid. “A Spider Monster?” He nearly growled. “Where?”

“It was a few years ago.” Gerry said, stepping forward to place himself between the man and Martin. “We burned them all.”

“Or, we didn’t,” Martin clarified, still trying to hold onto the 'don't actually admit to arson' line. “But we watched someone else do it. We just… wanted some advice on how to handle the monsters.” His voice went soft towards the end as the man’s expression grew increasingly intense.

Finally, the man shook his shaggy head and the moment seemed to break. “You run into trouble with any of that sort, call on me. I’ll take care of them.”

When he grinned, it seemed like more of a baring of teeth, and Martin was sure that his canines were much longer than before.

“Oh, um, thanks.” He and Gerry scurried back to their beds without a word, though neither could sleep. It seemed like it was very hard indeed to survive the monsters littering their world becoming monsters, unless of course you already were one.

Martin hadn't tossed or turned in years, having trained himself to never draw unnecessary attention, still he stared into the darkness all night as he worried about survival, about choice, and about inevitability.

He could feel spiders on him all night, but when he looked there was never anything there.

____

“Okay, what is it?”

Martin blinked up at Gerry in confusion. “What is what?”

“What do you mean what is what? I bring you to the botanical garden on your birthday, and you haven’t pulled out your poem book once. Look at those, uh,” He squinted at the little plaque. “Purple passionflowers, wow that’s a name. Still, all this and you’ve got nothing? It isn’t like you.”

“That flower looks a bit wonky to me.” Martin protested, before sighing. The older boy was right, he was turning 18, and it was a much better coming of age than Gerry’s had been, so far at least. Still, he couldn’t focus on it like he wanted. “You’re right, sorry. I’ve just been… thinking recently.”

“I know, that’s why I asked what it is you’re thinking about.” Gerry said, his voice snarky.

Martin jostled him with an arm. “About… monsters, and what it means to be one. About how… it might be safer.”

The goth sighed, but in a way that sounded like he’d been anticipating this conversation and was hoping to avoid it on this day especially. “It might be safer, but it wouldn’t be… good. We would be hurting people, would have to hurt people.”

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I think… I think eventually if we keep up like we have been, we’re either going to be killed by one of these things, or we’re going to become one. I just… I’d rather it was on our terms, you know?”

“I regret telling you about what happened with Mike Crew.”

“This isn’t about him but that is a great example! Remember that time we tried to hide him from the Distortion? Well it was after him again a few days later, and he had to become one of the Vast to get away. Now the Spiral has a new face anyway and who knows where that guy came from. I don’t want to have to jump out a window and hope to survive.”

Gerry huffed, tension and anger in every line of his body. “So what? What would you rather do? Bury people? Skin them? Turn yourself into ash? There are no good alternatives Martin, each of the fourteen is worst than the others.”

“Why do you care about the fourteen? I thought you hated that classification.”

“I know I hate the fourteen! Its putting up arbitrary lines that don’t actually exist and- Why is that the part you’re choosing to focus on! That was not the important bit!”

“No, you see, it is important. These things work on Nightmare Logic, right? And the classifications are fake, so why do we have to stick with them?”

Intrigued despite himself, Gerry sighed. “Alright, you really want to go over this now? Today? Come on, I saw a pub down the street. I’m going to buy your first drink.”

“I thought my first drink was that whiskey that we took from that drunk guy a few years back.” Martin sassed.

“Well I didn’t exactly buy that, did I?” Gerry quipped back and the younger man laughed.

The pair bickered their way to the pub, waiting until they were in a secluded corner in the back of the pub.

“Alright, give me your pitch.” Gerry said, swirling his beer. Martin sipped at the wine he had requested and made a pinched face that meant he hated it but didn’t want his brother to know. They both knew he would drink it after all, they weren’t in the habit of wasting anything they spent money on.

“Okay, so, you say that they’re more like colors than boxes, right? Like areas where they meld together or overlap.”

“Right.”

“So, who says we have to stick with blue or orange or whatever? What if we wanted to be magenta, or aqua, or periwinkle!”

Gerry, who painted when they had the money and was much more familiar with color theory than his brother, rubbed his temple. “So, what? You want to come up with new fears and serve them?”

“Ish. Kinda new fears, kinda like… overlapping fears. I mean, really its more like a collection of Ven diagrams. Isolation has been proven to cause hallucinations, is that the Lonely or the Spiral? The Ocean is used by both Vast and Buried. It is so hard to tell sometimes if we are dealing with a Hunt or Slaughter Leitner and I still argue that the rotting meat is just as much Corruption as Flesh.”

“Martin, I’m the one who made the color argument in the first place, I know all this."

"Right, well I thought, maybe if it wasn't an established fear with, with other followers, it might not be as strong? Like, maybe we could handle it better."

"Or, it would be twice as strong because we're trying to join two." Martin didn't have a reply to that, but looked so morose that Gerry sighed. " But okay, I’ll bite. What are you suggesting we join?”

“Well...” The boy began, shifting awkwardly for the first time. “I was kinda thinking… if we’re going to get powers to help us survive, they might as well be different ones?” He looked more worried about that, about suggesting they follow different entities, than he had about suggesting they sell their soul to something evil in the first place.

Gerry was pretty sure co-dependence fed something, but he wasn’t interested in examining it.

“Okay,” He said, though his heart panged with the same pain he saw on Martin’s face. “Okay, I guess that makes sense. What about me then?”

Martin took a deep drink of his wine before remembering that he hadn’t liked it. His voice was rough when he spoke again. “The Tracker, an overlap of the Hunt and the Eye, the fear that something knows you well enough that it will be able to find you no matter how hard you hide.”

Gerry felt his mouth went dry and took a drink. “That… would be useful for tracking down Leitners, I guess.”

“It’s more than that.” Martin said softly. “Its… I looked at my notes. I think Avatars work the best when someone fears the entity that they end up serving.”

Gerry frowned. “I don’t-“

“I know you still won’t go to record shops.” The goth froze, intense eyes locked on Martin even as the younger boy hid his gaze. “That’s the only think your mum actually knew about you, that you liked music and spent time in record shops. You worry that if she’s looking for you, those are the places she’ll go so you avoid them like the plague.”

The older man said nothing, letting the accusation hang across the empty table. “What about you?” He asked, neither confirming not denying the accusation. That was answer enough.

“The Puppet Master.”

Gerry frowned. “I didn’t see you going for Stranger.”

“I’m not. It’s… you and I both know that I was always headed towards the web. We don’t talk about it, but we know. Sometimes… sometimes I think that Petunia was on my hand on purpose, that it was part of some internal Web struggle and the Mother favored me for some reason. Maybe its part of the web’s manipulation that I feel this way, but I think I was… destined? …chosen? Something. I don’t think becoming part of the web is avoidable.”

“That’s why you want to do this, isn’t it? You think if we don’t do this… partial thing, then the web would get you completely.”

Martin smiled thinly. “Sometimes I feel like its hovering over me, just waiting to jump.”

“Okay. Okay.” Gerry said. If he and Martin didn’t have an ironclad don’t-look-at-each-others-work-without-permission agreement in effect, he would think that the other boy had peeked in his sketchbook. He’d had a nightmare about the boys home a few nights back, and it resulted in a drawing of Martin standing in the middle of a giant spiderweb, with a huntsman spider clearly crouched to pounce. Martin was right. The goth knew then and there that there was no way he was backing out now. They were doing this. “What’s the other one, then? And where does the name come from?”

“Web and… and lonely. The Puppet Master is… the fear of being so manipulative that you can’t tell whether someone really likes you or- or if you’re just making them act in a way that makes it seem like the do. The fear that if you stop acting in a certain way, stop manipulating those around you, they won’t think of you twice. The fear that every friendship and positive reaction you have is ingenuine, something of your own creation, and if you loosen the strings for a moment everything will collapse. That no one would like you, if you didn’t make them.”

For a moment there was silence. Gerry cleared his throat and tried to speak. “Martin…”

“It’s not-“ Martin breathed through his nose sharply. “It’s not you. I know you. You’re my anchor, right? It’s just… everyone else.” He said softly, looking at his fingers. When the waitress came over Gerry ordered, an interaction he usually left to Martin, and got two shots.

The older man chose not to pry deeper, not to try and comfort his friend. He knew it wouldn’t be appreciated at this moment. “Okay. Then let’s brainstorm, how do we Become?” With that, the two young men leapt forward with all of the confidence of an 18-21 year old making lifelong decisions with no perception for the impact that it could have.

#TMA #the magnus archives #tma fanfic #tma fanfiction #the magnus archives fanfiction #Matin Blackwood #Gerard Keay #gerry keay #smirke's fourteen #smirkes 14 #My own fear headcanons #Spiders #the web

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