Idk if this is a hot take or anything but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Jon didn’t have any friends (besides Martin) basically the entire series.

Sasha was nice enough but she was strictly professional. Tim was reasonable in the beginning and I like to believe they were friends but honestly he’s pretty wary of Jon s1. Melanie hated Jon the whole way through. Georgie was there for a bit before things got too messy, but the way she treats him s5 is like a time bomb. Basira treated Jon like a stove with a broken gas release, and Daisy, my god Daisy. I could go on and on about their relationship but it was really clear after the trauma she inflicted on Jon he could never truly trust her.

They all feed into the theme of Jon’s inhumanity, but I remember listening and being confused because I always saw ppl treating this like a found family when they never were.

magnus archives! for the ask game

[ask game link] YAYYYYYYYYY THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK this got horrifically long so under the cut!

Favorite character: i’d love to say basira but it’s probably melanie. or martin. oh little moth…

Least Favorite character: uhhhh i love all the characters as *characters* but i love to hate elias of course. what a fucking creep they did such a wonderful job with him. 106 and 117 live in my brain constantly & forever

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): FIVE? THERE AREN’T ENOUGH IN HERE FOR FIVE but it’d be what the girlfriends, jonmartin, daisira, basira/melanie, and. hm. hmmm. gertrudeagnes

— oh crap wait i keep forgetting platonic relationships are ships too, okay okay add jon & basira and jon & melanie and jon & georgie in there. not in any particular order but still

Character I find most attractive: im not even attracted to women but. daisy. i didn’t understand the fan reaction until i listened to her voice for the first time (i consumed this podcast almost entirely through transcripts) and went Oh I Get It Now

Character I would marry: georgie easily

Character I would be best friends with: jon or melanie because i love befriending haters you are all so fun

A random thought: i miss them so much. i kept expecting the transcripts to switch to “archive” for jon at some point but they never did which is probably for the best for accessibility reasons but can you imagine. i miss them so much. basira is funnier than people give her credit for. georgie is less funny than people give her credit for and i appreciate her so much for it (don’t be a Stranger!). i miss them so much

An unpopular opinion: hey did you know basira hussain is in the third most episodes total and actually has the second most scenes with jon (she had The Most, period, before martin dethroned her in s5)? did you know? anyway she should be in more stuff and i love her deeply. i also don’t think she actually had double standards for jon versus daisy per se, i think her problem was thinking that guilty people deserve punishment and therefore that daisy’s victims (criminals) were fine while jon’s victims (random people off the street) were not

— this is also why she stops daisy from killing jon in 091, because she’d met him before, he was a human being who cracked jokes, he *couldn’t* be guilty; rather than because killing people is bad

— i also think she knew deep down she was wrong for this considering how she says in the unknowing: i don’t want to hurt you. i don’t want to hurt anyone. and then in s5: of course i care! …that’s the problem

— she had to force down her compassion in order to function well as a police officer and forced herself to believe that it was the right thing to arrest people who did bad things

— reader she was incorrect

— have i mentioned i love her

My canon OTP: jonmartin and what the girlfriends

Non-canon OTP: you cannot tell me basira and melanie didn’t have something going on while jon was in his coma you simply can’t

— melanie was strong and violent and necessary and basira needed someone strong to rely on after daisy even though she could see how miserable melanie was. basira stuffed down all her emotions and became a stone figure and melanie feeling herself being overtaken by rage both aspired to that and hated her for it. they are anchors for each other but false because their usual anchors (daisy, georgie) aren’t here or wouldn’t get it. do you understand.

Most badass character: the admiral

Pairing I am not a fan of: sorry to jon.elias fans i do understand that exploring the Power Dynamics could be fun but i genuinely cannot see any romance in there whatsoever. can’t jon just hate a man in peace

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): hmmmmmmm. not anyone in particular? i think basira’s s5 arc was kind of rushed but i’m not super mad about it. also obviously the racist stereotypes in there (the haans. i mean the haans) but in terms of main cast i can’t think of anyone

Favourite friendship: tim & sasha because i haven’t mentioned them anywhere in this ask and that is a travesty. they’re fun i hope they are kayaking happily together somewhere

ooh 💔 is an unusual one im intrigued but also 📺 and 😅

MWAH san xox

💔 Least favorite ship you have written about?

honestly none of them? i don't really write fics/ships i don't care for as a general rule and so it's hard to rate/compare ships as far as preference bc it really depends on what mood i'm in!

(that said. if i had to pick. probably the one daisy/basira drabble i posted back in my tma days just bc daisy as a character leaves a bad taste in my mouth more so now than she did when i wrote it)

📺 Any references to other media that you put in your fics?

oh constantly. i can't remember any off the top of my head right now but i'm sure i've put movie and song and tv references in most of my fics skjfnskfbn

😅 Was there a fic/chapter that you were nervous about posting? Why?

mmmmmmm steve harrington: a thesis, maybe? or my slasher series? both of which because they're fairly different tonally and stylistically from what i normally write and therefore i was a little more nervous about reception/lack thereof?

send me fic asks from this list of emojis !!!!

[image ID: digital fanart of characters from the Magnus archives in formal clothes. From left to right, we see: Melanie, Basira, Daisy, Jon and Martin. Melanie is a thin Chinese woman with black hair dyed blonde (her roots have grown out), light tan skin and acne scars. She wears a shiny black dress with puffy sleeves, black tights and a choker with a bloody bullet dangling from it. Basira is a fat Arab woman with dark wavy hair in a low bun and brown skin. She's wearing a satin green dress with bronze details and a translucent shawl overtop. Daisy is a thin white woman with dark hair (grey-brown at the roots), eye bags and scars. She wears a checkers blazer and long purple skirt over a shiny yellow blows. Jon is a short Sri Lankan man with chin length dark-greying hair, scars and facial hair. He wears an eye themed hairclip, a white blouse with sheer sleeves and black leather pants under a dark green waistcoat covered in white eyes. Last is martin, a fat argentinian man with dark brown hair with a steak of white at the front and tan skin. He's wearing a striped purple shirt unbuttoned down to his chest with brown suspenders and pants. He has one hand in his pocket, the other behind his head. Nobody in the picture looks very happy. The background is dark green with yellow sparkles added for decoration. end ID]

POV: the meanest bitches show up to the work function with these fits and murderous intent in their eyes (click for quality dear God)

it’s been a bit now so. misc 200/end of mag in general thoughts? under a cut because this is a bit long, and i will preface this to say that i mostly enjoyed the episode but this is going to be mostly my criticisms, bc i feel like the good parts have already been well covered by people other than me. so yeah just a warning this is mostly crit

- it’s Still very hard for me to parse how i feel about this episode, but i think after sitting on it for a bit, i’ve come to the general conclusion that i am very satisfied plot-wise (in terms of tragedy/the structure of tragedies, the open-endedness of our ending, the general Writing TM), but not so much satisfied character-wise (in terms of arc and relationship resolution). I think we deserved more resolution on wtgfs -- i wanted more with them! more with melanie and jon; more with the melanie and georgie and basira’s side of the plan. more than that really small tidbit that we got at the end! and... honestly? a little bit more emphasis on the weight of Jon actually dooming other worlds in the end, and what that means for Jon and for wtgfs/basira. Especially with the context of the consequences re: the Web...won. no caveats or complications, the Web got. Exactly what it wanted.

- on that note,  From a uh. Critique against capitalism standpoint I’m not sure how I feel about the ending? And I don’t really want to. Read too much into what isn’t there? But I mean mag has long been a pretty explicit anticapitalist narrative so...? Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the implications of WTGFs and basira basically just being treated as narratively right in terms of letting the eldritch evil stand-in for capitalism have whatever it wanted and feeding it and doing exactly what it asked them to do. and having Little consequence as a result of that. Obviously they’ll still face loads of hardship, but that comes from the apocalypse, not from, like,.,, doing the direct bidding of the Capitalist Monster/System/etc to be clear, i’m not like...mad they made the “wrong” decision; there was no wrong or right decision here. but I am a little upset that for all they spent 199 discussing the various consequences of each choice, we got to see very little of that actual consequence playing out...none of the survivors seem to really be carrying the guilt or even the full understanding of what they did, because they never saw the suffering they could create as anything more than a hypothetical. i feel like we could have spent just a bit more time with them dealing with that. a bit more time even with jon dealing with that, a bit more time spent on jon changing his mind. other people have said as much better than me but. yeah

- i feel like there was a lot of character stuff brought up in s5 and especially act iii that i would’ve loved to have seen more resolution of. why have that whole thing about Georgie telling jon to give melanie his last words himself, if Jon was going to come back but then never bring that up again (full disclosure this is smthn that @pronouncingitwang​ brought up!)? Why have Jon say he was “going to go  apologize to [his] boyfriend”/Jon tell Martin multiple times that they were going to talk about their fight “later” and then not have that happen on screen? Why did we have two whole episodes of cultist interactions if they were just going to be removed off screen? Why have martin’s “I’ll get jon to destroy me like the others” decision if that doesn’t really come up? what about salesa!! why tell us melanie hating jon is a projection of her self hatred and then not bring that up again? why give annabelle all those juicy interactions with martin and then turn her into a monster when jon shows up, why give her so much character and backstory and then so thoroughly remove her agency? why have all these really cool parallels between jon and annabelle if annabelle is just going to be this monstrous and agency-less plot device with no follow-up? what happened to her!

- on that note...annabelle. They... really took this character who is a Black woman and who had so many parallels to Jon and who they could’ve like. very easily Actually made into a protagonist of color (because we only got one!! and she’s a cop!!!!) (or if not protagonist, at least smthn more sympathetic), (which wouldn’t have negated previous racial problems w tma, but would’ve shown growth from them) and made her a scary monster who just Serves her capitalist entity overlord without personal agency and then bows out when she’s no longer needed...you can have whatever diagetic/watsonian explanations you want for how 197 went, like sure she was just ~being dramatic~ and putting on a show for jon, but all that is still something the writers Decided to do in the real world, and the racial implications of her character arc are just. not great. and her character had So much more narrative potential. idk i will forever be salty about annabelle

- i Still Don’t Like the web being sentient!! i said this after 197 and i’m sayin it again! i think it makes it less frightening and less interesting! with the End being aware of its own, well, end, I actually thought that worked, and i really liked the corpse routes ep, but for some reason I didn’t with the Web? which seems hypocritical of me, I know, but, look: The embodiment of the fear of dying being aware of and welcoming its own dying emphasizes the inevitability and the truth of that fear. Which is why it works for the End. It’s still not recognizably /human/, because it is inexorable and certain, in a way nothing human can be. So its awareness of its own end DOESNT feel like flattening the worldbuilding. And using my own logic, I guess sure you could say the embodiment of the fear of manipulation and schemes being capable of scheming does the same thing but it. It rly doesn’t feel the same to me? Bc that’s rly a fear borne of human sentience & behavior. and so to give it that sentience makes it feel more human, and less interesting within the context of the horror. this is definitely just a personal taste thing as far as how i like horror and eldritch deities and such but yeah.

- i liked the statement a lot like, as a little self contained story? it was really nice to have jon give us one last story before the end. I thought that was sweet and i liked how the statement was written! on the same note though, i could’ve also gone without knowing like. the entire cosmology of how the fears came into being. again, just a personal thing, i don’t like my horror to be known, even at the end of it all when it doesn’t matter what we’re still scared of anymore. I just. I want my fears to be frightening and beyond comprehension and unknowable. it just leads me to have more questions than i really need at the Final episode? i would love to keep the jon giving us one final statement thing, and you know what? i would've loved: statement of the archivist, regarding jonathan sims. no idea what you’d do with that but it sounds cool in my head.

- very minor and very specific-to-me thing but i Don’t Like that basira got to be the Last Words...sorry y’all I just don’t like basira i can’t get behind trying to make me feel sympathetic for a cop who stood by and let people get murdered by the state for years and only felt bad about it bc fearpocalypse i just can’t. i don’t like her never have never will and also melanie and georgie are right there why didn’t they get to have the last words it would have been so much better ... why not have the person who loved jon and Knew very deeply his tendency to self-sacrifice say something or why not the person who is in-canon very similar to Jon and self-admittedly projecting her self hatred onto him say some sort of her own attempt at peace why not either of these two ahhhh

- i uhhhh. really liked jon killing jonah. jon for once getting to be angry for himself. that felt really nice. no ceaseless watcher nonsense either, just him and a knife and beating the shit out of this guy who even now continues to underestimate and belittle him. and i liked jon doing what he did in general -- i actually changed my mind on this; i really didn’t like it at first but i do now. i’m sad that it came at the expense of his promise to martin, but it makes sense and...i don’t want to say jon was right, because i again don’t think any of the decisions were right per se, but in terms of like... not doing what the “elder fear deity who wants to feed on fear and pain for literal eternity” wanted... yeah. i get it. he would never have been able to go along with that willingly. and he really shouldn’t have been, considering all that he went through being a puppet for said elder fear deity. and from a tragedy standpoint too, i actually think it’s a really really well written end for him. considering how my favorite tragedies are structured and how the way out has to be presented to us, but the tragic hero Ultimately will always fall back on their faults, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. hamlet is granted a way out and he doesn’t take it; he always always hesitates. captain ahab is granted the chance to turn and leave his chase and love instead, and he doesn’t take it. orpheus turns around. etc etc. I think it was also really lovely that jon got a twist on that, that in the end he did change, for just a moment, and chose love instead. even in the face of all the horror that that might mean. i really like that he and martin are together, wherever or however they are. that martin is allowed to feel (rightly) furious and betrayed and still so, so unconditionally in love. 

idk i have more thoughts probably but again they’re very hard to parse and mostly just getting into the super specific realm which i don’t think is particularly helpful

i have a lot of feelings for jon and martin and their ending i think it was the best possible ending we could’ve gotten for those two and i Am really. I just have a lot of feelings.

OK I would like to throw my two cents in on the JonMartin song discussion because I have a lot of love songs in my playlist and I end up thinking about these dummies more than I probably should

SO The Killing Kind was making the rounds a little while back and I absolutely love Mariana's Trench and their music. And they have SO MANY JMart song options like!

Only the Lonely Survive

THIS! Is like my top favorite so it goes first. Maybe it's a little too on the nose though, ha. If Jon had never rescued Martin from the Lonely, or if Martin had decided to go through with Peter's plan. If they hadn't chosen each other, they likely would have survived in some regard. And even in the end of the podcast you can argue that it fits. Basira is alone. Georgie and Melanie have each other, yes, but they've lost their people/followers (they get them back! theoretically). Even the other avatars survived (rip not really Simon).

Notable lyrics

but i'd rather hurt here than be happy somewhere else

no one will scar me like you do/but no one will ever be compared, compared to you

a love like this will end in tragedy

burns us both/to love this close/we lose ourselves/and i know we won't get out alive (and it's alternative: it hurts like hell/to love this well/but no one falls/the way we fell/we'll burn alive)

This is gonna get long, so the other songs below the cut!

One Love

THIS SONG. Is pure s4 Jon pining after Lonely Martin. I could literally copy and paste the entire song. You just have to listen or at least look at the lyrics to understand. Jon realizing everything he's lost post-coma. How much it hurts not having Martin around. Him coming to realize his feelings for Martin, and Martin not being able to reciprocate while working through his plan with Peter. I could go on.

Notable lyrics I'll try not to quote the entire song

your sad blue eyes like mine/full of pity now but I don't know why

now you're nothing more than a silhouette/but just hold quick you're fading right/in a cold trick of the light/i'm just so sick, i though you'd might be here/but you di-disappear

you've been wishing but you don't know how to stay/and i've broken but i'm better every day

now i pine for phantom pain/it's the only time i see your face

what if we could find a way to try to heal?

what if there was a reason not to go/what if there was still a little bit of hope?

Beside You

This is a safehouse song if I've heard one. Fresh from the Lonely, some time to process all the trauma they've gone through. Somft. Also works for the hc of Selective Mute Martin (fic rec by the way)

Notable Lyrics

when you're overwhelmed/and you've lost your breath/and the space between the things you know is blurring nonetheless/when you try to speak/but you make no sound/and the words you want are out of reach/but they've never been so loud

cause i'm just trying to keep this together/because i could do worse and you could better

Dearly Departed

Ah, what a sweet melancholic song. This is very much s3 before The Unknowing, especially for those headcanons of Jon spending time with Martin before leaving, and coming to realize his feelings right before, well. Also works well for Mag 199 and Mag 200

Notable Lyrics

we don't have to talk of where we go from here

one final shoulder/here before we're none/and then there were none/this last call could be all we can do for each other

we'll toast what could have been

i don't know how to mend it/when this chapter ended

but at least tonight we'll still pretend/hold each other close like it's not the end

forever after you will be my home/and there's no place like home

Echoes of You & Your Ghost

Both lovely songs. Both very fitting for s4 era JonMartin. And also the growing list of ghost-ish!Martin fics (x, x, x)

While We're Young

Another s4 song. I think this one works from the perspectives of both Jon and Martin. I think it's also safe to say I think about s4 way too much. But I love angst, and I love pining, so alas

Notable Lyrics

i was there watching you/watching me, missing you

maybe the truth hurts so/it's easier not to know

i've been so lost without you/and are you lost without me too?

little complacency took you away from me/we both want it but love is not enough you see

Glimmer

Ok so maybe this one is a bit of a stretch. Somewhere in s4 to safehouse timeframe. The lyrics are pretty repetitive, but there's a couple standouts that fit JM so it gets included anyway (it's funny what you find/when you go without)

Who Do You Love

Ok maybe again another stretch. But there are still some very fitting lyrics! This is very much a Jon song. And yes. Another s4 song. In case you haven't picked up on the pattern yet.

Notable lyrics

i miss the way that you saw me/or maybe the way i saw myself/but i came back to you broken/and i've been away too long/i hear the words i've spoken/and everything comes out wrong

nothing will change if you never choose

I Knew You When

This one is more for angst Somewhere Else, about Jon and Martin addressing what happened in Mag 200. So this one is not really associated with canon I suppose, but fanon. It Will Be This, Always by @bluejayblueskies is the fic I really associate this with. Their take on what happens Somewhere Else is just *chef kiss* How the decision Jon made against the group put a strain between them. How they struggle to overcome the hurt they caused each other. But still so desperately wanting to try to fix things between them. And giving Jon a voice! Rather than him placating Martin and acting like Jon's decision was the bad decision/wrong decision/what have you. I think the song especially fits chapter 9, but I won't say anything else without risking spoilers. Check the fic out, and Jay's other wonderful fics!

Don't like Mariana's Trench? Or want some other options? I gotchu. I have so many songs and I've thought about this way more than I should.

Walk Me Home by P!nk. Mag 159/safehouse vibes

Another Place by Bastille. Bit of a stretch, but very much 'Somewhere Else' vibes or would they have ended up together without the trauma convos

I have way more Stray Italian Greyhound anyone? All This And Heaven Too? I will eventually make my own JonMartin playlist. I just apologize that there'll be a lot of MT on it.

One of the nice things about the way the TMA fandom has reached full large-fandom levels of toxicity is that I no longer care if people get mad at me for my opinions on characters! So, some Georgie meta.

(Because fandom is and always has been Like That, I do feel the need to clarify here that I love Georgie, she's one of my favorite characters, characters are more interesting because of their flaws, and I have no investment in the idea that women or female characters are inherently better or more emotionally competent than men or male characters. If I talk a lot about her relationship with Jon, it's because Jon is our point of view character and also the person she interacts with the most. Also, this rambles, sorry.)

I've been thinking about the Season 4 Jon Trauma post and how much I liked the way it talked about Georgie, and it's convinced me that if Georgie could feel fear, she's the one who'd be most afraid of Jon out of all of them. She's the one protagonist we have whose only interaction with the powers has been as a direct victim of them. She doesn't know what they feel like from the inside, like Jon and Melanie; she doesn't know what they're like when they're someone you love, like Basira; she doesn't even know what they're like as petty middle management, like Martin and Tim. What she knows is that one time a monster ate her (only) friend and traumatized her so badly she spent a year in a suicidal depression.

And now her ex - and yes, Jon and Georgie have a remarkably comfortable relationship in the beginning of season three, but they're still exes and they broke up for reasons, even if we don't know exactly what they are - has turned up on her doorstep, shaking and possibly bloody, with nowhere else to go and no access to his home. He's clearly lying about what's going on. He repeatedly violates her house rules. And then he tells her that he's turning into one of those same kinds of monsters that traumatized her and ate her friend. It's clearly enough to override any remaining affection she had for him, and by any definition he has now positioned himself as a trigger.

(Through no fault of his own: the only real response he has to Georgie's statement is "I can't believe you didn't tell me." She's the one who assumes that he Knew, somehow, that she also had a statement; she's the one who suggests he had alternatives. Both suggestions are plausible but we don't actually know for certain that either are true.)

But Georgie isn't afraid of Jon because Georgie can't be afraid -at least, according to her. I'm not sure how much I believe this in the grand scheme of things; it seems like an extremely unlikely mechanism for one of the fears to have. It seems much more likely to me that she's just never met anything as terrifying as that encounter was, and her subjective sense of fear has been massively recalibrated. In which case not only meeting but having hosted in your home another monster who self-describes as similar to the one that was so terrifying that literal threats to your life are no longer distressing would...probably ping. But she's conceptualized herself as a person who doesn't feel fear; it's even possible that was part of her recovery, identifying this as a possible benefit of what would otherwise have been a universally terrible, soul-breaking experience. She looked existential terror in the face and survived, and came out of it a person who cannot be afraid of anything left on this earth. That's kind of a superhero origin story, and I can't blame her for it. I think anyone with a mental illness has at least tried to find ways in which their suffering has made them a better, stronger person.

But whether she's suppressing and rationalizing away any fear she feels or she genuinely doesn't feel any of it, she does frequently behave as though her lack of fear gives her a more objective view of the situation than anyone else. I don't believe she actually uses the word "just," but it drips from her every interaction with Jon after Dead Woman Walking. Why doesn't he just stop reading the statements? Why doesn't he just quit? And, in Zombie, I honestly can't interpret her reaction to Jon when he wakes up from his coma as anything other than, Why doesn't he just die? If he hates being this so much, if he really doesn't want to be a monster, why doesn't he just die?

I really would like to think that it goes without saying that this is, at the very least, a massive failure of empathy, but she's so explicit about it and fandom spent so much time basically agreeing with her that apparently it doesn't. Not only is Georgie not afraid of the situation, but (and this is the part that makes me wonder if she's not rationalizing, rather than being supernaturally unable to feel fear) she can't possibly fathom how afraid everyone else is, and she never tries. She persists in treating the whole awful situation, as @findingfeather's post says, like this is a mundane problem with people who are refusing to help themselves, rather than a supernatural trap that has been specifically built to be inescapable.

Now, let me be clear, even if she were talking to, say, a drug addict who nearly killed themselves because they were in denial about how much of a problem they had, her attitude would be unforgivable. But in this case Jon had no choice in whether or not to become addicted to statements; it was done to him in such a way that he didn't notice it was happening until withdrawal was already incapacitating. He also didn't have the option to leave, as Tim's extended vacation made clear. And, on top of all of that, the whole reason he was in a coma in the first place was that he was trying to save the world. (Neither he nor she knows at this point that he was doing nothing of the kind, so that's really not relevant.) And - look, when Jon came to her after the end of season two, he was asking for help. When he rejected the kind of help that she offered it was because he knew it didn't apply to the problems he actually had, but she treats that like it's his problem, which is something like offering a leg splint to a person bleeding out from a gunshot wound and getting offended when they tell you that won't work. He was very clear that what was happening scared him and he didn't know what to do about it, and her only suggestion was "walk away," which he literally could not do, for multiple reasons.

She's lucky Jon has pretty much precisely zero self-worth at this point, because anyone else would have cut her off completely for behaving like a fucking asshole.

I say "she's lucky" because frankly, even though she says that she wants nothing more to do with him, she turns up at least twice in the Institute after that, with the excuse that she's picking up Melanie to take her to therapy. I don't know about you, but I have never once gone to someone's workplace to pick them up and gone snooping around inside, and no matter how fascinatingly weird that workplace is, I definitely can't imagine doing so when I know that workplace also contains a person I have definitely decided I never want to speak to again. She goes into the Archives, for Christ's sake, and she listens outside Jon's office door for long enough to catch a bit of the recording before letting herself in (so it's very clear she knows who's in there).

Now I'm not trying to paint her as a monster here; Georgie would hardly be the first person to have second thoughts about cutting off someone they still care about, or to break that boundary that they set themselves when they realize they do still want to know how that person is doing. But the fact is that she positions herself as having the moral high ground in every single discussion they have and that's just not true. She is not literally a supernatural monster, true, but if season four did anything with the concept of monsters it was breaking down the difference between "supernaturally driven no-longer-human" and "person capable of caring and empathy." (That's a whole different meta, though, one that I will get around to someday.) Not that Jon is any better, in that encounter specifically, at dealing with a complicated and contentious relationship - he deliberately goads her, even if he doesn't use compulsion. But that's the thing, they're both exes who have had a falling out and aren't handling it very well. Neither of them is in the right.

All of which makes me really wonder what her relationship with Melanie is actually like. We don't actually see hardly any of it directly, and of what we do, well, Melanie sounds like she's still high on painkillers, so it's hard to take that as an indication of anything. But given that people (who are not intentionally trying to manipulate those around them) tend to, y'know, be fundamentally the same person in their various relationships, though it may manifest in different ways, we can probably make some guesses.

I have always been bothered by, and I really can't ignore, the fact that they were getting together at the same time that Melanie was doing what Georgie has been demanding of Jon since season three: she did whatever it took to get out. I have to wonder if Georgie knows about the nonconsensual surgery part of Melanie's process of getting out, and if she does, if she understands how vital it was. I certainly wouldn't be surprised, if she does know, that she's managed to compartmentalize it: Jon inflicted this terrible trauma on Melanie, Melanie escaped the entity that took her over. (Subconscious implication: Jon is a monster; Melanie is better than him.) I would be very surprised if Georgie is interested at all in the fine distinctions between entities; she's shown no interest in learning what is actually happening to anyone in this situation beyond "it's bad and they should get out of it." But it's relevant, because by the time Melanie makes the decision to blind herself, she's in a much different position than Jon, enslaved by an entity but not consumed by one. She herself admitted to Jon that she would never have voluntarily escaped from the Slaughter.

And given how difficult Melanie finds it to talk about any of this - you can hear her dragging the words out from behind her teeth in her conversation with Jon in Flesh, truly incredible acting by Lydia Nicholas, my god - if Georgie doesn't want to hear it? I can't imagine Melanie insisting. Yes, Melanie is going to therapy, but let me tell you, I've been going to therapy for twelve years now and I have yet to have several of the important conversations my therapists have insisted I have. That shit is hard. But I can imagine a scenario where, having been told by her therapist (who, remember, doesn't have the first idea what Melanie is actually going through, because Melanie isn't telling her about the supernatural so she has to leave out a lot of really relevant details) that she ought to tell her friend/potential girlfriend/new girlfriend about these things, Melanie attempts to bring it up, Georgie says kind and reassuring things and refuses to let her clarify any of the details, and Melanie gives up in relief, thinking, well, I tried. Super valid all around, but it doesn't mean that Georgie has any clearer picture of what Melanie's traumas actually look like, never mind Jon's. There's no world in which I can imagine Georgie actually internalizing the idea that Melanie loved the Slaughter when it had her, and she would gladly have stayed with it if Jon and Basira hadn't intervened.

In Georgie's eyes, Melanie is being a Good Victim. She was hurt but she was strong; she fought it until she won; now she's going to therapy and setting boundaries and trying to heal. She got away.

(Except, of course, she didn't, because as of The Eye Opens no one has gotten away, because this is the entire world now. We have no idea how this has affected Melanie. Presumably she's out of reach of the Eye, given that Jon can't see her or Georgie (and there's some evidence on the side of Georgie's encounter genuinely having stripped her of fear, if she's also invisible to the Eye), but she spent a long time under the influence of the Slaughter. It had her firmly enough that her attacking Jon was enough to give him his Slaughter scar. If nothing else, Melanie certainly hasn't had her fear removed, and talk about a situation bound to retraumatize someone who had such a visceral revulsion to being trapped that Elias chose it as his mechanism of control over her. Melanie probably doesn't look like a Good Victim any more, and I'd bet her relationship with Georgie is suffering some serious strain because of it.)

We don't know when exactly Melanie and Georgie got together; the last time one of them mentions the other is, I'm pretty sure, when Georgie tells Jon that Melanie is back from India. So we know that Georgie and Melanie were friends; that's good, that's a good foundation for a romantic relationship. At the very least they know each other, they have some idea of what to expect. I'd be surprised if they were dating during that season 3/4 hiatus period, though, or frankly any time before Melanie's surgery, just because Melanie seems much too consumed with rage to have room for any other emotions, and I can't imagine Georgie putting up with that.

What seems way more likely to me is this: Melanie comes back from India, arranges to meet Georgie for drinks. Probably they don't talk about anything serious; possibly they talk about Jon, honestly, since we know Melanie was looking for him and Georgie talked to him about Melanie, but very likely in the same "stuck-up pompous ass" way that Melanie talks about Jon in early seasons. (I bet Melanie's roasts are amazing.) Shortly after that Melanie joins the Magnus Institute and then, very likely, either she never tells Georgie about it and therefore they don't talk much or she does tell Georgie about it and Georgie tells her that place is bad news and she won't have anything to do with it and they don't talk at all, until, whichever way that went, the Unknowing happens and Tim dies and Jon winds up in a coma and everything goes to shit. We know Georgie visits Jon in the hospital; we don't know if Melanie does, but frankly it seems unlikely. If they did cross paths during this time, it was probably very brief and superficial. Then: the surgery, and Melanie's recovery.

I'll be honest, I have a hard time imagining Melanie deciding on her own that she should go to therapy. It's possible Basira suggested it, but it really does sound like a Georgie thing to do. So I picture something like this: from the way Basira talks it sounds like they've all been pretty much living in the Archives for a while, and on top of that everyone in the Archives has just badly violated Melanie's trust, so Melanie pulls up her Facebook DMs and talks to the only other person she has. You were right, she says, this place is terrible, I can't handle it, there's no one here I can trust and I'm so alone. And Georgie, who is generous with help and advice (so long as it's accepted) and (like anyone) weak to being told she was right about something, starts talking to her. We know Georgie's got good boundaries, and we know she doesn't want to hear details about what's going on in the Institute, so I can see her saying, I can talk to you, I would love to talk to you, but not about this. For that you need a therapist.

So Melanie gets a therapist, and the prospect of going out amongst the monsters they know are stalking the Institute without that protective shield of rage (never mind the emotional vulnerability of going to therapy in the first place) makes public transit an unthinkable option, so she asks Georgie to take her, and she does, and she keeps taking her to therapy, which is, as far as we know, the only time Melanie leaves the Archives in season four, until she blinds herself and escapes it completely.

And so they have this relationship that's built up almost entirely around Melanie's trauma - with a foundation of friendship, certainly, so I do think that if they are willing to work through it they could make it a working, healthy relationship, but (and again this isn't stated in canon but is my speculation based on what we know about these characters) it is a romantic relationship that's built around the process of Melanie recovering from multiple traumas. Ones that we know that Georgie a) doesn't know many details about, and b) more importantly, refuses to know any details about. Now, I have no experience with romantic relationships and serious trauma; I might be wildly off base here. But. I know that boundaries are important and I know that trust is also important. And if Georgie is holding similar boundaries with Melanie that she has with Jon (and, as I went into excruciating detail about earlier, she has very solid emotional reasons to protect herself with those boundaries), that's drawing a hard line around what's basically the past two to three years of Melanie's life, and undeniably both the worst and most important things that have ever happened to her. That seems...difficult to manage in the long term.

(This is a bit more of a stretch, more of the germ of a fic idea than an argument I'm prepared to defend, but I also would not be surprised if Georgie told Melanie that she wouldn't date her while she was still working at the Institute. That's a very reasonable boundary, and it's good motivation - and probably healthy motivation, I do like the idea that Melanie had something to reach toward in escaping the Institute, not just the desperate flight from - but it's also something of an ultimatum. Which is not inherently bad, but it is the kind of thing that can fester, given other problems.)

Now it's entirely possible that Georgie isn't that internally consistent. People aren't! (See: Basira's attitude toward Daisy vs her attitude toward Jon in season four.) Maybe she's more flexible about being willing to listen to Melanie, maybe she's starting to understand some of what was happening and how genuinely impossible a situation it really was. But that has to be a struggle for her, too; it's not a perfect, sweet, unconditionally good situation that teaches you that you've been unfair to the point of cruelty to someone you used to care about. And by the time the apocalypse rolls around, Melanie is, if she's lucky, just barely able to say she's healed from the plain physical trauma of blinding, never mind all the other baggage. They've got to be having a rough fucking time of it, at the very least, even if you assume that they're suddenly both the kind of people who will sit still and listen supportively and talk honestly about their own messy and complicated emotions, when neither of them have been that kind of person before.

(Another disclaimer because Fandom Is Like That: This is in no way a condemnation of or argument against fluffy What the Girlfriends fic; fic is for making fluffy things that you want to happen to your faves, or building fluffy content that you desperately need for whatever reason. Gods know there are plenty of unhealthy parts of Jon and Martin's relationship that I ignore in most of my fluffy fic. This is me attempting to work through my thoughts and feelings about the relationship I see in canon in the hopes of actually being able to write some fic about these girls myself someday, because I personally can't write fic until I understand canon, and so much of them happens offscreen because they're not main characters, and they're written with such depth and complexity that you can't just slap a stereotype on them and call it good. Which is awesome! But it means I gotta do the work, and I post it because a) it's work, and this is fandom, and I want validation; and b) I'm hoping other people have insights that might also help me clarify my thinking.)

Oooookay Magnus Archives season three is done! We got a whole lot more knowledge on what's going on, and a whole lot of more questions.

The various threads connecting all the episodes have become very obvious now

We have these fear entities that are the ones behind everything.

Everything is slowly but surely coming together ahhhhhhh

So, Elias wasn't evil per se but he was very annoying

It wasn't really meant to be funny, but Melanie just very casually trying to murder him all the time was pretty hilarious

I've really liked Melanie's character since that first statement she gave so I'm glad she became a more important character

Tim's story about his brother :'( dude

And Tim is dead now!

Although tbh I was expecting him to die during the end of this season

(Martin is probably next and I am worried 🙃)

Watching Tim go from being a very cheerful jokey character, to how angry and depressed he was by the end was very sad

Martin continues to be my favorite

Ohhh gosh, that scene in episode 100 where he tried to pay that girl who thought she would get money by giving a statement. I just about died

That scene in 119 with him and Elias >:( Elias can you please shut up for a second I swear

Well he's in jail now

And Peter Lukas is now head of the institute

We don't really know much about him, but I'm optimistic

He has the same sound effect as Michael(now Helen) which hmmmmmm

The same sound effect was playing on and off throughout the Unknowing as well

I haven't even talked about John yet

So being the archivist is being an avatar to The Watcher, and he gets some powers out of it so that's neat

He also like has to keep recording statements. It's like a need now hmm

I really liked getting some backstory as to why he joined this institute.

And he talked to Gerard Keay! Who was very helpful, unlike some people

We learned so much more about Gerard and Gertrude this season

Ugh, and the Unknowing

That finale was a little hard to keep track of at times

Tim died, Daisy died, Basira is okay, John is dead but also not dead

I'm not toooo worried about him, I don't think he'll ever get killed off (at least untill the end of season 5 😬) he's way to important

Daisy killed Breacon and/or Hope, and the other probably died in the explosion so I guess we won't be seeing them around much more

Soooo much happened this season, and the mysteries have been expanded upon so much, and yet I still have NO IDEA WHATS GOING ON

Okay, well I could go on and on about everything that happened this season, but this post is already long and disorganized enough, so I'm gonna stop there. On to season four!

Magnus Archives - First Impressions (151-175)

We’re almost there, gang. Out of the Lonely and into the Eyepocalypse we go! Blah blah I had 75% of the series spoiled and am jotting down my thoughts, you know the drill.

EP 151 (Big Picture): - OH SIMON??? - okay okay Simon's kinda funny, you go you funky little sky grandpa - Martin Tell Her The TRUTH EP 152 (A Gravedigger's Envy): - oooh another ancient one - hey that's terrifying wtf - can someone please comfort jonny boy good lord EP 153 (Love Bombing): - Idk why the cult ones freak me out, maybe because cults are real? - oh god what's gonna happen to that dog - I literally just made my dinner with white wine vinegar that's a little old are you sHITTING ME - GIRL GET OUT OF THERE WHILE YOU HAVE A CHANCE YOU KNOW SOMETHING'S OFF - AYYY THE HUNTIN' GANG - tbh it was weird that they helped him even though they knew he wasn't human actually - DAISY!!!!! - Jon can you chill w/ the sass if you're not gonna help - Okay I'm gay but Daisy Growl Hot - Two dying monsters trying to reconcile their humanity, this is sad I hate it here EP 154 (Bloody Mary): - oh god it's This Episode I've been dreading it poor Eric - g o d Gertrude sounds so upset - I would die for Eric - "Eric I'm gonna count to ten and you're gonna tELL ME HOW YOU QUIT" - I'm already crying good god - "he needed me" o w - MARTIN GOT TO SAY FUCK!!!!! - O U C H - i am so upset FUCK this podcast - the catalogue of the dead is just the Delano-Keay family album EP 155 (Cost of Living): - CALL HER OUT JON - Tova, to this doctor's heart: it's free real estate - A FUCKING C H I L D?????? - ah yes, some more DIY surgery, who needs doctors when you have knives? EP 156 (Reflection): - ayyyy adelard how are ya - oh fun flesh time - oh? extinction? - also that was gross what the fuck - M A R T I N EP 157 (Rotten Core): - go save Martin before I cry - ADELARD!!! - ah no, I'm gonna miss this dude he was kinda cool - this hits different in corona times - okay this is actually pretty gross wtf - Martin's lonely because he chose to be, Jon is lonely because everyone hates him, poetic cinema EP 158 (Panopticon): - Ah Shit Here We Fucking Go - OH WHAT THE FUCK NOT!SASHA???? - AYYYYY THERE'S JONAH MAGNUS WELCOME HOME RAT BASTARD - uh oh bye bye Gertrude Time - mom and dad are fighting to be Martin's favorite parent lmao - no not the promise :C - Martin is the brain cell, he really just played both these men like kazoos - gdi Peter give me my boy back EP 159 (The Last): - hi I am Sad - Marto blease just go with the tired eyeball man - "i see you" MY B O Y S EP 160 (The Eye Opens) - oh lord here we go - at least we get some Jonmartin conversation - Monologue Time! - Jon: can I just say, from the bottom of my heart...my bad EP 161 (Dwelling): - welcome to the apocalypse bitches - FINALLY i've been waiting for these tapes for my entire life - TIMMMMMM! SASHAAAAA! - Elias being a normal person is unsettling - ALL THE EYE JOKES gdi I refuse to simp for eyeball man - THE JARRING "ARCHIVIST" I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD - "If I wish for all of you to go away do you think it'll work?" well it worked on Tim and Sasha - Elias: I'm a cool boss, I can drink wine - the image of Jon just huddled on the couch with a bag of tapes and listening to them over and over is so sad - sorry Gertrude no Sasha, just a sad little man - thank u for the powerpoint Gertrude - JON DON'T SNAP - i love them so much your honor EP 162 (Cosy Cabin): - GERRY GERRY GERRY - okay Gertrude and Gerry are adorable I love goth boy and his badass grandma - Gerry, ever the pragmatist: but what about TAXES gertrude - Tim and Sasha interacting is the sweetest thing ;_; - oh this is AFTER the hookup lmao - OH WAIT Sasha canonically knew about Danny??? I didn't know that oof - Oh Jon's getting a phone call I suppose - Jon's trying so hard to be dramatic and Martin's like "okay bitch grab ur backpack and lets go" EP 163 (In The Trenches): - "Tell everybooooody I'm ooon my waaay, new frieeends and new plaaaaces to seeeee" - YESSS LET MARTIN CURSE OVER THE GUNSHOTS AND BAGPIPES - "Martin can you stand over there and cover your ears while I cast Eldritch Ramble" EP 164 (The Sick Village): - another one that hits different in corona times - I hate the word soupy - what in the midsommar - if you can't find your own statements, DIY your own - Martin: fuck u Jon, Helen's my friend now - Martin: can I get an Uber, can I PLEASE get an Uber EP 165 (Revolutions): - this is my friend's favorite episode so I'm excited - oh circus music gross - THE RHYMINGGGGG OH I LOVE THIS - my arms are sore from happy stimming at this audio oh my god - SHUT UP JON IT WAS A GOOD POEM - GET HER ASS JON - is that our first "Ceaseless Watcher"?? I think it was! - Jon: Level Up! - Martin: that's hot EP 166 (The Worms): - HELL YES JON SAID FUCK - oh worm? - Martin answer your damn phone - awww Martin don't doubt yourself :C EP 167 (Curiousity): - Fiona: lmao watch this -passes out- - oh I didn't realize Eric was one of the OGs, their conversations make more sense now - Michael :c - Gertrude you got played like a fiddle damn EP 168 (Roots): - jealous Martin lmao - Jon just tell him why you woke up that would probably solve this - As someone who also freaks out about every little twinge this episode felt targeted EP 169 (Fire Escape): - desolation time? desolation time. can't wait to walk through hell - so aside from Smirke's 14 we have the 3 additional fears: the Extinction, the Scotland, and the Landlord - oh this one is terrifiyng i love it - OOOOH the "jons" slowly fading in was really clever - G O D martin sounds so defeated poor boy EP 170 (Recollection): - Martin finding tape recorders is the cutest thing - Oh fuck are we in the Lonely oh shit - this is so disconcerting i love it - someone get this man a better chair EP 171 (The Gardener): - Martin: damn that's a lot of bones - oh not THIS dude again I can barely understand him oh my GOD - well that was interesting EP 172 (Strung Out): - oh web? - oh this is sad shit - I think this is one of the worst domains yet for me personally this sounds like hell - g o d the web makes my brain hurt blease Jonny I'm stupid EP 173 (Night Night): - oh dark? - oh so the darkness is just the apocalypse daycare? nice - oh and this tween runs it, nice - Jon: are you SURE you want me to kill this middle schooler? - wow this is depressing EP 174 (The Great Beast): - oh hunt? - oh vast? lmao that's what i get for assumptions - Martin just wants to kill a man is that too much to ask someone give him a gun EP 175 (Epoch): - ex...tinct...ion? - “Peter was right” no FUCK YOU I refuse to give Peter any credit LOOK ADELARD WAS RIGHT, Adelard Decker laid the BLUEPRINT - poor Jon he's gettin these hard-hitting google searches - Basira and Daisy?????? OH WAIT THAT MEANS OH NO

Small Joke Story Bc I’m Not A Coward

 “Everybody shut up, we only have three hours to detail the greatest conspiracy theory of our time,” Melanie said severely, uncapping her marker. Jon perked up. “You don’t get a fucking vote, Jon.”

“Why not?!” 

“Because this is the greatest trick the devil ever pulled,” Tim said seriously, moving to stand on the other side of the whiteboard from Melanie and uncapping his own dry erase marker. “Convincing the world that he was from California.”

Everybody stared at Tim and Melanie, who were both wearing matching expressions of grave seriousness. Martin began kneading his forehead. 

Under her breath, Sasha muttered, “Not this bullshit again.” At Basira’s flat look, she explained, “Every single solitary time Tim has a few margaritas too many at our favorite Tex-Mex place he goes on about this stupid theory he has. He’s been convinced since, like, our first month of working here.”

“I’ve been building evidence for years,” Tim said furiously. 

“My Buzzfeed background has made me perfectly suited towards collecting evidence and making neatly formed lists,” Melanie said. She drew a T-chart on the whiteboard and wrote on either side ‘PROBABLY CALIFORNIAN’ and ‘DEFINITELY A BODY STEALING PURITAN GHOST FROM THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS’. “I reached the inevitable conclusion independently of Tim, and we worked together to put together this rhetorical argument. I know by the end of it all you’ll agree with us that Elias Bouchard is an evil ghost.”

Hm. 

Martin slowly fed Jon another piece of fudge, knowing that this conversation was going to upset him. 

TMA American AU, made as a result of four hours of increasingly inane text messages between myself and @lazuliquetzal. Every time we bring this show further from Britain it is brought further into the light. 

Read the rest of it under the cut!

The timing had to be exact. 

They had agreed to wait for the 55th Annual Historical Salem Convention to roll around. It was the closest thing they had to security while working at the Usher Foundation. After a while you really did get used to eyes constantly watching you, all the time, never feeling quite safe in your own skin, but it never really hurt to be careful. Especially when it came to Elias Bouchard. 

Personally, Martin really didn’t see what the big deal was. Of course there was a mysterious, malevolent entity always watching you, judging you, finding you wanting, and finally condemning you to eternal suffering. God existed. 

Still, it seemed to bug the others, so Martin bribed Rosie with a loaf of his trademark sausage and cheese loaf to let him know when Elias excitedly left for his favorite event of the year. When he got the text from Rosie, Martin stood up from his chair, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Bouchard has flown the coop!”

On the turn of a dime, everyone stopped pretending to work. Tim threw down his pen, Melanie jumped up and ran to go wheel out the whiteboard, Basira tossed her book over her shoulder and pulled out her secret legal pad, Daisy logged off her favorite website GunShoppersUSA.com, Sasha spat out her chewing tobacco into the tin on her desk and put her boots back on the ground, and even Jon emerged from his office with a grim expression. 

“It’s time,” Tim said grimly. “It’s time that we all find out the fuckin’ truth.”

“I keep on telling you, you’re over-reacting,” Jon insisted. He dug his hands in the pockets of his Harvard hoodie, scowling. Martin fastidiously arranged the plaque on his desk (“Your Life Is A Gift From God: What You Do With That Life Is Your Gift To Him”) as he imagined ripping it off him. Best not to be inappropriate during work hours. “Why put forth all the effort for such a stupid lie?”

“It’s hardly his first lie to us,” Basira said, seemingly bored and watching Jersey Shore on her phone. “He also lied about not being an omniscient serial killer.”

“This is different!” Tim said, slamming his fist on his desk and Melanie rolled the whiteboard in. “That’s a matter of common sense. Who wouldn’t lie about being a serial killer?”

“If I was a serial killer I wouldn’t lie about it,” Sasha said with a straight face. “I’m not a pussy.”

“I am a serial killer,” Daisy said, bored. 

“You guys are fucking freaks,” Tim said.    

“Jesus christ, just say y’all,” Sasha said, yet again. Martin nodded fastidiously. 

“All’a youse be quiet,” Jon muttered. He walked forward and sat down in the chair next to Martin’s desk, which made him flush. Martin quietly pushed over his big candy bowl full of fudge, which Jon absently took and stuffed in his mouth seemingly without realizing it. “What’s alla this ‘bout, then?”

“Wow, he really must be tired,” Basira muttered to Daisy, who looked strongly as if she was pretending not to mark down whenever Jon’s hilarious accent jumped out. 

 “Everybody shut up, we only have three hours to detail the greatest conspiracy theory of our time,” Melanie said severely, uncapping her marker. Jon perked up. “You don’t get a fucking vote, Jon.”

“Why not?!” 

“Because this is the greatest trick the devil ever pulled,” Tim said seriously, moving to stand on the other side of the whiteboard from Melanie and uncapping his own dry erase marker. “Convincing the world that he was from California.”

Everybody stared at Tim and Melanie, who were both wearing matching expressions of grave seriousness. Martin began kneading his forehead. 

Under her breath, Sasha muttered, “Not this bullshit again.” At Basira’s flat look, she explained, “Every single solitary time Tim has a few margaritas too many at our favorite Tex-Mex place he goes on about this stupid theory he has. He’s been convinced since, like, our first month of working here.”

“I’ve been building evidence for years,” Tim said furiously. 

“My Buzzfeed background has made me perfectly suited towards collecting evidence and making neatly formed lists,” Melanie said. She drew a T-chart on the whiteboard and wrote on either side ‘PROBABLY CALIFORNIAN’ and ‘DEFINITELY A BODY STEALING PURITAN GHOST FROM THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS’. “I reached the inevitable conclusion independently of Tim, and we worked together to put together this rhetorical argument. I know by the end of it all you’ll agree with us that Elias Bouchard is an evil ghost.”

Hm. 

Martin slowly fed Jon another piece of fudge, knowing that this conversation was going to upset him. 

Sasha, from where she was sitting across from him, noticed the action. She smiled reassuringly at Martin. “Don’t worry. I kinda...I kinda get Tim about the Elias secretly being British thing, but there’s no way there’s any witchcraft going on here.”

“I just heavily disapprove of witchcraft,” Martin said haltingly. “And I really don’t think it’s something we should joke about -”

“We know,” everyone said. 

“You tried to exorcise Jane Prentiss,” Tim pointed out. 

“She was of the Devil! So sue me!”

“She was definitely of the Devil,” Sasha agreed. “I’ve seen hordes of insects that big plenty’a times, and they’re definitely Devil work. One time, I saw this spider the size of a dinner place eat a bird -”

“Shut up about the bird spider,” Jon screamed, “I am sick to death of the bird spider -”

“She was of Portland,” Basira said flatly.

“What’s the difference?” Daisy asked. 

Basira fixed Daisy with a cold, beady stare. “Unless you want everyone in this room to know exactly what place you got in the Miss Kentucky County Fair Pageant -”

“Second,” Jon said, “it was humiliating.”

Daisy took out her hunting knife the size of her forearm, which Basira quickly wrestled from her, and it took another twenty seconds for Sasha to call the room to order. Martin stared longingly at the gun cabinet they kept in a corner of the room underneath a big pile of boxes, which everybody had a key to but Jon. 

“Okay,” Tim said loudly, after the room had returned to relative order. Mostly through Martin feeding Jon the toffee fudge that kept his mouth glued shut for at least the next few hours. “To recap. Our evil boss, Elias Bouchard, is a well known douchebag asshole cuntface. He is gnarly as fuck. He is uncool.”

“Mfmf,” Jon said.

“No, it was pretty fresh how he framed you for murder. Let’s cover what we know of his background.” Tim rapped the whiteboard. “Pothead rich kid from San Diego. Now, everybody knows certain things about people from San Diego. Rich! White! Hipster! Dope on the waves. But not as dope as me. Really rockin’ zoos. San Diegoans are cool dudes who are great to hit a vape with.” He rapped the whiteboard again, much more empathetically. “Elias Bouchard is none of these things but rich and white!”

“That’s all you need,” Basira said flatly. 

“Vaping is really bad for you, you know,” Martin said reproachfully. 

Melanie took out her vape threateningly, making Sasha throw the stuffed alligator she kept on her desk at her to knock it out of her hands. “No sources of ignition in the archives, Mels!”

“Now, let’s go over my evidence,” Tim said loudly. “In the interest of fairness, I will list reasons that Elias may actually be from California.”

“Are we going to go over his means, motive, opportunity, anything?” Jon asked, seemingly bored, having finally swallowed his fudge. 

Tim’s eyes locked in on Jon’s. Jon quailed. “I’m sorry,” Tim said pleasantly, “are we going to actually stop and wonder about why someone would, hypothetically, want to do something stupid before accusing them of it and, perhaps, stalking them to their homes?”

“Massachusetts isn’t a stand your ground state,” Daisy whispered to Jon. “We’re in coward territory, you can take him.”

“If you call the North coward territory one more time, Daisy -” Basira said threateningly.

“Anyway!” Melanie said loudly, as she wrote on the whiteboard. “It’s possible that he is from California because he’s rich and white.” She wrote down ‘privilege’ in big letters on the board. “However, as we know, there is rich ethnic diversity in California. Do you know where else rich and white people live? 17th century Puritan England.”

“I have a reason why Elias could be from California,” Sasha said seriously.

“You have the floor, hun,” Tim said. 

“He’s an asshole.”

Melanie silently wrote down ‘ASSHOLE’. 

“Pretentious,” Jon called. 

“Big talk from the Brooklyn Boy,” Sasha called back. “Gentrified Gentleman! Colombia Copycat! Big Apple Asshole!”

“I oughta kill youse,” Jon hissed. “Disrespect the boroughs in my house again and I’ll show you how 84th street boys do it -”

“You and what square mileage?!”

Melanie, who was the most emotionally honest out of all of them, wrote down ‘PRETENTIOUS’ anyway. 

“Now, let’s move onto the real arguments,” Tim said, clapping his hands to restore order. “Let’s review. Mels, make sure you get this down. One time, I saw him parking in December, and he drove well in the snow. He’s a natural at it.”

Silence bore down over the assembly. That was, by far and away, extremely incriminating. Californians couldn’t drive well in the snow if you held a gun to their head - Daisy had checked. 

“Moreover,” Tim continued. “I tried sharing my korean-ecuadorian-french-thai fusion food truck take-out with him and he refused. Can a Californian refuse the siren call of food truck fusion cuisine?”

“That is suspicious,” Jon said grudgingly. 

“Tim and I experimented,” Melanie volunteered, as she wrote down ‘EATS LIKE AN OLD PERSON’ on the whiteboard. “We tried cranking down the temperature in his office to - get this - sixty degrees. He didn’t even notice.”

“I haven’t heard him complain about winter once,” Tim pointed out.

“Winters in this infernal land fucking suck,” Sasha groused. “If it’s below 100 degrees it’s too fuckin cold.”

“Bood,” Daisy said. 

“Agreed,” Martin said. “I had to figure out what snow chains are.”

“I can’t drive,” Jon said proudly. Martin patted his hand. 

“Moreover!” Tim said. “I asked him his opinion on reality TV and he said that he didn’t watch it. I asked him what his favorite outdoors activity was and he said ice fishing. Every summer he goes to Maine with his shitty husband to go ice fishing. It’s bullshit.”

“Elias is gay?” Jon, Known Worst Gaydar In The Fucking World, said in surprise. 

“Put that down in the pro-California column,” Daisy said. Melanie wrote down ‘GAY RIGHTS’ on the board. 

“I hope you don’t let the fact that Elias is gay influence why you righteously hate him,” Melanie said to Martin seriously. “Gay rights are important, Martin. I believe this very strongly.”

“Aw, bless your heart,” said the guy who had been thrown out of his small Oklahoma town and excommunicated when he was eighteen. Not that anybody knew that. Martin didn’t believe in oversharing. Everyone took one look at the bolo tie and Precious Moments desktop calendar and assumed heterosexuality. What if he just liked bolo ties? What if Precious Moments was cute and sweet?

“Okay, back on topic,” Tim said, as if they had ever actually been on topic. “I have a finishing blow for all of you. This’ll blow your socks off. It’s really the coup d’tat. That’s a little something we say in California to show that we really got this sucker on lockdown. One time, Melanie saw him eating Taco Bell in the cafeteria -”

“ - and enjoying it,” Melanie said viciously. “Then I walked up to him and went, hey boss, what’s that you eating? And he said -”

“Just having some Mexican food,” Tim spat. 

Everybody sat in silent observance of this crime. 

Finally, Jon rubbed his chin and said, “I just don’t get it. Why would you pretend to be from California? It’s a mediocre state.”

“Say that to my SoCal beach bum face -”

“It’s to hide the fact that he’s the ghost of a 17th century Puritan witchfinder bodyhopping in order to feed his infernal god of paranoia and suspicion,” Melanie said, with a straight face. 

Cautiously, Basira said, “And you got to that conclusion...how?”

“By using the investigative skills I learned at Buzzfeed,” Melanie scoffed. “Duh.”

But now Basira was actually looking thoughtful.  “I mean, there is the fact that the Usher Foundation is built on a sacred Native burial ground and is precisely located on the ancient site where witches were sentenced to death, constructed using the wood from their holy pyres?”

Everybody thought hard about this. 

“If he pretended to be from Florida I would have caught him out in a second,” Sasha said finally. “Man looks like he’s never seen a spider bigger than a saucer.”

“Shut up about the fuckin spiders -”

“I’ve seen the rats in NYC, they look like they could do my taxes -”

“That’s their prerogative, James!”

“I’d be able to call him out in a second if he pretended to be from Jersey City,” Basira said thoughtfully. “And, come to think of it, I have heard him call a trunk a ‘boot’ before.”

“I heard him call an elevator a lift once,” Daisy volunteered. 

Everybody chewed over this new piece of information. 

“God,” Sasha whispered, looking sick. “I can’t believe an English scum has been among us this entire time. It’s terrible. I never thought I’d be forced to interact with those fuckers.” She muttered something else under her breath in Spanish, which made Jon roll his eyes. 

“You’re scared of Englishmen, of all things?”

“It’s their legs,” Sasha shivered. “Too many legs.”

Finally, Jon turned to Martin. “What do you think, Martin? You’ve been pretty quiet.”

Martin sighed. Martin carefully drank some of his world famous peach sweet tea. Martin took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. 

“Of course he’s a heckin’ seventh century puritan body hopping ghost,” Martin said finally. “I’ve known that for, say, since I was hired.”

Everybody stared at him. 

“Why the fuck haven’t you mentioned that,” Daisy said flatly. 

Martin shrugged. “Y’all done never asked.”

Jon took a second to gather himself, clearly two seconds away from flying into sheer Brooklyn Rage. 

Thankfully, Melanie was squinting furiously at him. “What makes you say that?”

Martin just shrugged again. “So I was interviewin’ wit’ him, right? And I wanted ta make a good impression, so I just said, oh, the Lord provides for our meetin’ and all that. Then he said some Bible quote at me. Then I was like, oh, I can totally work this angle. Then I quoted the New Testament back at him, and I guess we got into a sorta competition? This happens in the South. But I ain’t never met someone who can out Bible quote me. So I figured, oh, he must be a body hopping evil Puritan ghost from the 17th century.”

Everybody stared at him. 

“He called me a nice young God fearin’ boy,” Martin said. “Only Puritans and Southern Baptists do that, and he ain’t no member of my church. Plus, you know, when were fightin’ over him framing Jon for murder and how dangerous that was, he’s the only person I ever met who could use cherry picked Bible quotes as effectively as me in order to win an argument. So...really, it’s just logical.”

Slowly, Basira said, “You figured he was evil because he was an expert in your tactics?”

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” Martin said wisely. 

“Fuck this shit,” Jon said, standing up abruptly. He threw on his coat over his hoodie, frowning down at everyone from his unfair height. “I’m going down to the deli and getting me a pastrami on rye. Martin, c’mon, I’ll spot ya a Pabst.”

He had never been more in love. Martin shot upwards, throwing on his own coat and hat. “Alcohol is of the devil -”

“Just drink the beer, Martin.”

Well, there were some benefits in being excommunicated. Martin saluted everyone, eagerly linking his arm around Jon’s. “Saints keep all y’all! See you after lunch!”

“Honestly, Martin, just say youse.”

“I would really rather die.”

The magnus archives for the fandom thingy ?

the first character i ever fell in love with: fuck I don’t really know. I guess Tim? At first I really didn’t care about the story I was just here for the individual statements but I had zero attachment to the people in it. I can’t tell at which point the recurring cast really started growing on me. Tim is iconic from day one tho.

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: eh. I haven’t really had time to dislike any of the characters. I did find Nikola a lot less interesting past the statement where it’s a shop mannequin. That was a really good statement and everything that went down afterwards just didn’t hit me as well.

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: I mean technically I still like Melanie/Basira, I have just accepted that it didn’t actually take that direction and that nobody cares :’D

my ultimate favorite character™: TIM. TIM TIM TIM TIM TIM TIM TIM

prettiest character: well, I mean, it’s a little complicated to decide for obvious reasons, but I will say, Not!Sacha has the sexiest voice and everytime she says “yes” in that tone I melt a little bit

my most hated character: Peter Lukas. I get that everyone has decided he looks like a ship captain for convenience sake, but from his voice alone I could not imagine him as anything else than Gabriel in Good Omens. Elias is evil but Peter Lukas is the corporate dude who pretends to care about good and god I want to cut him to pieces

my OTP: I haven’t really thought about it tbh. I ship very casually in this fandom so far, I haven’t formed any strong attachment to specific pairings. I guess Jonmartin just by virtue of being exposed to it every episode, and they are cute it’s true

my NOTP: same, don’t really have strong enough opinions to form one, I will say I did recoil in horror upon stumbling on martin/peter a few times but also like. I think it’s like prompto/ardyn in my ffxv answer:  theoretically I can understand the appeal, it just feels like a really low hanging angst fruit and I’m not interested.

favorite episode: Binary! it might be because I grew up scaring myself reading creepypasta alone in the house at night, because it really feels so much like that, and it scared me to death and I love it

saddest death: ah... Tim..............................

favorite season: I think it’s kind of a tie between s1 and s5? S5 is really good so far because it’s very well written and interesting, but S1 also just has. A really cool vibe as an anthology, and scared me more often.

least favorite season: I think it’s S3? I had a hard time when the overarching plot started to really kick in and I still had no fucking idea who anyone was and couldn’t recognize anyone’s voice at all, and on top of that I had to try and make sense of the timeline... it was a lot of effort I had not originally signed up for. I’m sure it’s not as bad as it felt, really, but, yeah.

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: Gertrude... I don’t even hate her I’m just so fucking neutral about her and I don’t get what all the fuss is about I’m sorry

my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: I mean. Jon? :D I’m kidding. Probably Elias because he’s just. Really ridiculously evil and it’s delightful.

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: none of them deserve anything good to happen to them that’s precisely why I’m here, but I guess Martin? Also Tim.

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: once again, my soul remains completely untarnished by my love for fucked up things, but I have not been the same woman since my exposure to Daisy/Julia Montauk. @ Jonny Sims I know they’re both dead now but how much do I need to pay you for interactions between them please

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: that’s pretty much all the ships I’ve seen so far, really. I’ll say lonelyeyes, I think as a concept the multipe divorces thing is genuinely funny and I applaud fandom for coming up with it, but also. Well, I just don’t go there. 

fandom thingy

*!!!!!!SPOILERS FOR JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING!!!!!!*

Things about the Magnus archives (mostly season 5) and it’s fandom that make my lungs collapse with the sheer amount of serotonin that floods my entire body when I see them

The fact that no matter what you do or how good of an artist you are Jared Hopworth will always look like a blobfish

Anytime Jon has an ace ring I literally combust

“ACAB” vs “I am gay” werewolf wife (also please I need more basira art please I need it please she is beautiful plea—)

Breekon and Hope: these homies have been happily married as a joke and as a fuck you to Peter and Elias for over 300 years

Tim “Kool-Aid Man” Stoker

The 15th fear: Teenagers (+I’m about to throw hands with a 13 year old)

Jonny Sims had to kill off the only canonical brain cells in the pre-canon and the first season (rip Sasha and Gertrude)

SIMON FUCKINH FAIRCHILD WHAT AN ABSOLUTE MADMAN HES BEEN MY FAVORITE AVATAR SINCE WE MET HIM AND HE KEEPS GETTING BETTER I DONT KNOW WHY IT TOOK HIM YEETINF HIMSELF OUT OF THE SKY TO LAND ON HIS ASS IN FRONT OF THE LITERAL MOST IMPORTANT COUPLE IN EXISTENCE FOR EVERYONE TO REALIZE HIS POTENTIAL AS A COMEDIC GOLD MINE THANK YOU FOR NOT KILLING HIM JONNY SIMS HES JUST A USELESS IDIOT GRANDPA BIRD RAT STUPI

WTGFs Georgie and Melanie, blind, fearless, and WILL kick your ass

*sounds of brutal pipe murder*

Here is a alphabetized list of why you cannot and frankly should not kill me: 1) it’s rude. Thanks, The End. Jon: “fair enough” Martin: *pikachu face*

“You fear the Dark when you’re a CHILD and then you GROW UP to have more MATURE fears, like a TRIPPY MERRY-GO-ROUND WHERE YOU STEAL PEOPLE’S EXISTENCES”— Jonny Sims

Jonah crying on a dramatic couch in the panopticon and listening to tik tok-assigned theme song on repeat as his only source of self-esteem because even his god thinks he’s a bitch bastard

The “We Actively Know He’s Probably Listening and We Still Love to Disrespect Elias” gang

Jon but brian david gilbert

The Home of Phobia https://bugeyesandstumpy.tumblr.com/post/622671728278126592/remember-the-lonely-house-with-uncomfy-chairs-in

He was subjected to the ultimate fear of Being Known

martin the murder cheerleader martin the murder cheerleader martin the murder cheerleader

+Helen the godawful “listen to Martin :D!!” couple’s therapist and queen of the jonmartin fanbase (I especially love all the theories about her she’s very fun and spooky)

“Hello? Hello hello??? — phone guy Annabelle Kane

Nikola being HORRIFIED at the fact that Jon doesn’t moisturize

Martin “I’m traumatized, my new boyfriend is a monster, I love him so much, and I’m about vicariously to go feral” Blackwood.

Manuela’s tiny, evil sun https://bugeyesandstumpy.tumblr.com/post/622776071826325504

And last but certainly not least because they’re what started this whole tumblr spiral (hahahahahahaha) and deserve honorable mentions

“I want. Another. Divorce”

the kayaking trip

And all the ensuing chaos

(If anyone ever sees this as I’ve never posted anything of my own before, please feel free to add your own favorite things if you want, I probably missed some good ones that I will also be adding as everything gets closer to imminent sobbing :)

Ok general TMA season 5 predictions about character fates to see how wrong/right I was later

People who are definitely going to die: Jon, Daisy, Elias

Daisy already got one fake out death at the end of S3, i don’t think she’s going to get another. Right now, she feels the most dead and I think she’s going to die first. and if Basira actually has to do it I will launch myself straight into the vast i s2g

And, ok, tbh I don’t actually think Jon is going to die exactly. I think something worse will happen. I don’t know what form that will take, maybe getting trapped in hilltop road spooky dimension, maybe becoming fully a monster/becoming part of the eye, just fucking turning into a tape recorder, or worse becoming immortal and undying like that one old af skeleton archivist he was afraid of, alone and unable to truly end or live!! that would suck. idk. All I know is that this point, simply dying seems...too easy?? Like he’s not coming out of it fine and human or happy most likely so I think it’s more accurate to just call him “doomed” rather than necessarily dead. But. Same difference as far as my feelings are concerned (’:

Same with Elias, though I do hope he will actually just die. I mean he’s the main villain so I can’t imagine him not dying in some way. We’re supposed to get a bitter-sweet ending right? Every body wants to kill Elias, so if even one other character lives, I don’t think they’ll allow him to live (and I really don’t believe EVERYONE is going to die. Idk who I want to kill him, I could make a good case for Daisy, Martin, or Melanie, but he’s probably screwed Jon over the worst so I think he ought to)

People I don’t think are going to die: Georgie and Melanie

I don’t even really know why, I just don’t see any death flags around them? Melanie finally chilled out, any death flags I saw on her kind of vanished after she blinded herself. It feels like if anyone's character arc should be on an upward trajectory from here, it would be her? As “up” as one can go in this story at least. She’s the one I feel most strongly about living. and I think Georgie is going to be fairing the best in the nightmare world what with her lack of fear.

Also, Jonny promised The Admiral would be ok and someone needs to be there for him, as he IS the only truly important character after all.

People I honestly don’t know what the fuck: Martin and Basira

I have no idea whats going to go down with Basira tbh, I’ve had a hard time getting a grip on her character or predicting what her arc is going to be. Maybe she’ll die with Daisy, but if not, I have no idea.

And ok, Martin. I know EVERYONE thinks he’s going to die, because that would be the most tragic, right? Kill the positive fan-favorite fluffy character, when a writer hints sad things are going to happen, that is ALWAYS the character they kill off. Killing them is like a symbol for the death of all good things in this tragedy! but that’s kind of why I don’t think he’ll die??? it just...too easy. Almost too predictable, because Martin is exactly the type of character who you would expect to die in this kind of story. But he’s so much more developed at this point than other character’s like him usually get to be. Martin has only just started growing a back bone, after being angry and frustrated about being pushed around and used and underestimated by everyone for the whole show. They said in a Q&A they want every characters arc to be satisfying, and I’m having a hard time imagining why Martin would need to die. He wanted to die at the start of last season, because he lost all the people he wanted to live for. Then he finally started being proactive. If anything, wouldn’t it make more sense for his arc to be choosing to keep living, even after he loses all those reasons/people again? (that being Jon)

 The only purpose his death would serve that I can think of rn is to hurt Jon more and further his tragedy arc. But I think if Martin’s character was just going to amount to being used as a tool to further another characters angst/motivation, then he would have been the one to die in season 1 rather than Sasha. I don’t think Martin is going to be happy, or ok exactly. Maybe he’ll lose his humanity too, maybe he’ll just fully snap and go on some kind of murder rampage. Maybe whatever influence the spider (probably?) has had on him will reveal him to not be who we thought he was. Maybe he’ll end up in a similar doomed position that Jon is (not exactly “dead” but certainly not human and with little to no hope for a happy normal future) I don’t know, I’m not sure where exactly Martin will end up, but I just don’t think (at least I hope) that he’ll simply amount to fodder for Jon angst (or audience angst). But maybe there will be some other good reason for him to die revealed later?? I guess I didn’t anticipate Tim needing to die at the start of S3 either, but it became very obvious that’s where his arc was heading about half way through that season. maybe i’m just in denial! who knows. But I still think Martin simply dying is too easy

Short fluffy tma character headcanons

Cause this podcast and these characters are taking over my life

Jon Sims

Has a lot of really great hair - thick and wavy and soft

But its already going grey cause he is ~stressed~ literally all the time

Used to wear glasses but doesn’t need them anymore

Is not really an animal person but would literally die for any cat

Sleeps with his eyes open

Martin Blackwood

Wanted to be a high school English teacher before dropping out of college to support his mother

LOVES dogs and has always wanted one but never had the space or money

He actually doesn’t like tea very much

He’s more of a hot chocolate guy, but tea was his mother’s favorite and now it’s Jon’s, so he keeps making it

I said these were fluffy headcanons but literally every headcanons about martin is sad I’m sorry

Ummm he definitely jots down poetry and draws artsy flowers on his hands when he’s supposed to be working

Constantly suppressing the urge to ruffle Jon’s hair

Sasha (the og Sasha)

No time for Jon’s shit

Seriously I believe they became friends because she sat down with him at lunch one day like “please drop the terrible accent you’re not impressive and nobody respects you, if you actually want to make friends here’s what you’ve gotta do - ” and Jon interrupted her like... “but it’s my real voice”

They’ve been friends ever since

Constant prank wars with Tim

Small flower tattoo behind left ear

Tim Stoker

I like to think of Tim as the shortest original archivist

Sasha once made fun of him for it

He showed up to work the next day rocking spectacularly bedazzled 6-inch heels and towering over Sasha

Sasha was very impressed and ended up asking him to go shoe shopping with her

He’s kinda ripped - like, he actually goes to a gym and has probably eaten more vegetables in a week than Jon has in his entire life

Running joke with Sasha that Jon is actually a vampire

Is currently taking a fun family vacation camping with his brother, who is 100% alive

Elias Bouchard

He’s a total Taylor swift/ generic pop music fan

I don’t know why I believe this but it has become firmly fixed in my mind and pop music just feels so right for Elias

He uses his beholding powers to implant annoying songs into people’s heads

Every time an employee has a song stuck in their heads it’s because of Elias

He also occasionally air-drops memes into his employees brains

He literally just does this for fun

Basira Hussein

Has always been a bookworm

Joined the police force because she wanted to help people and go on adventures like the heroes of her favorite stories

Sometimes disassociates/ zones out because she’s making up a story in her head

Actually started writing a sci-fi novel but it got pushed to the side as her life became busier and busier

Has never told anyone but daisy about this novel, and even Daisy’s not allowed to read it yet

“Daisy” Tonner

Used to have really long hair but she completely shaved it after a vampire grabbed it in a fight and almost strangled her with it

Has lots of scars running up her hands and arms from the same vampire

Sorry I’m really failing in my “happy headcanon” quest

Has a kill list of people/ things she intends to hunt, she repeats it over and over to herself when she needs to focus or calm down

Jon Sims is 100% on this kill list

Melanie King

Bright purple hair

Elaborate, artsy tattoo running up right arm

Kinda looks like a harmless, artsy hipster

But she’s trained in jiu jitsu for like 14 years and could seriously fuck you up

Her dad worked at a jiu jitsu training center so she got free lessons from the time she was a little girl, and always loved competing

Always has at least 3 knives on her person

Seriously she’s started accumulating them at an alarming rate, someone should stop her

Georgie Parker

Redhead with extreme freckles

Loves cooking and experimenting with new foods

Isn’t actually a good cook at all

Jon did all the cooking when he was in hiding at her place

Doesn’t actually like cats very much - she’s more of a dog person

But she still loves the admiral and will loudly insist that he’s the only good cat she’s ever met

💕💔🏳‍🌈 !!! :)

💕 tell us about one of your favorite characters and why you like them!

UM...........I LIKE BASIRA. I know she’s not Canonically muslim but it’s nice to see a character that is generally interpreted as a hijabi and I latch on very hard to characters that are MENA/that I think are as a general rule. I also think she’s very..... Like.... I like that she tries to be a grounding force, if that makes sense? Like I know a lot of people dislike her for her practicality and the way she treats people in season four but I don’t really think she was more in the wrong than anyone else and frankly people thinking that she is made me latch onto her harder. I also really like her relationship with Daisy like they care about each other so much in a way that’s a lot different than everyone else there cares about each other and it’s. Compelling.

💔 tell us about one of your LEAST favorite characters and why you dislike them.

Cannot imagine this comes as a shock to anyone but I really really dislike Elias. It’s not that he’s like, a bad guy, or whatever, I like some villains, but he’s, like, predatory, for lack of a better word? And it makes my skin crawl. He’s a good villain! And sometimes that’s enough to make me like a character but the sort of power he holds over most of the main characters and the way he forces trauma onto characters or makes them relive it is exceedingly uncomfortable and it makes any scene with him in it kind of super hard for me to get through. Especially The scenes with Martin and Melanie.

 🏳‍🌈 do you have any headcanons (lgbt, race, neuro, etc) that are important to you?

Jon has autism + tremors + is a jewish MENA feminine guy who sometimes uses she/her (I project onto him a lot if that isn’t obvious sdfsdhdgfh), Martin has ADHD and is also jewish and MENA, Basira being muslim obviously and I think she Also has autism, Daisy is a she/he butch, Gerard is a femgay, less important but I like to think that Oliver is also a femgay 2 some degree + is black and I think Jared is gay. There’s probably more but that’s off the top of my head

The Magnus Archives ‘Left Hanging’ (S04E04) Analysis

An episode about the open sky, an Archivist at loose ends, and the return of everyone’s favorite wacky old wizard.  Definitely less happening this week, but still quite a bit to think about.  Come on in to hear my thoughts about ‘Left Hanging’.

One of the interesting things about the opening of the statement is the emphasis of a theme of this show: there is nothing special about the people who get targeted by the powers, usually.  They haven’t often done something to draw attention; they aren’t some Chosen One.  They’re people at the wrong place in the wrong time. I think that feeds into the heart of the cosmic horror of the show: people are small.  Who they are and what they’ve done don’t matter to the powers. They were the nearest person to hand when ineffability strikes, and they therefore experience something horrific. Horror, therefore, is not a retributive force in TMA, nor is it an allegory for something about that person. It is random, hitting good people, bad people, and all the people in between without discrimination.  If the powers do indeed ‘make decisions’ the way that we perceive, those decisions are beyond our understanding.

So we have statements like this, of a guy why just happened to be on the wrong cable car in Austria. A cable car with everyone’s favorite wacky wizard, Simon Fairchild.  As soon as I heard ‘gentle amusement’ and using his walking stick only when he remembered to do so, combined with a cable car suspended miles above the ground? Yeah, I was certain that Simon was going to put in an appearance.

Again, they are above nothingness, and a mist appears, and Simon steps out into nothingness.  Big old wink, and then gone.  Does this mean that Simon is gone, or did he simply go somewhere temporary?  Did he finally find the Vast beings he was looking for?  After that, the rest of them shot up through the nothingness, so it’s possible that Simon actually set them up for their ride, and he was stepping off to let them enjoy themselves.  That seems more his modus operandi.

Especially since a long, spindly creature with a laugh like Mike Crews’ took the cable car driver. It makes me think that this was just another adventure that Simon engineered for hapless people he just happens to be around.  And Simon, much like the powers, will ‘gift’ these experiences to people.

Jon states that Simon is ‘evil’ and likes to torment people to feed the power that sustains him, but that seems less than clear from Simon’s actions.  I do genuinely wonder if Simon might think that he’s giving these people the experience of their lifetimes.  That this is a good thing, not a cruel thing.  That letting them experience the void will be as joyous for them as it is for him.  It’s hard to say, but he never seems … malicious in his glee.  He seems like he’s sharing a joke that everyone he harms just haven’t quite understood.

Or that could just be me, the massive Simon Fairchild fangirl that I am, reading something into the situation that isn’t there.  But I think Jon needs to believe that there is that clear distinction.  That Simon is malicious and evil, and therefore knows that he’s harming people.  Because if he doesn’t know, or even if he thinks it’s doing his victims a favor, then mightn’t Jon do the same?  After all, they’re both Avatars of their powers.  Jon knows that taking statements drags at least some part of his own victims into the nightmare realm of the Beholding.  But he keeps doing it.  At least he doesn’t think he’s helping the people he’s gathering statements from; at least not yet.

But of course, his objection to Compelling Basira was that he didn’t want to burn a bridge, not that it would be the wrong thing to do or hurt a friend, so that’s less than encouraging.

The ending with Martin also really fit into the title of this particular one.  Whatever is happening with Martin, he either won’t or can’t tell Jon about it.  He sounds so distant, barely more engaged with Jon than Basira was.  And for someone weeping in the trailer before making his decision, that’s worrisome.

It’s interesting that Martin implied strongly that he wasn’t working for Peter Lukas (although calling him ‘Peter’ probably didn’t do anything to help Jon’s jealousy).  There’s clearly something going on.  Martin’s been so busy that he has no time to write poetry, or to stop and really talk with Jon.  Maybe he’s afraid.  Maybe he’s been forbidden from really talking to Jon.

I definitely think that what’s happening with Martin and what Basira is up to are going to be ongoing themes, perhaps even the main plot points of the first half of the season. It’s frustrating, because they all know that Peter works for the Lonely, and therefore is trying to isolate everyone in the Institute.  And yet none of them, even those who seem to not be locked into some secret agreement, are going out of their way to stay in touch.  Maybe Basira and Melanie have been sticking together, but from the way that Basira talked about Melanie, that seems less likely.  Unless, of course, she doesn’t trust Jon enough to let him know what she and Melanie are up to.

But it leaves Jon exactly where the Lonely wants him.  He’s isolated, reading statements and doing little else.  With the threat of other powers trying to make a move against the newly-awakened Archivist, I doubt he’s leaving much either.  Martin would be the ideal person for him to turn to, given their history, but Martin has somehow been removed from the equation while still being there.

And interestingly, Jon didn’t compel him.  Of all the times when compelling a friend might be both justified and useful to all parties, this might be it, but Jon is handling his friends with kid gloves. Likely, Melanie’s state and her open hostility have taken him aback, and he doesn’t want to make things any worse with Martin or Basira.  So they’re all in a holding pattern (without the holding).

I want to know why Basira no longer trusts Jon at all.  Is it simply thinking he couldn’t have come back right after six months?  Is it blaming him for Daisy?  Is she just too troubled by whatever’s really going on with her to look too far outside herself?

Conclusions

The emotional situation in the Archives never seems to be anything better than tenuous, and as I said often enough through the past few seasons, this current state can’t stay for long.  There are too many threads about to snap.  Basira feels like the calm before the storm.  Melanie is going to explode in one direction or another, it’s just a question of what’s in her way when she does.  And Martin is keeping secrets.  A lot of secrets, likely because he believes it’s the only way to help Jon and the others.  And if he’s not working for Peter Lukas, I have to wonder what it is he’s doing.  It’s clearly with Peter, but perhaps it’s more of a loan or secondment?  A pledge of time in Peter’s service in exchange for the protection that the archives is now afforded?  Or is Martin more active than we realize?  Does he have a plan of his own?

We’ve been with Jon while he was plotting and planning throughout the show, so it’s interesting to see Jon on the other side of this impenetrable wall that six months of trauma has produced.  He can’t even pick up the pieces, because the pieces are nowhere near where he left them. Everyone has radically changed toward him.

As big a dick as Elias was, I may hate the Lonely more.  With Elias, we knew what he was about.  He wanted Jon to be the ultimate Archivist, and he wanted the Watcher’s Crown to proceed as planned.  But the Lonely’s motives are inscrutable, and without more information, Jon’s stuck. He needs to dig into the Archives, to try and find stories about the Lukases or their patrons and how he might oust the Lonely from the Institute.  

He already sounds defeated. He’s not interested in looking into this current story beyond a cursory glance.  He’s not interested in putting all the pieces together, which to my mind is the ultimate point of the Archivist.  He just reads and feeds his god by rote, without anything more.

Maybe that’s Peter’s plan. Immobilize Jon, remove all his supports and sink him so far into depression that he reads the statements and doesn’t try to research his way out of the problem.  That sort of inert feeding of the Beholding might actually be the most effective way to prevent the Watcher’s Crown, at least for a time.

But like I said, the situation is tenuous.  Something, sooner or later, is going to give.