Favourite Episode Masterlist

MAG 183 - Monument

doodle 183/200; days left - 17/110 1/128

wanted to try something different and i think it turned out pretty ok :)) (don't look too close tho xD medibang paint isn't suited for this type of things and i was too lazy to make it perfect)

↓without texture bc wgy not

Maybe he wasn't. But-

maybe

Jon

was.

I thought it was a good line, Jon, don't let your boyfriend bully you for being dramatic

Love this episode. The statement is genuinely hilarious. Ah, academia! [SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PEER REVIEW]

It's refreshing to explore this kind of domain, despite it being a genuine fear of a very niche profession

helen in mag 183 is peak voice acting i love her imogen harris is doing phenomenal work

!!SPOILERS FOR MAG S1-S5!!

Okay, I tried this before but it didn’t save right so here we go again. This is gonna be shorter. please don’t spoil the finally for me I just finished MAG183, and if you don’t want spoilers please leave, NOW. This will be going into a bit of detail on specific VERY SPOILER episodes.

OkiDoki, lets do this. You have been warned. 

The tape recorders, lets talk about them. When we first start the series the listener assumes that the recorders are just a way of conveying the story to them, but as the plot progresses the characters begin to notice and comment on out of place recorders. To the point it begins to become a source of frustration and conflict between our main cast in seasons 2-3. But the listener continues to think that they are listening through The Eyes recorders, especially after Smirke’s classification is explained in MAG 111: Family Busines(Transcript) *side note* if ur on a computer ctrl-F is the find command, enter whatever word you want to find in the drop down. But, as one gets into season 4 & especially season 5 its made more clear the the recorders are a common occurrence for The Archivist,( MAG 161: Dwelling, Transcript)   LEITNER: “Right. (brief pause) Did you mean to leave the tape running?” GERTRUDE: “Oh, good grief. Forty years I’ve been using them, and I swear, I’ll nev–” [TAPE CLICKS OFF.] I’m not going to go through every episode but from my memory its implied a few times that Gertrude had a similar problem of forgetting to turn the recorder off or not turning it on in the first place. Not sure if Elias recorded this one on purpose, why would he though, but MAG 158: Panopticon(Transcript) where we get to literally hear him murder Gertrude. some more obvious evidence from season 5 would be MAG 181: Ignorance(Transcript)  SALESA : “Things shouldn’t be able to manifest in here like that.[referring to the recorder]” “In that case, we shall leave it to be.[referring to the recorder] It’s hardly valuable, and it’s probably best not to upset whatever it might be involved with.” Its stated in this episode and the one before it( MAG 180: Moving On, Transcript) that its a blind spot for the powers, and that they can’t know it’s there w/o seeing it themselves. MAG 170: Recollection(Transcript) MARTIN: “Wow, retro! What are you up to, little buddy; just – listening?” “(pleasant surprise) Oh, he-hello! What are you? Huh. Didn’t even know I had a tape recorder. Do you still work, or…”. these clips, mainly Salesa’s, imply that the recorder might be Eye aliened but not affiliated. Along with the way the Martin treats the recorder in this season and the last season(4, not gonna go through the effort of finding those clips) means that he thinks someone or something is listing. 

Anyway, hope you enjoyed my spiral into slight madness. I had a bit about Jude knowing where Mike Crew lived but I wasn't in the mood to re-do that deep dive, maybe another time. Feel free to engage w/ this how ever you want, re-post and add commentary, or comment, or whatever.  LMK your thoughts. <3

MAG 183 Relisten

Activity on my first listen: cutting the jasmine in my garden.

Wanna say right at the start of this episode, I loooove the soundscaping in this one! Especially the sounds during the dialogue scenes.

MARTIN:"Oh, bugger off!" JON: "Everything alright?" Ha, Jon's tone xD Like "Heh, I know what you're going to say".

JON: "It’s a building. A tower, in a sense." MARTIN: "Oh yeah? And what sense might that be?" JON: [Faintly ominous] "The Tarot sense." I thought the Ivory sense, but okay?

MARTIN: "Really?" JON: "What? No. Sorry, it… felt like a good line." MARTIN: "No, no, it was. I just… I dunno, I… you did the look and… It’s fine, sorry." Okay, Martin finally seems to get one of Jon's jokes, but I don't, can someone explain this to me? XD Like The Tower of the Major Arcana? What's up with "the look"? Anything specific or just Jon being a theater kid?

MARTIN: "What, what’s the deal, though? Parts of it almost look like –" JON: "The Institute." MARTIN: "Yeah." JON: "Yes. It makes sense. After all, it was built on the ruins of what Robert Smirke constructed." Also, like... The Magnus Institute was an academic institution. And this domain is about academia as far as I remember...?

HELEN: "I was so looking forward to catching up after that whole Basira and Daisy thing, but then pfft! You both disappear. I’d be very keen to know how you managed that little trick." MARTIN: "Why, it caught us by surprise too. I mean, w-we actually ended –" JON: [Firmly] "We found somewhere to rest. That’s all." MARTIN: "Oh, yeah. Ah. Yes." Hm, makes sense that Martin would tell her. With Helen per se he didn't really have any bad experiences yet (He did with Michael, but Helen is definitely different and that can draw a mental line, not seeing that it's actually still the same being). Jon on the other hand, oohohoho... He knows not to trust her.

JON: "She made her choice." HELEN: "With your assistance." JON: "It was still her choice." Ahhh, the choice and free will theme again!

JON: "Martin, I’d prefer we talk about this alone." HELEN: "Oh, I bet you would. You were probably just going to bypass it entirely, weren’t you? I can’t believe you would deny him the choice to see his own domain." MARTIN: "My… my wha– John, my what?" It's not Jon's fault they're being stalked by gaslight gatekeep girlboss all the time so she can show up and sprinkle some of her manipulation all over them, so they would start to argue. Good thing Jon and Martin are better than that. And technically, Martin should already have a strong suspicion he has a domain, they talked about it in MAG 167. Jon said they all have a domain and when Martin asked about his, Jon wanted to check in, if he really wants to know about it and Martin immediately declines. Being in denial of something or intentionally looking away doesn’t mean that that thing isn’t real.

Hm... This really took it out of Martin though. Normally he wants to talk things through, but now he rather has a moment to quietly think about it...

"The one who sits in the central chamber cannot remember his name. But he knows that people called him ‘doctor’. He made sure of that. To ignore it would have been the greatest disrespect and he will not be disrespected." Lol, is that poor soul Austrian? (There are sooo many memes about this here in Austria! They usually are titled "Tell me you're Austrian without telling me you're Austrian" and then it's someone with insanely many titles or absolutely stupid things with titles. For example doorbells on the outside of an apartment complex. There are no names, they are simply titled (ha) "Top 1" or "Top 2" and so forth. And then there is one with a small sticker in front of it so it reads " Dr. Top 5" xDD)

"This… wasn’t right. The first of the doors would lead him… Maybe that wasn’t the first of the doors. But it, it was, it was the first door. But that would mean… No, he, he was right, he was certain, he had factored in all the timings. This didn’t make sense." This has strong "My code isn't working... I have no idea why - My code is working... I have no idea why" vibes XD

That statement doesn't do much to me. Then again, I'm not an academic. My sister who has a PhD however says she totally feels this one.

JON: "Well, you’re a watcher, Martin. You worked for the Institute, you read statements. The Eye is… fond of you." This is super interesting. Cause this means, not every watcher out there is evil or a bad person like Jude, or Simon... So for the post-change-world this would be super interesting. (Oliver also seems chill to me, that's why I like him so much.)

MARTIN: "But I’m not an avatar." JON: [Heated] "Avatar isn’t a thing, Martin! It’s not– It’s just a word. A word used by… fools like Smirke to try and sort everything into neat little boxes, to reduce the messy spray of human fear into a checklist: Human, avatar, monster, victim." Love that we get this conversation, about how the world works, in a domain where this was the theme.

JON: "If you’re sure." MARTIN: "… I’m sure I love you." [FOOTSTEPS] JON: "I love you too." [FABRIC RUSTLES] Those two <3 (Ha! Better luck next time, Helen!!)

@a-mag-a-day

Round One Part Three - Match 27

tbh Zombie is one of those episodes that really fucks me up bc it's like. reverse dissociation.

MAG 122 - Zombie | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Statement of Lorell St John, regarding zombies.

MAG 183 - Monument | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Considerations of knowledge. Recorded by the Archivist in situ.

MAG 183, Monument

I enjoy Helen's snippiness and JonMartin's shippiness, and I really love the [SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PEER REVIEW], but more than anything else...

Trigger warning: forum moderation

... the statement reminds me of confused mods who can't agree on how to handle a fascist troll and turn on each other while their online community burns down around them. Definitely the work of The Spiral.

@a-mag-a-day

AUGHUGHGHGHGGH

I'm sorry, I was just minding my business playing Stardew valley while the horrors of Magnus archives played in the background, when I... I heard Helen call Martin "Fruity" and I fucking lost it

mag 183 - monument

humans really like boxes. we like being able to make rules and principles and being able to say that this is how something happens and that is why it happens and everything links together neatly. science is, at least at the level most common people are at, all about being able to figure out the universe with rationality. which quickly becomes an issue when you come to the realization that the universe is irrational. not just in a 'we don't know or understand how everything links together' kinda way, but in a 'not everything does link together' way. for the entirety of our existance, we've been trying to figure out why things are the way they are, whether through science or religion or other coping mechnisms, but the universe isn't conscious. there is no why. honestly, i think trying to tackle science won't get you very far unless you also try to tackle philosphy

the statment also comments on the individual and the issue with just the mere perspective a lot of people come at the universe with their logic. because as much as it's inherent for us to try to divide things into boxes, it's inherent to assume that we make out the centre of everything, and the universe was created from our perspective. as a species, and as individuals. for some reason or other, reality must be catered to us and our view of it, because we have never experienced what it's like being anyone else. and yeah, sometimes academics and scientist, particularly those who've never ruminated over this, turn the whole thing into a bit of a dick-measuring contest of trying to prove that they must be the right one, simply because it was from their perspective, but can you really blame them when it's really just human nature?

look, i like science, but by god does it annoy me when the assumption that the whole of the universe abides by our rules is seen as an inherent baseline. you must come to the realization that, really, we don't know shit

i appreciate what tma does in its approach to this. i like that all these human categories just turn out to be meaningless factions made for us to digest things easier rather than the concept of fourteen entities being inherent. at the same time, i do find a bit of an issue with the binary presented here instead. whilst the watcher vs. watched concept is certainly interesting, it sort of feels like it undermines the point of it all. you know, all the bullshit i just spouted? i guess you could interpret it as jon not being able to really get the whole scope of it, despite the eye powers, but struggles with binary, either-or views of the world has always been more of martin's thing. which to be fair he seems to continue to have a hard time wrapping his head around it here. i just think it's a bit sad to have this really interesting episode all about how all of the divisions created so far have been meaningless, only to have what is, at the end of the day, just another set of divisions thrown at us and told that these are the true ones. i don't know if anyone gets me on that? but what can you do?

"The sky, Arthur, the sky!" John's voice is horrified.

"What?" Arthur asks, terrified and impatient.

"It's looking back."

-----

The Dreamlands get some unexpected visitors.

Helen Distortion my beloved

Highly recommend listening to ep 138 and ep 183 back-to-back... You can really pick up on how this was what Smirke was afraid of, and in doing so, the Fears made the right architecture so that they could be "contained, channeled, harnessed" as a monument to him.

Dramatic irony at its finest that were Smirke still alive for the Eyepocalypse, the Fears would sort him into this neat little box...

Also, I'm totally not crying about this episode's ending.... Nope. No way. Who's crying? Not me!

Oh man I do wonder how Smirke would have fared on the eyepocalypse (and how he would react to this domain)