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verbosebabbler · 29 days

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I'm taking a few days break from the Magnus Archives for reasons under the cut. So I'm going to give some more of my miscellaneous notes that didn't fit into my previous two structured posts about the fear stuff.

Spoilers under the cut

I'm mourning the loss of my favourite character, the Distortion, so I'm taking a small break. I just really loved the Distortion's playful antagonism. a little more when the Distortion was more openly antagonistic during the first season, but the bantering between Helen and Jonathan and Martin has been really good this season. But I get why it had to happen.

Something I didn't mention was the fact that both Peter Falk and Wanda apparently have that strong aversion to answering questions. It's interesting, because the trait makes more sense for Wanda than for Peter, given her connection to Spiral, as opposed to Peter's connection to the Lonely

There's also a parallel between the feeling of being watched in association to the tape recorders and with the Observers of West. In TMA, the feeling of being watched is likely diagetically related to the Eye, but in practice it feels like a reference to the real life podcast listeners. And, of course, in West the Observers are pretty explicitly the readers, though in universe we're interpreted as unknowable extradimensional entities. Plus, the Observers have more control with characters like Peewee, and even with characters we can't control, we still can communicate clearly unlike with the audience and Jonathan.

Episode 47 I believe is where zampaniosim pulled it's lack of West, as the Spiral associated location there had no left turns. The hallway also has a swirling green pattern which is similar to the green designing of the rooms like the attic is zampaniosim north.

Episode 144 features feelings of impending doom in relation to the extinction, so there could be interesting parallels to make with the homestuck doom aspect.

My notes trailed off after a while as I got more invested with the story. I only really stopped to jot down an episode number if there was a fear avatar story being told or the fear system itself was being explained, as both help in my understanding this concept. I'm a little to tired to continue, so I'm just going to post this thing now as a little update to my progress

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verbosebabbler · 1 month

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I feel that I need to stop and write a post for the end of season 4, since there is a big status quo shift starting the next season. I really didn't end up writing anything about the spoilers below, just focusing on the Fear system.

Let's see if I can now write the 15 fears by memory, names may vary because why not also not have definitive names for a completely new categorization system.

Desolation Death Stranger Spiral Corruption Buried Vast Web Slaughter Flesh Lonely Darkness Eye Hunt Extinction

Ok, I can manage it, though slaughter and below were like pulling teeth from my memory for some reason. But it'll get easier with time. My memory isn't great without little reminders, but usually I can remember them in groups. Sure, why don't I group them. I had done it before when my only understanding was from the wiki. Because of how the fears tangle there will be multiple uses of each fear.

To start with are the pairs of opposites I can think of: Vast and Buried, of large or enclosed spaces Eye and Darkness, of the seen and not seen Eye and Spiral, of truth and falsehood Web and Lonely, of connection and disconnection

Then there's the large group of destructive sorts of fears Death, Desolation, Slaughter, Corruption, Extinction: • Death is specifically about an end of a person most usually • Desolation is the destruction of anything of worth or meaning, which can be a loved one. • Extinction is the apocalypse. Very associated with both End of life and with the Desolation of everything. • Slaughter is unimaginable violence which often results in a lot of death • Corruption has plenty of associations but the one relevant to this group is its connection to decay and rot.

Then there's a group that I associate with more primal fears Hunt, Slaughter, Flesh: • Hunt being the most primal of them all, the chase of predator and prey. • Slaughter is related to violence and feels connected to the predator part of the hunt, that hunger for the catch. • Flesh is related to the acknowledgement that people, like animals, are just meat and can be eaten and easily relates to the prey part of hunt. --Could also include the Death of the prey, the Darkness in which both predator and prey can hide, but for some reason my mind doesn't group them in here.

It's hard to articulate, but then there are fears that play or rely upon our perception of understanding of what things are. Eye, Stranger, Spiral: • Eye is the fear of being watched, of secrets revealed. It's the fear of being known • Stranger is the fear of the uncanny, of something being not quite right. It requires a base understanding of what something is, in order to fear what it's not supposed to be. • Spiral is the fear of confusion and deceit. Fundamentally, it is of misunderstanding. Of wrong or incorrect knowledge. --Of note, zampaniosim also uses corruption abstractly for the eroding of information. "The rot takes all in the end." Like corrupted data and link rot. So it would likely be partially grouped here.

There's also some looser. • Vast fear cases are likely going to coincide with Lonely. • Corruption or Web could both be associated with spiders. • Spiral and Corruption are an weird duo that is really hard for me to explain, though this is zampaniosim specific.

I think I will need to make a larger separate post on corruption. I went off on an unrelated tangent to how overbroad corruption is, made even broader in zampaniosim. Seriously, trying to list out and separate all of the ideas that are getting lumped in to corruption is taxing on my energy and sanity.

But one thing that still puzzles me is, where are fractals in all this?? It's not brought up a lot in TMA: there's a story of a guy getting obsessed with them thinking they had secret knowledge of the universe, and there was an offhand mention of that web artifact table not being like the fractals. It felt like a setup to something then but maybe it was just a reference or just dropped. I only mention because both fractals and the idea of obsession that story had are a strong reoccurring element in zampaniosim and I think it made me believe it'd be a bigger deal here than it was. But now I'm not sure which fear that story was associated with.

I'm done typing for now. On to season 5, and then... My podcast app lists the Magnus Protocol as season 7? Was season 6 all the non Magnus extras in between? I've been skipping the extras and was going to go back to some later (like Duskhollow, which is relevant to zampaniosim). Eh, I'll figure that out when I finish season 5.

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verbosebabbler · 1 month

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I have listened through season 1 of the Magnus Archives.

If this somehow makes it to the purely Magnus Archives fans, then my discussion may not make full sense.

I'm coming at this podcast through the lens of Zampanio. Zampanio is a thing hard to explain itself, but suffice to say it is a different arg/web series thing and it uses several concepts found in the Magnus Archives, like the different Fears.

There will be spoilers for season 1 and spoilers for this concept Zampanio borrowed, so I may know a bit more than your average first time listener. I read through some of the wiki specifically on this system for the purposes of better understanding Zampanio, but not any of the plot related happenings for the podcast.

So my discussion will be below the cut.

Now, briefly for my Zampanio fellows, sorry I have been away. That I'm still away, really. My Zampanio induced 'hibernation' as I'd been calling it has lasted longer than I expected. I'm not really up to date with the goings-on, though I still get pieces floating by through discord notifications. JR, you asked for use of my pixel art and I never responded. You may.

I am not fully returned to the community. It doesn't feel right if I'm not caught up enough to fulfill my role as Guide. And I am intimidated by the process of trying to catch up with what is an ever expanding series. So my discussions below will be through the lens of things prior to my general departure after Lavinraca.

My discussion continues below.

As I said, I have gone through the first season of the Magnus Archives and I think I understand the Fear Entities system a bit more.

It was neat to see the throughlines of these specific Fears through the different stories of this first season. I could almost tag each story with it's associated Fears (usually multiple as I now see how they oft intertwine). Specifically I am beginning to understand the more nuanced differences between more closely related Fears like Death, Corruption, and Desolation. Season 1 Episode 36 "Taken ill" seems to be trying to make the distinction at least between the fear of death and the fear of the rot.

I did try to keep a close eye on Desolation, a fear I had trouble differentiating between either End or Corruption aside from the association of fire. And that fire association was the only connection I saw between the Desolation and Ria.

I know Ria went on a blaze of arm 1, so that is an obvious comparison. But I couldn't see the nuances of Desolation that led to that conclusion. She always just seemed Eye-coded. The endless pursuit to understand the nature of the world, her wanting to be seen and acknowledged by both Camille and Vic. It all felt it pointed to a desire to know and be known.

I know she made statements of wanting to destroy the world to start anew and those are meant to point to Desolation, but I don't know. It felt a little… tacked on? It never really fit.

I understand the view, the destruction to make room for growth. But I don't really see that in her character. She is a compassionate person, trying to take care of those around her, like Devona when she was stuck in her monstrous form. But the Desolation isn't really integrated with this compassion.

Like, I'd imagine this sort of Desolation would rely more on tough love, of breaking down the bad parts on those they care for to allow them to heal and become better people. But she just seems to focus on just making others better, rather than destroying the parts of them that are hurting them.

I could just be misunderstanding things. I know there is an element of self destruction to her character, maybe an aspect of destroying herself to try to make things better for others. And admittedly it's been a while since I read those related sections.

But I do definitely now better understand the difference between being an Avatar of an Entity and just being haunted by that Entity. I knew that it involved some kind of draw to the Fear, a compulsion to proliferate it. But seeing it through the words of Jane Prentiss in Season 1 Episode 32 "Hive" made it pretty clear.

It's especially useful to compare that episode to something like Season 1 Episode 16 "Arachnophobia". Carlos there was particularly tormented by the fear of spiders, and Jane seemed to be troubled by the wasps in her home as she reached out for help. But she also had a strong compulsion to them, to what they represent, to their actions, to what she 'heard' that others could not hear. Seeing this inner monologue will help me understand the other characters in Zampanio acting as Avatars of their respective entity, like the connection between Camille and End.

Otherwise, I am just generally enjoying my time with the Magnus Archives. I'm going to be continuing on to the next season soon. I was just compelled to write something, probably due to the narrative tone of the podcast getting stuck in my head (though I think it's faded throughout the long period of me writing this).

And, hopefully, I will be able to sit down and reread all the writings in this branch of Zampanio. My memory to particulars has started to fade and my own archival process for Zampanio was actually meant for the purposes of me rereading it. It's just an intimidating amount to read with a difficulty in where to start.

I could just go as a regular explorer would through all the writings in North, East, South, West, NorthNorth, EastEast, and so on. But I wanted to try to find a more coherent reading order to suggest for newcomers before my hibernation. Now I need the order myself, one that I did not make. I'll probably haphazardly tred through my files, maybe trying to write up an order as I bumble my way through. That's why it was been an intimidating task.

But I wanted to make some sort of written thing to check in and say that I am still thinking about Zampanio. Also, sorry for the potentially weird writing voice. After listening to a specific voice for a long time, spoken or written, my inner narration involuntarily mimics it (a Thief of Dreams quality in myself). It's faded in the too long of time of me writing this, and I just noticed this on reread but I don't really feel like rewriting it.

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