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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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Still not over melanie canonically becoming a meme and being a popular youtuber. Can you imagine the world ending and you hear rumors of a safe haven watched over by the chosen ones in this hellscape and when you get there one of the chosen ones is like fucking matpat or something
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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hello! i am the person who made the tma literary references post (that was made on a sideblog, this is my main), and i was thinking of making an update to include people's additions from the notes. do you mind if i include yours and @ you on the main post? i know some people are uncomfortable about that kind of thing if it's done without permission, so i thought i'd ask :)
I don't mind.
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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People writing tma time travel fix it fics are too focused on the small plot points in the story, stopping Prentiss, being nice to Michael, locking away the table. Jonah will just orchestrate something else from those same Fears to torment them, possibly something worse.
If I were to write a fix-it fic (I wish I had the motivation 🥲) I would go to the source. I would send Jon back to when Georgie met that horrible corpse, have him (earmuffed and everything) kidnap the corpse, take it even further back in time to the birth of humanity (and Fear) and go to everyone one by one to let them all hear the corpse's whisper (while their hand are covering their ears of course) and help them recover from the initial shock.
No one feels fear, the baby Fears are starved out at their weakest. Problem solved 👍
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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inside you there are two wolves. one is a former abusive cop desperately trying to redeem herself. the other is a literal wolf. you are alice ‘daisy’ tonner.
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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Part 4: The Sixteenth Fear UPDATE
Reposting this with something added, added stuff in bold.
The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.
In part 3 I said every fear has an opposite. But the Flesh didn’t exist before the industrial revolution. So there would have been 13 fears then, an uneven number, and not every fear could balance against an opposite. So how could that be?
The answer is, there were only 12 fears before the Flesh. The Corruption and the Desolation used to be the same fear.
Diego Molina of the Lightless Flame cult worships Asag. A Sumerian god of disease that could make fish boil. So Asag seems to be of both the Corruption and the Desolation.
In Infectious Doubts Arthur Nolan complains about it: “Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is. Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls the Lightless Flame Asag, like he was when he was first researching it. I just really wanna tell him to get over it; I mean Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church we very much settled on burning in terms of the – face we worship, and some fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it? Plus there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is way too close to Filth for my taste, but no, he read it in some ancient tome, so that’s that –“
Ancient is the key word. The tome predates the industrial revolution and the Flesh. Asag probably isn’t a thing anymore and Diego is indeed a prat for worshipping it.
In The Architecture of Fear Smirke writes “I know you say the Flesh was perhaps always there, shriveled and nascent until its recent growth, but to grant the existence of such a lesser power would throw everything into confusion. Would you have me separate the Corruption into insects, dirt, and disease? To divide the fungal bloom from the maggot?”
It is not random that Smirke uses the Corruption as an example here. The Corruption is the opposite of the Flesh, so the Corruption is the fear that Smirke believed had no opposite for hundreds or thousands of years.
In part 3 I said vampires where Corruption/Desolation/Hunt. This is a little far-fetched, but I wonder if the vampire’s we’ve seen have been old ones that predate the Flesh. And that’s why they are part Corruption, since Corruption and Hunt used to be next to each other. Maybe there are more modern vampires without the long sucking tongue. Maybe instead of sucking blood, when they bite you begin to burn or boil. Since the Hunt is now next to the Desolation instead of the Corruption-Desolation combo.
In Vampire Killer Trevor says “I have killed five people that I know for sure as vampires, and there are two more that may or may not have been.” There is a missing middle part of Trevor’s statement. Maybe there he talks about killing two vampires that are modern and therefore different so he’s not sure if they’re actually vampires.
Speaking of fears splitting up, why is the Darkness the opposite fear of the Slaughter? In Last Words we hear of the first fear “A fear of blood and pounding feet, a fear of that sudden burst of pain and then nothing.”
And of the second fear “The fear of their own end, of the things that lived in the darkness, became a fear of the darkness itself.”
I think the first was a general fear of violence. It includes what became the Hunt “Blood and pounding Feet…” and the Slaughter “…Sudden burst of pain and then nothing”, and the End “The fear of their own end…” And the second fear was the Darkness. They were the opposite by default, simply for being the two first fears.
When the Buried became a fear, the Hunt split up from the Violence to oppose it. When the Vast became a fear, the End split up from the Violence to oppose it. All that was left of the Violence was Slaughter, still opposing the Dark. When humans began warfare, fear of war fit nicely with the Slaughter.
The Eye might have been part of the Dark at first. Still from Last Words: “…because they knew the dark held flashing talons and shining eyes…”
When the Lonely became a fear, the Eye split up from the Dark to oppose it.
So what about the Extinction? Does it have an opposite? Yes! There is a sixteenth fear. And what can be the opposite of the fear of the end of the world? The fear that the world isn’t real. That we’re all just living in a computer simulation. If you think the world isn’t even real, you’re not gonna be so worried about it ending. I’ll call it the Simulation.
Here is how the fears are arranged on the wheel, with the two latest fears added:
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Description of image: A circle with 16 spots similar to a clock. On each spot is a number and the name of a power: 1. Corruption. 2 Extinction. 3. Desolation. 4. Hunt. 5. Slaughter. 6. End. 7. Lonely. 8. Stranger. 9. Flesh. 10. Simulation 11. Spiral. 12. Buried. 13. Dark. 14. Vast. 15. Eye. 16. Web.
The Extinction is next to the Corruption. Disease and garbage are both gross. Possessive is an Extinction episode, even if not acknowledged as such by any of the characters. It’s about garbage. And Maggie is creating people out of garbage. She is making the inheritors mentioned in Time of Revelation. There are also creatures made of garbage in Concrete Jungle. And Maggie was full of moving insect legs, showing Corruption influence.
Quote from Adelard Dekker from Rotten Core: “I’ve spoken before about how keenly I’ve watched news of possible pandemics, which is where I suspect the Extinction may pull away from the Corruption during its emergence.” Adelard knows the Extinction is next to Corruption.
The Extinction is next to Desolation. That fits, nuclear weapons cause fire. Quote from Times of Revelation, describing corpses: “They were stiff, and desiccated, mummified by some process Bernadette could not begin to guess at, but that rendered their flesh like tightly packed ash” Ash as if they were burned.
The Simulation is next to the Flesh. The Flesh makes you think humans aren’t people, they are just meat. The Simulation makes you think humans aren’t people, they are just NPCs.
The Simulation is the next to the Spiral. Both make you question what is real. The Spiral makes you doubt your mind, the Simulation makes you doubt your world.
There are five episodes about the Simulation: Binary, Zombie, Cul-de-sac, Reflection and Upon the Stair. 
In Binary Sergey Ushanka uploads his mind into a computer. He becomes a simulation and it hurts. There is influence by the Spiral, the statement giver isn’t sure if she’s going crazy. And there is influence by the Flesh. Ushanka uploads himself into a computer and then he eats the computer. So that’s cannibalism.
In Zombie the statement giver thinks other people aren’t real, they’re philosophical zombies, In other words they like simulations or NPCs. The man that follows her repeats the phrase “Just fine, thank you for asking” and says nothing else. Just like some NPCs in video games will say the same phrase over and over. The man is identical the three times they meet, except for his t-shirt changes color. Sometimes in video games some NPCs will be identical, except for some colors are changed. (Because it’s less work to recollar a character than to draw one from scratch.)
John thinks Cul-De-Sac is about the Lonely. And yes, the statement giver was lonely. But the people affected by the Lonely choose to be lonely, and the statement giver didn’t. His boyfriend broke up with him because of cheating and then he lost his friends because they sided with his boyfriend.
I think the theme of the statement is unreality, not loneliness. In the Magnus Archives, when someone gets marked by a power it is because they made some wrong choice. The choice the statement giver makes is to return to the place he found dead and soulless. He drives back to his ex-boyfriend to deliver the moose, rather than send it by mail. He specifically wants to meet his ex. Not an act of loneliness, quite the opposite. Also he is returning a moose that is angular and creepy, in other words it is unreal.
When the statement escapes from the nightmare it’s because he got a phone call from his ex. And he says “I love you.” and that fits neatly with the Lonely. But it also fits with escape from the unreal. He escapes because he communicates with a real person.
The road signs says “Road” and “Street”. Generic and unreal. All the houses look the same. Like in a computer game. The statement giver wonders if they are the same house. Like in a computer game where one might reuse the code for a house many times.
The house he enters has stock photos. Unreal.
The people on TV have something wrong with their eyes, similar to the eyes of the zombies in Zombie. And it’s a fake cooking show, and a fake infomercial.
The dead woman upstairs was someone who had social media profiles, and that nobody notices had died. Meaning she lived her life online. That sounds like she was lonely. But living online also makes her a good victim for the Simulation. Everyone she talked to was on a computer, she couldn’t know for sure if they were real.
The woman had killed herself with a mirror. I think what happened was she had looked into the mirror and seen that her eyes were wrong, like the eyes of the people on TV. And she had thought she was just a simulation, like everything around her. And therefore she killed herself. Or perhaps she wasn’t reflected in the mirror at all? Like in…
Reflection. Adelard speculated that this statement was about the Extinction, but I don’t think so. The protagonist was in a world that seemed unreal. A fun fair is artificial so that fits the theme. The people were playing games, which fits the theme via computer games maybe.
Adelard says “I can’t quite get past the detail that there was no reflection at all in the mirror he used to return.” It is almost at the end of Adelard’s letter, it’s clearly meant to be significant. The no reflection might be symbolic for the statement giver starting to think he isn’t real, which might be what happened to him after he gave the statement.
Reflection has influence by the Spiral, with the maze of mirrors. There is influence by the Flesh, with the cannibalism.
Upon the Stair is about the fear of not being real. It has influence of the Spiral, John thought it was a Spiral statement.
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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Gertrude said that the notthem would need a lot of power to change so many people's memories, photos, recordings and so on
You know what would take less power and have the same effect?
Looking and sounding exactly like the person and only changing tapes, Polaroids and one person's memories.
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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Part 32: When Rituals Fail UPDATE
Posting this with something added. Added stuff in bold.
The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.
Elias thought that the reason the rituals failed was because the fears could never be separated. That it would be impossible to bring just one through, it had to be all. I think he was wrong, for three reasons.
First reason. Here’s a quote from Elias, where he explains why it is impossible to separate the fears “To try and create a world with only the Buried makes as much sense as trying to conceive a world with only down.”
But we have seen such a world. Quote from Entombed “This is forever deep below creation. Where the weight of existence bears down. This is The Buried, and we are alive. There isn’t even an up.”
The Buried is a world without the Hunt. The Hunt can’t reach Daisy there, because the Hunt and Buried are opposites (See Part 3). Elias uses the absence of up, as an example of an impossibility. But John says in the Buried there is no up. I think this was specifically written to clue us in to Elias being wrong.
Second reason, every time we hear of a ritual there is always a reason why they fail. The reason isn’t always obvious, but I’ll go through most of them in this post. Elias based his conclusion on the assumption that there was no reason for the Dark’s ritual to fail. He was wrong, as I’ll explain.
Every attempted ritual, except the ones involving John and Agnes, has a group of people choosing something related to the fear. (With a broad definition of choice.) If only one person does not make the choice, the ritual fails.
The Lonely. A group of people in an apartment building were all supposed to choose to be lonely (rather than move out of the nice cheap apartment). Gertrude wrote about it in a paper, the people got help, they weren’t lonely, the ritual failed.
The Slaughter. The soldiers are supposed to brutally murder each other. But the statement giver doesn’t like killing. He is not swayed by the music, he does not join in on the violence. The ritual fails.
The Hunt. Daisy speculated this failed because the Hunt doesn’t like to complete things. She was wrong. The people were supposed to join in the obsession of the hunt, to kill vampires and probably to die. But the statement giver was only pretending to be obsessed, the ritual fails.
The Corruption. This is from the episode Love Bombing. (John was wrong that the Prentiss attack was a grand ritual.) Here the choice is to love. First they take care of a sick dog. That is, they love it. Then they have to love and join the monster mass of people.
The part where they have to say they love each other, it’s a test, to see if they are ready for the ritual. The protagonist did not love the other woman, and so she is told to leave. She is jeopardizing the ritual.
Note that she is not forced to leave, or killed. Had there been force or violence the ritual would have failed. That’s another rule for the rituals.
I think when she left, it was already too late and the ritual failed. Or maybe it failed when it got blown up. Probably by Gertrude.
I think nobody in the cult was working for the Corruption originally. The Corruption just found a cult that was really into love and thought “Jackpot! Send in the dog!”
The Buried. The choice here is for everyone in town to get into the pit at the same time. When the statement giver comes to town, he is told to leave. But not forced, significantly. He is jeopardizing the ritual, because he might not climb into the pit with the others.
The statement giver has a “dream” where he willingly climbs into the pit and puts his arm into the hole. Though it’s not really a dream. This is a test, and he passed. Whoever’s in charge decides to go ahead with the ritual.
This is a mistake. The statement giver does not go into the pit with the others. A woman in the pit suddenly begins to scream. Not because she is in the pit, but because she noticed the statement giver is not in the pit. She knows the ritual is about to fail and it does.
Later Gertrude shows up and dumps Jan Kilbride into the pit. She thinks she stopped the ritual, but she was too late. The ritual had already failed.
The Flesh. The choice is for everyone to throw meat into the pit. (I’m guessing they also all have to die from exhaustion and get thrown in the pit or jump in, but we don’t see that part). When Tom Haan notices Lucia Wright is present, he hands her meat. He hopes she will take it and join in, which she does. Had she not done so, the ritual would have failed. If she had left, the ritual would have failed. If Tom had killed her or forced her to join in, the ritual would have failed.
The ritual fails anyway, because Gertrude blows it up.  
The Spiral. Quote from Michael “A thousand staring morsels stood, and not one of them believed themselves sane to look upon it.”
If one of the humans there had believed themselves to be sane the ritual would have failed.
Actually there was a person there who believed they were sane. More from Michael: “Michael did not go mad, though no words you could have said would have convinced him otherwise. (…) If Michael thought he had lost his mind, it was only because what he saw with crystal clarity was simply not something that could be real. But Gertrude Robinson did not waver. (…) She gave no indication that she saw anything more or less than was expected. Hers was not a mind that left room for doubt.”
Gertrude didn’t realize, but there was no need to sacrifice Michael Shelley. The ritual would have failed simply by her presence.
The Stranger. When John and the gang set up the explosives to blow up the Unknowing, Nikola does nothing to stop them. She knows they are there. She waits until they have set up the explosives before she starts the ritual.
There are no other victims there than the Magnus crew. They are the ones that are supposed to make the choice. The choice they are supposed to make is to use logic and reason during the Unknowing. Nikola has to give them a chance to win, and part of that is she lets them set up the explosives.
In the 1787 attempt at the Unknowing, the ritual is stopped by a soldier from the Slaughter. The soldier is not confused: “I was sure he was a soldier, and he was nothing but a soldier.”
In Nemesis Gertrude speculates that the Unknowing can only be stopped if the explosives are detonated from within Unknowing. Meaning, someone has to “choose” to use enough reason to set it off.
Just four victims is a small number. But I think John counts extra, since he is the Archivist and should be harder to confuse.
Maybe Elias made a deal with Nicola, told her about their plan. After all, Elias wants John to get blown up, to get the End scar.
Elias advised John not to bring Tim to the ritual. Tim seems pretty suicidal at this point, earlier he dared Elias to kill him. Elias is worried that if Tim is the one to blow up the ritual, John won’t get the End scar.
The ritual fails because Basira reasons her way out. Or maybe it fails because Breekon uses violence against Daisy, not sure.
John is at first very confused, but then he starts to see more clearly. That is because the ritual is already failing, because of Basira (or Breekon). There is no need for Tim to blow up the place and sacrifice himself.
The Eye. We don’t know much about Elias’ first attempt at a ritual, but it seemed to take place in the panopticon prison, with Elias in the middle, watching the prisoners around him. The prisoners were probably supposed to make some kind of choice, and at least one of them failed to do so.
The Dark. The darkness ritual first begins to collapse at Hither Green, where it is led by Natalie.
Quote from Manuella “Natalie and the others followed, but they did not truly understand. Not truly, with their talk of peace and unity and Mr. Pitch. A friendly name, to try and hide from a concept they couldn’t grasp.”
In the episode Police Light the darkness creature inside Rayner is trying to get a new host, by entering Callum Brody. Then the police intervene and shoot Rayner, saving Brody from being possessed. But a droplet of the monster hits the police officer Altman. Altman is in the process of being possessed. Then Altman is stabbed and killed by Natalie Ennis.
There is misdirection here. We are supposed to believe that Natalie stabbed Altman because he was a cop. But actually she killed him because he was possessed. She was secretly working against the darkness cult.
Why? Gertrude must at this point have realized how a ritual will fail if one person makes the wrong choice. She must have talked with Natalie and explained to her that Mr. Pitch is a lie. That the Darkness is not about peace and unity. So because of Natalie the ritual failed.
The third reason for why Elias is wrong is the most important, and I’ll cover it in the next post.
If Elias is wrong that a ritual must draw in all the fears at once, why is it that no ritual has succeeded throughout all of history? I think there just hadn’t been that many attempts.
In Family Business Gerard says if a ritual fails, it takes centuries to build up enough power to attempt one again. Yet we hear of several ritual attempts happening very close together in time: the Lonely circa 2007, the Spiral sometime after 2007, the Buried in 2008, the Flesh in 2008, the Corruption circa 2012, the Dark in 2015, the Stranger in 2017 and the Eye in 2018. How can that be?
In the Architecture of Fear, Smirke says he wrote down several rituals. Since Smirke lived a couple of hundred years ago, it could mean most of his rituals were attempted back then, and that’s why most of them were due to be attempted again around 2007. But that gives us the same problem, just further back in time. Why was it that most of the rituals could have been attempted about the same time, back when Smirke wrote them down?
I think the reason was, most of the powers had never attempted a ritual before Smirke designed them. The Powers have no creativity (see Part 9) and could not have attempted a ritual until a person came up with one. Smirke says he is unsure if all the powers had rituals before he put pen to paper.  
I think there were two rituals that Smirke designed that were attempted relatively long after his death. The Slaughter ritual probably needed a great war to succeed, and therefore did not happen until War War 2. And the Hunt ritual took over a hundred years to set up, as it included two groups of explorers from over a hundred years apart.
Three rituals predate Smirke’s creations, those of the Dark, The Vast and the Stranger.
Smirke got his ideas for rituals after hearing of the ritual of the Dark. In Heart of Darkness, Manuella implies her ritual had been planned for three hundred years, after the failure that birthed the thing inside Rayner. I think when Flamsteed drowned Reimer in The Movement of the Heavens, he stopped the first ritual of the Dark. Reimer was drowned May 2 1715. On May 3 1715 there was a Total Eclipse that could be seen in London. (That date is from real life, not mentioned on the show.) I think that’s when the first Darkness ritual was gonna happen.  
The first Unknowing happened in 1787, Smirke was born in 1780. So unless he invented it as a child, it predates him.
In Big Picture Simon talks about the last ritual he attempted, in 1853. That implies he’s had at least one earlier attempt. Simon became an avatar in the 1500s, so he’d probably only had time to do two ritual attempts in total.
What was Simon’s first ritual? In Literary Heights we hear the plot of Ex Altiora: Villagers prepare to do battle against a large monster. But the monster turns out to be too vast and the villagers throw themselves off a cliff. That sounds like a Vast ritual. Perhaps it failed because not all the villagers jumped off the cliff.
Maybe Simon wrote Ex Altiora to use in the ritual. It is from the sixteen hundreds, so it could be from about two hundred years before Simon’s second ritual.
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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If tma ever got adapted to a visual medium, in the fifth season the archivist should always be looking directly at the camera, no matter what angle it takes
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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Part 10: Early Attempts UPDATE
Reposting this with something added. Added stuff in bold.
The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.
In Curiosity Emma Harvey keeps putting Fiona Law and Sarah Carpenter in danger, making them encounter the fears. I think Fiona and Sarah were early attempts by the Web to complete the Eye’s ritual, to make Fiona and Sarah get scars from all the fears. Emma thinks she is doing it out of curiosity, but the Web is manipulating her. That’s why Emma gets cobwebs in her hair.
I’m less sure, but Leitner’s library might have been another attempt by the Web at doing the ritual. The way Leitner tested the books on his assistants, one of them could have gotten all the fear scars. Leitner seems to be Eye aligned, the way he tries to learn of the fears. Maybe the Web was manipulating him.
The Leitner library was attacked by the Hunt, the Buried, the Spiral (possibly the Distortion), The Vast, The Flesh, The Darkness and the Desolation. Noticeable the Eye and the Web were not among the attackers, possibly since they were the forces behind the library. Before the attack, the library was visited by creatures of the Stranger. The Stranger opposed the Web (see Part 3.) Perhaps the Strangers realized the Web was up to something and organized the attack.
John carries around a Zippo lighter with a web motif. The purpose of the lighter was to blow up the panopticon. In First Aid Gerard Keay had a Zippo lighter with an eye motif. I think Gerard was another candidate to collect the scars, and his lighter another candidate for blowing up the panopticon. He interacted a lot with the powers and could easily have gotten many scars. In First Aid he seemed marked by the Desolation.
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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Jonny Sims @ the part of the fandom that wants to fuck Elias
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magnusmysteries · 2 years
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Part 17: Grant or Gareth or Gary or Gavin UPDATE
Reposting this with something added. Added stuff in bold.
The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.
Another mystery for you to solve. In Scrutiny Jess goes on a date with a man whose name she can’t remember. She thinks it might be Grant or Gareth or Gary or Gavin. Can you figure out his name? It’s pretty hard, but I’ll give lots of hints.
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Hint 1: It’s not Grant, Gareth, Gary or Gavin.
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Hint 2: The handshake is a clue.
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Hint 3: This is not the only episode the date appears in.
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Hint 4: In Threshold John talks about taking a statement from Jess. He says the recorder didn’t turn on. Why didn’t it turn on?
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Hint 5: The hand that gripped Jess underground is a clue.
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Hint 6: The hand that gripped Jess underground belonged to the date.
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Hint 7: What I said in part 16 is relevant…
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Hint 8: …but the date is not the Distortion.
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Hint 9, last hint: The reason Jess goes on and on about the name is a clue that the name is important. The name begins with a G.
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Solution: The date is Gabriel, the Worker-in-Clay. Helen wants the Eye’s apocalypse to happen. So she wants John to take victims and be strong so he can survive the challenges. We see her encourage John to feed on victims in Threshold and Rotten Core. When John enters the corridor in Flesh, Helen gives him fake memories of having fed on two victims. So in Doomed Voyage when John meets Floyd on the boat, John feeds on him. John has lost his inhibition to feed on random strangers, because he wrongly believes he has already done it twice.
Helen also wants to ruin John’s relationship with his friends. Without other friends, John is more likely to rely on Helen. Helen contacts Gabriel. Gabriel goes on a date with Jess, who is one of his old victims. He gives Jess false memories of John taking her statement. Jess complains to the Magnus Institute and everyone gets mad at John. When John and Basira enter the corridors at the end of Heart of Darkness, Helen gives John false memories of having fed on two more victims, including Jess.
Gabriel makes Jess forget his name, but not perfectly. Grant, Gareth, Gary or Gavin all sound a bit like Gabriel. They sound even more like Gabe, which is what Gabriel is called in the Puppeteer. Maybe Gabriel also changes Jess’ memories of what Gabriel looked like on the date?
In Sculptor’s Tool we see Gabriel can change people’s memories. Deborah’s memories of what day of the week sculpture class is changes. Sculptor’s Tool also establishes that Gabriel and the Distortion are friends.
The date shakes Jess’s hand. Gabriel shakes Deborah’s hand. Jess gets a bruise on her leg after the hand grabs her. Deborah gets marks on her hand after shaking hands with Gabriel. Deborah says Gabriel’s hand is damp. Jess says the hand that grabbed her was like wet sand. Both hands are wrong, one with spiraling fingerprints, one with fingers in the wrong place.
Gabriel thanks Deborah, in a creepy way. The fake John, created by Gabriel, thanks Jess in a creepy way. Fake John says he is from the Magnus Institution rather than the Magnus Institute. That’s Gabriel’s spiral nature shining through, he’s saying institution like in mental institution. John’s recorder doesn’t turn on during those statements, because those statements never happened.
Jess says “Every time I do, every time I get that – panic just rising up my throat, I see him. He’s there. Not when I look properly. But just at the edge. The corner of my eye”. We have heard of no other of John’s victims seeing him when they are awake. Maybe Gabriel does not have the ability to change people’s dreams. Maybe he follows Jess around and gives her memories of having nightmares instead.
The Spiral is next to the Buried on the wheel. (see Part 3). I think Gabriel is part Spiral part Buried, which is why he makes Jess claustrophobic. (I think in Lost Johns’ Cave, the pale hand holding the candle belongs to Gabriel. Lost Johns’ Cave had claustrophobia and false memories. And hands are obviously a theme for Gabriel. 
I also think Gabriel is responsible for the vase in Lost and Found. A clay vase, a man whose memories don’t match reality, and two creepy hands coming out of the vase. The hands have dirty fingernails, like from working with clay.) I think David, the husband from that episode, is actually Gabriel. Gabriel gave the statement giver false memories of being married. 
David was trying to get the statement giver feel insane: “For a while I thought he [David] was actually trying to gaslight me, make me think I was losing my mind…”
“I know he [David] was talking to various doctors about getting me help. There were certainly a couple of points I was worried about him having me sectioned.”
John says “...it would appear he was married to nobody. But he was married.” Gabriel isn’t a real person, so sort of a nobody.
Was the vase removing objects, or giving the statement giver false memories of having the objects in the first place? Hard to say.
I think Gabriel is also Dr. David from the episode Wonderland. First he’s called David like in the Lost and Found episode. 
Second there is this quote “Names are… tricky. You know how long it took me to realise I was Doctor David? I mean, neither do I, to be perfectly honest, but the point is names can take a while.” Suggesting the character had another name before.
Third, Dr. David’s face comes off, like it partially did for Gabriel in Sculptor’s Tool.
Fourth, Helen says “I was paying a visit to dear old Doctor David.” The Distortion and Gabriel are friends.  Some might object, didn’t Gabriel die in Another Twist? “The-Worker-of-Clay tore out his veins to dissolve himself in crimson mud. The others of us were cast to all the places that aren’t; some have still not found their way out again.” Not sure dissolving would kill him. This is a guy who can have his face move away from his skull, and have shifting clay beneath. And if I’m right he can also appear inside a vase. Maybe he just dissolved himself temporarily so he wouldn’t be cast to the places that aren’t. And even if he died, he might have come back, like the darkness monster inside Rayner.  
Basira also went through the corridor. Was her memories messed with too? I think so. The next time Basira meets Elias, Basira beats him up. I think this is out of character for Basira. I think Helen gave Basira fake memories of being an angrier and more violent person. That way Basira gets even angrier at John.
In Threshold John asks Helen if the Web can manipulate another avatar, meaning John, and make them feed on victims. Helen laughs and laughs. She knows she’s the one that’s been manipulating John to feed.
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magnusmysteries · 3 years
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Explaining the Mysteries of the Magnus Archives
I have posted my theories on Archive of Our Own. It is basically the same stuff I have posted on this tumblr, though the order is rearranged: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33101302/chapters/82172614
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magnusmysteries · 3 years
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The Woman With The Backwards Arms UPDATE
Reposting this with something added. Added thing in bold.
The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.
Meat is about the ritual of the Flesh. Tom Haan’s people are throwing meat into a giant mouth. Lucia Wright happens to be near the church where the ritual takes place. She is discovered and handed meat. She chooses to help throw meat into the mouth, because she is scared they’ll hurt her if she doesn’t. One of the people throwing meat is a woman with arms that bend backwards. Lucia is thinking about escaping, but does not get an opportunity. She says what spurns her on to keep throwing the meat is that she saw the woman with the backwards arms had fallen and some of the others had thrown her in the mouth.
Like I said in Part 32, I think had Lucia not agreed to help throw the meat, the ritual would have failed. Had she been forced or threatened to leave or to participate the ritual would have failed.
I think the woman with the backwards arms is Marie Balandin from Body Builder. There are three clues to this. First, in Flesh Jared talks about being invited to rituals by those of skin and hunger (that is Stranger and Flesh.) He doesn’t go, but says some of those whose body he changes goes.
Second, in Bodybuilder Jared asks the statement giver what part of his body he hates. Those are the parts Jared will change. In the same episode the statement giver describes Marie like this: “Often I’d find her staring at the mirror in the changing room, her gaze locked on her shoulders, moving them slowly up and down with a look of disgust on her face.” Jared changes Marie’s shoulders, hence the woman has backwards arms.
Third, the woman is very tall and gangly. She has to stoop to get through the entrance of the church. In Body Builder we learn that Marie was suspected of animal mutilations. Sheep had been found dead with their femurs removed. Martin wonders what Marie was planning to do with the femurs. She was planning on putting them in her legs to get taller.
The animal mutilations happened in 2013. The Flesh ritual happened in 2008. Marie is another time traveler. (see Part 20, Part 21, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 33 and Part 34 for more on time travel).
Why did Marie travel back in time? I think in the original timeline, at some point Lucia stops throwing the meat and escapes. And the ritual fails. Marie goes back in time to change this. The people can’t threaten Lucia. So Marie deliberately falls in front of Lucia and is thrown into the pit, to scare Lucia into continuing. The ritual would have succeeded except for the explosion.
Earlier, Lucia said the woman rested her eyes on her, suggesting Marie knew who Lucia was.
Of all the time travelers on the show Marie is the only one without some obvious connection to Hill Top Road. But there is an indirect connection: the demon inside Father Burroughs cooperated with Tom Haan to torment the Father (see Part 22). The demon traveled in time while inside the father. The demon might have told Tom about the rift in time.
In Desecrated Host Father Burroughs holds a fake mass where he is tricked into eating human flesh. I think the purpose of the mass was to turn the yellow stole into an artifact. An artifact of both the Spiral and the Flesh. The Spiral since the demon and hallucination is of the Spiral. And the Flesh because of the cannibalism. In the fake mass there is an audience with fevered, jaundiced yellow skin. When the ritual of the Eucharist begins, the audience begins to vanish. I think the audience symbolizes the Corruption, and they are banished by the cannibalistic ritual because the Flesh is the opposite of the Flesh. (See Part 3).
I think the yellow stole would have been used during the Last Feast. By incorporating an artifact of both the Flesh and Spiral, the ritual could have brought through both the Flesh and Spiral into our world. That’s why the demon is working with Tom Haan.
I think Jared Hopworth is part Spiral (see Part 3). Hence Marie is too. Including a Spiral-Flesh avatar in the Last Feast might also have brought through both the Flesh and the Spiral.
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magnusmysteries · 3 years
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Part 38 Bold As Brass UPDATE
Reposting this with something added. Added stuff in bold.
The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.
I think Brass can protect against the Fears.
In First Aid, Gerard is burned all over his body, except for around his tattoos, and “…the burns seemed to stop at his neck, along a clear line. It was as though he’d been wearing a choker that the damage couldn’t get above but his neck was bare.” Later Gerard asks for a brass pendant he has been wearing. The pendant was protecting him.
In Crusader the statement giver removes a grate made of brass or maybe bronze and finds an old archive with an old archivist. He escapes. Gertrude asks him if he replaced the grate when he escaped. He did. I think the grate was trapping the archivist, hence Gertrude asking about it.
In Tucked In Benjamin is killed by a darkness monster. Before that Robin is found dead in a closet, with his sheets around him. The closet has a brass handle. Robin had apparently been hiding in the closet a long time. I think he starved to death. I think the monster was unable to enter the closet thanks to the brass handle. So Robin is not killed the same way Benjamin is. Robin is covered in the liquid from the monster. But maybe the monster got the liquid onto the sheets before Robin fled into the closet.
In Pageturner Mary Keay’s bookshop, has a a brass plaque reading “Pinhole Books - By Appointment Only.” Perhaps it makes it so monsters can’t enter uninvited.  When Dominic enters the shop with Ex Altoria, the smell of ozone vanishes. And when he is in the shop and looks at the book, the woodcuts have changed. One has a Lightenberg figure. The monster that was bound to the book was not invited into the bookshop. So when the book enters the shop, the monster becomes powerless. It can’t cause the smell. And it is even more completely trapped in the book, and therefore can be seen in the form of the Lichtenberg figure. Notice that Mary does not invite Dominic into the shop, she just turns around silently and leaves the door open. She wants him to follow but she is careful to not actually invite him. When Dominic leaves, the monster is no longer powerless. The smell is back and Dominic falls down the stairs.
In Tightrope the steam organ makes two two clowns fight and the audience laughs. In Strange Music, probably the same organ makes a clown doll kill. In Heavy Goods we learn that the leftover pieces from when Nicola is made is fed to the organist. I think this is when they changed the organ. The organ has brass pipes and a brass plaque reading “The Calliaphone”. It also has words carved onto the cover of the keyboard “Be still, for there is strange music”. I think the brass and the carved words were added to change the organ, to protect against its immediate violent effect. “Be still” as in don’t go into a violent rage.
In Blood Bag the protective syringe is made of brass. More about the syringe in Part 7.
In Boatswain’s Call the boatswain’s call is made of brass. Tadeas Dahl always wears it and plays it to make Sean Kelly vanish. Maybe wearing it protects Dahl from vanishing into the lonely himself?
In Taken Ill the bell of the reception desk is of brass. The statement giver rings it. Then she notices a greasy residue on the bell and says she was glad she was wearing gloves. John Amherst request that Mr. Miller is to be cremated and his ashes returned in an urn made of brass.
I think the brass is to protect people from getting sick, when touching the bell or the ashes. But wouldn’t Amherst want people to get sick?
In Part 2 I said that the fears give people choices, often with a warning that something supernatural is going on. Had somebody gotten sick from ringing the bell or being near the ashes they would not have gotten a proper warning, and therefore not have made a proper choice. Then something bad would have happened from Amherst’s point of view. Maybe all his victims would have gotten well?
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magnusmysteries · 3 years
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This is Simon Fairchild
https://youtu.be/buqtdpuZxvk
youtube
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magnusmysteries · 3 years
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playlist for when ur listening to mag 160 for the first time
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