#i hate jurgen leitner but his analogy about an ant trying to understand a human is very very salient

[jaeheewillalwaysbemyfav]

So I'm writing my term paper about The Magnus Archives and have been relistening to season 1 as a way to try to organize my thoughts and Fuck I Miss This Podcast

also i hate how it ended even more bc a running theme throughout the podcast UNTIL THE VERY END is how inescapable the Entities are. We see all sorts of attempts to avoid or thwart them and sometimes they do work for a while, but I think we forget that even absolute icons like Joshua Gillespie or that guy who left the Spiral because he was going to be late for dinner still were impacted enough by their experience to come to the Magnus Institute in the first place

And that by coming there Guess What They're Lowkey Marked By

I don't care what the Magnus Protocol or any part of canon will say/says, the Entities should not be banishable. Not without some kind of massive psychological shift in all life on Earth that eliminates fear.

Do you know how many of the S1 statements talk about watching? Nearly all of them involve it, of course because that's the easiest way to show gruesome spooky things + justify why there's someone alive to tell the tale, but in the context of TMA, I think it's extremely important that it's brought up in nearly every statement

There's always a point where the statement givers comments about their watching: they stay in a Situation longer because some part of them wants to see, they feel they can do nothing else so they watch, they return to the location of the Situation after it has initially passed, there's always a point where they could have left it alone but they don't because they feel like they can't.

The avatars might have petty squabbles between themselves about their "respective" patrons. But the Entities themselves seem very content to give a sizeable portion of those they've marked, at least partially, to the Eye.

#tma #the magnus archives #tma the entities #tma the eye #mine #in other words: I Maintain That The Entities Are All Friends Actually #well #not friends #but not divided into neat little clans like smirke and co. believe #i hate jurgen leitner but his analogy about an ant trying to understand a human is very very salient #except where i'm pretty sure based on how canon plays out he's talking about individual manifestations of one entity vs the entire entity #i'm choosing to interpret it as one entity vs That Which Is Fear #the Entities are not fundamentally distinct... well... entities #but parts of a fractured whole #it's no cosmic skin off their metaphorical backs if a victim of one entity ends up claimed by or serving another #they're just trying to get as much tasty tasty fear as possible #i think of them like a bunch of mouths that all lead to one stomach #sometimes they might go for the same target #iirc it's either ivo lensik or father burroughs(?) who is compelled to call out 'i'm already marked. i'm not for you' or something to that #effect #but anyway yeah sometimes they're essentially trying to extract fear from the same source in different ways #and one 'mouth' will kinda say to the other #'hey i think i can do this best buzz off' #and sometimes they listen #but there are also times where they basically draw and quarter a motherfucker #like father edwin burroughs(?) #(i forget how his last name is spelled) #who was gangbanged by nearly all the entities #which is hilarious to listen to in retrospect #bc this man just goes out of one frying pan and into several fires