Follow Your Passion: A Seamless Tumblr Journey
I’ve been noticing this also, and I think it has something to do with the purpose of what Sam and the crew are doing in the first place. The purpose of the Magnus institute was to document people’s fear to make them relive it to feed the eye. But the OIAR randomly gathers statements from wherever it can find them.
Based on this, one possibility is that the OIAR is harvesting fear from the employees. So the system chooses statements based on what might stick with the employees. Hearing a story about someone suffering is sad and unpleasant, but hearing a story about something that is out there to cause pain, and it is probably still out there? That’s certainly enough to keep your average Joe paranoid.
did anyone else pick up on how many of the cases weren't from the victim's point of view? it's happened 3 times so far (4 if you count daria? she's complicated) out of seven cases. tma in comparison has 130 out of 154 statements (i am only counting s1-4 because s5 messes with format) (if the numbers are a bit funky please note that i hand counted them so i apologise for that). of course, we only have six episodes of protocol, but there is clearly a difference and i can still make a post out of it.
maybe it's because we aren't only getting stories from the survivors now, as other people have mentioned
but also, those accounts from the perpetrator remind me somewhat of statements from avatars. needles' poetic, ominous manner of speech sounded similar to statements like jane prentiss, manuela dominguez, etc. (side note: needles was very corruption in my opinion. calling the stabbing/other violent actions an act of affection was definitely reminiscent of jane and the hive, just saying). others have pointed the parallels between jonah magnus and the violin guy, but i'll do it again: guy obtains much power via acts of violence, and despite knowing it hurts people this guy continues to see the skill and power with a cost as a blessing, keeps the origin of the power secret and passes it onto another person, who they tell the origin of the power to and bestow the power upon this other person, who did not ask for this. samuel webber's contentment with his new form while retaining an underlying sense of fear is comparable to avatars who love and fear their entity in equal measure.
as well as this, these cases seem more directly aligned with tma entities. magp 4 is extremely slaughter, and resembles mag 42 (grifter's bone). magp 3 is corruption, and mag 6 is also corruption in my opinion (i think people agree with me on that?).
i'm sorry i haven't planned this out i just noticed something and spent an hour typing on my phone about it. tell me your thoughts in the tags, i'd love to see someone make an actual theory about this!
Ok so today's statement was seriously lonely, spiral coded, but was I the only one that was oddly remined of the You Are Here restaurant space from TMAGP 8 (Running on Empty). Like that also had Spiral, Lonely vibes, perhaps there's a connection.
Something about how the Eye’s always been there. About how Jon’s voice starts slow and monotone in the first season, when he still doubts these statements. Something about how, toward the middle of the statement, before the thing happens, he takes a breath where the victim took a breath, where their thoughts stumbled. About how he reads them and laughs when they do, and how his tone changes.
Something about how, in Mag 33, Tim was asking Jon why he classified things under the wrong date, someone’s name was wrong, something was cross-referenced wrong…he Knew all along, and had no idea he did.
Something about how he knew everything since the beginning, he read the statements as if they were his own stories, with fear and questions and scoffs and stutters. Something about how the Eye’s been in him since he worked above the basement.
Something about how Jon would read each statement and give what seemed to be an initial reaction to the content—shock, fear, ‘more spiders’— and then say “I had Martin look into this,” and then explain what they followed the case with, even though this seems to be the first time he’s read it. About how the Eye looked into every case, or set it before any of the gang and had them look into it before Jon could read it.
And now, something about how the computer voice fades. How Jon’s voice is still there, how he’s still real. How he’s real on his own terms, in computers still run by the Eye. How he can’t escape but he’s still listed as “unknown” on his Wiki page. Something about how Jon Simms is still out there and still being human through these wires.
Something about how the Eye’s known and loved Jon, and how the Eye still crinkles when someone tells a lie and how Jon’s still human enough in there to read these statements to everyone, listening or not.
I'm thinking... do we really get how the magnus institute worked in tma universe? cause the archives are not the only part of the institute sooo... maybe the institute described in tmagp is not really different from that in tma? it wouldn't be surprising if tma jonah would be interested in alchemy as it is connected to immortality...
Everyone is saying J 2.0 Is Jonah (which it probably is)
But what if it’s just Some Guy, that got stuck in the computer
Wilding out Celia theory:
- There's two Celias
- One from this universe, one from TMA
- They share a body
- When Celia wakes up after sleepwalking, that's the Celia of TMAGP
- When Celia's at the OIAR, that's the Celia of TMA
- one of them"s a baddie
*tinfoil noises*
- TMA Celia has become an avatar of the stranger
TMAGP 17 SPOILERS
Celia gives me Moon Knight vibes. Maybe she's sharing a body with her AU self? She seems committed to Jack and genuinely interested in pursuing Sam, so I'm not sure which is which. Might be possible that Celia is genuinely her name and that's why TAFK Lynne picked it, subconsciously.
Which raises the question of who's sleepwalking during the day, and who's working at the OIAR during the night. I feel like Celia's comments on a "crazy couple of years" and her son could go either way- as in, sometimes TMA Celia was making choices, and sometimes it was TMAGP Celia.
Also, is her last name a reference to the Talented Mr Ripley? I'm leaning towards "living her alternate self's life."
DPHW reminds me of the Aarne Thompson index for fairy tales. I wonder if they're categorizing the type of tale, more than scoring it on qualities?
Evil wish fulfillment, a la monkey's paw
Honestly “Desires” might not entirely be it. I think it may be sort of a “Careful what you wish for”
“I just wanted to make people laugh” okay well nightmare clown
“I wanted to play the role of the mysterious stranger” okay. Truck crash
“I wanted to prove my thesis.” How about such an intimate experience with it that you will never be the same
It’s like these people are experiencing the consequences of obsession in real time dialed up to 11
In s5 of TMA Jon mentioned kids have more basic fears, like the Dark. What if they were building a whole other fear? Or trying to unite them into one power, alchemy style?
Hey Jonah. Jonah Magnus. Jimmy Magma. Why did you, the head of an institute dedicated to worshipping and feeding the fear god of knowledge, need a bunch of young, gifted children who would probably know more than other children their age?? Be honest with me Jonah. Did you need them for an attempt at a ritual?? You can be honest
TMAGP 9 SPOILERS
I have a bad feeling Freddy is using the voices of Jon, Martin, and whoever else to goad Sam into returning to the Magnus Institute. And that Jon & Martin are, in fact, completely dead.
TMAGP 4 SPOILERS BELOW CUT
Sacrificing yourself, or part of yourself, has been a constant focus so far (nothing's wasted in the garden). A lot of people have commented on the "be careful what you wish for" narratives, and I'm on that page, but I think there's been self-harm in each story (implied in 1, regarding the eyes). People's passions consume them, and they're "giving in."
TMAGP 4 feels like the first story where someone channels that supernatural harm outwards as well (in 3, the murder precedes the supernatural encounter). In TMA the statements were often innocent people encountering terrible things, but the POVs are more complex this time around.
Considering the ambiguity of the system's morality, I feel like the macro POV (the devices we're listening from) will be equally ambiguous. I wonder if we'll get into the horrors' sentience (or lack of it) and how this weird abstract organism would, itself, would choose a moral path.