#tmagp2

DIVERSITY WIN, THE PERSON WHOSE COOL TATTOO RESULTED IN YOUR UNFORTUNATE DEATH USES THEY/THEM PRONOUNS

tag me if design used :0 . no spoilers in comments plz . art acc @puppunkz . procreate ipad apple pen 2.5hrs

I think this is the first "entry" into the TMA franchise written by Alexander J. Newell? And it's a hell of a good one. I know I only have 3 incidents to pick from so far, but this is my favorite. As a reminder, I have already seen this episode. Everything after will be new to me though.

2:09 - "-and that’d be another “resurrection,” possible subsections… “obsession,” “medical”, “pursuit” and… hmmm. “Blasphemy”, maybe, so that would make it… four two three seven." Again with these subsections! Some of them are thematic, but some of them are just elements that were present. The main focus of Frankenstein in my eyes is his focus on avoiding responsibility. He goes against the laws of nature, and just abandons his creation because it has scary eyes. He lets Justine literally get executed because he refuses to reveal the fact his creation killed his brother. And then Victor makes then entire thing about him! About how bad he feels, about how he'll have to live with the guilt and regret of knowing. He's so up his own ass, Frankenstein's Monster basically tells him "I'm going to kill your loved ones" and Victor assumes the monster is just going to attack him on his wedding night. Idiot. What a goddamned idiot. And do any of these subsections get all that? Nope. Maybe "Blasphemy" gets close to it.

3:15 - "We aren’t here to decode the system. That’s Colin’s job and you’ve seen what a delight it’s made him. Just try to learn your codes and process your cases." Interestingly, while Gwen is determined to take this job seriously and process incidents to the best of her ability... she still seems to willing to overlook some of the absurdities and look deeper.

3:33 - "Then quit. No-one’s making you work here." Gwen can be mighty capricious at times. I think she might have taken Sam saying even she doesn't have perfect memory of the system as a blow to her ego. Alice doesn't want to take the job seriously at risk of it feeling real, and Gwen herself has said a lot of "hopeless wasters" come into this job. So why does Gwen take it so seriously? What is her goal here? Why does she even want Lena's job when everything about the job seems so... obfuscated.

4:32 - "Hey Gwen? Gwen? Gwen? Time isn’t real." Did I mention I love Alice?

8:40 - "I was meant to be doing a portrait for some generic witchy alchemist and it was when I was researching the symbols and stuff that I came across “Ink5oul”" It's always the symbols. And Ink5oul is already being associated with alchemy.

9:39 - "Looking beyond into the interior, it seemed like more of the studio was dedicated to ring lights and photography gear than tattoos!" It's like the focus is all on being scene. Being perceived. Not just having the tattoo for yourself, others, EVERYONE seeing it. I think this whole thing is pretty Flesh-coded, and that's only gets more intense the further this goes. It's the relentless observation of the body. The soul doesn't matter. Appearance does.

9:56: - "they had an absolutely gorgeous floral serpent design running up their arm and into their neck that was so vivid it looked ready to slither off their skin and onto the chair." That tattoo has to come alive in a later episode. I want to hear an incident where this icon just siccs a tattoo snake on someone. I support non-binary wrongs.

10:40 - "Before I could reply they hit a button on their set-up and suddenly we were live streaming with lights in my eyes and their arm tight around my shoulders. I don’t remember much of what they said to their viewers, but they kept telling everyone how lucky I was whilst they dragged me into the chair." You know, listening to this again now... I'm getting Mr. Beast vibes. Like it's awful. "Oh, I'll do this charitable thing for you, you just need to agree to let my exploit your image to be ravenously consumed by my thousands of fans! I'm not even going to give you a warning, just start being content! If you aren't content, then what's the point of your existence?" Ugh. Gross. And then the immediate painful torture. This would be a nightmare for me.

11:35 - "I wanted to scream but I couldn't even breathe as it felt like thousands of wasp stings ravaged my body whilst mediocre dubstep thrummed through my chest and Ink5ouls chatted to their viewers completely unconcerned." 11:57 - "The stream was over and I was apparently forgotten." 12:39 - "Just as suddenly as the lights had turned on, they were off and I was bundled towards the exit. No debrief, no aftercare." This really gets to me also. The sheer... banality of it. Imagine going through the most unimaginable torment you have ever experienced, having your flesh merciless carved into... and someone is just playing shitty EDM over it. It's the worst day of your life but to the person causing it, it's just Tuesday. They're not even really being sadistic, they aren't relishing in it, it's just... nothing to them! And then you're just thrown out, like a product that's been used! There's no conclusion, no explanation, no catharsis, just intense pain and then it's over and you're expected to just move on like nothing ever happened. Awful.

15:04 - "Looking around me, I realised that all of my paints were still out" So as a rational person not being mindscrewed by alchemical symbols on your tattoo feeding on your body dysmorphia, you used the paints on the portrait, right? Right?

15:32 - "I began to take a pallet knife to the left eye. Just a small tweak. It was as subtle change, barely noticeable but I knew I was making progress, because I could feel when the knife scraped bone." :( I had to double back when I first listened to this. And then triple back. I thought she was talking about the canvas. And she was. For a moment. And then she seamlessly transitioned into being the canvas. The switch is just, instant. There's no direct moment of it starting to blur or be confused, and I love that because it makes it so jarring. 16:42 - "It was small tweaks at first" Proceeds to give very extensive list to 'tweaks'. Just completely broken from reality and now looking for anything and everything to fix. And there is ALWAYS something to fix.

19:50 - "If I wanted to clear the canvas, I would have used turpentine." The nonchalance of this line makes me laugh. I'm a bad person.

20:40 - "Just stop paying attention.. Don’t look at me like that, I’m serious. I just skim the case for keywords, and if it’s a talker I hit play and get on with other work." I've already said my whole thing about this. Sam does not seem to want to accept the horrors of the world however. The absurdity of the systems, the way the computers haven't updated since the 90s. He forces himself to listen to the incidents. He wants to figure out what things mean. He wants to make a change. Time will tell if this is a virtue, or if it will get him killed.

22:07 - "They’re “expanding external operations” and you know what that means. Outsourcing. Redundancies" I don't think that's what Lena meant. I think that was code. Code for what? Something bad, probably.

24:46 - "Er yeah, that should be fine. It’ll need to be after the 28th though as that’s payday." What's going on with Alice's brother? Is he in a tough spot since his music career hasn't kicked off yet and he needs to ask Alice for cash?

I really do love this episode. Body dysmorphia is one of my favorite aspects of the Flesh, and this gave all of the vibes. I know we aren't going to have the same clear-cut entities as TMA, but still.

Okay, so we don’t know the full capacity to how Martin and Jon are in this universe, but we know through their computerized voices as Norris and Chester at least ‘part of them’ is here.

We can also speculate the 3rd voice, Gus, is going to be Jonah.

So if Martin, Jon, and Jonah are here, might Elias be too to some capacity? I’m not talking about Jonah possessed Elias, I’m talking about the original Elias. We saw in Mag200 how when Jonah was killed, Elias resurffeced for a second to tell Jon “good luck”. Perhaps if Jon and Martin were transfered to other universes to some capacity, Jonah and Elias might have too, seperate entities now.

And if Elias is separate, could we speculate he’d want to put a stop to these fears after being tormented with the incapability of doing anything about them for years. He’d know about them at the very least. We know Gwendolyn Bouchard got her job from nepotism, showing that he might have worked for OIAR or some related organization. Maybe Gwendolyn is so dead set on having things such an exact way because she KNOWS what’s happening. She wants to be in control to stop all this.