The Magnus Archives Beginners Guide

The Archivist: “Disproving piles of nonsense felt good, like real work, not just driving myself to distraction with conspiracy theories and paranoia.“

It’s Halloween and like every year the Archives are  inundated with statements. Most of them patently false - some not. Help Jon battle his paranoia by giving him a bit of work and piles of nonsense to work through.

You can hand in either a real or a made up statement or create a cursed artefact for the artefact storage in the form of any art. If you need an inspiration you can use the prompt list given, or just write as you please. At us @pilesofnonsense or tag with #pilesofnonsense2020 and if you like add it to our AO3 collection.

17th October - Hunt | (Sparkly) Vampires 18th October - Buried | Swamp Monster 19th October - Desolation |  Ghost Lights 20th October - Web | Curses 21st October - Flesh | Ghouls 22nd October - Dark | Bogeyman 23th October - Lonely | Abandoned Houses 24th October - Vast | Creepy Fog 25th October - End | Ghosts 26th October - Corruption | Giant Worms 27th October - Stranger | Dolls&Puppets 28th October - Spiral | Otherworldly Visitors 29th October - Slaughter | Werewolves 30st October - Extinction | Zombies 31st October - Beholding | Urban Legends

Rules

Fic must be written in statement form or contain a statement in statement form

Art must contain either a scene from a statement or an artefact for artefact storage

Prompts can be followed but don’t have to be followed to submit something, if you have an idea for a statement that doesn’t fit any of the above prompts feel free to add it to the collection!

- The library, which Martin worked at for a good 10 years before his transfer to the Archives.  Apparently this gets frequented by students doing research a lot--in season 1, Tim passes on some complaints about some errors some of the students who’d listened to Jon’s tapes found.  

- Research, where Tim, Jon, and Sasha worked before Jon’s promotion.  They receive the statements made at the Institute--nearly all of which are fake--and do follow-up and field work to look into the issues.   What we hear the assistants doing in season 1 is probably very similar to what they were already doing in the research department.  Once it hits a dead end, they collect all the notes and conclusions and pass the file off to the Archive for filing.  From the sound of it, this is the largest and most active department.

- Artefact Storage is a collection of spooky/cursed artifacts, where Sasha had worked before she worked with the others in research.  Apparently they’re very hush-hush about how cursed the stuff is in there, but it was so bad she barely lasted six months before trying to transfer out.  It’s implied that this collection is not known to the public.

Rusty Quill just released an operations update and here’s a brief summary of a couple of points from it. The full document is 9 pages and covers much more tho so I’ll stick a link in a reblog, I highly recommend reading the full thing.

On Transparency

RQ currently employs a high proportion of ppl that are LGBTQIA+, mentally ill, disabled and/or chronically ill.

They have a lower proportion of employees that are POC or who have hearing and visual impairments

Going forward:

They are actively looking to employ more POC

They acknowledge that they currently lack the resources for it but are investigating how to become more accessible to potential employees with hearing or visual impairments

More stats about the diversity stats of the company will also be released later in the year.

On Content

They’ve reviewed their current shows and acknowledge they messed up in several places such as:

Depictions of Egypt and its culture in RQG

Tom Haan perpetuating harmful East Asian stereotypes in TMA

Using real world figures like Amherst as antagonists when they caused significant harm and that harm is still ongoing

The disproportionate number of antagonists in TMA who are characters of colour when compared to the a-racial presentation of the main cast

Going forward:

They’ve hired an in-house sensitivity consultant and may also consult specialist sensitivity readers as needed

Future shows will be subject to a more thorough planning which includes sensitivity consultation

Jon: I’m sorry what

Martin: a dog, a spaniel, I think

Jon: like

Jon: In general?

Me:

[see content warnings in tags for episode discussion]

I am belatedly realizing some people are interpreting my shitpost as the “man in the audience” comment, but that’s only a side effect and part of the whole.  

Jon, marked by the Web as a child, seen as “a gift from the Web” to Jonah to make Archivist, pushed into relapsing with the Web’s lighter, trapped and mocked and gaslit by Annabelle’s statement, so caught up in the terror of being manipulated into something harmful he doesn’t know whether his desire to save Martin can be trusted, physically being forced to end the world as he struggles to resist.  “I’m different, now.  I’ve worked so hard,” and then being forced to drink in the fear of everyone in the world against his will.  Here he’s forced to watch so many of his own deepest fears play out, and just like he couldn’t break free of Annabelle’s or Jonah’s statements, couldn’t even pull away on his own as it restarted again.

The “man in the audience” was more victim-blaming, the same as Jon has faced with every person who tells him the end of the world is his fault.  The same as happened on the stage itself!  Jon wasn’t able to find a way to free the victims of other domains, but because he can’t free this one, the spider blames their suffering on him.  Blames his own suffering on him.  And the message for both watcher and victim are the same: you did this to yourself, you deserve this, there’s no getting free.  

An umbrella is something designed by humans to shelter them from rain. Neither humanity nor rain exist anymore at this point. The umbrella is broken and ultimately unable to fulfill its purpose.

There is no rain to shelter humanity from anymore. There is no humanity left to shelter from the rain.

A broken thing designed to probide comfort and safety - neither exist in the Extinction’s domain.

It’s what’s left of humanity’s hubris - there were far worse things they would have needed protection from, but they ignored those, of course. And even if they hadn’t, they weren’t even able to construct something capable of sheltering them from the rain. Unable to build something that would last.

This isn’t The Archivist “bullying” an umbrella, those are the notes Leah - the chatacter the statement is being “pulled from” - is writing down in the book; useless warnings that ultimately lead to nothing.

“Even if Leah had known, if she had had time to warn them, who would have believed her? Who would not have laughed her out of her life if she described the horrors that were to come in their true and vivid detail?

“But there is no one left to warn, though that does not slow her hand even a moment. She ignores the burning pain in her forearm, where the thing’s rough tongue has torn a section of her skin clean off.”

She is, ultimately, just like the umbrella: A broken relic that survived the downfall of humanity. Both of them were unable to protect humanity.

If he have the Hunt, Dark, Vast, Spiral, and the Eye left, that means we have our expected avatars for those domains, right?

Don't know who we have for the Dark, considering that at best it's Manuela and Helen saw to her.

The Vast could be Simon Fairchild, obviously.

Maybe we will finally see a main avatar of the Hunt... or we will see Daisy.

And the Spiral has already followed them with Helen.

And of course, Jonah for the Eye.

I completely forgot about #15.

But hey, next week, sounds like we get the Hunt. But I don't like that hesitation.

So. Episode 115. That was when this happened.

This, as far as I recall, is the last time we ever saw Helen clinging to who she was before she merged with the Distortion. She was new, she was changing, she was scared and confused, and when she went to Jon for help, she was vehemently rebuffed. There’s no trace of this doubt six months later, and since she’s pretty firmly entrenched in casual card-carrying villainy by that point, it’s safe to say it took less than those six months for her to let go.

And then we have Jon, who’s been wrestling with his own humanity like a bar of soap in the bath since the start of Season 4 at the latest, possibly longer, but since the coma marked his biggest physical leap toward monsterhood, that’s how long he’s been consciously fighting for it, at least. So the next time Helen sees him, he’s in exactly the same position she was in when she went to him for help. He isn’t physically human anymore. He’s started seeking out victims of his own. He’s scared and alone and has no one to turn to. And what does she do for the rest of Season 4 and beyond? Nudge Jon along in the direction of the same decision she made, of course!

Maybe she took satisfaction in seeing him struggle. Maybe she resented being abandoned and this was her own version of taking revenge. Maybe she genuinely thought she was helping him. Maybe she didn’t care.

The specifics of her motivation aren’t important. What is important is that Jon had every reason to reach the same conclusion. Not only was he isolated, but every external influence in his life was pushing him closer and closer to being a monster. The people around him were already treating him like one, and his strongest anchor to humanity was stuck behind a locked door with an isolationist sea captain. The decision should have been easy. Why wouldn’t it be? It was for Helen, and Jon had everything Helen had and less.

Except

Jon woke up in February. He doesn’t rescue Martin from the Lonely until September. That was nine months of isolation and mistrust from the people around him, and Jon was still clinging to his humanity.

And then the world ends, and Jon is handed absolute power and no reason not to use it, and Jon is still clinging to his humanity.

“How are we still having this intensely boring conversation? I honestly thought that actually ending the world would be enough to stop you whining, but no! You’re the most powerful person in a world where the worst consequences imaginable have already happened! Absolute power with zero responsibility! What more can you possibly need to just enjoy yourself a tiny bit?”

That doesn’t sound to me like a mastermind whose plot has been foiled. That sounds like someone lashing out because she’s bitter over the fact that the person she’s heavily projecting on isn’t following the script in her head.

I’m including all the sources I can remember, but feel free to let me know if I left anything out and I’ll update it.

Jon:  Canonically asexual (TMA 106, word of god via Q&A, streams, interviews, twitter posts, etc).  Had boundaries against having sex while dating in university (TMA 106).  Canonically multi-spec (mspec)–has dated a woman (TMA 106) and is in a relationship with a man (TMA 160+, word of god).

Martin:  Canonically mlm (TMA 117, 159, 170, word of god via twitter, Q&As, interviews, etc).  In a relationship with a man (TMA 160+, word of god).

Tim:  Canonically bi (word of god via Reddit reply, TMA 49).  Had a fling with a woman that he wanted to return to (TMA 162).

Sasha:  Had a fling with a man that she had no interest of returning to, and insisted she was “not the love interest” (TMA 162).

Basira:  No canon sexuality.  Called a man “hot,” but didn’t state personal attraction to him (TMA 52).

Daisy:  No canon sexuality.

Georgie: Canonically mspec.  Dated a man in university (TMA 106) and in the current timeline (TMA 85), and is in a relationship with a woman (TMA 157).

Melanie:  Canonically wlw (TMA 157).  In a relationship with a woman.  Arguably may have expressed attraction to a man (TMA 86), but I’ve seen various interpretations.

Agnes Montague:  Initiated a relationship with a man (TMA 67).

Jude Perry:  Canonically wlw (TMA 89).  

Oliver Banks:  Canonically mlm (TMA 11).

Jonah Magnus/Elias Bouchard, Peter Lukas, Gertrude Robinson, Gerry Keay, Adelard Dekker, Annabelle Cane, Helen Richardson, various other minor characters:  No canon sexuality.

Bonus:

“They want to be alone. They don’t want any children around at all.”

Jon:  I ended up living with my grandmother, a kind enough woman, but she had already raised her children, and the resentment she felt at having to raise another was never something she completely managed to hide from me. (TMA 81)

“They tell Jack it is after his bedtime, and put him in another dark room where he cannot run.“

Jon:  By the time I was eight, the police had had to return me from my explorations at least three times, and my grandmother swore that if it happened again she would begin locking me inside the house. And I fully believed her.  (TMA 81)

“Is it because he is brave enough to fight the monsters? No. Jack is scared all the time. The world is so big and the night is so long, and the monsters are waiting under the bed and in the closet and down the hallway and in the street and round the corner and behind him.”

Jon:  I am not a brave man. I believe I am starting to come to terms with that fact, but I am, in certain circumstances, a very stubborn one.  (TMA 41)