without the rope

Celebrimbor, leaning over Annatar’s shoulder: ‘One of his old guys’ as in a Maia, or as in an evil monster?

Dwarves: Yes. That is, it killed Durin, and the survivors of his party say it was a nightmare of fire and darkness.

Annatar: We’ll be right there.

Annatar: A little farther back, guys.

Annatar: [breathes back in some of the power he’s left gently scattered around Middle Earth over the last several millennia, for just this sort of thing. Grows 3 feet in height, features turn somewhat lupine, whole form catches flame, with a crown of darkness that also burns]

Annatar, sonorously speaking twisted ancient tongues: SO HELP ME MELKOR, DAVE, GET YOUR ASS UP HERE BEFORE I COME DOWN THERE AND HAND IT TO YOU.

Newly-titled Durin’s Bane, arising in might of shadow and flame, also speaking twisted ancient tongues: Gorthaur! Long have I awai—

Annatar, slamming them against the opposite wall and hissing in black and monstrous eldritch tongues: Listen up you little shit. The Lord is gone until the Battle of Battles so I am in charge now, and I have a good thing going right now. I could summon an army led by scions of Lúthien. I control interest rates in empires of all three major races of sentient incarnates. The last and greatest part of the House of Fëanor is bound to my will.

Celebrimbor, happily married for nearly 3000 years now, has definitely become at least conversational in a variety of black and/or ancient tongues in that time: [waves on cue]

Nain, newly crowned King of Moria: [whispering] What are they saying?

Celebrimbor: [whispering] Annatar is catching them up on current events in a manner they’ll understand. We’re thinking we’ll relocate them to an isolated volcano in the far east, if this goes well.

Very old monsters all alone, left behind by changing times, enemies but finding comfort in each other

Like, in the most common Sindarin interpretation, the name consists of the elements hall- "exalted, high" and brand "noble, admirable, fine." HOWEVER, hall- can also mean "veiled, hidden, or shadowed." Already, just at first pass, it's a great name for a Sauron in disguise, because it captures a duality and ambiguity that keeps you guessing, just like the character himself. It's also a callback to Sauron's first name, Mairon, which means "admirable."

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Tolkien often took name roots with Germanic origins for his human characters, particularly the Middle Men. In Old English, hal can mean "a secret place" or "whole, undivided" and brand can mean either "torch" or "sword"--a good combination of meanings, given that the entire Southlands arc revolves around a "lost king" uniting his country, only for it to be consumed in fire by a sword being put in a secret lock. Plus, there's the combination of "torch" and "sword" in brand that evokes smithing, especially with the more Modern English use of a "brand" being a mark that is made with heated metal.

And we're not done yet!

In Old Norse, the name element hall comes from hallr "stone, slab," and much like in Old English brandr means "sword, torch." Again, "stone sword" is a very apt name given that putting the hilt in stone is the way to open the floodgates. AND, I don't think it's any coincidence that there's another famous lost king who pulls a sword from a stone... yeah, they snuck a King Arthur reference in there!

Hamid, gesturing at Zolf: Kind and beefy? That’s just a hunk.

Hamid, gesturing at Bertie: Only beefy and stupid? That’s just a jock.

Season 4 is where this starts to change. A lot of this can be attributed to the fact that Jon is rapidly developing supernatural knowledge, but at the same time this is basically giving him a get out of jail free card. As the audience, you assume Jon is still giving you the information when he finds it, because that's what he's been doing up until this point. You assume he's still doing all this for the noble cause of saving the world. Hell, it's not even until over halfway through season 4 that you learn he's been stalking people and taking their statements (the guy who does have a history of stalking, of paranoia, of taking things to far - but you don't want to think about that, because he's the protagonist, the voice you're supposed to trust), and only then does the audience fully come to realize how much he's been lying to you and how little you can take his words at face value.

Referencing this post (beware, it has spoilers for The Magnus Protocol).

Oh goodness, so so many. Only a few that I remembered off the top of my head, but I spent some time today trawling the depths of my "magnus archives speculation/analysis" tag and found a couple more fun ones.

Most of the ones I did remember are either still popular headcanons (Web!Martin), or actually turned out to be canon (Jonah!Elias). The Gertrude one always stuck in my head because it's very silly on the surface but also draws attention to the fact of like - how was her skin still in good enough condition to wear after being buried for months? (And Lietner's too, for that matter). Was Nikola just wearing really tattered rotten shreds???

Anyway. Some that I remembered, which all relate to Martin for some reason:

Backup Archivist: Heading into the Unknowing, Elias had Martin reading statements specifically to train him to be a stand in Archivist in case Jon died. Also included sub-theories that he could end up able to compel people on his own, share the role with Jon, or take over entirely if the show pulled a bait-and-switch and Martin was the real protagonist all along.

Who's the Father?: Every single possible theory about who Martin's dad was and what implications that could have on the show, from Leitner to Elias to Peter Lukes to that one dude Peter banished to the Lonely in his statement in 159.

Schwartzwald Cousins: Albrecht von Closen says he and Clara/Carla had trouble having kids in his first statement, but in a later episode says they have two boys. Part 1 of the theory was that the kids were actually avatars who'd emerged from the mausoleum after Albrecht disturbed it, and been adopted by the childless couple. Part 2 was - well - it's canon that Gerry is descended from one of these kids. The theory was, what if Martin was descended from the other? Gerry seems to have some Eye powers linked to his heritage and upbringing, so it was speculated that Martin might turn out to have some as well and be important to either Elias's plans, or to thwarting him (this tied into the Backup Archivist theory nicely). A sub-theory was that they were significantly closer cousins, Martin's mum's maiden name had been Keay, and Martin K. Blackwood was Martin Keay Blackwood all along.

And the ones that I found in the tag (credit in brackets):

Martin’s mum was a runaway Lukas (@/centaurianthropology, here)

The lighter was linked to the Desolation (@agnesmontague) + an addition by me that I'm so proud of in hindsight - "I think the web design pretty much confirms that it’s linked to the Web, but if it’s the Desolation as well, might it be linked to the other occasions we’ve seen those two powers interact? Namely, the ever mysterious Hill Top Road?" (Here)

Another of my posts that I'm delighted to reread (here) reminded me of the many, many, "what's up with the tapes?" theories. I remember "the tapes are sent by the Web", "the tapes are sent by Elias", "the tapes are manifestated unconsciously by Jon" (my personal favorite, sadly disproven), and I think there were also some "the tapes are Gertrude's ghost" posts???

Elias was the Eye the same way Michael was the Spiral - Gertrude sacrificed him to stop the Watcher's Crown (@/statementbegins, here)

Also reading through these is reminding me that there was a stretch where we were calling the Vast and Lonely the "Void" and "Isolation", which I love.

This is just a select few posts from 2018, so there's a lot more under the tag if you're interested in looking! Link below, copy and paste into a web (lol) browser because the archive (lmao) page doesn't work on the app.

https://cirrus-grey.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/magnus%20archives%20speculation%2Fanalysis

it's finally done!! this comic took me about 26h 20min (and an overall time of over 2 months) and is based on the fic with the same name, written by @advena-perditus (you can find it here. check it out, it's very good)

in mag 121, he makes a point of calling jon "jon" over "the archivist" because he says "archivist" is too formal, and in mag 168 he refers directly to jon two times. the first is at the top of his coroner's report, where he denotes it as being addressed to "the great eye" and "its archive, which draws knowledge of this suffering unto itself," referring to jon both with the more dehumanizing of his avatar titles and with an "it" pronoun. the second time is towards the end, where he calls jon "jon" and expresses that he isn't asking for mercy and that he would have offered this report willingly if that were still an option.

Basira didn't know Tim well enough to know he had changed so radically. Jon and Martin had been there every step of the way, Martin especially, and it was so gradual they probably didn't notice until it all boiled over. At the same time, I don't think Tim really recognized how different Jon was from the very beginning either. And of course neither of them noticed Martin was different, but Martin was fighting really hard not to show that he was anything other than what they expected/wanted/needed him to be (that's a whole separate post, I think).

Daisy was gone for six months, and the thing is that Basira didn't really know her. She knew the Hunt. Daisy came out of the Buried and tried to leave the Hunt behind, and Basira couldn't recognize her without it. Frankly, I'm not sure Daisy could recognize herself. Jon - and to a certain extent Melanie - had a bit of an advantage there, because they didn't know her that well, or really at all, before, so they had nothing to compare it to. All of them were meeting someone new, it was just that Basira was trying to shove this new person into the old person's role and getting frustrated that the pieces didn't fit even though the label was the same.