I'll be real I don't know why Sasha is made out to be the "one with braincell" or the "emotionally intelligent one" of the s1 crew when everything we know about her points at her being a little bit Fucking Insane. She hacks her coworkers' phone and her workplace's system because privacy violation is Fun. Her first instinct when faced with a dangerous monster is consistently to square the fuck up. One of them tells her to meet it alone in a isolated location and she's like "yeah ok". Her coworker is under siege for 2 weeks by a woman full of worms who she knows has definitely killed before and she's like "nah it's probably not THAT dangerous you know how Martin gets". She is smart she's brilliant but she's NOT the only normal one who babysits her crazy male coworkers, she IS the crazy coworker!!

You know who DOES fit that role though? Tim. Literally the only one who isn't doing some stupid shit in s1. He's just doing his job and being friendly with everyone. The only one who isn't intensely stressed out or breaking into houses or actively seeking monsters. He was an older brother to someone who was always up to some shit and you can really feel that. If there's anyone in s1 who's qualified to babysit a bunch of unstable people in their late twenties /early thirties and hold the collective braincell that's Tim.

Just about every character in The Magnus Archives is a massive hypocrite, seeing people hate on one hypocrite and absolutely worship another just sets me off.

People hate on Basira, or Georgie, or Martin, or Melanie for being hypocrites, but I swear they fucking worship Tim, Elias or Jon.

I probably look like I’m arguing with a brick wall, but I don’t give a gaf. I can’t stand these people

I could write a five (or more) page essay defending all of these characters if asked, and maybe I will, maybe I won’t. We’ll see how I’m feeling when I actually have the time to do it.

do you think jon feeling less than human was familiar to him?

do you think those around him glaring at him with the distain reserved for a creature entirely other fit him like an old coat he was resigned to wearing again?

do you think, when melanie and basira, when tim looked at him in such a way, talked down to him like an emaciated tiger helpless to its own hunger, he was reminded of his childhood?

as an almost certainly neurodivergent child, and a self-proclaimed “deeply annoying” one at that, do you think he got used to that certain look from others? the look of “you’re lesser,” and “you don’t belong,” and “you aren’t like me”?

do you think his friends watching him with that same distrust and disgust came with a sort of familiar melancholy? one that he fell into easier than the saccharine self-destructiveness of finally reaching for just one cigarette?

do you think that that familiarity felt, in some way, like coming home? easier to just let the strangling creeper vines grow just a little more than to get up?

This scene makes me so upset.

It's the first time in the series Jon decides to walk away from something instead of chasing it's knowledge to a self-destructive degree.

And he's "rewarded" for not feeding The Eye by being framed for murder and having that thought drilled into his head, "If I didn't look away, Elias might not have had the same opportunity to kill Leitner."

This moment literally teaches Jon that he's correct to be paranoid about knowledge slipping through his fingers, and he's right to push himself too far to get it. He's not even allowed to take a breath after speaking with the man who ruined his life with his books without there being disaster. And I think this moment has a lot of implication for his actions later in the series.

Oh, Jon </3

I love Sasha and Tim from Magnus archives because your first impression of who the chaotic one is obviously Tim “statement of Joe spooky” stoker because he’s goofy silly and makes jokes about burning down the archives BUT he’s actually the most normal one of the lot

he’s just a guy with a background in publishing and some horrifying trauma who likes workplace banter

meanwhile Sasha “reliable down to earth nerd” James goes around stalking her coworkers and calling her boss out for lying about his age in front of HIS boss (she knows his real age because she hacked into his files. for fun presumably) completely unrepentant

she also was like “okay yeah weird hand monster at my local cafe I will go to a secondary location (graveyard) with you and kill a man why not” completely alone and presumably without telling anyone where she was going??

Tim is the impulse control in their friendship believe it or not he just typically chooses to be her hype man rather than exercise common sense

Can't stop thinking of the significance of gerry's eye tattoos like why beholding? Why not Desolation or Hunt? It would seem on brand for either to be his entity of (begrudging) choice. Or even the Vast. Freedom/escape from the burdens and weight of existing seems to be a theme there and lord knows he had so little of that.

Rambling ahead (as per usual atp)

whenever people make jon like 5’8 or sumn but say he’s short i stand there shocked until i remember that people have varying definitions of short

My favourite thing about relistening to TMA is picking up on the themes that each fear likes to play with.

So far I’ve identified:

Stranger - strong scents, narcotics, performance, abstract self expression, dolls, mannequins, statues and taxidermy, preservation of the original at the expense of context, lack of eye contact, herbs, disability

Buried - rest and the desire for calm, dreamless sleep, exhaustion, embrace, weight and pressure (emotional and physical), humid hot environments, being consumed, resolution

Vast - thrill and adrenaline, just sorta oversized living things

Corruption - love and connection, self destruction, people pleasing, beauty, community, assistance and care,

Slaughter - poetry, song, dance, knives, persistence in the face of death, focus, determination, anger and aggression,

Desolation - occult practice, camaraderie, romance, allure and draw, beauty

Dark - religion and worship, absolution, lack of sensation, abandoned places, chemicals, materials essential for sustaining life brought to a state where they would be unsuitable to do so (food with no nutritional benefit, water unfit to drink, a sun with no light), erosion of safety and comfort

Hunt - addiction, purpose, children’s games, adrenaline,

End - sleep with dreams, gambling, games of chance, trickery and deals

Lonely - art for the self, meditation and quiet, rain, mist, white noise, shorelines and other bodies of water, monotony

Spiral - fractals and repeating patterns, colour and shifting hues, just a lot of swirling spiralling imagery (ringlets in hair, ferns, coffee steam), wordplay, migraines and headaches, play and games,

Flesh - gifts and ownership, self and other, automation and machinery, pleasure, healing and harm, dysphoria

Web - reproduction and immortality, demonstrations of power, recordings that have some aspect of curation or edit associated (film reels, cassette tapes), digital media (video, websites, film and animation), narrative and storytelling, cobwebs, strings and connections,

Eye - books and libraries, lack of ownership, erosion of intimacy and privacy, preservation of context at the expense of the original, glass, windows and mirrors

There’s quite a few cross overs between different fears. Maybe this shows how they could have branched off from one another? I haven’t included the extinction or the purity here but I may type it up later. If I missed any themes or you have your own thoughts feel free to tell me and I can update the list