Rating YOUR Magnus Hot Takes!
Vložit
- čas přidán 30. 06. 2024
- Hey y'all, I'm Afton G. Kier and welcome to the ̶H̶a̶l̶l̶o̶w̶e̶e̶n̶ All Saints Day special, where we're rating viewer submitted hot takes about the Magnus Archives. Some of these takes... well, they're certainly going to stir the pot. As always, please consider liking and subscribing to support the channel. Anyways, I've been Afton G. Kier, and good night, CZcams people!
---
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:09 Stupid Jon
4:52 Elias is Great
6:27 Extinction, Vast, and Height
10:24 Extinction isn't End, Slaughter isn't Desolation
15:10 Alternate Universes and Mike Crew
18:06 TMA is Deep
20:27 No Slaughter?
23:38 More Hezekiah
25:09 Office Drama and MartinxPeter
33:05 Daisy is a Monster
35:20 Daisy Did Nothing Wrong
36:26 Dasira Isn't Romantic
38:20 JMart Needed More Buildup
40:47 JMart Buildup 2
42:11 JMart Pandering?
43:28 JMart Bad?
44:42 Jon Bad?
46:51 Liking Leitner
48:04 Closing Thoughts
---
Links to Douglysium's Google Doc and Tumblr Posts
Tumblr: (douglysium.tumblr.com/post/72...)
Google Doc: (docs.google.com/document/d/1G...)
---
Music:
Agony and Ivory by Daub Audio (pixabay.com/music/mystery-ago...)
Creepy Mood by SoulProdMusic (pixabay.com/music/beats-creep...)
Don't Go Underground by Nicsa (pixabay.com/music/horror-scen...)
Ghost in the Mirror by Miyagisama (pixabay.com/music/beats-miyag...)
Late Night Country Road by TimKulig ( / latenightcountryroad-1 )
Industrial Nightmares by TimKulig ( / industrial-nightmares )
---
Follow me on Twitter @Afton_G_Kier
Catch my Reddit posts with u/Afton_G_Kier
Watch me interact with Twitch Streams with Afton_G_Kier
---
Thank you to everyone who participated (in order of appearance)
Elizabeth Davies @elizabethdavies5296, GOLISOPOD_15 @golisopod_15, Marigaby Teyssier @marigabyteyssier2279, Douglysium @douglysium9770, Sapphic Gal @sapphicgal3245, Marcel Miranda @marcelmiranda1348, Dallin Hunt @dallinhunt6872, Randomjester99 @randomjester9983, Ryan Hosie @ryanhosie2963, DG Toti @DG_Toti, An On @anon26535, TheLuckySpades @theluckyspades, Ya_Gurl_Char @YaGirlChar1986, MoonBunnyGW @moonbunnygw8342, oliver @pisssboy847, your mother, of course @yourmotherofcourse7474, YanDanTDM @YanDanTDM, Cinder @cinder6775
---
Entities Explained
( • The Magnus Archives En... )
The First TMA Video
( • Rating EVERY EPISODE o... )
Every Video!
( • Something is Coming | ... ) - Zábava
Hot take: Simon Fairchild was always wearing one of those colourful hats with the tiny propellor on it. It just was never mentioned because it wasn’t relevant to John or Martin’s journey
Coldest take ever. Simon's propeller hat was actually the season 1 pitch🙄
@@laurinmuller132 “so I have this idea for a series right? Basically, there’s this old guy and he wears a propellor hat…”
“And?”
“Well, we’ll do a little bit of world building around it.”
Jon is pretty smart. He's just the protagonist of a story set in an universe where reality bends to nightmare logic, everyone is trying to kill him, and has at least two eldritch fear gods after him at all time.
He does a good job for someone that never has good options or knows what's going on.
Martin is cannon at least 6 feet. A worm jumped six feet to his face. I will only accept big huggable Martin in my house.
That's 1.82m to everyone else reading. And I agree with you. Big huggable Martin ❤
The fact that his voice is so small is what makes Giant Martin so appealing. The duality of a big man who is just a lil guy is so much fun.
My sorta-meta hot take is that I think Tim’s death was set up to leave the _possibility_ of him coming back as an avatar. My guess is that they were split between killing him off permanently and turning him into a Desolation avatar, but since they were already doing a new-avatar-problems arc with Jon, Daisy, and Helen in season 4 they ended up never bringing him back. At any point in seasons 4-5 Tim could’ve just shown up alive with a very basic explanation that he wanted to keep fighting the monsters and chose to come back and I’d have bought it. His self-destruction arc is so massively Desolation coded. I can see him choosing to die a human rather than live a monster but I think it was absolutely a purposefully allowed possibility just in case they had wanted to take a different direction in the following seasons.
36:30 I want to add nuance by saying that, while I don’t think they were in an active relationship, I believe Daisy and Basira were intentionally coded as lesbians in a way that fits into a larger pattern of TMA utilizing queer _coding_ contrasted with others’ explicit identity to show how a character has lost a level of self they can’t get back.
To explain what I mean I’ll use a more explicit example, because Jonah is like this too. When contrasted with Jon and Martin and their experience when Peter sent Martin to the Lonely, Jonah’s experience letting Barnabus die (in a nearly identical scenario) is pretty clearly meant to create a parallel. Jon saved Martin and, in doing so, directly confirmed the start of their queer relationship - creating an anchor which kept Jon tethered to himself. Jonah letting Barabus die can be seen as a rejection of his self, that connection which could’ve anchored him, and so Jonah is left subtly queer coded for the rest of the series and is unable to exhibit that connection any longer. Him keeping Barnabus’ skull is meant to convey this coding, the reminder of what could’ve been. I mean - Jonah’s closest associates in the present are the manifestations of _loneliness_ and _distance._ This is, all in all, a really interesting and cool way to show characters who have lost a fundamental part of themselves - by not allowing their identities and human connections to be explicit - and I think it applies to Daisy too.
Daisy is stuck in a system of silence with Basira, which has allowed them to cooperate as a team and engage in their brutal work but has also destroyed their capacity to connect as people. The fact is that they _could’ve_ been more, they could’ve had a genuine relationship, but the silence and complicity between them - as Daisy lost herself more and more to the Hunt - prevented them from ever actually reaching that true explicit connection that could allow them to stay themselves. They existed only to fulfill a purpose of violence, and when Daisy couldn’t do that anymore Basira practically abandoned her. If their relationship hadn’t been colored by their place in that system of silence and violence, in that loss of self, they could have maybe had more. There was some real bond buried under there, but it was concealed and coded as a result of the system that they were unable to both break away from.
I think, if we’re trying to see parallels here, you could probably contrast Daisy and Basira with Melanie and Georgie. Georgie helped Melanie get _out_ of the downward spiral she was stuck in, while Basira and Daisy encouraged each others’. The fact they stayed themselves in the end, I’d argue, is why Melanie and Georgie got together canonically. They didn’t let the forces of fear consume their selves, and so they were able to still find that bond between them.
This isn’t the best explanation of my analysis and I’ve probably missed some details that could explain this better but I think it’s an important point.
Damn this is such an incredibly interesting and nuanced take on just another way that Avatar-ization takes one's humanity away. I had never considered this at all (and had forgotten about Barnabas and Jonah keeping his skull altogether) but it makes perfect sense the way you explained it, and just from an analytical level both of your pairs of relationships are incredible.
Before Daisy got trapped in the Buried I felt weirdly sad for Basira because of their inability to fully connect as a couple, which completely swapped once Daisy began abandoning the Hunt once she escaped the Buried. Truly those first few conversations with Daisy in and after the coffin switched my entire viewpoint on her, Basira, and their relationship as a whole. It really sucks how much they both missed out on in each other because of the Hunt's influence (and potentially Eye/Dark for Basira, depending on your interpretation).
Hot take: The line "The sky ate him" is actually terrifying. I totally buy that she didn't have anywhere near the vocabulary to describe or even comprehend what she saw, and honestly "the sky ate him" scared me more than "the blanket never did anything." The Vast is the only entity that gave me nightmares
JonxMartin i feel so strongly about, my main reason being Martin is Jon's only positive constant since the start of his job as archivist. Sasha and Tim are gone, and only horror and elias are left from his early days. He knows Martin is there, and when he wakes up from his coma and sees Martin gone, drawn away inside his own scheming, it makes him realise exactly how much he actually cares for him
It makes 100% sense why Jon would become attached to Martin. He's the only person who still actually cares about Jon's wellbeing after all this time, and the only good person who's still here since the beginning. I do agree with the video that the *romantic* element of their relationship seemed a little rushed. It would have been nice to get a little more of Jon actually finding things about Martin endearing in the earlier seasons. While I absolutely love them together, I think they just as likely could have been a QPR couple given their build up. Or even if they first time they said "I love you" was in the final scene of season 5. It would have hurt a lot more, sure, but also would have given us time to see their relationship grow. I love them, but I wish it was a little different.
Regarding the table question, let’s not forget that Jon has an instinctual hatred of the Web. Given his state of mind at the time, destroying something that has associations with the thing that set him on his path probably seemed quite appealing in the moment.
And honestly, his hatred of the Web probably was the main reason for his decision in the Finale; for all his claims that he wanted to destroy the Entities rather than banish them, I think at the heart of it, he just didn’t want to give in to the Web.
Honestly, that’s a very good point! Jonah points out in 160 that Jon’s paranoia was linked to him sensing Not!Sasha hanging around. If he could detect her, it would make sense that the table would also ping his (heh) spider-sense.
I FORGOT TO COMMENT IN TIME! So here's my hot(ish) take that week hopefully make Pt 2: I don't understand why the community doesn't know which Entity is responsible for the vampires. They're so deeply tied to the Hunt in my mind, they exist to A) put the fear of being prey into humans, who have essentially removed ourselves from the food chain, and B) create new Hunters, a la Trevor Herbert. A new Most Dangerous Game, so to speak.
I also think the Vampires are aspects of the Hunt. They're created from humans that were 'blood suckers' in life. Scammers, con artists, those that preyed on other people emotionally or financially; parasites on society. They're in turned transformed into literal leaches that hunt out victims.
100% agree, I always found it fascinating how the Hunt made more avatars by hunting itself
I think they're Flesh for that first reason
i actually find s1 jon kinda endearing and cute in the way a grumpy cat is but I am a but pissed abut his treatment of martin I wish he apologized for it at some point. it didn't even get brought up again much after that until mag199. maybe its bc I'm a bit like martin that im mad about it but I WISH martin had been just a little pettier about it. jon barely even recognizes how much of an ass he was in mag199
I agree jmart is a little rushed, and I came completely blind into tma and ngl i didn't catch jon having romantic feelings until s5; however the reason jmart works for me is *because* it isn't draw out or have dedicated episodes. I think jmart only work because there's an apocalypse happening, and they can find comfort with each other. I think Quiet sums up Martin's feelings pretty well but it would have been fun to have a similar episode from jon's pov where his feelings came from: maybe even mention his asexuality or Georgie
My hottake is that Sasha, Michael, Helen, and Tim deserved better like soooo much better man...
Don’t know if it’s a hot take, but I think the Hunt and the Eye can be very related. The Eye is about knowing for sure, but it’s also the quest and the investigation to Know (at least in Jon’s case) much like the Hunt. And I think this has basis in season 2 and 3 where Jon is beginning to really experience the pull of the Eye, and spends all of his time consumed with the *hunt* for knowledge and answers. Also in season 5, he’s really excited about the mystery aspects of the places he can’t See. Meaning an important part of the joy of Knowing is that quest and mystery. This bit might be a bit of a stretch, but in addition to the obvious link between Jon and Daisy in season 4 regarding their humanity, I think there’s something in that connection that’s stems that shared love of the hunt, meaning they can really understand and relate to each other in what fundamentally drives. I think this makes it even easier for them to be each others support system. “Don’t listen to the blood, listen to the quiet.”
absolutely! I made myself a "color wheel" for the Entities and I had the hunt and eye close together!
I love how the more clued-in characters constantly point out that the Entities are WAY less separate than most of their followers think. Even the fandom falls into this trap.
The section on the Extinction gave me a new theory for the reason the Web planned to escape through the crack. Assuming the web is as old as history, maybe older (given it sort of represents not being in control of one's own actions and heavily relates to manipulation, it may be as old as human society) why did it take thousands of years to escape through this ancient crack? Given the Flesh came about during the Industrial Revolution, why wait for more fears to come about and increase the number of entities needed for marking the linchpin? Why do it at all and risk the End taking everything? It is the only conscious being, and it likes manipulating and being in control, so why go to new universes that may have their own entities or even beings that subsist on things other than fear? Why risk that? The Extinction.
The Extinction is the fear of catastrophic change, of something taking over after humanity is gone. Something that may have different fears. The Web is a very complex and existential fear. It's not like the hunt or the corruption whose domains are very tangible. Having a new species so different from humanity in its being and thinking risks the more complex fears. If the Extinction brings about a hivemind, how is that going to work out for the Web. There's only one mind in existence. How is it going to worry about manipulation? And the Extinction is unique because its monsters can potentially fear. Some other entities may adapt, but not all. I think the web wants to create openings to new universes to keep the Extinction in check. Feed off one universe for a bit, then move to the next when things start changing a bit too much for her liking.
I completely agree with this. The Extinction is the answer.
When you were reading the “the slaughter shouldn’t exist” hot take and how it called its episodes boring or bad, while I do think a lot of slaughter episodes make me tune out a bit, I specifically remembered Grifter’s Bone and the bagpipe village massacre as two very memorable Slaughter statements and about 30 seconds later you highlighted exactly those two.
Tim and Sasha being in a romantic relationship was a huge gut punch in early season 5. I think a bit more could have been done to underline the tragedy. Just a little more fun dialogue between the two in season 1, both giving more life to the characters in season 1 while unbalancing Tim in season 2 with one or two contrasting interactions between Tom and Not!Sasha showing a subconscious upset or confusion
Where is it said they were in a relationship? How comes it's never mentioned in earlier seasons?
@ In season 5 episode 162 Jon listens to a tape from just when he became the archivist, and on this tape he can hear Tim ans Sasha talking, and Tim mentions their "ill-advised hookup" in the past
an ill-advised hookup they decided to never repeat again is hardly a romatic relationship though. to me they work much better as friends and it seems they figured out the same. it doesn't take away from how close they were - your point about Tim being upset and confused is still very relevant
I think Tim/Sasha is a fitting contrast to Jon/Georgie. Both of them are better off as friends, but Tim and Sasha figured it out fast enough to spare themselves a bad breakup and years of separation.
My hot take is that The Buried and The Vast are closer than people think. While most of the time they are opposite, they are both linked with water, and for example mountain climbing can very quickly change from Vast to Buried or vice versa. There are a few statements that were about water that I couldn't tell which entity it was. I also have a friend who is a Vast avatar but aligned with Choke.
There is no left without right
Oh God I'm in this. I think I understand The Eye a little better now...
Anyway, honestly, I think Mahtin talking with a really childish voice despite looking like a bear works. A lot of people who were abused or unloved as children talk like that because they can't mentally advance beyond their trauma. Plus, most people would find it creepy and off-putting, which would fit with how he could never find a place in normal society.
But surely someone would make a comment on that? Or maybe a nickname or something.
As someone who shipped JonMartin since season one I've always thought Jon was slowly getting feelings for Martin but berrying it cuz he's emotionally constipated af. But I'm very used to doing 8 pages longs essays on why this minor character in this one episode of this show is queer and I can prove it.
Burying*
I think it makes perfect sense that the Extinction wasn't a big deal. (spoiler incoming)
As we learned more it becomes obvious that the Great Fears broke apart and deviated from each other as fears changed in specificity and magnitude, with the most recent being the Flesh, coming to being with the industrial evolution and the factory farms rending the flesh of animals for food at an unprecedented rate. This act didn't end the world, nor did it end the existence of the animals, the source of the fear. The Extinction coming to be would not be an apocalypse, but most likely would just be a world in which extinction is a very present and widely held fear, which is basically accomplished with things such as global warming, pollution, nuclear weapons, etc.
This of course raises the possibility of man-made extinction, but the Magnus crew can't do anything about that any more than they could have tried to stop the industrial revolution to save all the animal life from the coming of the Flesh. It is a societal change that humanity at large will either have to live with or change together
Another reason is that the End and the Hunt make it clear that the Great Fears wouldn't do anything that killed all or even most people, as then it would have less to feed on/be unbalanced (with the exception being the s5 Changing, but at that point all bets were off). The End actually ending all people would mean it would end, and the Hunt never completes the Everchase as that destroys its purpose of the act of the hunt being its central purpose. In much the same way, not only would an actual cataclysmic event remove much of the feed from the Extinction, but then the catastrophic change would be over, also defeating the purpose of the Extinction being the fear of great change. This leads me to believe that in a way, the Extinction could even passively prevent apocalypses, as it always want us to be on the edge of one but never tip over into it.
The best way to understand the difference between the Desolation and the Slaughter is a difference between method and result. A difference in time and context. In a war, if a tank is rolling up and shells your home, you're afraid in the moment of the violence being inflicted on you and around you, afraid of the tank and the people inside it. That's the Slaughter. The conceptual fear of losing your home and everything you know and having nothing left, is the Desolation.
I think both Desolation and Slaughter have very distinctive places. The Desolation is fear of losing everything but also the fear of wasted possibilities and things ending too soon. Like an accident that kills a talented young scientist, or a promising relationship that for some reason gets crooked and ended before it has time to develop. It's more about the pain, physical and emotional, and the unfulfilled promises than death or ends. The Slaughter is horror and death, senseless out of the blue violence, the underlying suspicion that people can turn into bloodthirsty monsters at the drop of a hat, the creeping fear that certain things out there do not need a reason like hunger or instinct to attack and destroy in gruesome ways.
8:36 I wish Mike lived by I will defend his death. He died randomly and purposelessly, like he was completely insignificant, and that was the whole point. The Vast doesn’t care about anyone, not even its own people. He became a blip in the story, infinitesimal in comparison to everything else.
Awesome stuff! Did *not* expect that my opinion on office drama would yield as hot a rating as the argument that Daisy Tonner did nothing wrong, but I see why. Also, some of my favorite statements are the ones that have vague theming, so I didn’t necessarily mean for my fanmade Sasha statement to seem focused on stranger stuff, I actually did mean for it to lean more spiral-centric considering if this happened when Sasha was a kid it’d be really easy for adults around her to try manipulating her into thinking her memory is wrong.
Also, yeah Martin was smart, I think in hindsight my general distaste for Peter Lukas’s existence kinda colored my perception of any moments when he was directly involved (aka the majority of season four)
20:57 Whaaat? I love the slaughter stories, they’re so strange and haunting
100% agree. Anyone who doesn’t fear the Slaughter clearly hasn’t talked to a veteran or civilian survivor, or studied much history- the real stuff, not the propaganda. I’ve got trauma related to mass shootings that I won’t go into on the internet and…yeah. The Slaughter fucking terrifies me.
I put off watching this for a couple days, and I didn't comment any hot takes, purely because I try to avoid negativity when it comes to a piece of media that means so much to me. However, dare I say, I agree with most, if not all, of the thoughts you shared, Afton. I especially agree that Daisy and Basira are not romantic, Sasha definitely could have had a phenomenal backstory, and...yeah, I will admit, Jmart did need a bit more buildup. Also, I may be a rare case in this community, but I do not possess an ounce of hatred in my bones for Jurgen Leitner. 😅 The iconic Leitner rant is GOLD, and the dunking on this old man is quite amusing when it comes to general jokes, but...he was a man who simply made a really terrible decision. He's not EVIL. I am totally fine with him and feel incredibly bad that he had to get brutally pipe murdered.
Fantastic video, as always, Afton! You explain things so succinctly and eloquently.
BUT I DO HAVE A FIGHT TO PICK WITH THAT ONE JON HATER--
At some point, I really do need to do the whole Leitner rant on here.
Grifters bone is one of the episodes that after listening through fully sticks out to me the most. Not sure why that episode specifically did,but I think the slaughter is pretty important for the reasons you said
also i guess im just..not that involved in the community but the vast is my favorite and I never noticed it getting a lot of attention. I wish there was more content in the podcast about the vast and the ocean ( I really like the connections with the vast and the buried when it comes to the ocean)
I agree on wanting more Ocean-Vast, simply because I can actually listen to those without needing a good lie-down. I’ve got serious acrophobia!
I was really confused about "Martin falling into Peter's manipulation like an idiot" part since the S4 finale showed how Martin outplayed Peter and kept him away from Jon and the rest while uncovering information about the Extinction. Elias even mocked him for it 😂And yes, Peter is a terrible manipulator because he lacks an understanding of human relationships/feelings (which is why he'd never be in one as it's the whole point of the Entity he serves. the old bastard just wanted to be left alone).
I fully agree with Dasira's take. I remember the statement Jon read in S5 before Basira killed Daisy - it was about partners in crime (I forgot their names) who were described as a chosen family who always have each other's backs - the two of us against the world kind of thing. And it seemed like a direct parallel to Daisy and Basira's relationship.
While I agree that JonMartin needed a bit smoother transition to romantic development, it didn't come as a surprise to me even though I didn't know about them beforehand (I only knew Jon was ace). I could understand why Jon would be distracted and oblivious for a long time but by S3 he was much more empathetic because of what he was going through. Him learning about Martin's feelings through "office gossip" probably caught him off guard but made him think about it and then losing Martin after almost dying made him realize his own feelings - at least that's how I saw it while listening. But I agree that it would be preferable to get a few more moments between S3 and S4 and not fill in the gaps on our own. Even so, the interactions between the Lonely Martin and Desperate Jon were the only times I teared up despite S4 being my least favorite 😅
However, I believe their relationship played a huge role in both of their character developments. At the start, Jon is emotionally stunted, often resorting to sarcasm and criticism as a defense mechanism. As he experiences more, he becomes more empathetic, but it's his love for someone that truly brings out his vulnerability and opens him up emotionally in S5. Ironically, despite no longer being human, he appears to show the most humanity in S5 to me, with his feelings for Martin serving as his anchor throughout.
With Martin it's even more obvious. He's always been lonely, never loved, and constantly seeking validation through acts of service (thanks, Martin's "mom"). While we've seen his bravery and resilience throughout past seasons, it's only after finally being loved, particularly by the one he loves, that he truly blossoms. I believe the Martin we see in S5 is the Martin we could have had all along if he had some love in his life earlier (a wholesome but occasionally feral badass who doesn't take anyone's bs lol). I also disagree about them not having relationship issues in S5 - I remember people danking on Jon for taking Martin through his worst fear to kill Jude or not communicating "Trevor's plan" and people danking on Martin for using Jon as an attack dog, not understanding he wasn't comfortable with it. They figured things out but they had their moments. It just happened that their honey-moon phase aligned with Armageddon so no time for relationship drama 😂
And if it's not obvious yet, S5 Martin and S5 Jon are my favourites. S1-2 Jon was fun but I didn't really care about him much... and only after he started opening up more and more is when I got invested and started to root for him. So yeah, S5 Jon is the best boy, the Eye's little monster or not 😂
I agree about S5 JonMartin being an imperfect relationship-they have a fundamental disconnect about the eyepocalypse, with Martin constantly asking Jon to fix everything and Jon keeping Martin in the dark. The final conflict in the entire show is the two of them going behind one another’s backs because neither will budge from their worldview.
@@atlander4204 Yes, I was very confused with a "too perfect and smooth relationship for the apocalypse" take. They had a reasonable and understandable amount of issues considering all the circumstances and not enough time to figure everyting out
S1 Jon was my favourite Jon, once everyone started being mean to him for no reason in S4 (at least Tim had a reason) he just got too sad and wet. I get it, s3 was very traumatic for him, poor guy, but that is exactly the emotions I'm talking about, the more I pity the guy the less fun I find him to listen to. Plus there was more plot and less individual statements in S4 and almost none in 5 and they were my favourite bits, I still liked 5 though.
yeah, honestly i find it just as interesting as it is annoying how shitty everyone is to jon. he's the pariah of the institute, and i think that adds another layer to daisy being the only one empathetic to him, she did infinitely worse shit than him, on purpose, and she knows the only reason they're treated differently is because the old daisy would've bashed skulls for that. the archival staff are genuinely abusive people who made jon their scapegoat because he's the perfect mix of not scary, and too filled with self hatred to ask for anything else.
I agree the Martin x Peter relationship is weird, but my god I just wish they actually made Lonely Eyes a thing, like in the Panopticon during the confrontation between Peter, Elias, and Martin, they could've just made a line between Elias and Peter that would make the audience speculate but not enough for it to be "ugh, this whole story arc was just because these two had another breakup", but more like, "hmm, so is there some past between these two that are more than just semi-rivals who like to have bets once in a while?"
9:38 I don't get the idea of Jon being short. From episode one, I envisioned him as tall and thin, with very angular features that would be hansom if they weren't always pinched and scowling. I often imagined he tried to use his height to seem imperious and literally look down his nose at people. I also don't know why some think he'd wear glasses. It's never meantiond him having his glasses knocked off in a struggle or anything that would indicate him needing them; and why would the Ceaseless Watcher choose an avatar with poor eyesight? If he started the series off with glasses and miraculously didn't need them as his powers progressed as a sign of his transformation then it'd make sense but otherwise it just seems bit out of character and fetishist.
14:05 The Desolation is the fear of pain; physical and emotional, loss and grief. Desolation is about lossing everything that matters and having nothing. Being left with nothing after a fire, losing your friends and family, destitution and hopelessness. Slaughter is the fear of random purposeless violence. That a wild beast could spring out of the bushes and tear you apart or a neighbor or stranger might do violence on you for no reason. It's the anxiety of not being safe. It's terrorism. Mercilessness. Mindless animalistic impersonal violence.
40:11 Jon×Martin felt more like truma bonding then a romantic relationship to me. Martin spends so much of the early series fawning over Jon then literally ghosts him in the moment of his greatest trauma. The end of season four felt contrived, and Martin throughout season five refused to understand that both the world, and Jon, have charged in irrefutable ways. It feels like Jon is holding on to Martin as his sole anchor to his own humanity, and the more he does, the less Martin is able to sympathize with him. Like the image of Jon Martin loved isn't all it's cracked up yo be in the face of Jon's self-hatred, guilt and belonging to the new world.
My Hot Take is that I don't like Melanie or Georgie. I started out liking them but grew to detest them. I even agree with Elias/Jonah that Melanine's selfish. Gorgeie stared off great but in season four just revealed herself to be a fairwether friend. I though she lost her abilty to feel fear not compassion.
Basira and Daisy was a roller coaster that I actually liked the conclusion of but Basira in season four made me want Jon to just blow up at all of them and explain how he feels like he's suffocating and dying of thirst and starving all at once and Basira's answer was to just hold his breath indefinitely.
Season five would have worked much better if the build up to Jon×Martin had been given more space; then, have season five deconstruct their relationship. Show that the more Jon reciprocated the more Martin pulled away. Show the danger in the idolization of our loved ones.
i think honestly georgie and melanie dont actually have a lot of chemistry, it kinda feels like most of their development leading up to season five is them popping up but with a closer relationship, but besides cursory moments of season five we barely get to see them actually interact. i think largely they're two characters the writers didnt know what to do with, and so just kinda shoved together. i think the biggest problem with melanie is that ONLY the villains ever call her out for shit. it makes the other characters seem stupid because like, let's be real here, jon never defends himself from anyone, but melanie is like one of two characters who he'd have a good point in ruthlessly screaming at, he's just so obsessed with suffering that he would never ask to be treated better.
and there's very few points where melanie shows even the slightest possible compassion to jon despite him being honestly shockingly kind to her at points. and it makes georgie seem like shes a really shitty friend for bonding so much with someone who treats her friend that way.
My hottest takes are that 1 the Dark is SO SEVERELY underrated! I think there's a lot more that could've been done with it especially as a package deal with other entities (Spiral and Stranger especially) 2 Gertrude Robinson is also severely underrated. I like her a lot, I find her really interesting and am always super curious about her backstory. I can never find much deep fandom analysis about her that isn't making her out to be a bad person
Jonny did say he has the most trouble writing Dark episodes because he doesn’t fear the Dark…
Somehow my initial comment I left close to upload seems to have never sent, either my tired ass never hit send or I forgot, but here's my comment
I'm really glad you replied to my take and I am kinda surprised to see you agree with it as much as you did, seems like I fell into a different side of the fandom where that would be more controversial a take than where you ended up (I blame my like of shipping content in other fandoms)
One thing I think you might appreciate is how I personally frame these kinds of characters, "they are a terrible person, but a great character"
It makes the distinction of "fascinating and tantalizing character to learn about" and "would like to meet them as a person"
Most, but especially Daisy, of the TMA cast only fall into the first of these categories, those being the deeper characters with (possibly irredeemable) flaws, the second category being those who seem to be good people, though they may fuck up majorly
For some reason I tend to end up/think I end up in parts of fandoms that conflate the two takes (all all points between) on characters so I overestimated the spice it seems
I'm also as of this moment relistening to Basira's first statement so there are a few more fresh thoughts I may add at a later time
Hot take: There are counters for most of the entities ex Blindness for the Eye truths and logic for the spiral etc etc
I think I'm alone in this, but the slaughter is actually one of my favorite entities. I even have the official slaughter tarot card shirt, in maroon red. I think one criticism that I *can* levy against it is that it's often explored through Melanie's PoV, and though I do not share the disdain for her that some of the fandom does, I just don't think that she does much interesting with the slaughter. My favorite slaughter episodes are actually the ones that delve into historical fiction. We tend not to hold a lot of empathy for the people of the past, seeing them as less enlightened and more cold people far away, but they were just like us, just as smart, just as empathetic, yet the leaders of the past marched them off in the hundreds of thousands to face the most horrific conditions our history has known, only to die gruesomely and painfully, never seeing their loved ones again. All due to escalations of tensions that, when traced far enough back to their sources, seem petty and random and utterly unrelated to the people actually killed as a consequence. And yet, people served; whether due to propaganda or societal pressure or long-buried bloodlust, *we* made those conditions as terrible as they were, and we remain capable of that violence and hatred if the conditions are right, as much as our comparatively cushy modern lives may lead us to delude ourselves otherwise. In fact, its not even something exclusive to us. Chimpanzee researchers have shown that a sufficiently intelligent and social animal is capable of engaging in a primitive sort of tribal warfare, mirroring our own hunger for power and capacity to turn on ourselves. If you havent already, read up on Jane Goodall's research into the Gombe Chimpanzee war, its fascinating. A quote, viewer discretion advised -
"For several years I struggled to come to terms with this new knowledge. Often when I woke in the night, horrific pictures sprang unbidden to my mind-Satan [one of the apes], cupping his hand below Sniff's chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound on his face; old Rodolf, usually so benign, standing upright to hurl a four-pound rock at Godi's prostrate body; Jomeo tearing a strip of skin from Dé's thigh; Figan, charging and hitting, again and again, the stricken, quivering body of Goliath, one of his childhood heroes."
Chilling. Needless to say, the slaughter is a *very* strong concept for an entity, it's a fear so brutal and yet so real, it certainly belongs among Smirke's 14. We're fewer generations removed from those who reveled in bloodsport and public executions than we'd like to think, and deep down that terrifies us.
I agree-as much as I love Melanie, she seemed pretty divorced from the nuances of the Slaughter. Perhaps an Avatar who, during WWII, was so broken by what he saw and did that the only thing he could do was embrace the destruction? Then again, tying the supernatural into real world conflicts like that is a slippery slope, and the reason why Jonny so regrets the way he wrote John Amherst.
i forgot what my username was and suffered a worm attack when you said it out loud. anyways, glad i checked the void for videos today.
Late to the party as always and with my little information on the fan base this might not even be a hot take but the coffin is a leitner of the buried.
It seems way more powerful than any simple Artifact other than the leitner's. I would even call it an avatar.
The coffin remains one of my favorite " things" in the show as it's so unexplained yet terrifying. Just choke in its purest form that always finds a way to get more people.
Love that stupid box
My fan theory was that the Web won at the end of mag 200, the other entities being drawn somewhere they would starve. The information about other universes only came from the Web and the tape recorder at the end showed that the Web was still around. So the Web was the last entity standing for their own ritual, if a ritual would even be necessary.
The Magnus Protocol being set in a different universe does count against it somewhat though
Cold take: Afton deserves way more subscribers and recognition
Hot take(?): The Web doesn’t make sense, I get that it’s mainly the fear of being manipulated which is fine, but I don’t get the spider thing. Obviously it wouldn’t make sense not to include spiders in a series about fear but spiders themselves don’t fit into the Web’s sphere, spiders don’t make schemes or manipulate people, the closest I can connect them is getting caught in a web but that would mean this eldritch deity took an interest in literary themes, being trapped is the Buried’s domain and bugs are the Corruption’s domain, I love all 15 of the entities but I feel like the Web’s domain being split in two like that is a tad wishy-washy
OK SO ACTUALLY A REALLY FUN IDEA
I see where you are coming from, I truly do but i saw this headcanon once and it's been Living in my Head (it's paying rent tho) Sorry it's not going to be as explained in The original post and ill add some stuff but i'll try to get The point across
FLIES! It could be flies and insects! I do admit it's a bit iffy cuz we don't know If they feel fear in the real world, but it's been explicitly Said in podcast that Animals can feel fear and even shape them
It's technically wrong, cuz in Mag 200 they don't Mention It, so all things considered you are right! But i think it's VERY COOL to think about!
Flies being afraid of a natural predator that traps them with (sometimes) invisible threads and the more they struggle The harder It is to get out?
ALSO ALSO Im sure they Didn't have that in mind when they made the show but did you know some spiders create "flowery" patterns that humans can't see (it reflects UV light) to attract Insects? That's so cool to think about!
I like to think that It kinda merged with The (albeit more complex) human concept of manipulation, i think it's Fascinating how magnus decided to include animal's fears and god i Wish they went more into It
Sorry, im not trying to contradict you i totally get what you mean but Man do i enjoy this little headcanon
(apologies for any spelling mistakes im sleepy)
The spider aspect of the Web, I think, mostly comes from the cultural associations of Spiders. Webs are often associated with manipulation in the cultural zeitgeist. Their ability to wait when hunting is also commonly associated with patience, which is a major aspect of gradual manipulation. My favourite connection is that, in Vedic philosophy, from my limited research, spiders are often seen as the hiders of the truths of the world using veils of illusion, which feels surprisingly close to the Hill Top Road reveal. Have to do more research on it, though, so thanks for reminding me! (I was thinking of doing a "Why Spiders?" video anyways, so I'll have to give you a callout in it for reminding me of it)
While I agree that the way the Web and spiders were written in TMA needs a lot of improvement, I think that spiders are an important part of the Web that can't be removed. Fundamentally, the fear of the Web comes from manipulation and loss of control, which are fears that require time and the cause of those fears to be in the shadows or untouchable in some way to be effective. This makes it difficult to covey those fears in a 15-20 episode, so in order to write those fears well the Web needs something to show that there is something to fear and that something intelligent is puppeteering you from the shadows. Ideally, spiders would be acting as minions that execute on the plans of something greater or as a sign that paranoia and the fear of manipulation are justified rather than the crux of the fear itself. There are some moments like the tapes and Mag-172 Strung Out that use spiders like I described that are some of my favorite parts of TMA. Overall, I think spiders being part of the Web is important in order to make the Web work as an Entity, and that spiders need to be written differently in order to covey this.
Okay actually, the episode about Hezekia is what convinced me that i do want to be buried when i die rather than being cremated. There was a death in my family when i was first listening to the show, and i listened to that episode while on the way back from the burial. At the funeral he'd been all done up by the mortician, and he looked so peaceful, so sleepy. And then i listened to Hezekia. That episode spoke to something inside me that i didnt know was there. I know ill be dead, and i wont feel it. But it sounds so cozy. To sleep. Buried. I want that.
My 11 (sorry) hot takes -
A) Everyone's hatred of Jon in-universe is really grating and comes across as completely unfair. I know it makes sense as he's sort of the catalyst for a lot of their problems but there are lots of times in season 2/3/4 where Jon will save everyone from INSERT RANDOM ENTITY HERE and everyone will be incredibly rude and horrible to him then Jon will apologize to THEM like it's his fault. Jon does do some bad stuff sometimes but the best example I can think of this is Jon coming out of the coma and then being immediately given the cold shoulder. Jon being used as an emotional squeeze toy by everyone to bitch about is completely ridiculous too.
B) I'm not a fan of Gertrude's VA. She's pretty good and sounds like how I imagined her in my head but she sounds really bored a lot of the time. It's probably in character for some entries though.
C) Daisy & Basira are horrible selfish characters, though Basira is certainly the better of the two.
D) I think the ending/season 5 is really not good, and I am more than happy to pretend that the show ended at the s4 cliffhanger. Despite having a clear goal, Season 5 feels really aimless and nowhere near as interesting as Seasons 1-4.
E) Jon x Martin doesn't do it for me at all. Good for them though.
F) Jon's extended world trip didn't really do it for me either and would've rather just had more anthology stuff or a smaller attempt at stopping a ritual.
G) Tim's 180-degree character transformation from "cool laid-back guy" to "nihilistic depressed man" happened too quickly and I would've liked to have seen it more drawn out.
H) When he finally makes an appearance, Jurgen Leitner is a really disappointing character. His VA's pretty poor and it doesn't seem like he has an actual plan.
I) It might have just been me, but it seemed REALLY obvious (like almost from the beginning obvious) that Elias murdered Gertrude. I also think that the identity of her murderer happens way too early.
J) I feel like The Extinction is too vague and I'm still not entirely sure what it's really all about. MAGs 134 & 144 (and maybe 65??) are still some of my favorite entries in the entire show, and the imagery from both is really good (especially 144's description of the man coming home and finding his father a charred shadow on the wall.)
K) The buildup to the Dark Ritual in Ny-Alesund is really cool, so it's really disappointing to find that by the time they get there it's already over. It takes all of the built-up dread and throws it away.
I agree with Tim's change. It happens too sudden. I didn't even know he had a brother, let alone there was any trauma involved. There should have been something there, some hinting... like Tim avoiding talking about his childhood or being inexplicably nervous in certain situations. Small things that would hang here or there and then when the "big change" happens it all clicks and you realise _why_ this or that happened. The way it was done felt forced to me.
Not sure if it’s a hot take, but I’ll submit my comment from another video here for consideration as well.
I always thought 160 should count as extinction. They literally ended the world as they knew it, replaced not with humans per se, but with avatars and victims. If anything, I think the watchers crown is the extinction ritual, or at least is the extinctions birth. I think in that case, Jonah inadvertently causing an extinction instead of an eye ritual is fitting - in the sense that any extinction isn’t specifically intentional. And as an extension, episode 200 - destroying the new ‘current’ world, and infecting other worlds with it, is another extinction, in a way.
Also theoretically - I like to consider the whole thing from an outside perspective, either from out literal point of view, or from the characters in protocol’s point of view if they find some record of what happened in TMA. From ours (or maybe Sam’s?) point of view, we’re listening to the story of a world (or universe) going extinct. Like it no longer exists in the way it did at the start of the story. You could consider the whole 200 episodes of TMA a very long extinction statement.
I hope any of that makes sense, I realized trying to put my thoughts into words was a little harder than I thought. 😅
Yep, I am the one person that would have been disappointed to see more The Extinction, because it didn't exist and this is a hill I will die on.
The Extinction was theorised by Dekker and exploited by Peter Lukas as a ploy to convince Martin to use the power of the Panopticon; the whole extinction motif is just a facet of The End, which is why it only got a single domain in the post-change world.
Man I'm glad I found your channel before it inevitably blows up. It's cool when creators can interact with their viewers on the level that you're able too.
Oh my gosh. Clicked on a random tma video and was greeted by a sexy voice???? Hello??
Your art has really improved
I have always just accepted the thought that Martin is a gentle giant. He purposfully tries to make himself smaller and tries to take up less space because he is used to his mom wishing for him to. Small martin has his pros, but tall martin is hard to miss, and yet he is still overlooked and ignored by so many people. I'll take this to my grave.
I love the idea of tall Martin for exactly this reason. It’s also
why I love small Jon-he starts out with a chip on his shoulder, desperate to be taken seriously. I bet they wish they could swap heights.
I forgot to write my hot take so here it is: Season 5 Martin is an awful human being and someone, at least one person/monster/whatever should have called him out. Also, his relationship with Jon is not love, it's a mix of Jon being horribly isolated and traumatised and Martin turning into an upgraded copy of his mother (manipulative & petty). That couple wouldn't last one day in normal circumstances (aka not the apocalypse).
ive always thought of the hunt and the slaughter being more similar than the slaughter and the desolation. a part of the hunt is the fear of being hunted and eventually killed by someone or something, a part of the slaughter is about you being killed, not just hunted, while the desolation is about someone else dying in a violent way and also loss.
one other thing, Jmart caught me off guard too. it felt like the relationship developed way too fast and it almost felt a little forced, dont get me wrong, I love them together, but It felt like it was a last minute idea that was catering towards the part of the fandom that shipped them.
It was a bit surprising how Martin and Jon ended up together, but if you look at it closer it's not that far fetched, Martin has always been there for Jon (in his own little way), it would have been baffling if Jon didn't react to it. It's also very possible for people not to realise they have feelings for someone, especially in Jons case where he always needed to deal with things trying to kill him, he didn't have time to assess his own feelings. Not all romantic relationships need a meaning or a historic backing to make them solid, most human relationships start from meeting someone in a bar, I wouldn't call that a solid bonding.
My hot(?) TMA take: Jonah pretending to be Elias was a more complelling antagonist than after his reveal. It's not like Jonah is a bad villian - he played his part in the story, his plan was great, "apologies for the deception jon" is iconic but his motivation was not really interesting to me (the End and I just looking disappointedly at him). Living forever, experiencing many lives - it makes sense for the Eye and everything but i guess i've seen it way too many times already.
Jonah as a main antagonist is neither someone I could hate with passion waiting for his painful death, nor the type with complex motivation/goal/philosophy that I would find fascinating. His lore and letters weren't that exciting to me either. Thankfully, Annabelle and the Web were the exact type of antagonists I enjoy the most - I see their vision. I'm not rooting for them but I find them interesting anyway 😂
As an aside, I recently got to listen to a sneak preview of the first episode of Magnus Protocol from Kickstarter backing, and it seems to have a very interesting set up. No spoilers obviously, but I'm very much looking forward to your thoughts once it starts releasing in January.
I'm intentionally avoiding it just so that I can make an unbiased "Protocol Concerns" video in December XD
Regarding Martin‘s height.
I present two counter-arguments from my friend group.
We have the twinkiest small bean you can imagine and every time he meets new people, they are startled bc his voice is really deep.
And then there’s our softest giant with a voice as fluffy as clouds. Actually, we have two of them.
I personally don’t picture Martin as a tall mountain, but I do imagine him a bit taller than Jon and a lil chubby, bc heck yeah you can‘t stop me.
idk if this is a hot take but I do think that the concept presented in zombie would've been better as an spiral statement than an stranger statement, similar to MAGs 19 and 20 (as in, the whole, the host turned out to be people thing) , the idea of someone going insane and thinking others are not real therefore hurting them has no consequences hits someting really deep on me
not sure how hot of a take this is, but i really wish the End got more love. i mean, the statements we did get were top notch (the ones i can remember at least it’s been a while) but i just wish it was explored more.
idk maybe i’m biased bc everyone i’ve ever met and every quiz i’ve ever taken has told me i’m an End avatar ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I know I'm good 2 months late, but I have some thoughts
I was about to write something about the first comment, but then you said basically what I wanted to write. I fully agree that Jon's not stupid for shaking Jude's hand. This episode is actually one of my favourites and I really like this scene in particular (would like it more if I hadn't been jumpscared by Jon's screaming every time, but, eh). I never considered Jon doing it to avoid getting hurt more, though, and I don't think this motivation would be that significant? He wouldn't get the offer from Jude if he weren't "willing to keep talking to things that might kill him" in the first place. He does not shake her hand because he's stupid he knows it's going to burn him, but he makes a conscious choice, because this will give him access to information. This shows just how strong the Eye's hold on him got already, and this feels important to me.
I agree with Martin not being tall, the fandom took the worm jumping 2 meters and took it as this is Martin's height and I couldn't disagree more, I think it jumped 2 meters *forward*, but except for the worm part I don't have a strong opinion on that.
Thank you for reminding me of that Scottish town Slaughter episode, I kinda forgot about it and it is really good
The office drama part was actually the reason I started listening, I tried listening to it once before when I thought those are all just unconnected horror stories and gave up pretty quickly until I found out that, oh, it has plot, at which point I binged it in 2 weeks
I agree that there's not enough Sasha in this show, she's one of my favourites, if not the favourite archival assistant and I wish we got more of her
Season 4 is actually my favourite, but I can see how it's very different from the rest. I love the way Martin plays Peter and that for the entire season we don't really know if he should be trusted, or if the Lonely already got him. And I love Jon struggling with his loss of humanity. I, in turn, don't like season 5 that much, I do find it interesting and very creative, but while I regularly re-listen to single episodes from it, I don't really care for it as a whole
I agree with your thoughts on Daisy, her character arc was great. I like her relationship with Basira as either romantic or platonic, I'm fine with both
I do not like Jon in season one at all, he's terrible in the realistic way that makes it very difficult for me to listen to some of the first statements, I'm not saying it's bad writing cause I believe it was intentional, but I have had too many personal struggles with similar people in my life to brush it off as just fiction and enjoy it
My personal hot take is that I don't really like Simon Fairchild. I'm not even sure why, it might be because he's a Vast avatar and I am panically scared of that, but I love Mike, so who knows really. I think I just don't get the whole fun evil sky grandpa thing he has going on. [Edit: I forgot to add, I disagree with you saying that Mike wouldn't be so well liked if he wasn't killed, the man is so charismatic that he made me, a person so scared of heights I don't sit near windows in tall buildings and struggle with even the shortest ladders, understand why someone would voluntarily throw himself off of a building and even relate a little to enjoying it (And I would like to add that yes, I do feel personally victimised by the inclusion of not one, but two spooky ladders in the entire show /j)]
Also, I agree with @aarob8934 here in the comments, I don't really understand the confusion about the vampires, they always seemed obvious to me, but that may be because vampires in general are my hyperfixation, and thus I might have thought about them more than your average listener
Thank you for this video, and all of the TMA videos too. I love your analysis
Hot take: the Unknowing works FAR better as a Spiral ritual. The Stranger is an entity characterized by the uncanny valley, doppelgängers, and the fear you could be replaced with nobody knowing. And yet every time it’s ritual is described, it’s a mind bending acid trip where cannons become trees with mouths, legs become fists, and chairs become stones. Even your mind is shredded as you believe enemies to be friends, friends to be monsters, yourself to be nobody, and everyone to be you. To that end, the Spiral’s whole schtick is manipulating people’s senses and minds to the point where it’s impossible to distinguish reality from absurdity. And since the Spiral deals in misinformation, shouldn’t that make it the natural opposite to the Eye, which deals in information? The way Michael is teased in early seasons, he was already set up to be a great antithesis to the Archivist, with Season 3 ending with the Great Twisting. But instead we got Unknowing 2: Clowntastic Boogaloo.
Honestly Stranger works better as an opposite to the Flesh. The latter is all about reducing life to just the meaty bits, the former is all about creatures that can walk and talk but without any meaty bits (or the wrong ones).
Also totally unrelated, but milder hot takes: both Dark rituals were boring af/totally forgettable, and the Buried is one of the scariest entities in the whole show.
20:27 Thank you for responding with well thought out counterpoints! Most of the reasons why I think Slaughter shouldn't be an entity comes from a perspective of what kinds of stories and how much creativity do the entities give room for. While I don't necessarily think the Slaughter has the worst stories or the weakest writing of the entities, I do think it is fundementally unable to consistently have interesting stories like the best entities in TMA do. I mostly think this due to it acting like an amalgam of the other fears and it being too repetitive with its themes.
For the amalgam part, I do agree with your point that the Slaughter incorporates many aspects of the other entity and that it would take more than throwing everything to the Desolation to write Slaughter out of TMA. However, I don't believe that Slaughter is able to push the aspects it takes in a unique direction or combines them to achieve something none of the other entities could do on their own. Me and a few friends had a discuss about how to improve the writing of some of the weaker entities, and in that discussion we came to the conclusion that its nearly impossible to write a Slaughter story that feels like its can only be told as a Slaughter story. Spontaneous violence can be handled by Spiral or Hunt, mass death and catastrophe can be handled by Desolation, End, and Extinction, feeling like a disposable piece in a great, terrible machine can be handled by Vast and Web, the constant pressure that any wrong move can cause untolds amount of harm can be handled with Buried and Eye, being transformed into something unrecognizible by horrific violence can be handled by Stranger. We couldn’t come up with a single theme that was Slaughter's and Slaughter's alone. We also came to the agreement that trying to write these themes as a Slaughter story make for a weaker and more boring story than writing these themes as another entitys' story. There is also the fact that there are stories like Mag-65 Binary, Mag-122 Zombie, and Mag-183 Monument that aren't cleanly one entity, which shows that there isn't a need for a entity that focuses on taking from other entities when you could just combine those aspects, allow the fear causing that particular supernatural event or story be something that isn’t clear and still end up with a good story.
Now, onto my second point. Every Slaughter story is either a story where people are spontaneously violent or a story about the horrors and violence of war. While having a consistent theme is good, the Slaughter is far too narrow to allow for any stories that dont fit in one of those two categories, doesn’t offer much room to write anything that subverts those categories or expand upon those themes, and those categories can be handled just as well by the other entities.
Overall, these issues make it so that the Slaughter feels like it's repeating the same thing over and over again while preventing it from providing anything new. I believe that these issues can only be tuely fixed by making fundamental reworks to the concept of Slaughter, which is why I don’t think it should be an entity. Maybe Protocol will prove me wrong, but that's my hottest take on TMA.
did Slaughter haters just not watch The Piper
Hot take: "The Magnus Archives is a workplace comedy" is a fine (if overdone) meme but it's a bad part of any sales pitch. And frankly I'm still a little worried Protocol is embracing it out of some idea it's "what the fans want", that could seriously fuck up the tone
Hezekiah was definitely a favourite!
Hot Take: Jon gets too much shit for breaking the table. When the table was delivered to the institue in season one, but Elias AND Martin suggested he destroy it, and he refused. Sure he misjudged the situation, but he wasnt the first to have that idea.
“That’s a little guy” he CANONICALLY is not a little guy. His only physical description in the whole podcast is almost word for word that he is not a little guy.
Shhhhhhh let me live my lie
God, I both love and hate the Martin x Peter idea. It would certainly add to the tragedy of TMA by a large factor. The idea of Peter being a rebound and acting like he genuinely cares for Martin only to disappear when Martin had gotten comfortable and started to rely on him, and *thats* what drives his descent into the lonely would suck so much in best way, though I would’ve hated if it went that route and probably would’ve dropped the show then.
I’m not really in the fandom so I don’t know if these are hot takes but these are some of my opinions(as someone who has listened through tma 9 times)
1. Annabelle Cane is my favorite character and I wish she was in the podcast more. She’s so entertaining and such a fun personality to have in the mix when everyone is so irritable all the time.
2. For that being said, spiders being part of the web makes no sense if the web is supposed to focus on manipulation. Obviously the imagery makes sense but actual spiders as the animal have nothing to do with manipulation and the funniest quote from the series imo is “when a spider gets to a certain size, it’s not fully spider anymore” like I love you Annabelle but literally what does that mean.
3. It really gets on my nerves that Melanie blames Jon for her joining the magnus institute. I think it’s realistic, I think it makes sense for her character but omg it just personally pisses me off so much. Like why would he have warned her???? He talked to her twice and she made it very clear she looked down on the Magnus institute and didn’t like him. Also he didn’t know the deal with the Magnus institute at that time either. My comparison here is: imagine your friend gets hit by a car on the way to your house and instead of blaming the person who hit them, they blame you because they were on their way to your house when it happened.
4. I like a lot of the reoccurring avatars (like the distortion) significantly more than any of the main characters except for maybe Daisy who was the only character I found genuinely like able towards the end
Oh and I forgot but
5. A good chunk of episodes are actually really funny in concept when you think about them. Especially the buried with bangers like Dig where a guy just digs a lot and we all ignore the pit which genuinely made me laugh because like “nothing for you down there, you just enjoy your sky” is such a funny line
One last thing which is more of a criticism of an opinion in this video, I really hate this opinion that mlm couples in media exist for “fangirls” because I see people say things like that a lot. Also I feel like that really doesn’t apply in tma for 2 reasons: 1. It’s actually built up just very subtly. 2. If tma panders to fans then why did mike crew die instantly? I feel like tma really doesn’t do that. I personally am not that invested in any ships in tma but it makes me happy to see gay couples being represented so casually as a gay dude myself and it annoys me seeing that be degraded.
Also cool art!
hot take: mag 5 is the best episode out of the first 10
My hot takes? Martin is most certainly not and UwU cinnamon roll. He’s a manipulative prick who puts on the softie act for show. (I still love him tho)
Micheal didn’t have enough screen time. His death felt so sudden and so rushed.
Jmart DID have adequate build up
The guy that worked with Breekon and Hope was a plot hole that could’ve easily been solved by making him one of the anatomy class students
In terms of association with knowledge, the eye may have an academic pedigree, but of the fears, it is the least knowledgeable. It just knows things, it doesn’t comprehend them or understand them. The eye and its avatars were easily lead along by the web, and it wasn’t because they didn’t know, it’s because they lacked the foresight to realize what was really happening. The web is the most knowledgeable entity.
The slaughter has some of the best and most gripping episodes, and it’s the lonely that is the inferior fear
Season five is a drudge to listen to every single time (I’ve listened to the podcast 4 times)
The takes on why Jonmartin are completely valid and most of them are entirely backed up by serious logic but to me personally its not very nice to say "pandering to the fangirls," as it implies that girls are only listening for the romance. I know that seems like an exaggeration but being female, I've always found there's something a bit harsh and judgemental in the subtext of ever changing 'fans' to 'fangirls' because there are almost certainly male viewers who loved Jmart and while I love it too, it's not what I came for. Maybe I'm reading far too into it, but it's just an unfortunate choice of wording.
Thrown Away is worse than Squirm, it just hit me harder
My ones:
Arachnophobia should've been part of the Corruption and the fear of manipulation either its own Fear or part of the Spiral.
The Slaughter and Hunt should've been a single entity called the Violence or something similar.
In the later seasons, all the characters being mean to Jon is unjustified to the point of bad writing.
Season 5 is the best season, but Jon and Martin argue too much.
All the episodes that jump into the past are by far the best.
In the show the Desolation is too focused on fire. Either just have it be the Pyrophobia entity, or give us some Desolation stuff not fire focused, because, despite what Jony would have you believe, there's more ways to lose something important than in a house fire. Or have the Desolation folded into the End because the fear and panic of actually losing stuff vs that losing a loved one is the same imo, but I also imagine that might bloat the End.
All the statements are organised by entity on the Rustyquill CZcams channel via playlists, and people should use them.
Sorry there's so many
I’m surprised the archival staff being mean to Jon wasn’t in this video, especially in season 4. The man nearly died saving the world. The writing was a bit depressing that season, which does fit the lonely to be fair.
It does give me the idea on an Eye aligned therapist though. All the characters could have used it at that point
@@richardiv385Ah, but they would have to be a bad therapist, in order to generate fear /lh.
1. I have always felt like Spiders should be apart of The Web. The Corruption has, almost a gross horror to it. All of it is gross, and messy, and that is a purposeful design, and spiders don’t really mesh with that. I’ve always liked the idea that the Entities are impacted by humans and avatars as much as they impact them, they are literal manifestations of their fear. People associate spiders with controlling, and manipulative people, and that’s why it’s part of The Web. As for The Web being apart of The Spiral, yeah I can’t fault that. The Spiral is all about reality being twisted on its head, of not being what it seems at first, and The Web does fit that. I feel like that would be too broad of a subject for one Entity, but there’s definitely an argued case for that. Personally, I like the idea that The Web originally was apart of The Spiral, and split off from it as people grew to fear manipulative people, and those seeking to control them.
2. The Slaughter can definitely be broken down and distributed into the other Entities, but I think you’re misunderstanding The Hunt. The Hunt isn’t about the violence, heck, it’s almost the opposite. It isn’t the violence afterward, it’s the chase. Violence is a stop to that chase, a stop to the thrill of the hunt. Heck, the ritual for The Hunt is literally called The Everchase. Violence is an end to The Hunt, and for that reason, they’re almost opposites.
3. I’m not sure if it gets to the part of bad writing, but I do feel like the whole, hating on Jon for existing at all, was sort of not really that good. I don’t think it’s bad writing though, because it’s accurate. Basira has always fought monsters, she has seen so many monsters, and now that Jon is turning into one, she isn’t just going to give him mercy. Yes, she’ll give Daisy mercy, and that might be a “flaw”, but that’s because people are flawed. Basira doesn’t have the personal connection to care enough to let Jon traumatize people. Melanie, meanwhile, is literally being affected by The Slaughter. She is angry, and while it’s not good that she turns that on Jon, it doesn’t change anything. She has a reason to not care that much about Jon, and she never really cared that much about him anyway. Jon didn’t have the connection with Basira and Melanie that he did with Sasha, Tim, and Martin. And honestly, Martin really shouldn’t care as much about Jon as he should, but he does. TLDR, yes the hating on Jon does get annoying, but it isn’t bad writing, because all the characters have reasons.
4. Personally, I don’t like S5 that much, but that’s just my personal opinion. The statements were definitely fun, but I’ve always liked how the Entities and fears affect the main characters, and Avatars and such. While Jon and Martin did argue quite a bit, they’ve also been through the last 4 seasons, and are currently going through the apocalypse. I do feel like they did definitely argue quite a bit more than they should have though.
5. Ehh, I don’t really see much difference between the past episodes and those that aren’t in the past, but I can see why you might like them. It is interesting to see how the characters in the past worked.
6. Yes, yes, yes. The Desolation is entirety too focused on fire. There are so many more ways that your life can be destroyed, and fire isn’t the only way. I will absolutely agree with this. Now, I’m guessing you’re talking about The End when talking about how The Desolation could be folded into it, and I’m not too sure about that. The End is more about how death can’t be stopped, and while it definitely has connections with The Desolation, The Desolation has so much more than that. The End is that finding out your loved one is dead, and never being able to talk to them again. The Desolation is seeing everything you are being destroyed, and knowing that you can do nothing. The End is the depression, the denial, while The Desolation is that immense feeling of grief and loss. The End is what comes after The Desolation.
7. I didn’t actually know the playlists that list the entities exist until recently. I feel like a good reason people might not like them is because a lot of the fun, at least for me, is seeing how the statement interacts with the entity, and what entity it could be. The playlists lock down the videos into particular entities, and doesn’t really give them the freedom to bleed out into the other entities.
Actually one of the Q&As says that when coming up with the entities the Slaughter and the Hunt were the same. They got split into two because Johnny felt there was enough distinction.
My take on it is the Hunt is a fear that feels more direct and personal. Whereas the Slaughter is more the fear of being a small part in a greater violence.
@@Dranlia learned something new today, and I definitely see that perspective.
Forgive me for saying this but my hot take is season five was soooo boringggg. The statements I mean, don’t get me wrong the actual story was great and super cool I have no complaints, but the way the statements were formatted they just seemed so long and there wasn’t a sense of identity to them which left them super forgettable for me and I only remember maybee a handful of them
if there was an option beside subscribe call hide this channel. i would click it
What are you trying to say? (Sorry English no my first language)
I do not agree with Dasira not being romantic at all
Fight me