Latest Posts by rookrock - Page 6

TMAGP's liminal spaces so far (EP 7 spoilers):

1. The Graveyard, the Magnus Institute

2. In5oul's studio

3. The Garden

4. N/A? Perhaps where the protagonist met the merchant

5. The Theater

6. N/A? Does an alley count? Does a call station count?

7. Hill Top

I'm calling them liminal bc they're described only at certain times of day (middle of the night for the graveyard) or in terms that make their entrances and exits, as well as the passage of time within them, unclear (like the tattoo studio and the garden). The theater preserved from childhood memories, yet staffed with only one employee, the Magnus Institute where doors are all open while it lies abandoned, etc., feel solidly liminal to me.

Hill Top is mainly there because of, y'know, but I do think the events of 7 make it a space with unclear limits and volume. It would be ironic if it has nothing to do with Hill Top Road.

I feel like the OIAR office is liminal (between sunset and sunrise, for one thing). The sheer vibes off that place!

TMAGP 7 SPOILERS

Wishing all of you a very happy "they put my archivist in the computer" Thursday

Very niche meme about a few characters from the Dune series and the Lemon Demon - Spirit Phone songs I relate to them in my head

TMAGP 7 SPOILERS

FUCK YEAH FUCK YEAH FUCK YEAH

Celia:

- wants to search by "meat"/etc.

- recognizes Chester's voice

Colin:

- says there's "real stuff" outside the emails/etc.

- violently refuses to allow external electronics onsite

- discusses a weird email from "John"/"Jon" with Sam

Gwen:

- shows the Klaus video to Lena

- believes someone paid Lena to attempt his murder

- confirms with Lena that there's "real work"

- becomes the "externals liaison"

Statement:

- HILL TOP, HILL TOP, HILL TOP

Theory:

This feels like almost complete confirmation for all of the following:

1. Hill Top Road allowed MAG's powers in (does not confirm if they remained in their old forms i.e. Smirke's 14),

2. Celia is "that" Celia,

3. "Chester" has the voice of Jonathan Sims, not just the man but the character, and the same for "Norris" having the voice of Martin,

4. "Augustus" also has the voice of a significant character,

5. The "Response" part of OIAR will become more important.

I know these are basic conclusions, but I'm just laying it out to process. I think with the computer voices' sources confirmed, that removes a lot of uncertainty regarding how much TMAGP will engage with MAG's immediate consequences and characters.

I hope it leads to "grumpy computer archivist archly assists with casework" but you never know.

If you're behind in the Magnus Protocol or you haven't listened yet cause it hasn't "grabbed you"

Get caught up

I'm not joking

You have two days

Get caught up

Get caught up

GET CAUGHT UP

Is it just me, or would Needle dude and Micheal distortion get along well in a sibling relationship?

Yes! Jon mentioned survival bias in TMA, because all but a few statements were made by those who survived the Horrors long enough to visit the Institute. But it seems like more of the characters here did not survive.

Thinking about how a lot of theorizing about the Magnus protocols has been considering tma statements as about fear whereas tmagp statements are about desires BUT I’m wondering if this is more about like… selection bias?

Think about it- the Magnus archives collected statements from people who volunteered - people who were frightened and then heard of an archive that collects spooky statements. whereas the OIAR system scours the internet so it’s not biased by who was scared enough to go to the Archives.

He's Michael in my heart 💞🪡

i love the totally uncreative name of Needles. jonny sims was trying so hard not to name him Michael that he couldn't think of anything better

something that is kinda cool to me is it seems like in tma you get the statements of people who made it out long enough to tell their story's, even if they died in the end they where able to go to the magnus institute and record their experience. in tmagp they are pulling story's from those who didn't make it out and have a place to record everything, its pulling from last emails and locked forum post, old blogs and letters. they don't have ways to know what happened to them.

TMAGP 6 SPOILERS BELOW CUT

TURN BACK BBY

"Just make sure you eat them on site" what, do the mini donuts fucking dissipate off site, Lena? Are you a goddamn Fae Lady, """Lena"""?!!

The SIZE OF THE BUILDING is disproportionate to number of employees... Feels significant

fuckin NEEDLE PERSON HARVESTING FEAR

CELIA. CELIA WHOSE NAME WAS STOLEN? IS CELIA ALSO FROM THE ARG???

they're going to eat Celia, Celia Ripley

Alice feels kinda jealous with the overwrought lampooning of Sam's conversation with Celia

🏳️‍🌈 🔥 🏳️‍🌈 🔥 🏳️‍🌈 🔥 🏳️‍🌈 🔥 🏳️‍🌈 🔥

TMAGP 6 SPOILERS

This feels like a break from form. In this case we got someone explicitly feeding on fear and seeking more out, whereas others had someone drawn in, lured, without the fear being super explicit.

I don't know if Needles is exactly an avatar, but they seem like a vector of fear more than any other statement characters so far.

Also...no one at the OIAR was really scared of this guy who was deliberately trying to elicit fear. FASCINATING.

Foxes Practicing the Difficult Art of How to Shape Shift into Humans by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1840′s)

Hey. You know when you're eating a cracker, and it cracks perpendicular to your mouth? Get a load of this: there's an easy fix.

Just dip the cracker in water first, and kiss goodbye to that crisp cracking crunch. That's right, make this simple bargain with the demon of wet and enjoy uncrackable crackers for a lifetime of pleasure.

Life hack!

Migraines make me feel like that prophetic rabbit from Watership Down. Fiver. Like the terrible whole body shivering and burning skull and teeth must presage awful events, each symptom an omen of terror to come.

I'm a little obsessed with seers and thinking about that is my coping mechanism for this cluster. Also, tracking migraines, I figured out they come in clusters. Beautiful brilliant great. I love it. I can predict the future! And the future is painful.

At least I know it ends. That's a pretty good thing to know.

PLEASE READ!!! I DON'T POST STUFF LIKE THIS AND THIS IS SERIOUS TO ME! ELON MUSK IS TRYING TO DUMP THOUSANDS OF GALLONS OF WASTE WATER INTO THE LAGUNA MADRE IN SOUTH TEXAS!!!

The Laguna Madre is a beautiful ecosystem that houses so many species of wild life and many migratory species of shore birds go there to eat and rest. Its all thanks to the sea grass that grows there, and after the big freeze of Texas in 2021, it is slowly making its recovery and now it's in danger again!

(Black Skimmer with chicks shown here)

If Elon continues with this disguising act, nitrogen and hydrogen rich waste will be dumped and plankton and algae will begin to overpopulate and create a cloud of themselves over the sea grass causing it to not get the sunlight it needs to photosynthesize. It will basically be suffocated by the overpopulation of microorganisms and die out and so many species of animals will lose that shelter they need to feed, breed and even escape dangers like predators. This grass also feeds the endangered green sea turtle and was even given the name "Turtle Grass" for its huge importance to these creatures.

(Green Sea Turtle grazing) Not only that, but the South Padre Island is one of the largest ports in America and has many shrimping and fishing companies that rely on the environment to make a minimum wage. And once the water gets polluted, so many people can get sick or worse if they eat the fish and shrimp that have been exposed to it!

(South Texas Shrimping Boats) This is serious! And if you or someone you know lives in Texas there is a way you can make a comment and state how you DON'T WANT LITERAL SLUDGE IN THE OCEAN! IT WILL HURT THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE AND ANIMALS AND THE VAST AND DIVERSE ECOSYTEM THEY LIVE IN!

You can find the link here:

PLEASE DO WHAT YOU CAN! WE CAN'T LET MUSK DO THIS!!!

I would not put this past Johnny Sims

(but I do wonder if undead Mr. Winstead will turn out to be more important than he seems so far. The red canary definitely gets more attention in all the theories I see.)

All this about red canary being a warning vs anglerfish drawing you in (which I do find to be a very fun idea) but what about HARRIET WINSTEAD'S HUSBAND?

Something thought dead and gone for good but desperately brought back by someone who couldn't bear to leave it be and it comes back wrong. It's messed up and horrible and worse than they could've ever imagined. It's not what it was at all.

It's The Magnus Archives. It was gone for good but it came back in The Magnus Protocol and it's so messed up and bent out of shape. Jonny and Alex and all the fans still here just couldn't leave it be.

Harriet saw something strange in the figure and almost ran, but the sound of her husband's familiar voice convinced her it was safe. So many people were worried and skeptical about there being a tma sequel but hey! It's Martin!! We all know Martin!!

But is it Martin? Is it the same tma we all know?? No, it's only some of him, some of it. And it laughs at us for ever thinking it was the same thing we'd grown to love.

Dans le fond des forêt,

Votre image me suit.

In the depth of the forest,

Your image follows me.

Phedre by Alexandre Cabanel (1880)

I'M A SUCKER FOR RED DOOR GLARE

Andreea Dumuta

"Hunt Bowman" what an egregiously masc name. Just ferociously bro. I can smell the Axe body spray from here.

Description below cut.

Image ID: a comic book cover in a warm, even hot, palette of reds. At top in large font: Planet Comics. Smaller font: No. 63, Winter. 10 cents. Circular icon: Fiction House Magazines. In the foreground, the cover depicts a blonde woman in a white dress with a bright red belt and green helmet with wires coming off it. She climbs a rope ladder to the top of a metal ship, but at the top, what appears to be a man-ant hybrid has shot the ladder with some kind of gun. The woman drops her revolver and stares in shock at the man-ant. Through a window in the side of the ship, we see a uniformed man at the controls, firing the ship's guns at a giant lizard stalking them through a lava field. Outside, a man in the same uniform swings from the ladder and shoots with his own revolver at the same giant lizard. In the background, a massive blue drill bursts from the lava, while hazy reddish clouds obscure the ruins of a city. A text block over the right of the image reads: "Paradise or Inferno? Hunt Bowman battles to preserve his citadel of freedom from Voltan vengeance in Lost World! Also other top features." End image ID.

Judging by the lava field, it's not going so well.

Interesting, I missed this completely!! But what if it's Alice's and Luke's sibling? And Alice is big sister taking down the bureaucracy as revenge?

Kind of joking. But Alice is a wildcard.

Bad Fictional Data vs Fictional Bad Data

WARNING: This post will include discussion of a name that might be Alice Dyer's deadname. I won't be calling Alice by this name or using it in the context of that name being a pointer to Alice, but I will be using the name, uncensored, when talking about where and why the name appeared in chdb.xls .

----

You may know that as part of the ARG, the sleuths on Statement Remains uncovered a document called chdb.xls, allegedly a list that has something to do with The Magnus Institute. There's a list of names, ID numbers, first and last names, dates of birth, and information apparently related to each person's "score" in an assortment of psychological/personality tests. Three of the names in particular have stood out in a lot of analyses: Samama Khalid, Gerard Kaey [sic], and Connor Dyer.

You likely don't know that the commonly linked version of the spreadsheet, ported to Google Docs and linked in the TMAGP ARG Masterdoc, is presented out of order. (I'm guessing they didn't lock down editing until it was already all out of order from various people messing with it - totally understandable, this is not a callout post, thank you for making this easily accessible to people.)

But let me tell you about something I discovered by looking at the spreadsheet in its original order, and the almost certainly incorrect rabbit hole of theorizing it has sent me down.

Bad Fictional Data

Until episode 2 I had the same thought about the Dyer listed in the spreadsheet that I think most people did: that it was Alice's deadname, and that she had therefore been one of the Institute's young subjects. But after Alice had absolutely no reaction when Sam mentioned the Magnus Institute to her in episode 2, I now think this is significantly less likely.

Don't get me wrong: it's still reasonable to think that the Dyer listed in chdb.xls is Alice. Maybe she had some kind of supernatural experience that wiped her memory. (It probably wasn't that Alice was too young to remember, as the Dyer on the spreadsheet is listed as being at Piaget Stage 3, which occurs from 7-11 years old; but it's always possible that the Magnus Institute was using the names of legitimate psychological tests to hide their tracks when recording more esoteric data.) The point is, this isn't hard evidence that Alice has no connection to the Magnus Institute; it just made me go looking for more evidence.

I went back to the spreadsheet to look for more clues about whether or not this was Alice's deadname. What I found instead was some extremely sloppy fake data at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

For context, here are first ten names in the spreadsheet:

Note how each ID begins with the name's first and last initial.

Now check out the last ten names:

Not only do these IDs no longer always match their subjects' names, they occur in order: CD, EF, GH, IJ, KL, MN, OP, QR, ST, UV. The first names of each pair match the first letter of each ID, but many, though not all, of the surnames don't match the second letter.

My first thought was that whoever Rusty Quill had contracted to generate these names had gotten sloppy at the end of the list, created the IDs all at once using this alphabetical pattern, and picked names to fill in that roughly matched the IDs. But hey, we could use this to our advantage! Any name that was filled in as part of a series of IDs with an alphabetical pattern like this could be removed from consideration for red string analysis - we'd know they were meaningless fakes added by a lazy contractor, and not clues or characters that might show up again later.

Scrolling back up the spreadsheet, we can see the person generating the data having more care the earlier we go. We find the beginning of the AA/BC/DE/FG/HI pattern at line 136, but at first, the names mostly conform to the initials they've been given. JK09874 "Josie Jordan" at line 154 is the first break from the "first two letters of the ID are their initials" pattern; and breaks occur more often the further you go down the sheet.

Scrolling up to before line 136 (AA09911 - Aaron Atkinson), while the pattern isn't yet at AB/CD/EF/GH levels of obviousness, the first initials are still in alphabetical order. Zoe Hart follows Yara Logan follows Xavier Freeman follows Wyatt Edwards. The data creator skips a few letters - for example Niamh Fenton is followed by Phoebe Emmett, and S and T are together in the same line in Skye Travers.

We can follow this less-obvious version of the alphabetical pattern up to an abrupt break right at line 118, above which the IDs don't follow an alphabetical pattern at all. (They might follow a different pattern, but it's not one that I've found yet.) So that means we can discount all the names in line 118 and below as purely fake, generated lazily by a contractor, and not worthy of our attention for the purposes of red-stringing. Right?

What the fuck?!

(highlight is my own, it is not present in the original document)

My first thought was that the sloppy data generator had done the funniest thing imaginable, sending everyone on a wild goose chase about Alice's deadname just by having the name "Dyer" on the brain while looking for a surname that started with D. This would be Very Funny. No plot relevance, no implications, just the brain fart that launched a thousand theories.

My second thought was that maybe Connor Dyer was the last legit name on the list, and whoever started filling the rest of the sheet in with alphabetical junk data was inspired by the "CD" initials in the first place - whoever it was went on from there.

These are both valid thoughts! But I prefer my third thought:

What if it's on purpose?

Fictional Bad Data

There is a very obvious break between the set of data that doesn't look obviously* fake, and the set of data that is immediately identifiable as such. If we assume that this was intentional - and I want to reiterate that it all being unintentional is still a very real possibility here - why would someone at Rusty Quill want the data to be structured like this?

If the sharp dividing line between reasonable-seeming data and obviously fake data is intentional on RQ's part, it would suggest that we should take the data above row 118 as in-universe real data, and the data below row 118 as in-universe falsified data. It suggests that someone, either at the Institute or after its demise, was adding nonexistent children to the roster of The Magnus Institute. Why would someone want to do that?

There are all kinds of possible reasons, but here are a few off the top of my and my theorizing buddies' heads:

Financial fraud (institutional edition). If the Magnus Institute received funding on a per-child basis, they'd have an incentive to inflate their numbers.

Financial fraud (researcher edition). One or more people on staff were blowing off their child-analysis sessions and recording fake numbers for fake children. This would be ballsy as hell if they could be fired for it, but it was the Magnus Institute, so there's decent odds they couldn't be.

Scientific fraud (faking conclusions edition). The Magnus Institute in the Protocolverse claimed to be doing research on giftedness in children, which is the kind of thing that you'd normally publish in a scientific journal. It's not unheard-of for dickhead academics to falsify data to generate statistically significant results, since statistically insignificant results aren't going to get you published.

Scientific fraud (obscuring paranormal bullshit edition). If the Magnus Institute was using legitimate psychological test names to record Fear-related test results, it's possible their results showed different patterns from what you would expect from the real tests. They could have added the fake children to balance out the dataset as a whole.

Pseudonyms. The children are all real, the Institute just started using fake names for them for privacy purposes. They couldn't go back and change the names they'd already written properly for some reason. Probably something paranormal.

Those are all pretty interesting possibilities, and if we could narrow them down, it might tell us something about what things were like at the Magnus Institute before it burned down!

And the other big question is: why did RQ make the dividing line between the two sections, the first likely-fake entry, Connor Dyer?

One straightforward reason could be as a troll, a red herring to watch fans get in a lather over. And once the community inevitably noticed all the obviously falsified entries, RQ could eat popcorn and watch us lose our minds over whether or not that's even a real entry! (That sounds really fun, I would absolutely do that.)

But let's dig a little deeper, and look at what Connor Dyer being on the border between the real and fake entries would mean in-universe. Because of its position as the border between real and fake, it would be very easy for that entry to be accidentally included in the wrong group - a real research subject discarded as fake, or perhaps more interestingly, a fake research subject accidentally reclassified as real.

Remember, if a name is fake in the context of the Magnus Institute's research, that doesn't mean that the name itself is made up. If I was trying to think of a name that fit the initials CD, and those were the initials of my next door neighbor's kid, I might just write their name in as a lark. Especially if it was my first time trying to get away with falsifying information: this is a kid that verifiably exists and lives in the area.

My theory, supported primarily by my love for The Implications instead of actual evidence

Twenty years on, after all institutional memory of the fraud was long gone, trans icon Alice Dyer applies to work for the OIAR - an institution that (according to this theory) has an unofficial preference for hiring former Magnus Institute kids.

They are very confused when Alice proceeds to act nothing like a former Magnus Institute kid. It doesn't occur to anyone that her entry might have been falsified. What reason would anyone have to do that?

----

* Of course people with a background in data analysis or statistics will see immediately that even above line 118 this is a wild-ass dataset that would raise red flags for falsification, but at least it's not "the alphabet over and over" levels of obvious.

I'm gonna be playing along with this. Some are gut feelings, some are well reasoned predictions, a few are completely wild guesses. I don't think any have come up yet (if you discount the Latin in the OIAR's logo, but that hasn't come up in-narrative), so the series gets a bit of a head start.

Feel free to edit your own in - I'm curious what other people's pet expectations are. I used Baskerville Old Face because I don't have whichever fancy Baskerville font the transcripts actually use.

EXACTLY THIS

Teddy's fuckin dead. "Insurance" more like "ensured he kept quiet"

Just realized something about the OIAR and the emphasis on people being able to quit...

It's a lot easier to hide the fact that you're making people disappear when

a) you can say they quit unexpectedly and you haven't heard from them, the unprofessional bastard, or

b) everyone was at their going away party, we left on great terms, no I haven't heard from them lately?, and

c) everyone hired for this nightshift dead-end job has no strong attachments to people outside of work, and nothing to live for, anyway

IN THE HORRIBLE TIKTOK TEXT TO SPEECH VOICE

"hEre's how I lost my eye!!" 😌😌😌

so. we know that TMAGP is set in 2024. so far we have seen blog posts, forum posts, cctv, an e-mail. and we know that instagram live exists in universe.

How much time until we get a statement via tiktok storytime?

Gertrude is the epitome of "fuck it, we ball." I strive towards her example 😤

Gertrude Robinson.....*sighs dreamily*

This wave is so girl

Feminine Wave, 1845 by Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760--1849)

This is really inventive use of a speech bubble. Hell yeah.

“You do not want to be thinking about this stuff outside of here. It’s not good for you. I’ve seen people go weird before now.”

Im finally getting to catch up on Protocol!! Did this listening to Ep 2!

I'VE BEEN CONVERTED

“the IT guy is pretty uhmmm…. yeah pretty… pretty scary” - samama khalid probably (to alice)

MAG 101 has the Spiral asking "am I evil" and while that's a very Spiral™️ question, I feel like TMAGP is genuinely exploring this. Fear can be fun, when it's a story. It's not innately "evil"- and here's all these stories, scavenged ephemera more than Official Statements, where the fear wasn't really the point.

TMAGP has me thinking about the sublime. The idea of beauty and terror sharing a space in your brain, and the exultation of artistry - a painter like Daria or the virtuoso with the demon violin - to the point of destruction. The joy and horror at seeing a loved one return from the dead. The excitement and fascination of becoming something not quite human, the distress and panic as your body is changed. The shiver of fear as a pleasurable sample of terror.

I wonder where they're going with this.