The Archivist can manipulate everyones perception now. It seemed to me as though their fears turn tangible or at least turn into hallucinations, so the protocol universes' alchemy rules. On top of that, the Archivist said they "have [Jon's] story."
My theory is that the tapes somehow ended up in the protocol universe after towerfall and the dread everyone felt towards Jon as the Archivist is what created the Archivist creature creeping around now. It's similar to how people viewed him and his humanity. A villainous monster that feeds upon your trauma without remorse.
This would also explain why the fears of the Archivists victims appear like with the water corpse TMP!Alice found in the alley and now the people in the archives universe seeing their fears. If all the tapes ended up in the protocol universe, all of the 15 fears would have been able to form there as well, connected to the Archivist, creating an extremely powerful external.
If the Archivist hasn't been intentionally laying low in the protocol universe, they seem to have more powerin the archives universe. Maybe this has to do with the 15 fears (aka the dread that manifested into the Archivist) being more distinct there. If this makes sense after the entities technically being passed on could be a whole other essay.
So. If this Archivist really is Jons story from the tapes becoming tangible and real through Archives rules, then the Archivist is likely a microcosm of how people perceive him. Furthermore, everyone in the zone passing rumors about him along as well as Melanie, Basira and Georgie still worrying about Jon makes him even more of a mystery which is not sad at all haha
We know that Alex and Jonny have said that Archives is about “what makes someone a monster” and Protocol is about “what makes someone a person”.
We now know that the ERRORchivist is NOT Jon, but “has his story”.
I’ve been a long-time believer in the theory that Celia ending up in protocol-verse caused the spooky story of The Archivist in her head to become transmuted into an External via fear alchemy.
I now believe that when the ERRORchivist got into archives-verse it started feeding on everyone’s fear of The Archivist and growing more powerful from it.
I think that the way they’re going to beat the ERRORchivist is by setting the record straight to the public on who Jon was as a person. Not an all-powerful demon with vaguely-defined powers, but some pretentious dork from Bournemouth who loved his ex’s cat. I think that making everyone in the world, who so far just have this dreadful image of him Watching burned into their minds, see and acknowledge that Jon was a human (potentially via the FR3DD13 system telling his story) will depower the ERRORchivist and leave it as something similar to (albeit not) the real Jon.
the magnus institute in the protocol universe definitely created the philosopher's stone.
Sam definitely interrupted this stage in the creation of the philosopher's stone and accidentally saw this person's literal soul.
now why would the OIAR (presumably) send in the response team to burn down the magnus institute for the creation of the philosopher's stone?
simple: they wanted it. and the government the OIAR works for currently has it, just as they were able to have Klaus to create FR3-D1. they stole what they wanted and they burned down the rest to ensure the recipe was destroyed.
and if the philosopher's stone reveal is in the works the title of this song from sam jones terrifies me
I've been catching up on TMAGP in preparation for seeing Hilltop: Live in a couple of days, and it's sparked a good amount of red-stringing, so I thought I might as well make a proper post to try and untangle all the theories I have about what's going on in the show and what might happen next. Some of these theories are mutually exclusive, so they can't all be true (maybe none of them are), but I want to get them out there anyway just in case:
0) The MAGP universe's version of Fears is Alchemy - this isn't a theory as it's stated explicitly in the podcast, but it bears repeating because a lot of my theories take it as read.
1) The Magnus Institute in TMAGP was using their gifted and talented program to search for people to use as agents, catalysts and subject - several of the statements (eg ep 33) involving Dr Welling (who we know worked at the Institute from Sam's statement in ep 28) list the statement-giver in terms of their viability as catalysts etc.
2) I suspect that Sam, if he hadn't walked off and caused trouble, would have been tested and found to have a high viability in one category; which may explain why he was able to survive ERROR taking a statement from him.
3) Sam caused Dr Welling to mess up an alchemical ritual in 1998 (ep 28), after which Dr Welling became a weird skeleton that crawled its way out of the man's flesh - perhaps the failed ritual also affected Sam, which is why he's the protagonist and could survive a statement from ERROR.
4) Dr Welling became a skeleton monster thing in 1998 (if it wasn't all a weird hallucination, which is not unprecedented in TMAGP). In 1999, he was the driving force behind the Millennium dome plan that would have had a ritual take place at the Dome during the millennium. The statement in ep 21 details how that ritual would have unbalanced everything, and how the ground on which the dome is being built is "bad". I think that this wasn't a mistake and that Dr Welling, messed up by the failed ritual Sam witnessed, wanted it to go badly.
5) Related to 4, the Institute was destroyed in late 1999 to prevent them enacting the millennium ritual that would have thrown things catastrophically out of balance.
6) The Institute was destroyed by Starkwall on the orders of the OIAR, who used FR3DI to predict how badly the millennium ritual would throw everything out of balance.
7) TMAGP Gertrude Robinson was part of Starkwall (if she was, the quality of their agents really declined after she left) and was involved in the destruction of the institute - this isn't really textually supported, I just want Arson Granny to exist in TMAGP too.
8) Gerry, who says he was in the institute's gifted and talented program (probably because TMAGP Mary Keay is just as bad of a parent as the TMA version), would have been used as a subject/catalyst (used to fuel an alchemical ritual, or turned into something monstrous) if Gertrude hadn't rescued him and raised him to have a normal life.
9) Like Sam & Gerry, Jon and Martin were involved in the Institute's gifted and talented program. Perhaps they had high viabilities as subjects and catalysts - and they didn't have people who would save them from the institute (supposing that Jon was still raised by his grandmother, and Martin by his ill mother).
10) If TMAGP Martin and Jon have the same birthdays as their TMA counterparts - which I think is a sensible assumption because you won't be the same person, in terms of genetics, life experiences and memories, if you were born in a different year - and they died in 2004, then they were 17 when they died.
11) I think that the explanation that Jon and Martin died of natural causes (heart condition and cycling accident) may be covering up what really killed them.
12) One theory about their death I have is that they were taken out by Starkwall, either because of their previous involvement with the institute (perhaps they were throwing the alchemy balance out with their existence if they had been involved in the sorts of rituals we know took place there), or because of the worry that they would continue the work of the institute. If the 2004 date is correct, then it took 5 years for people to decide they needed to die/for Starkwall to track them down.
13) Related to 12, we know from the blackmail material Gwen received from Augustus that Lena has been in charge of the OIAR for ~20 years. Perhaps, new to the job, she ordered the deaths of Jon and Martin - and those are some of the bad choices she refers to when talking to Gwen about the job.
14) Another theory I have about Jon and Martin's death supposes that TMAGP Martin & Jon were more intertwined with the institute than we think, and they died when the institute burned in December 1999 - they were supernaturally linked to it, so its destruction dragged them down too. They would have been 12 when they died if this were the case. This would require Sam (in ep 23) to have approximated 25 years to 20 years however, so this is more unlikely.
15) In the statement from ep 17, there are 2 other people in the therapist's office with Darrien - a large, soft man with a stutter who is the receptionist, and a bookish guy who looks older than he should who is another patient. Lots of other people have assumed that this is Jmart from another universe (not TMA or TMAGP), and I agree. I wonder why Jon is a patient though - if he's anything like TMA Jon, there's no way in hell he'd go to therapy. Perhaps TMA Jon becoming the Archivist and ripping the tear around the Hilltop open affected Jons in other universes, causing mental problems so bad that this Jon ended up/was forced into therapy.
16) Related to 15, perhaps TMAGP Jon did in fact die of a heart condition - a condition caused by the fact that TMA Jon was stabbed through the heart (his theory has been made by others, it isn't my original thoughts). In that case, maybe TMAGP Martin just got unlucky and had a regular cycling accident?
17) The Elric company has been involved in many of the statements in TMAGP: they created the Booth computer that trapped a guy in ep 36; they made the trading app that made the man ruin his life in ep 13; the company is mentioned in episodes 1, 35 and 49; and episode 46 contains a transcript of a board meeting at the company. They explicitly use Externals to make money, and profit from supernatural experiences ruining people's lives. The fact that they have appeared so often suggests that they may be a villain to defeat in later episodes; or, more likely, fail to defeat because it would be almost impossible for regular people to bring down a wealthy company. They may have been included in the podcast to critique how capitalism allows the unscrupulous to profit off the suffering of others.
18) The names of the senior people at Elric industries were redacted because we already know them (eg Gwen's grandfather Jeremy Bouchard, or Trevor Herbert) and it would reveal too much, or we will meet those people and the creators are setting up for a later plot twist reveal of their involvement in Elric.
19) Related to 17, another plot thread that I feel will be very important in later episodes is the fact that Lena said that the DPHW numbers can only trend upwards, and that you can only balance them by making them all higher. We may find out that this assertion isn't true; but that it requires so much effort to reduce DPHW (eg by fixing the underlying problems in society - homelessness, poverty, abuse - that cause pain, helplessness etc) that it's far easier to just increase suffering - which may be used as a metaphor for capitalism, we'll see how it goes.
20) Jonny and Alex know that us as audience members want to hear from our favourite TMA characters again, and they use those cameos to distract us from important information elsewhere in those episodes.
21) We know that the Klaus that Lena failed to kill was the Klaus that designed the prototype of FR3DI in Soviet Berlin. Maybe the OIAR offered to smuggle him out of the country before Klara and the Stasi could catch up to him in exchange for creating a system to monitor DPHW levels. Klaus was gutshot by Lena, and he disappeared afterwards (Lena would definitely have checked all nearby hospitals) - that, and the way that ep 44 described how he was nearly fused with the computer, implies that maybe Colin wasn't the first person FR3DI consumed.
22) Related to 17, the effects of the rift - both its pull on people who've fallen through, and how many people are falling through - seem to be worsening as time passes; and the London exclusion zone was said to be growing in ep 50. The problem that our characters have to solve for the S2 or S3 finale might be trying to close the rift again - I'm not sure how they'd manage it, but Annabelle & The Web managed to open a rift, so perhaps they'll figure it out - which will be perfect for a pyrrhic victory ending if Celia ends up on a different side to Jack. Maybe there will be a point where she has to choose to return to TMA to save everything (restore balance by returning everyone to their own universes), and leave Jack; or stay with him and doom everyone - an impossible choice for the good mother that we know Celia is.
23) In ep 22, we hear voices coming from the telegraph, screaming about how they are "alone together". It would be really messed up if those voices were Jon, Martin & Jonah, bodiless for centuries until an event (the migration of the Fears out into the multiverse?) allowed them to enter FR3DI; but I'm not convinced by the timeline of this theory.
24) The statement in episode 19 describes how Isaac Newton went too far with his alchemical studies and threw the balance off - it's implied that this lack of balance caused the bubonic plague outbreak of 1665. In response, the Magnus Institute enacted the Magnus Protocol and brought balance - by burning half of London down in the Great Fire of 1666. This (and the likely burning of TMI to halt the millennium ritual) establishes the sort of scale of destruction that is necessary to bring balance, implying that if it falls out of balance - either through Gwen's incompetence, or by the spread of the rift - the price to pay will be very very large.
25) I'm not sure we'll ever truly know what happened to TMA Jon and Martin. Jonny did say in the S5 Q&A that he loved the ambiguity of TMA's ending and that, if he did a sequel, he wouldn't ruin the mystery of what happened to them. Chester and Norris could be scraps of TMA Jon & Martin scattered through the multiverse; they might be Jmart from another universe; they might really be the Jmart we know and love - but I don't think there'll ever be a solid answer; which just means more fuel for the fix-it fanfics!
These are all the theories I have so far - I look forward to most, if not all, turning out to be embarrassingly wrong when more episodes come out!
I was like "huh, loads of alchemy in Magnus Protocol, better pick up some books on alchemy to see if they help me understand some hidden themes" so I picked up "Secrets of Alchemy" by Lawrence M. Principe and guys, I'm just sitting there, reading it like:
THERE IS SO MUCH STUFF THAT'S CURRENTLY RELEVANT. DYES (INKS??) BEING ONE OF MAIN SUBJECTS, AN ALTAR WHERE YOU SACRIFICE MEN OF THREE METALS AND ASK THEM QUESTIONS (FREDDY?), GERMAN CODE BEING RELEVANT (???), ONE OF THE MAIN ARABIC SCHOLARS OF ALCHEMY WAS PRINCE FUCKING KHALID (like, ya know, SAMAMA KHALID??).
I'm only TWO CHAPTERS INTO THIS BOOK and already had like five points where I'm gleefully reading it and suddenly going "...wait". I will go insane before S1 even ends.
okay anyway. alchemy. alchemy is the big thing in tmagp. balance is huge in alchemy. it is literally the basis of almost everything in it. tria prima--balance the three primes and you can do anything from turning lead into gold to raising the fucking dead.
the oiar is trying to keep everything in balance for the good of the people. lena herself says that in 13. to keep everything going and in check, the "opposing forces" need to be monitored and balanced. they manage the externals and monitor potential externals cases to make sure things are within a reasonable margin of chaos, maybe? that's why they give them specific assignments. bonzo and mowbray and possibly ink5oul if they'd said yes. you can still do all these things to 'feed' (lady mowbray declining refreshments because she'd recently eaten right after we hear a casement about her) but we're gonna tell you who to feed on because we need to monitor it and keep it balanced.
the magnus institute in this universe was heavily focused on alchemy. sam's whole thing that he saw at the institute where that dude just,,, shed his skin after fucking up some kind of experiment, over a person that was "naked and pale and still". maybe dr welling was trying to bring that person back to life?
when isaac newton got a little too crazy with alchemy, a couple of roberts said "hey, we need to Protocol this dude". it disturbed the "precarious equilibrium". threw something off balance. balance balance balance. throwing something off balance means enacting the protocol.
they talk about the great plague of london, enacting the protocol against the entire city. the great fire of london was in 1666, which is also when the great plague is said to have ended. isaac newton's lab caught fire, allegedly after his dog knocked a candle over. ironically in this context, the dog's name was diamond.
the magnus institute burned down.
i don't actually think a "magnus protocol" exists. i don't think there's a specific protocol named after the institute. i think it's a misnomer, we're thinking of it wrong. after all, the protocol is being referenced as existing as far back as the 1660's, but jonah's notes were dated 1845.
i think the Magnus Protocol is in reference to an incident. the enacting of The Protocol against the Magnus Institute. and i think the reason that any cases or information regarding "the magnus protocol" are blocked is because the OIAR is connected to the protocol being put into motion against the Institute and they don't want anyone knowing about it (the office used to be associated with starkwall--maybe?? maybe the oiar loaded the gun and starkwall pulled the trigger?)
there's so many moving parts here and i'm struggling to put them all together without a god damn corkboard and red string.
I THINK I FIGURED OUT THE NEW ENTITIES SYSTEM IN TMAGP.
I haven't seen any other fan theories like this, but if anyone else thought of this first, please let me know.
Anyways, alchemy obviously plays a big part in the magic system of the protocol universe. And I've seen several people bring up that Celia mentioned the three primes of alchemy. Based on my very non-expert google knowledge, the three primes are salt, mercury, and sulfur. Salt represents the body, mercury represents the mind, and sulfur represents the soul.
In other words, physical horror, psychological horror, and existential horror. There are three fear entities in this universe; Salt, which is fear relating to the body/physical harm, Mercury, which is mental/emotional fears, & Sulfur, which is existential fears. This lines up pretty well with what Colin said:
This time, the way to keep the entities from entering our world is to keep them balanced. And based on what we've seen, the way to keep the balance is probably by sacrificing people to them.
This next part is a bit of a stretch & I don't expect it to be right. Something interesting I noticed, all the Externals we've met so far seem to be Salt-coded. Maybe the OIAR is only in charge of the salt part of the balance? What if the Hilltop Center and the Magnus Institute were in charge of the other two elements? Colin didn't mention what happens when there's too much salt, but we might see that for ourselves soon.
i know it probably won’t be this BUT i’ve been entertaining myself thinking about what if alice and sam find the tape with episode 200 (maybe minus the part with basira n friends) in the ruins of the magnus institute and they just stare at each other like:
while listening to
guy from computer doing a murder
guy from computer lore dumping
SECOND guy from computer yelling at guy from computer for doing a murder
GUYS FROM COMPUTER ARE GAY FOR EACH OTHER? love wins.
what’s this about traveling other dimensions?
second guy from computer doing a murder. love loses.
You heard that right. And if you've listened to TMP 39 - Dependents, you've heard it too. Not only can I prove without the shadow of a doubt that not one, but two Archivists are roaming TMA's London, but I can also prove with spectrogram + phonetical analysis exactly what Jon is saying.
Let me prove it to you.
First, let's start with an unedited audio sample, taken at 16:30:
Did you catch it? If you didn't, I don't blame you. There's a lot happening here. Let's check the official transcript for more context about what we're hearing.
So, what we're hearing is definitely the Archivist. It's evident that it's whispering something, but the specifics are currently hidden under layers of reverb, static, and tape winding. Let's clean it up a bit to get a better listen. I pitched the audio down 30%, reduced the background noise, and ran it through a few frequency filters to make the speech more prominent.
At the very least, we know this is obviously not Beth Eyre, who voices [ERROR]. Since the transcript states that this audio has to come from an Archivist, that really only leaves us with one other possibility.
But let's assume you still don't believe me. I took the liberty of isolating the vocals entirely and running them through a linguistics analysis programme called Praat (which is fantastic + free by the way!). This way, we can analyse the speech all the way down to the position of the Archivist's mouth when speaking.
I admit, the speech is a tad more muffled in this version. However, the lack of background noise makes the spectrogram much easier to read, which is what we are aiming for here. We're far past the point of just using our ears.
Behold the Spectrogram:
Looking at this diagram, we can conclude that there are four words being spoken here. (The second word is the gap in the middle part. Note the density shift at around 1000Hz. We know this word must be free of any sharp consonants.) More importantly, the formants provided can be compared to samples of Jon's RP dialect to determine if there's a match. If the frequencies match, it's the same voice. If we get the wavelengths to match, it's the same word.
Let's start with the first word. I'll skip the specifics, as explaining every minute detail would take forever and bore everyone to death. The left image was extracted from the spectrogram above. The right photo? That's Jon saying the word "this."
Note how both waveforms are split into two halves, low then high. Note how the high half trails off at the end. Take into account the similar placement of the red formants. This is the same word, pronounced in the exact same dialect, with the exact same frequency. It is Jon.
Let's do that again with the second word.
Again, the formants line up in the exact same order. The audio on the right is a bit louder, which is why the waveforms have a higher contrast.
What did this word happen to be? World.
Here is the original spectrogram in Audacity. The two bright spots on the right-hand side are easy. It's the same sound as the end of the first word as well. (Notice the frequencies are the same.) These are an easy Letter S. I then fact-checked this using methods like before.
Finally, we have clear, undeniable proof:
"This world isn’t yours."
Edit: thank you to @thestrangepoet for correcting “is” to “isn’t!” The presence of the letter T was a bit inconclusive, but it makes so much more sense in this context.
Now, what does that actually mean? Well, he’s likely referring to Sam. The extent of what he actually knows I’m uncertain of. Feel free to theorise and let me know! I have an idea about how this affects the overall story, but that's a post for another day.
I furthermore checked every single instance [ERROR] spoke for occurrences like this, and what did I find? Nothing. There was a bit of whispering in TMP 10 that I couldn't manage to isolate, but the voice was definitely Beth Eyre's. The only other time an Archivist audibly appeared in this fashion was... Oh, Hello. The TMP series teaser with Jon and Martin. Brilliant.
Now I just have to hope that nothing gets debunked by tomorrow. I'm crossing my fingers, TMP 40.
Thank you to Rusty Quill for sending me down this rabbit hole! The details added to all corners of the production bring so much life to the Magnus mystery. I'm glad I could dig deep and analyse this - We love you!
So I saw a tag on a post about the newest episode about Gertrude saying "good luck hunting" and how she might have thought Celia and Sam were avatars. And I got hit by a realisation
TMA GERRY WAS TRAPPED IN A BOOK, AN OBJECT THAT GIVES KNOWLEDGE, in the HANDS OF HUNT AVATARS and whose only way to escape the misery of not being was death. An escape Jon gave him even if he lost knowledge
Did JON REACHED OUT HOPING TO FINALLY DIE ? DID HE HOPE THIS GERRY, EVEN IF HE WASNT TMA GERRY HE WOULD RETURN THE FAVOR ? THAT HE WOULD FREE HIM LIKE JON FREED GERRY ? THAT WITH THE PLACES REVERSED THE SAME THING WOULD HAPPEN ?
THE GODDAMN PARALLELS THAT MIGHT JUST BE ME OVERTHINKING BUT ZKXVZKNDZKFBKZOXKZOBX
waiting for the moment one of the text-to-speech voices says something directly to Sam and when he brings it up to the office nobody takes him seriously
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