#the not!them

[artfulacrostic]

tessa winters talking abt analog and digital has me thinking abt why the only records of people erased by the not!them are the voices stored on old-school magnetic tape, and the pictures in polaroids. hmmmmm 🧐🧐🧐

[iwillstabifnecessary]

Tma headcanons: some of these hurt

So I like to think pre-coffin daisy had long hair that was ether in a ponytail or braid, which she cut off post because it was choking around her and post coma jon has pretty long hair grown during the events of previous seasons usually puts his hair back with office supplies like paper clips the office rubber bands, has had Daisy who keeps a hair tie on her wrist as a former habit from long hair coming up to him abd just asking if she can braid it as something to do, so after the coffin its not uncommon to find Jon with his hair and a braid or Daisy braiding Jons hair as he reads a statement

Research era Jon had very long hair and cut it when he got the promotion but during that research era with his hair he would use paper clips and actual rubber bands to hold his hair back and did it until Sasha gave him an actual hair tie which he kept on his wrist after he cut it and after the not!sasha reveal he kept it until he could use it again ie 3-5 was wearing it in his hair in a braid that martin learned how to do when he killed the not!them

the archival assistants dragged jon to a pride parade in season 1 and there was a Polaroid taken that is one of the few photos that Jon, Martin, and Tim had of the true Sasha and Jon regrets that he wasn't truly smiling in that photo even though he was having actual fun and jon also risked every thing to get the photo and brought it with him and martin to the safe house and kept it with them during the eyepocalypse it was in Jon’s front coat pocket in the end

This is a sad one after escaping the lonely when martin makes tea it can stay warm and comforting for very long because he's unintentionally lonely this does have a plus side because Jon can't make tea for anything so in the safe house martin teaches Jon how to make both their properly and Jon gets to pay martin back for all the times Martin made him tea

Jon is some form of neurodivergent ie either autism or adhd and when in a hyperfocus will sing/hum any song he hears and in this state is very impressionable so Tim will take advantage of this ie sing toxic by Britney Spears

Jon and Tim both love Monty Python and the two before the transfer to the archives would quote it to each other

Sasha and Tim are each others support system so if tim has a nightmare about Danny he will call her and if Sasha has a very bad day Tim will come over and just give her a shoulder to cry on, this stopped after Sasha got replaced because the not!them wouldn’t pick up the phone

The mechs were in fact Jonathan Sims, The Archivist’s university band, and were his found family

Jon wears skirts

Georgie is trad goth

Melanie is 5’1-5’2, Jon is a singular inch taller

Tim is tall wears Hawaiian shirts, heelles, and has dyed pink or blue hair

[themagnustournament]

Round Two Part Eight - Match 64

MAG 26 A Distortion vs. MAG 165 Revolutions

A Distortion

Revolutions

Voting ended onMay 4, 2023

And we come to the end of Round Two! In Round One, Revolutions earned itself 147 votes. Now, it’s up against A Distortion; lots of questions surrounding identity to think about in this match.

MAG 026 - A Distortion | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Statement of Sasha James, assistant archivist at the Magnus Institute, regarding a series of paranormal sightings.

MAG 165 - Revolutions | Spotify - Acast - YT | Wiki | Transcript

Ruminations on identity and the lack thereof. Audio recording by the Archivist, in situ.

[deny3verything]

hc that Somewhere Else, when everything is fine, martin buys a polaroid camera. and jon doesn’t comment on it. and they try to use it as much as possible without ever discussing why

it’s not that they think anything bad will happen, but it’s better safe than sorry, and martin does absolutely love making photo albums of all their pictures. that jon teases him for

[theyellowmistress]

the perfect product placement

[miralines]

The not!them replaces someone and quickly realizes it’s made a mistake in choosing who remembers the real person. They’re faceblind. They’re pretty sure that person used to look different but they’ve had weirder mix ups, and it’s not like they’re going to bring it up or anything. They shrug it off and continue their life assuming it’s just another brain thing.

[webtable]

blabbering about my graham-is-a-ghost au don't expect this to make any sense because it's been two hours and my brain is fried

> every single time the not!them becomes someone they leave behind a ghost. remnants of what the body used to be (polaroids, notebooks, and amy's memories are good examples) will stick around, along with a physical manifestation of the person they used to be. (personally, i think that these manifestations of people who ceased to ever be probably vanished during mag165 when jon killed not!sasha, and before that were a part of the carousel)

> to see and/or hear them you have to be, or be on the path to being, some sort of stranger avatar, which is why no one in the archives could see sasha

> every single ghost exists in a kind of pseudo-reality that leaves them caught between living and becoming nothing but a piece of the not!them

> ANYWAY what i'm basically saying is that leanne was the only person left (by the time he died) that graham had to haunt, and he was lucky to have anyone to haunt at all

> leanne can't actually see graham very well, and his voice is the primary thing that she'll experience because of their shared connection with the calliope. if she'd met the not!them or some other stranger-based avatar/entity with a focus on physical appearance + spent time working with them, she'd get a more solid grasp on what he looked like

> in contrast, graham doesn't want her to see him at all. the not!them stole his skin to walk around in it + i'm of the opinion that it uses its arms to climb inside someone and get rid of anything it deems "unnecessary." graham died in the middle of that process and looks pretty beaten up and bloody

> a lot of what leanne hears is noises that she's associated with him for a long time. the clicking of lighters, scribbling, the squeaks of someone pacing in a small circle, and ragged breathing muffled by a hand are the most common sounds. he doesn't have to be doing anything for them to show up. it's up for debate on whether or not she's hearing all this because her mind is trying to make up an excuse for his continued presence or if it's just a side effect of his haunting

> in many ways, without realizing it, graham is dragging leanne further into the stranger. his presence is just another reason for her to continue looking into it

> graham can't do most classic ghost things. no floating, no phasing through walls, no moving objects with his mind. he exists but can't interact with the world around him unless the objects are things he's attached to in some way (old homes, objects that he's used before--doesn't matter whether or not they're his specifically, etc). unless he wants to walk everywhere or get on a bus, he's screwed.

> bodily necessities and functions are a hit-or-miss. his nervous system still works pretty well, but he doesn't consistently experience anything to do with the autonomic system outside of sympathetic + parasympathetic reactions. it's unclear if those happen because they're things he was conscious of before death or if the nerves and neurons required for doing that sort of thing are just damaged and trying to repair themselves to no avail

> likewise, it's hard to determine whether he gets hungry/thirsty anymore or not. the acts of eating and drinking don't really do anything for him, but he'll feel uncomfortable if he doesn't try. this also applies to things like pain and the urge to sleep.

> when leanne moved to southeast asia, graham couldn't follow her there and was left to roam. something that was very good for her, but bad for him. he spent a lot of time between 2014 and the events of the unknowing going back and forth between libraries and used book stores for any sort of access to entertainment and familiarity. (used book stores have the added bonus of occasionally containing an animal)

> leanne comes back to england for the unknowing as a result of both her relation to nikolai and previous experience with the calliope. there were backup choices, BUT she'd only been pulled further into the grasp of the stranger since she left and really had nowhere else to turn to. graham is naturally drawn to the house of wax while the unknowing is being set up because he's supposed to be a piece of their puzzle

> i actually have a theory that the chaos and feelings surrounding the unknowing is very similar to having been taken by the not!them, down to the abrupt conclusion that is the death of the victim. from lines like "Do you even know which of these hands is yours?" + "Do you even know what a hand is?" and the instance of "I see you," plus the confusion of identity experienced by everyone inside the building can be argued as proof. trying to see it as general stranger stuff or something anglerfish specific doesn't work as well. <- going to write more about that someday i think

> also, the calliope is not in the center of the building. just from what we can hear on the tapes and infer from leanne's statement about it, it is a Very loud instrument. it's pretty reasonable to believe that leanne would be able to get away from the explosion without dying.

> in short, i think graham helps her through it as the ritual begins to break down. leanne might not be able to stop playing until the ritual ends, but it's possible he could break away (connection to the eye perhaps?). i also think that this is the first time since his death that graham experiences an actual body that leanne can see. would love it if the choir was a mix of skinned anglerfish victims and the not!them's ghosts of people forced to experience someone that so obviously isn't them live out their lives.

> unclear as to what might happen after that tbh

> i hope they've died by the time of mag200. i hope they've both died by the end of mag200.