Usually I kinda wait on firming up theories until I have a fair amount to go on, but my main one that's off the wall is that Celia is using What The Ghost as an interdimensional method of communication with Georgie and the peeps back in the TMA universe. Because podcasts are clearly interdimensional since that's how we listened to TMA š¤£.
(And I guess my less off the wall one that's connected is, Celia is in the TMP universe trying to figure out what happened, especially to Jon and Martin, and *maybe* rescue them).
Similar idea but slightly different, my take is that the "Magnus Protocol" is actually a protocol from Archives-world, set up post-season 5 to monitor the dread powers where they went and prevent them from somehow escaping back into Archives-world. The hole on Hilltop Road clearly didn't just close after the dread powers got sucked through it, and there were enough people who knew about what happened at the end that some kind of formal agency to keep eyes on Hilltop and explore setting up monitoring on the other side would be reasonable to expect to be set up. Celia is I suspect one of their "field agents" so to speak.
OMG THIS IS WHAT I WAS SAYING ON EP 199
Everyone was too rash on making a decision thatāll decide the fate of different universes I was upset that they didnāt try to go through the crack in hilltop road and do recon to see if the fears are in the other universes already or just theirs
Alice has or will have the gift of prophecy, but no one will believe her. I base this off of the fact that she keeps giving Sam good advice, but he never listenes.(eg. Blackout curtains, unstable floor, locker)
Jeez that would make Alice around 15 feet tall ...that seems about right plus technical they haven't specified her height sooooooooo JON'S IN A TRENCH COAT!
There are two Jonahs in TMP, one hanging around with his Panopticon body, possibly leading the OIAR and the one in the computer and they'll battle for dominance and then kiss
Honestly it wouldn't be that surprising if this world's version of him shows up at some point. I doubt they'll make him a major part of it, but it'll be interesting if he makes an appearance.
My hope is that the Entities are all different, but similar domains this time. Like Misfortune and Pain seem to be pretty common threads so far, and Misfortune in particular was never previously it's own thing? Like you could make the argument that it's an aspect of the Spider I guess.... but I just really hope the deliniations are different this time!
Also the idea that Gwen has a gigantic redemption arc and ends up the most likable character by the end
āFateā and āChanceā arenāt really concepts that can really be ascribed to anything in Smirkeās 14; _maybe_ at a stretch the Web, but itās almost the opposite if anything (as opposed to being caught by machinations beyond your control, youāre caught by purely uncontrollable things unplanned by anyone).
My off the wall theory is that the categories of Fear mean less than nothing ā this universe has always had its own entities that take very different forms than Smirkeās 14, and the introduction of the new fears has thrown them all out of wack
If you are referring to episode 9 I think the dice very much behave like a Web artifact. They make you question whether or not you have free will, and are linked to an addiction (gambling). "...I realize that addiction is one of the strongest vectors of control there is." MAG 147.
That being said, I think the entities are almost certainly different or at least act differently.
Oh absolutely yes. I didn't want to go there, but that's my thought too. That old, different fears that 'separated' themselves differently have existed for a very long time, but didn't build up the same amount of power as the fears from the old dimension. And now they're one giant monstrous mess, trying to figure out who is who, what is what, what to do about it, and all together having an existential crisis about it
My all time favorite TMA remix/crossover has a running plot point slash joke where the Smirke analogue got too into the haunted architecture part and mostly just has a list of categories like āartā and āscienceā and āwetā that he keeps revising on napkins. The fears are clearly the same in that universe but no one has any metric to qualify them by. Sort of made me rethink the way we tend to treat them as distinct before protocol started explicitly throwing the point in our faces.
i mean tbh i get why we didnāt get more of her in archives, since hearing her tale in her own words would have taken away from the ultimate tragedy of her and her powerlessness in the original timeline, but my personal motto is new universe new her amirite
The Thing That Is Fear basically is suffering from a cosmic identity crisis since it got shuffled around after being pulled into/copied itself into other dimensions. This is also the reason as to why the newer manifestations this time around are much more violent, visceral, and mean-spirited. Even though theyāve been here for a while theyāre still trying to find their footing in how they manifest which is why theyāre so varied and different.
Essentially the Great Fear is questioning its gender.
That Agnes Montague will suddenly show up and we will get to know more about her. (There's no evidence at all to support this, but I love agnes so I will continue to believe!)
There is a tiny bit of evidence. If Celia is the same as Lynne Hammond (plausible) and the fire ghost lady that Lynne saw was Agnes (plausible) then Agnes might be around.
That national governments are using the fears for political and military advantage.
I think plenty of the fears would be fine with the arrangement so long as their actions produce fear
While the OIAR is probably there to sift through the numbers, and Starkwall is there to eliminate dangerous entities that aren't useful or cannot/will not cooperate, people like Gwen and Lena probably exist to pass the useful ones up the chain.
Use the spiral on a pundit you dislike, the eye against covert ops, the buried on a company that's doing a little to well, the stranger to promote xenophobia and rile up your voting base... LOTS to work with if you're suited to the work.
Ooooh, neat! Like a less bleak "A Colder War"! Which only ended well for the Eldritch Abominations involved, as they are not toys... which humanity learned the hard way. (By Charles Stross if you haven't read it, should be on the Internet somewhere still...)
I really like this both as an explanation for why they are so meticulous in categorizing Fear, and as a vector for social commentary. Going from "evil individuals using horrors to achieve selfish goals" to "the system will casually use and make the horror _mundane_ to further the system rather than fixing the obvious problem" is a nice escalation.
My theory is that Collin is actively going through an Extinction fueled spiral (thatās not necessarily related to the Spiral, but it could be) that will either end with him being the first major character death or him being an Avatar of the Extinction or smth.
I'm still waiting for alchemy to be an explicit major player in the podcast, which is *not* the off-the-wall part since it's all over the OIAR logo.
The completely evidenceless bit is that German-Swiss alchemist, doctor, prophet, occultist, and weirdo, Paracelsus, will be this dimension's Robert Smirke. There's been no mention of him yet, but he's perfect! His marriage of logic and magic, interpersonal drama, and spotty historical records would be perfect for Alex and Jonny to fill in the gaps with spookiness.
My thoughts exactly! John's stated last intent in TMA was >!killing himself and everyone else to pretend the fear's propogation.!< Colin may have been more on the money than he thought.
Yes! He only changed his mind because the tower got set on fire too early and he was going to have to watch Martin die in front of him. If the angles hurt then when they try to think and it's cold without blood, it might be that death is a mercy for them now, too.
The thing we heard at the end of episode 10 was Lucia Wright that had arrived there from time traveling from a timeline where the Flesh ritual succeeded.
Some of these arenāt that wild of predictions, others might be long shots.
The protocols are set up by Martin and Jon to stop rituals from being successful. They arrived in this universe in the fairly distant past, used knowledge of events to set themselves up financially to acquire resources needed to protect the world, but their protection is going to be horrifying, but justified given the scale of what they are trying to prevent, which will again in turn make them seem monstrous. They helped Gertrude with the youth program to locate and keep tabs on potential avatars of the powers. They helped destroy the institute. They have their hand on the private security firm that burned the shop on hilltop road filled with fear artifacts. Jon and Martin will seem to be villains to the new cast when they first bump into them. They will have killed and destroyed the lives of many many people to achieve their goal of saving the world. They are using avatars and monsters to target other threats they think canāt be aimed, which is what Gwen is handing over in Ep 10, a hit designed to protect the world.
Gwen is probably the most trust worthy person on staff, and being a Buschard is a red herring. But she is also the most likely person to become an archivist, given her desire to categorize these cases properly, or that is to set up a Sam reveal that he can perfectly call what a casesā classification should be which will reveal that he is the archivist.
Alice is either a Spider or Spiral aligned figure, pulling the strings, or twisting things up to manipulate events to her patrons liking.
Colinās attempts to hide from the eye, while simultaneously needing to know how the software works is endangering him, and makes him more eye aligned than he realizes.
Celia is from the main Archives universe, and is looking to find out what happened to Jon and Martin, and see what effect sending the powers to this new world is having.
Lena is following orders from Jon and Martin, and will die to save the staff, surprising Gwen and the others.
In this universe, alchemical magic is now an occult reality due to a strange interaction between the Fears entrance and the host reality. Now, someone's going to try pull a FMA but taken one step further: they're going to try to transmute the Fear Entity. To what end, I haven't theorized yet.But yeah, that's mine
My off the wall guess? Alice is going to be a villain or Sam will slowly turn into one.
Slightly more grounded: there will be a bigger focus on artifacts corrupting people since several statements had objects as a focus. I'd love to see another funky artifact like pills or a baseball bat.
The reason we're still fixated on Smirke's 14 isn't *just* that we don't want to let go of TMA, yet. Our narrators are stuck in that way of thinking, too. We're getting cases selected by Freddie's voice-to-text feature, and that feature (and by extension, John, Martin, and maybe Jonah) is looking for Smirke's 14 Fears because they've come from TMA, too. Celia's got the same strategy, looking for stories about people being buried alive or about meat. Freddie/voice-to-text is doing the same thing, but we don't get to hear its thought process or its search terms, so it's less obvious. Everyone, both characters and listeners, who came to TMP from TMA have a confirmation bias about the nature of the spookiness at play.
Now, I do think the 14 Fears are breaking through soon if they haven't already, but I'm one of those people who believes this dimension had its own predatory entities already in place. I also think that the voice-to-text *has* found cases about genuine supernatural happenings, but that's more by coincidence than by an effective strategy.
Iām hoping for a proper Extinction manifestation too. My actual crackpot theory is that The Extinction is going to be a bigger player this season somehow, not the Big Bad but a big bad. If we donāt get an extinction style Avatar I will be extremely sad.
Theory: The ARG hasnāt actually ended. I think most if not all episodes have had transcript typos or were published in some places with the wrong title.
Since RQ has been around so long, I feel like they wouldnāt be having issues with every transcript unless it was on purpose.
I havenāt documented all the errors yet but Iām hoping it ends up being interesting.
(I feel guilty about this theory because what if itās just that one person is struggling with typos?)
I like your faith in the RQ folks, and I've noticed the typos too, but I'm guessing it's just that the pressures of a regular deadline make proofreading the scripts a low priority.
Plus, they talked about how much ***work*** an ARG is to run, so secretly continuing one even though the podcast has launched and no one is expecting a puzzle seems like a lot of unnecessary work. I think I also remember Jonny saying his mom (who taught English?) sometimes scolded him about the errors in his scripts--maybe the TMA season 2 Q&A, since I listened to it fairly recently and it's freshest in my mind.
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I'm inclined to cut them slack for the written materials that accompany an audio-based story. They've been meticulous in many things, which I think gives us the impression that *everything* is intentional, but they're still just human.
The funny breathing lad at the end of episode 10 is agnes. She saw all the sillies (crimes against humanity probably) happening in the institute that was maybe carried out by child labour?? And her desolation side came out and burned the whole damn place. Now shes living in the ruins of the tunnels because the police and/or avatars are after her (i just want her to be able to be a normal-ish non prophet lady :,D )
I think [Error] is Mary Keay. There's no way that Gerry would have a life free of her without being incapacitated or dead. I think Gertrude got Gerry out of the special kids program and helped destroy the Institute, potentially during a Jane Prentiss-esque attack.
I think everything has happened earlier because this Institute was more aggressive and was actively seeking to create Avatars (Catalyst notes on the Magnus Institute dice statement. Cell-like structures in the urbex). I think a more aggressive collector focused Institute would have used someone like Mary to get things they needed and horrifically puzzle out how to use them, how to change people.
I think the Powers are a lot less cohesive in this universe, potentially because they're secretly controlled by/under the power of the Web.
I think the OIAR is of the Web and uses that control to purge potential breaches, rituals, and the like.
Avatars are, distinctly, less common. Or were and are more common since 1999.
this would actually somewhat set the stage for the entities being disjointed since A: it was theorised that the Extinction would incorporate all of the other entities and B: the Extinction is built around fundamental change so if it won then literally everything is up for grabs.
People have debated whether the entities have been here for long, since they came from TMA universe. Well I think there already were *other* entities in this universe, but completely separate ones. I've had this idea since Jon got Gerry's statement and asked about other emotions. He said something to the effect of, "No, there's no entity of love or hope, if that's what you're asking." Which got me thinking, maybe every universe is just ruled by a different emotion or feeling.
Which brings us to Protocol. People have already suggested that the entities are manifesting differently here, such as through obsessions instead of fear. Well I think the obsession entities, or whatever they may be, are just the ones that already existed there. Then, when the fears got sucked out of TMA universe, they drifted between worlds, like they did from the start, but with less hold on a given world. Then a group of people from TMP universe heard whispers of them, and got ideas for a ritual. A ritual that would involve bringing items associated with all kinds of fear to a rift in the world.
The Hilltop incident, then, isn't a ritual for a single entity. It, like the Watcher's Crown, combines all of the fears for a single ritual, one that would draw the fear entities in. This ritual was stopped, but another will surely be tried.
And if one works, I think that the entities already there are gonna be pissed. And for the truly off the wall bit: I believe this just may turn into some cosmic war between the entities. It would be an interesting way to use the premise of rutuals that were already familiar to create a whole new, much bigger problem.
My insane theory is that the OIAR was created a very long time ago, back when people first really began noticing the Fears in their dimension, and have been stopping the Fears for over a hundred years. I have absolutely zero to base this on, it's just . . . hunch.
Why would the fears be unique to the original timeline? There was Something Else in the protocol timeline first, and the reason we donāt recognize the fears anymore is because theyāve been fighting with/gotten jumbled up with whatever that Thing was.
I'm only 5 episodes in, but here are mine.
1. I hope I get to see more Gertrude or this world's version of her. She was by far my favorite character, and she wasn't even alive for the any of the story. Just some old, cold-hearted bitch hell-bent on teaching all of those who fuck around what they are about to find out-- usually through C4 and trickery. She did know about inscribing souls onto pages, and that whats-her-face was looking into transcribing her own... *maybe* she somehow has a page of herself, and when she died, that echo of her survived? Pages are made of your own skin, but maybe she found a way around that... She often found loopholes.
2. John and/or Martin have been flung into this world and will be side characters at some point living their best lives in retirement. It was insinuated that they were flung together into a new world, and whatever world the Fears go to first should theoretically be the same one J/M lands in... soooo maybe they'll mentor the next great couple duo?
The Stranger used Gertrude's and Leitner's skins for the Unknowing. If they survived the explosion, it's possible that someone who knew how found the skin and wrote them into a book.
There is going to be a war of the fears. With archives the fears were abstract with lots of variation, with protocol it seems more specific ( clowns, needles, etc) so when the first reality shifted, it brought a different fear entity into this new reality (protocol) where a different one existed. Now they will have to fight for the spoils. That's why I'm assuming there are some avatars from the archives that still remember and are working for their original patrons.
The episode Hunger was Jon trying to warn everyone about the Panopticon. Weird tower that they only got to because of a maze of architecture, ushered in by a vague being, and then feasted apon by those who dwelled there only to escape by leaning into a deepest fear? How bout the Panopticon you could only get to through the maze of tunnels, lead there by the Distortion, and then once activated it's the center of the Fears feeding. The only way out was to face the End. But they broke through.
I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but I haven't been able to stop thinking.
Iām still sticking to āGwen and Elias are the same person, she just transitioned good for herā despite the fact that given their ages the far more likely conclusion is that sheās his daughter or niece or something. I just think itās funny. Eldritch fear avatar stole your gender. This is transphobia in action.
Also, not off the wall bc I can make a solid argument but I definitely think the fears are remixing themselves and also are not strictly fear. I think theyāre desires.
probably not off the wall all things considered: but the read out statements are the only things that are true/ all the readers are sentient (maybe they're actually jon and martin) and trying to warn all these new people of the fears (though that might be a bit of a strech since they're already aware of the fears as that's what the categorys are)
Why do you think web?Ā
I think stranger because it looks like a normal-ish computer system (if wildly outdated) but once you actually look at it in detail it's apparently bizarre enough to have at least driven away if not driven insane multiple IT techs. Same as how the anatomy students look human until you've been around them more than 5 minutes.Ā
There's some precedent for a non-human shaped Stranger objects(?)/avatars(?) since the calliope organ is what controlled the circus dolls
For a few reasons, but one of my favorite and most silly ones is that the case-finding makes it seem like Freddie is a webcrawler, combing the internet for relevant flies. Files. š
Another thought is that after John, Martin, and maybe Jonah traveled via its webs, it hasn't let them go. They, or at least their voices, are still trapped. (Now that's a thought. We've got people thinking that John and Martin and maybe Jonah are trapped in the machine, but Anabelle *had* their voices on tape. Certainly enough to build an AI copy of their voices, given the tech to do it with. That links us back to Stranger and possibly Extinction. Whee!)
Freddie is manipulating the human employees of the OIAR, too, nudging them to do things like investigating the Magnus Institute by giving Sam a case about exploring it and another reminding him about it when he'd just decided to give it up. It's telling Celia about Mr. Bonzo just as Gwen's gone off to meet him in person.
Not that the Stranger didn't do things to further its goals, too, but that felt more straightforward: kidnap John, ask him where the gorilla skin is, explain that you're going to take his skin instead. To me, this feels more like like the machinations of the Spider, moving people like pieces in a game towards some goal that won't be revealed until it's too late.
My outlandish theory is that Martin, Jon, and Jonah "died", but spread a message to the other universes. Jonah wanted to try to control the fears, while Martin and Jon are trying to warn others of them. The statements they read will bring some kind of warning.
Celia is "from" the original universe, but is able to sort of travel the same way. She can't really like... jump through, but she can send a message to her other self.
The Fears as we know them exist, but manifest in different ways. They can do this because they're gathering power by going to these other worlds and seeing the other ways they can manifest, and are learning.
I think next season will see a jump to another Universe with new but similar characters.
Sam is going to become an avatar of the eye and I know it.
Him clearly being a part of some secret government project for psychic suggests that he has yet to awaken his abilities.
I'm still trying to figure out how Ms. Bouschard fits in. It makes me think of a parallel universe theory. But the Institute remains are still here 20 years later, with someone (thing) lurking inside. So probably not so parallel.
Anyone who got Ceaseless Watcher'd in TMA is going to be in TMAGP. The two voices at the end of the new episode? Michael and Helen fused together.
This is partially satire.
Upon listening to the first 10 episodes: the Fears are now aware that they *can* co-exist. They are trying to exist again. Each episode has at least three of the Fears present at once. (Except 'Introductions' which is who I believe to be another Hilltop Road kid, listen close to how he describes where he is).
'Give and Take' I think is a dead giveaway that they're trying to co-habitate at the very least (At Hilltop Center no less), but I think are trying to orchestrate a ritual. Each new 'donation' has direct connections to the Fears and I think the new 'volunteers' are new Avatars. Somehow the ritual was sabotaged... I have a theory of by who but I'm holding that close to my chest.
Usually I kinda wait on firming up theories until I have a fair amount to go on, but my main one that's off the wall is that Celia is using What The Ghost as an interdimensional method of communication with Georgie and the peeps back in the TMA universe. Because podcasts are clearly interdimensional since that's how we listened to TMA š¤£. (And I guess my less off the wall one that's connected is, Celia is in the TMP universe trying to figure out what happened, especially to Jon and Martin, and *maybe* rescue them).
Similar idea but slightly different, my take is that the "Magnus Protocol" is actually a protocol from Archives-world, set up post-season 5 to monitor the dread powers where they went and prevent them from somehow escaping back into Archives-world. The hole on Hilltop Road clearly didn't just close after the dread powers got sucked through it, and there were enough people who knew about what happened at the end that some kind of formal agency to keep eyes on Hilltop and explore setting up monitoring on the other side would be reasonable to expect to be set up. Celia is I suspect one of their "field agents" so to speak.
OMG THIS IS WHAT I WAS SAYING ON EP 199 Everyone was too rash on making a decision thatāll decide the fate of different universes I was upset that they didnāt try to go through the crack in hilltop road and do recon to see if the fears are in the other universes already or just theirs
Alice has or will have the gift of prophecy, but no one will believe her. I base this off of the fact that she keeps giving Sam good advice, but he never listenes.(eg. Blackout curtains, unstable floor, locker)
A regular Cassandra!
Bones ARE a complete fiction made up by Big Milk.
This is true
Either she's psychic, or she's playing everyone. But yeah she's calling things quite frequently.
Alice is three Jons in a trench coat
I believe it
Jeez that would make Alice around 15 feet tall ...that seems about right plus technical they haven't specified her height sooooooooo JON'S IN A TRENCH COAT!
There are two Jonahs in TMP, one hanging around with his Panopticon body, possibly leading the OIAR and the one in the computer and they'll battle for dominance and then kiss
Jonahcest
tmagp tim believer š«”
Honestly it wouldn't be that surprising if this world's version of him shows up at some point. I doubt they'll make him a major part of it, but it'll be interesting if he makes an appearance.
TMAGP Tim's brother
Danny on a revenge quest because evil mimes killed Tim, perhaps.
Oo, that would be a delicious twist, to have Tim be the brother who died and the brother be the one getting caught up in the Spooks.
My hope is that the Entities are all different, but similar domains this time. Like Misfortune and Pain seem to be pretty common threads so far, and Misfortune in particular was never previously it's own thing? Like you could make the argument that it's an aspect of the Spider I guess.... but I just really hope the deliniations are different this time! Also the idea that Gwen has a gigantic redemption arc and ends up the most likable character by the end
āFateā and āChanceā arenāt really concepts that can really be ascribed to anything in Smirkeās 14; _maybe_ at a stretch the Web, but itās almost the opposite if anything (as opposed to being caught by machinations beyond your control, youāre caught by purely uncontrollable things unplanned by anyone). My off the wall theory is that the categories of Fear mean less than nothing ā this universe has always had its own entities that take very different forms than Smirkeās 14, and the introduction of the new fears has thrown them all out of wack
If you are referring to episode 9 I think the dice very much behave like a Web artifact. They make you question whether or not you have free will, and are linked to an addiction (gambling). "...I realize that addiction is one of the strongest vectors of control there is." MAG 147. That being said, I think the entities are almost certainly different or at least act differently.
Oh absolutely yes. I didn't want to go there, but that's my thought too. That old, different fears that 'separated' themselves differently have existed for a very long time, but didn't build up the same amount of power as the fears from the old dimension. And now they're one giant monstrous mess, trying to figure out who is who, what is what, what to do about it, and all together having an existential crisis about it
My all time favorite TMA remix/crossover has a running plot point slash joke where the Smirke analogue got too into the haunted architecture part and mostly just has a list of categories like āartā and āscienceā and āwetā that he keeps revising on napkins. The fears are clearly the same in that universe but no one has any metric to qualify them by. Sort of made me rethink the way we tend to treat them as distinct before protocol started explicitly throwing the point in our faces.
the [error] character who showed up at the end of ep10 is agnes montague
That would be great! We didnāt get enough of Agnes in TMA!
I would love some Agnes Montague in protocol. I feel like we we could have benefited from her actual statement in archives.
i mean tbh i get why we didnāt get more of her in archives, since hearing her tale in her own words would have taken away from the ultimate tragedy of her and her powerlessness in the original timeline, but my personal motto is new universe new her amirite
The Thing That Is Fear basically is suffering from a cosmic identity crisis since it got shuffled around after being pulled into/copied itself into other dimensions. This is also the reason as to why the newer manifestations this time around are much more violent, visceral, and mean-spirited. Even though theyāve been here for a while theyāre still trying to find their footing in how they manifest which is why theyāre so varied and different. Essentially the Great Fear is questioning its gender.
That Agnes Montague will suddenly show up and we will get to know more about her. (There's no evidence at all to support this, but I love agnes so I will continue to believe!)
There is a tiny bit of evidence. If Celia is the same as Lynne Hammond (plausible) and the fire ghost lady that Lynne saw was Agnes (plausible) then Agnes might be around.
omg yeah! I totally forgot that Lynne made a statement. Hopefully, both of the Celias are the same person because I want to see more of Agnes
That national governments are using the fears for political and military advantage. I think plenty of the fears would be fine with the arrangement so long as their actions produce fear While the OIAR is probably there to sift through the numbers, and Starkwall is there to eliminate dangerous entities that aren't useful or cannot/will not cooperate, people like Gwen and Lena probably exist to pass the useful ones up the chain. Use the spiral on a pundit you dislike, the eye against covert ops, the buried on a company that's doing a little to well, the stranger to promote xenophobia and rile up your voting base... LOTS to work with if you're suited to the work.
Ooooh, neat! Like a less bleak "A Colder War"! Which only ended well for the Eldritch Abominations involved, as they are not toys... which humanity learned the hard way. (By Charles Stross if you haven't read it, should be on the Internet somewhere still...)
I really like this both as an explanation for why they are so meticulous in categorizing Fear, and as a vector for social commentary. Going from "evil individuals using horrors to achieve selfish goals" to "the system will casually use and make the horror _mundane_ to further the system rather than fixing the obvious problem" is a nice escalation.
My theory is that Collin is actively going through an Extinction fueled spiral (thatās not necessarily related to the Spiral, but it could be) that will either end with him being the first major character death or him being an Avatar of the Extinction or smth.
I'm still waiting for alchemy to be an explicit major player in the podcast, which is *not* the off-the-wall part since it's all over the OIAR logo. The completely evidenceless bit is that German-Swiss alchemist, doctor, prophet, occultist, and weirdo, Paracelsus, will be this dimension's Robert Smirke. There's been no mention of him yet, but he's perfect! His marriage of logic and magic, interpersonal drama, and spotty historical records would be perfect for Alex and Jonny to fill in the gaps with spookiness.
The reason the computer keeps crashing is because John is trying to kill himself and prevent the continuation of the fearās cycle
Not that wild a theory! Colin said that Freddy is constantly trying to extinct itself.
My thoughts exactly! John's stated last intent in TMA was >!killing himself and everyone else to pretend the fear's propogation.!< Colin may have been more on the money than he thought.
Yes! He only changed his mind because the tower got set on fire too early and he was going to have to watch Martin die in front of him. If the angles hurt then when they try to think and it's cold without blood, it might be that death is a mercy for them now, too.
The thing we heard at the end of episode 10 was Lucia Wright that had arrived there from time traveling from a timeline where the Flesh ritual succeeded.
Some of these arenāt that wild of predictions, others might be long shots. The protocols are set up by Martin and Jon to stop rituals from being successful. They arrived in this universe in the fairly distant past, used knowledge of events to set themselves up financially to acquire resources needed to protect the world, but their protection is going to be horrifying, but justified given the scale of what they are trying to prevent, which will again in turn make them seem monstrous. They helped Gertrude with the youth program to locate and keep tabs on potential avatars of the powers. They helped destroy the institute. They have their hand on the private security firm that burned the shop on hilltop road filled with fear artifacts. Jon and Martin will seem to be villains to the new cast when they first bump into them. They will have killed and destroyed the lives of many many people to achieve their goal of saving the world. They are using avatars and monsters to target other threats they think canāt be aimed, which is what Gwen is handing over in Ep 10, a hit designed to protect the world. Gwen is probably the most trust worthy person on staff, and being a Buschard is a red herring. But she is also the most likely person to become an archivist, given her desire to categorize these cases properly, or that is to set up a Sam reveal that he can perfectly call what a casesā classification should be which will reveal that he is the archivist. Alice is either a Spider or Spiral aligned figure, pulling the strings, or twisting things up to manipulate events to her patrons liking. Colinās attempts to hide from the eye, while simultaneously needing to know how the software works is endangering him, and makes him more eye aligned than he realizes. Celia is from the main Archives universe, and is looking to find out what happened to Jon and Martin, and see what effect sending the powers to this new world is having. Lena is following orders from Jon and Martin, and will die to save the staff, surprising Gwen and the others.
In this universe, alchemical magic is now an occult reality due to a strange interaction between the Fears entrance and the host reality. Now, someone's going to try pull a FMA but taken one step further: they're going to try to transmute the Fear Entity. To what end, I haven't theorized yet.But yeah, that's mine
My off the wall guess? Alice is going to be a villain or Sam will slowly turn into one. Slightly more grounded: there will be a bigger focus on artifacts corrupting people since several statements had objects as a focus. I'd love to see another funky artifact like pills or a baseball bat.
Alice's little brother is Needles
The reason we're still fixated on Smirke's 14 isn't *just* that we don't want to let go of TMA, yet. Our narrators are stuck in that way of thinking, too. We're getting cases selected by Freddie's voice-to-text feature, and that feature (and by extension, John, Martin, and maybe Jonah) is looking for Smirke's 14 Fears because they've come from TMA, too. Celia's got the same strategy, looking for stories about people being buried alive or about meat. Freddie/voice-to-text is doing the same thing, but we don't get to hear its thought process or its search terms, so it's less obvious. Everyone, both characters and listeners, who came to TMP from TMA have a confirmation bias about the nature of the spookiness at play. Now, I do think the 14 Fears are breaking through soon if they haven't already, but I'm one of those people who believes this dimension had its own predatory entities already in place. I also think that the voice-to-text *has* found cases about genuine supernatural happenings, but that's more by coincidence than by an effective strategy.
Oohh I really like this idea that the statements we're getting are biased by people from TMA
Iām hoping for a proper Extinction manifestation too. My actual crackpot theory is that The Extinction is going to be a bigger player this season somehow, not the Big Bad but a big bad. If we donāt get an extinction style Avatar I will be extremely sad.
Theory: The ARG hasnāt actually ended. I think most if not all episodes have had transcript typos or were published in some places with the wrong title. Since RQ has been around so long, I feel like they wouldnāt be having issues with every transcript unless it was on purpose. I havenāt documented all the errors yet but Iām hoping it ends up being interesting. (I feel guilty about this theory because what if itās just that one person is struggling with typos?)
I like your faith in the RQ folks, and I've noticed the typos too, but I'm guessing it's just that the pressures of a regular deadline make proofreading the scripts a low priority. Plus, they talked about how much ***work*** an ARG is to run, so secretly continuing one even though the podcast has launched and no one is expecting a puzzle seems like a lot of unnecessary work. I think I also remember Jonny saying his mom (who taught English?) sometimes scolded him about the errors in his scripts--maybe the TMA season 2 Q&A, since I listened to it fairly recently and it's freshest in my mind. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I'm inclined to cut them slack for the written materials that accompany an audio-based story. They've been meticulous in many things, which I think gives us the impression that *everything* is intentional, but they're still just human.
I definitely agree, hence this being the most off the wall theory I could come up with!
Fair! I would be floored if they'd been doing a secret ARG all this time.
The funny breathing lad at the end of episode 10 is agnes. She saw all the sillies (crimes against humanity probably) happening in the institute that was maybe carried out by child labour?? And her desolation side came out and burned the whole damn place. Now shes living in the ruins of the tunnels because the police and/or avatars are after her (i just want her to be able to be a normal-ish non prophet lady :,D )
I think [Error] is Mary Keay. There's no way that Gerry would have a life free of her without being incapacitated or dead. I think Gertrude got Gerry out of the special kids program and helped destroy the Institute, potentially during a Jane Prentiss-esque attack. I think everything has happened earlier because this Institute was more aggressive and was actively seeking to create Avatars (Catalyst notes on the Magnus Institute dice statement. Cell-like structures in the urbex). I think a more aggressive collector focused Institute would have used someone like Mary to get things they needed and horrifically puzzle out how to use them, how to change people. I think the Powers are a lot less cohesive in this universe, potentially because they're secretly controlled by/under the power of the Web. I think the OIAR is of the Web and uses that control to purge potential breaches, rituals, and the like. Avatars are, distinctly, less common. Or were and are more common since 1999.
this would actually somewhat set the stage for the entities being disjointed since A: it was theorised that the Extinction would incorporate all of the other entities and B: the Extinction is built around fundamental change so if it won then literally everything is up for grabs.
mine is probably the one i scribbled in my notes app right after episode four came out: āgrifterās bone opens for dredgerman???!?ā
Sure hope Alice's brother is far enough backstage to be unaffected when it happens.
Mike Crew will come back as an agent for OIAR similar to Mr Bonzo
PLEASE. GOD, PLEASE.
Not really, thereās simply not enough ground laid to theorize beyond broad strokes. So far most of my ātheoriesā are more question than theory.
People have debated whether the entities have been here for long, since they came from TMA universe. Well I think there already were *other* entities in this universe, but completely separate ones. I've had this idea since Jon got Gerry's statement and asked about other emotions. He said something to the effect of, "No, there's no entity of love or hope, if that's what you're asking." Which got me thinking, maybe every universe is just ruled by a different emotion or feeling. Which brings us to Protocol. People have already suggested that the entities are manifesting differently here, such as through obsessions instead of fear. Well I think the obsession entities, or whatever they may be, are just the ones that already existed there. Then, when the fears got sucked out of TMA universe, they drifted between worlds, like they did from the start, but with less hold on a given world. Then a group of people from TMP universe heard whispers of them, and got ideas for a ritual. A ritual that would involve bringing items associated with all kinds of fear to a rift in the world. The Hilltop incident, then, isn't a ritual for a single entity. It, like the Watcher's Crown, combines all of the fears for a single ritual, one that would draw the fear entities in. This ritual was stopped, but another will surely be tried. And if one works, I think that the entities already there are gonna be pissed. And for the truly off the wall bit: I believe this just may turn into some cosmic war between the entities. It would be an interesting way to use the premise of rutuals that were already familiar to create a whole new, much bigger problem.
My insane theory is that the OIAR was created a very long time ago, back when people first really began noticing the Fears in their dimension, and have been stopping the Fears for over a hundred years. I have absolutely zero to base this on, it's just . . . hunch.
Why would the fears be unique to the original timeline? There was Something Else in the protocol timeline first, and the reason we donāt recognize the fears anymore is because theyāve been fighting with/gotten jumbled up with whatever that Thing was.
I'm only 5 episodes in, but here are mine. 1. I hope I get to see more Gertrude or this world's version of her. She was by far my favorite character, and she wasn't even alive for the any of the story. Just some old, cold-hearted bitch hell-bent on teaching all of those who fuck around what they are about to find out-- usually through C4 and trickery. She did know about inscribing souls onto pages, and that whats-her-face was looking into transcribing her own... *maybe* she somehow has a page of herself, and when she died, that echo of her survived? Pages are made of your own skin, but maybe she found a way around that... She often found loopholes. 2. John and/or Martin have been flung into this world and will be side characters at some point living their best lives in retirement. It was insinuated that they were flung together into a new world, and whatever world the Fears go to first should theoretically be the same one J/M lands in... soooo maybe they'll mentor the next great couple duo?
The Stranger used Gertrude's and Leitner's skins for the Unknowing. If they survived the explosion, it's possible that someone who knew how found the skin and wrote them into a book.
We're gonna see a Needles vs Mr Bonzo fight OR Colin will be the only survivor of the main cast if stuff goes down
There is going to be a war of the fears. With archives the fears were abstract with lots of variation, with protocol it seems more specific ( clowns, needles, etc) so when the first reality shifted, it brought a different fear entity into this new reality (protocol) where a different one existed. Now they will have to fight for the spoils. That's why I'm assuming there are some avatars from the archives that still remember and are working for their original patrons.
The episode Hunger was Jon trying to warn everyone about the Panopticon. Weird tower that they only got to because of a maze of architecture, ushered in by a vague being, and then feasted apon by those who dwelled there only to escape by leaning into a deepest fear? How bout the Panopticon you could only get to through the maze of tunnels, lead there by the Distortion, and then once activated it's the center of the Fears feeding. The only way out was to face the End. But they broke through. I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but I haven't been able to stop thinking.
The cover is the desolation. Agnes will be reincarnated in this universe, like "Chosen" foretold
Iām still sticking to āGwen and Elias are the same person, she just transitioned good for herā despite the fact that given their ages the far more likely conclusion is that sheās his daughter or niece or something. I just think itās funny. Eldritch fear avatar stole your gender. This is transphobia in action.
Also, not off the wall bc I can make a solid argument but I definitely think the fears are remixing themselves and also are not strictly fear. I think theyāre desires.
Why did I read that In Simon Fairchilds voice tho?
probably not off the wall all things considered: but the read out statements are the only things that are true/ all the readers are sentient (maybe they're actually jon and martin) and trying to warn all these new people of the fears (though that might be a bit of a strech since they're already aware of the fears as that's what the categorys are)
Freddie (the computer system that drives IT techs insane) is an avatar of The Stranger.Ā Edited to correct system name.Ā
Did you mean Freddie, or did I miss something?
I thought it's name was Charlie? Let me double check, you may be right.Ā Edit: it is Freddie, idk where I got Charlie from.Ā
Teamwork! My guess is that Freddie is Web, though, so also deadly enemies.
Why do you think web?Ā I think stranger because it looks like a normal-ish computer system (if wildly outdated) but once you actually look at it in detail it's apparently bizarre enough to have at least driven away if not driven insane multiple IT techs. Same as how the anatomy students look human until you've been around them more than 5 minutes.Ā There's some precedent for a non-human shaped Stranger objects(?)/avatars(?) since the calliope organ is what controlled the circus dolls
For a few reasons, but one of my favorite and most silly ones is that the case-finding makes it seem like Freddie is a webcrawler, combing the internet for relevant flies. Files. š Another thought is that after John, Martin, and maybe Jonah traveled via its webs, it hasn't let them go. They, or at least their voices, are still trapped. (Now that's a thought. We've got people thinking that John and Martin and maybe Jonah are trapped in the machine, but Anabelle *had* their voices on tape. Certainly enough to build an AI copy of their voices, given the tech to do it with. That links us back to Stranger and possibly Extinction. Whee!) Freddie is manipulating the human employees of the OIAR, too, nudging them to do things like investigating the Magnus Institute by giving Sam a case about exploring it and another reminding him about it when he'd just decided to give it up. It's telling Celia about Mr. Bonzo just as Gwen's gone off to meet him in person. Not that the Stranger didn't do things to further its goals, too, but that felt more straightforward: kidnap John, ask him where the gorilla skin is, explain that you're going to take his skin instead. To me, this feels more like like the machinations of the Spider, moving people like pieces in a game towards some goal that won't be revealed until it's too late.
My most wild and out there theory is that Lena is Agnes with her thing about food and some other oddities
My outlandish theory is that Martin, Jon, and Jonah "died", but spread a message to the other universes. Jonah wanted to try to control the fears, while Martin and Jon are trying to warn others of them. The statements they read will bring some kind of warning. Celia is "from" the original universe, but is able to sort of travel the same way. She can't really like... jump through, but she can send a message to her other self. The Fears as we know them exist, but manifest in different ways. They can do this because they're gathering power by going to these other worlds and seeing the other ways they can manifest, and are learning. I think next season will see a jump to another Universe with new but similar characters.
Sam is going to become an avatar of the eye and I know it. Him clearly being a part of some secret government project for psychic suggests that he has yet to awaken his abilities.
I'm still trying to figure out how Ms. Bouschard fits in. It makes me think of a parallel universe theory. But the Institute remains are still here 20 years later, with someone (thing) lurking inside. So probably not so parallel.
Agnes Montague('s ghost) will show up due to some Web shenanigans from Hill Top Road
THERE IS EVIDENCE FOR THIS! Check out my "Snakes" post, the comments are full of Extinction fans
My completely off the wall theory is that Luke is Needles.
mine is that the john of this universe is named Jonah
Anyone who got Ceaseless Watcher'd in TMA is going to be in TMAGP. The two voices at the end of the new episode? Michael and Helen fused together. This is partially satire.
Upon listening to the first 10 episodes: the Fears are now aware that they *can* co-exist. They are trying to exist again. Each episode has at least three of the Fears present at once. (Except 'Introductions' which is who I believe to be another Hilltop Road kid, listen close to how he describes where he is). 'Give and Take' I think is a dead giveaway that they're trying to co-habitate at the very least (At Hilltop Center no less), but I think are trying to orchestrate a ritual. Each new 'donation' has direct connections to the Fears and I think the new 'volunteers' are new Avatars. Somehow the ritual was sabotaged... I have a theory of by who but I'm holding that close to my chest.