kept forgetting to post this but here is the piece i did for the @tapesdidntcatchzine! it’s a little thing about touch. what the tapes didn’t catch is a tma zine about unrecorded lighthearted things that supposedly werent mentioned in the podcast :) you can download it for free here
[image description: a five paneled comic done in warm colors of sasha, tim, martin, and jon from the magnus archives. the first panel is a closeup from sasha’s back of her and tim hugging. the second panel is of martin looking up at tim as he is explaining something, his hand on his shoulder. the third panel is of sasha, asleep, resting her head on jon’s shoulder in front of some shelves. the fourth is of martin brushing his fingers against jon’s as he hands him a mug of tea with bookshelves behind them, and the fifth and final panel is of the whole archives crew all together, linking arms as they walk down a street.
sasha is a thin, dark-skinned black woman with long braids tied into a ponytail. tim is a chubby, brown-skinned filipino man with short, spiky dark hair. martin is a fat, light-skinned mixed white and filipino man with short dark hair, and jon is a thin, brown-skinned pakistani man with short dark hair streaked with gray. end id]
Jon: you’re talking about me in Morse code! Stop it!
Sasha: Yes, John, that’s what we’re doing. In our very limited free time, we took a class on a very outdated, very unnecessary form off communication just so we could talk about you in front of you.
Sasha, later to Martin: yeah that’s exactly what we did
So obviously there’s a lot of big subplots that are introduced in s1 that we weren’t aware of til later seasons, but these are just things that I feel anyone would easily look over. (Aka Jonny is a lowkey genius, and it took me forever to realize these)
First episode featured cigarettes, and now we’ve realized how important the concept of addiction is to Jon’s arc.
Julia and Trevor’s introductions were back to back, and now they’re Hunt buddies.
Sasha’s first appearance was a stranger episode, and, well, we know how that ended up. She also spent the time debating the difference in pronouncing something.
Melanie’s statement was in a presumably Slaughter attached building. She became Knife Gal™️ Also her being the only one to really know something was truly wrong with Sarah Baldwin vs. her being the only one to see Not!Sasha as different.
Feel free to add on! I’m sure there’s more, these are just the things I’ve noticed :)
I WAS TODAY YEARS OLD WHEN I REALIZED THE FIRST TIME SASHA APPEARS IS IN A STRANGER ALLIGNED EPISODE AND ALL THEY TALK ABOUT IS HOW “CALLIOPE” IS PRONOUNCED DIFFERENTLY. JONATHON SIMS YOU SNEAKY, FORESHADOWING BASTARD!! I HAVE LISTENED TO SEASON ONE MORE TIMES THAN I CAN COUNT AND I JUST NOTICED THIS??
[ID: A traditional drawing of a group chat conversation between Sasha James, Tim Stoker, and Martin Blackwood. Sasha is an Afro-Latina woman with dark hair, freckles, and cat-eye glasses, and Tim is a Latino Man with short hair, a goatee, and a cut in his brow.
The chat is labelled “Archive GC.” Sasha sends a picture of herself smiling taken from under her chin and says “can I borrow a pen”. Tim responds with similar picture of himself making a duck-face and says “yes. you’re literally right next to me”. Martin adds “I’m gonna say it. POV: you are jon”. To which Tim responds with “hahahaha” in all caps and Sasha replies with a keysmash and “Martin” in all caps. end ID]
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had a funny idea so turned it into a part 2 to this post
oh it was @jonsimsandcats day? perfect time to post my piece for @tapesdidntcatchzine! i had a lot of fun working on this & the zine as a whole so please check it out here if you haven’t already :)))))
[ID: TMA fanart of Jon Sims in his office, surrounded by cats. One curls up on his lap, and Jon has a soft smile as he pets another sitting on his desk. Two more cats play on the floor. Sasha, Tim, and Jon poke their heads through the door, stacked on top of each other. Tim and Sasha are smiling, and Martin looks flustered. End ID]
If Michael had a quarter for every time some other avatar killed an archivist he had a mark on he would have 2 quarters. Which isn’t much but its weird that it happend twice XD
Sasha telling Jon that Martin’s self preservations skills (re: Prentiss) aren’t great then goes on to tell a statement about how she followed a strange supernatural being to a graveyard no questions asked.
Next set of mini Magnus Archives sketches. Peter Lukas, Simon Fairchild, Gerry Keay, and a S1 Sasha. (I adjusted her a bit more from my last take of her and I’m liking this design a lot more. )
the more we learn about who sasha actually was as a person, the more im convinced an archivist!sasha au would still be a tragedy, just a very different tragedy. sasha who hacks into her coworkers’ private information apparently just for fun, just because she can? sasha who, by mag26, isn’t going to quit a job that’s risking her life not because she can’t leave but because she’s “too damn curious” to leave things be? sasha who leaves the safe room to rescue tim during the prentiss attack and takes michael up on his deal to save the rest of the archive crew? sasha who gets on rather easily with monsters (and maybe even sees that the best way to survive these statements is to become one)? sasha who, maybe, finds gertrude’s tape talking about sacrifices that must be made without hesitation and warning her of elias? sasha who looks around the archives, at friends she has decided are hers to protect, at a mystery that needs solving, at knowledge shes going to uncover whether the world wants her to or not, and thinks i can be that kind of monster.
sasha, who descends to inhumanity with her eyes wide open, because she believes that’s the sacrifice thatll keep people safe. and because she likes it.
never usually find myself having the attention span to draw like character lineups so i thought id give it a try! (i aimed for what everyone would look like approximately in s3)
‘Michael’ reappeared on a crispy morning of what the humans call winter, as snow had started to cover the small town London was; small indeed, as everything looked small to him.
He met Sasha again, on the same road she took every morning from her home to the institute and through the coffee shop they both know so well, though she didn’t seem to have noticed him. And although it should have filled 'Michael’’s heart, even though he should have relished in the knowledge she wouldn’t realize he was there until she visited his corridors, it was nothing of the sort. It was not the want of an incarnation nor the thrilling wait for a taste of her fear. No, it was something much different, and much too close to the unknown for 'Michael’ to truly appreciate it.
'Michael’ thinks he felt it already, one day, when he was but a mortal and had not yet become half of a god, in a time when the human named Michael fell for men and women alike across the Institute.
And so, 'Michael’ waited, bid his time until the crowd around them dispersed and only a handful of them crossed the street; and when the time came to unfold his trap, 'Michael’’s laugh echoed in the cold wind as a door opened on the ground right under Sasha’s foot, one who only grew larger as she stumbled on her own feet, leaned back and lost her balance in the same vain, desperate attempt not to fall to her own demise.
And right at this moment, 'Michael’ caught her.
It wasn’t difficult, really. He only had to stand behind her and extend his bony fingers, much too long for humans standards, as he was told, and hold her hand in his as gently as he could. As his other hand went down to secure her back, so long and thin across her skin, barely touching her; 'Michael’ thought, for a small instant, that he was human once again.
He saw – more than he felt, her nails digging into his arm, clutching to it like a lifebelt while her feet hanged mid-air above the dark trap he created, kicking into nothingness.
'Michael’ laughed in the crook of her ear, her braided hairs tickling his face.
“Well, well, little archivist,” He whispered, against the skin of her face. “Seems like I finally caught you, after all.”
And as surprising as it sounded, Sasha didn’t struggle. She kept her hands tight around his arms, even looked up at him both warry and shocked, but she didn’t leave him. More than fear, it was surprise who painted her face, and if he dared to hope, a bit of glee.
“Michael,” She called out. “It’s you.”
This day, it was the first time she used the name he was given.
And truthfully, it was the first time he loved it like his own.
‘Michael’ tried to trick the woman several times since. He replaced the door to her apartment, but she dialed a friend’s number, asking to sleep the night there. He replaced the door to the entrance of the archive but she called in sick, and every time she turned her heels and walked away, pretending not to see him.
It was fun. For a while at least; but quickly it only irritated him more, and more than the constant avoidance of his traps it was the way she behaved as if he didn’t exist there, in her world, as if his long limbs couldn’t reach out to her and cut her throat clean if she refused to play along his tricks, as if he wasn’t a being much higher than her.
So, one day, 'Michael’ decided to play dirty.
He pretended not to be in her sight, observing her from afar as she kept looking over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow at the nothingness by her side. For a long while, this was their life, and the little woman named Sasha lived in her own routine once again, only hesitating for a few moments before opening a door.
'Michael’ once caught a glimpse of a documented file on her phone, covered with hundreds of door pictures from the magnus institutes entrance to the door of her own bathroom, and 'Michael’ laughed, mentally taking notes to perfect his fakes if he wished to finally deceive her clever little head.
‘Michael’ doesn’t think of humans as beings. There is no comparison either, as they call him an 'entity’, a 'god’ or a 'monster’ and he is neither of them, but really he shouldn’t have expected much from them to begin with. They can’t grasp what he really is, and to be honest, he doesn’t really understand what humans are either. All he knows is that they’re fragile, and meet their end very quickly.
And yet there are these… archivists. These humans who belong to the 'Eye’, and this girl, who stops by the same coffee shop on her way to work, every morning.
At first, he thought she’d be an easy prey, a winning edge on the 'Eye’ if he sas to capture one of its own, but it was nothing like it. If anything, the girl ended up being more of a challenge than he expected her to be.
First of all, she wasn’t afraid of him. She was wary of him, uneasy maybe, but she didn’t tremble in fear as he appeared in front of her, all limbs and distorted smiles sprayed around. Instead, the little Sasha narrowed her eyes at him and crossed her arms over her chest, and even though 'Michael’ could see her knuckles whitening she kept staring at him, at his untouched coffee, at his long limb and the smile he learnt later on was as ill-fitting as it could have been.
’You’re not human.’ She told him. She was right, and 'Michael’ kept smiling, and she took it as an answer.
She didn’t flee afterward. She didn’t ask questions either, she simply stared at him; and when 'Michael’ tried to trick her into walking through one of his doors, replacing the coffee shop’s entrance, she just shook her head and told him to ’go first’.
some doodles of the pjao tma au,, some hcs under the cut
helen, 17 - she’s an iris kid. pretty normal and fun considering the whole demigod thing. at least until she gets,,, stuck in the labyrinth for a month and loses her mind. she’s from santa fe
georgie, 15 - thanatos kid! bc goth girl with canonical death imagery. she sees ghosts sometimes and can Tell when people are about to die. she’s from florida!
mike, 13 - a goblin zeus kid who zeus definitely tried to get rid of bc,, he’s not supposed to be having demigods these days. mike is the kid who gets heatstroke bc he won’t stop wearing a turtle neck in the summer. eventually defects to kronos bc damn wouldnt u?
jon, 15 - hades kid! he doesn’t vibe with the goth imagery, wants to be in the athena cabin, and would like to nap. he and mike are bros and both from england.
jude, 17 - hephaestus kid who burns and wasn’t able to control her burning until she was nearly 12. she’s been at camp since she was 7 and vibes more with destroying than creating. she’s kinda assigned mike as her and agnes’ son. she’s from vegas lmao
agnes, 17 - she’s an aphrodite kid but,,, not in a conventional sense. her powers manifest more in an inexplicable draw that’s been present for as long as she can remember. people want to adore her, they barely have a choice. jude didn’t at first. thats part of why she loves her. Agnes can also induce vulnerability, which makes her very, very dangerous.
sasha, 15 - an athena kid who’s been trying her damndest to prove herself since day one, even if no one will take her seriously. she’s not as nice to jon when he eventually gets a quest before her bc she’s a teenager and Angy.
tim, 15 - he’s an unclaimed posidon kid, so was danny. when tim got to camp, he was hurt pretty bad by a monster and begged danny to leave him and get up the hill. but danny tried to fight. by the time help arrived, it was too late, danny stoker was dying. tim, just before passing out, can remember seeing the silhouette of a man standing over his brother and turning him into a tree.
martin, 15 - he’s an aphrodite kid. everyone thought it was a joke at first, when he got claimed. he doesn’t look like the boys in his cabin and had spent five years sleeping in the hermes cabin. his arc is largely about how self love is a valid and important expression of love as well tbh,,
