Scottish Artist Dorothy Carleton Smyth (1880-1933) Design Featuring King Arthur For A Collection Of Poetry

You and I have begun to blur. We're conjoined. Curious if either of us can survive separation.

Skelanimals :3

real

Okay the Akito homophobic jokes are kinda funny sometimes but genuinely we can all hopefully agree that in their relationship toya is the one who’s like dying of internalised homophobia

an underrated detail in pride and prejudice is that elizabeth bennett was home alone on the day darcy proposed because she had a headache. can you imagine. this was in the pre-painkillers era. you're at home with a headache and then this asshole walks into the room and tells you he loves you and wants to marry you even though he hates your whole family and you're beneath him. imagine having to deal with that while also having a headache. she doesn't even have ibuprofen

Osamu Watanabe

Imagine how much scarier zombie movies would be if the zombies smiled when they saw you because they were excited to finally eat. Imagine walking into a building to go and find shelter, scavenge, whatever, and you shine your flashlight into a room only to find several zombies idling there. Your light catches their eyes and they turn to look at you, their expressions desolate and empty. However, the moment they spot you, their open mouths turn to wide uncontrollable smiles and their eyes disappear into slits. They almost look friendly. Maybe even some of them manage to laugh instead of groan. How would you feel after months and months of losing people you know to smiling hoards? How would you feel after every encounter with a joyful zombie leaves you shaken and tired and fearful? How would you feel after hearing the sounds of laughter mixed in with the sounds of screaming and flesh being torn? After everything, what would your brain's wiring process do to you when you see a friend smile? Would you hate smiling? Would you feel rage? Would your brain devolve back into a time where showing one's teeth always meant a threat? What would you do if the joy of the human race was now only kept by the dead

"the magnus protocol had a whole ARG beforehand? what?"

yes! it did!

"oh so I need to have participated in this whole big thing to actually understand the podcast?"

not at all! from the official post-mortem put out by RQ, "while the ARG was not something that was necessary to participate in to understand the magnus protocol, it was designed to contain a wealth of background story and context that would enrich any player's listening experience."

"a wealth of background context that would enrich my listening experience 👀👀👀 how can I learn about this?"

SO glad you asked. sadly, many of the materials made for the arg have been taken down since the game ended 😔 (ex., the official OIAR, magnus institute, and bonzoland websites. though @strangehauntsuk is still up!), so we're a bit low on primary sources, but in terms of learning about what happened:

for a starting point, I would really recommend this video by @pinkelotjeart

it's super accessible, it was made in real time as the game progressed and follows the solving and revelation of clues as they happened, it hits all the major points of the mystery and moments of community insanity while eliding some of the nitty gritty puzzle grinding, 10/10 would recommend.

here's the official summary put out by RQ, and I'd recommend reading through this once you've already gotten a basic handle on the flow of the story and the basic connections between major clues and events. it's got some fun behind-the-scenes info and lays out the thought process behind the puzzles in simple terms

here's the full masterdoc of all puzzles and resolutions put together in the statement remains discord server. masterdoc my absolute BELOVED, masterdoc my bethrothed, masterdoc my soul mate. I'd recommend this as a second port of call after the above video as it either contains all details about the puzzles or links to other expanded docs that do.

here's the narrative summary doc that lays out all the plot and lore discovered in three pages of plain prose. if you just want to get to the good bits as fast as you can and get blasted directly in the face by contextless lore bombs, this is the doc for you. if you don't want to start with the video, I'd say this is another good entry point.

once you've got the lay of the land, some of the game materials that I found particularly interesting include:

the in-universe east germany expat usenet forum, with all content translated into english. most of it is irrelevant space filler with occasional extremely sus lore, but I still found it fun to read through. love to soak in some fictional forum drama.

chdb.xlsx, the spreadsheet of the names of all the children the protocol 'verse magnus institute was studying/experimenting on. EDIT: here is a version of the sheet without any annotations and with all of the names in their original order, kudos to @theboombutton for catching that the commonly shared copy had the order swapped around.

klaus.xls, a (very corrupted) spreadsheet with what looks like the classifications of a bunch of old OIAR cases.

EDIT: have a few more saved materials from the game that I forgot to include.

an in-universe audio ad to apply to the OIAR that ran before archives episodes and kicked off the whole game.

an in-universe video ad to apply to the OIAR, this one is an official upload that's still up from the game itself. you can subscribe to the OIAR's official youtube channel today, if you so chose.

the robo-voicemail greeting from the OIAR's phone line.

once you start poking around in these documents, you'll find a bunch of links to others with further information, the materials I've included here just contain what I feel to be the most relevant details to getting a broad feel for the whole game. once again, huge shout out to the statement remains server, I was barely in there as the ARG was in progress and only ducked my head in every so often to find links like these. true mvps of the fandom.

ancient greek word of the day: κακοθερής (kakotherēs), unfitted to endure summer heat

Why communication through texting is often much easier and more enjoyable than talking for me as an autistic person:

1. I can actually take time to think on how to formulate a response while also not having to bother about eye contact and body language which can be very stressful

2. The :3 face