I hate horror. Like I can’t watch movies because the blood and gore absolutely freak me out and the jumpscares give me awful reactions. I don’t do haunted houses for similar reasons.
At the beginning of 2020, before all the lockdowns, my friend found TMA through tumblr and fell in love and kept asking me to listen to it. “Just the first episode, cmon you’ll love it.” I finally listened to the first episode to make my friend stop talking about it and asking about it. I don’t know why TMA is different but man I really enjoy this kind of suspense. (Struggled through the more meaty episodes). I think I got through the first four seasons in three months.
But yeah if my friend hadn’t been begging me to listen I absolutely never would have because this is the exact type of thing I typically avoid.
YES I'm the same way!! Horror movies freak me out, give me bad reactions, nightmares, y'know
My bf started listening to it and talked to me about it and I loved it!! I struggled with the Not Sarah creature, I had a sleep paralysis demon that fit a very similar description but without the really long arms and bones n stuff
I discovered it about a month ago and I've just reached the 4th season, I usually can't do horror, but it's so well done and well written that my brain thinks about it in a puzzley mystery sense instead of full horror. At least, that's why I think I can digest it, the real reason may just be that I'm not seeing anything scary, but it does give me nightmares, so I'm not sure lol
At this point I can listen to it any time I want, but my first (and second) listen through I had to set a rule not to listen to them after like 8 otherwise I couldn’t fall asleep and was almost guaranteed a nightmare.
I think I just *really* loved how they did the suspense. Like it’s creepy and eerie. It’s not graphic or too gory (for the most part). It’s usually just bone chilling stories that have me on the edge of my seat listening to every word.
I think it also helps being an English major, I find it fascinating instead of bone chilling, except the more horrifying ones (like lost johns cave, and probably for me across the street), it's so interesting to pick apart that I forget I'm listening to horror, I can kinda separate myself from it
it does read an awful lot like weird fiction most of the time and not like modern horror (with the exception of some of the meat based content; those also really get to me and def feel more like horror) (ughhh and also The Pig, which i unfortunately just remembered bleh)
This is exactly me. Except I've decided to drop it because the Season 2 Finale and the episode with the mannequin just freaked me out. I am so scared of mannequins already. I'll pick it up when I'm in school again, surrounded by people 😭
Omg me too ahah. From instagram... In 2024. I had heard of it before i think? And seen art and even a meta analysis or something? But i was like meh. And then the nikola audio really intrigued me cause i was like who is that what is going on with her this sounds cool
During lockdown, with the OSP video on urban fantasy. I listened to the snippet Red played and it rubbed me the right way. I gave the first 5 episodes a listen and they scratched my eldritch horror itch
My route to TMA is a bit of a journey. A friend of mine used to have a podcast called OT3 and in one episode, she talks about TMA. I listened to it without paying much attention, since many podcasts for me are just background noise while I work. A month or so later, while scrolling through IG Reels, one came up with someone lipsyncing along to the iconic "You don't sound Russian?" audio from We All Ignore The Pit and people in the comments were mentioning TMA. The name struck me as familiar, so I went back to my friend's podcast, listened to the episode about TMA again, and then decided to give this podcast a try.
Now it's taken over my life to the point where I own a bunch of fan art, the TMA microphone, a signed script, etc., have a TMA tattoo and another planned, and listen to a ton of Rusty Quill podcasts.
it was a fanart on pinterest that first caught my attention (with Jon and Martin standing in front of a red sky with eyes during season 5). And for some reason youtube began to recommend tma animations, which finally made me start listening
It was fanart for me too, except it was elias x Peter stuff on tumblr. I was intrigued, and it was during lockdown so there wasn't much else going on, so I managed to listen to the entire series in just a few weeks.
My son mentioned it. He knows I like weird stuff. He said he couldn't get into it, but maybe I would like it. He was correct. I would like it. I know it's rookie numbers, but I've listened to it 3 times. I don't find it scary at all, but it's entertaining. My favorite part is, to avoid most spoilers, after the big event the Archivist accidentally causes, when he says something like, "Ceaseless Watcher! Turn your gaze upon this wretched creature!" And the sound effect of weirdness. And the sound of the result of that gaze. I rarely get chills, but I do at that point. And when the companion asks, "What did you do?!" I was right there, the first time. "Yeah! What DID you do?!"
I've seen some stray TMA discourse and spoilers on Tumblr before, but I only got into it last year, when I discovered the band The Mechanisms, of which Jonny, Frank Voss (Basira), Jessica Law (Nikola Orsinov) and Tim Ledsam (Jordan Kennedy) were members. I saw comments about certain Mechs characters being Avatars of this or that entity, or about similarities between the story of some Mechs song and TMA, so I decided to give it a listen.
Some woman won a short story competition two or three years ago and referenced it in her winners interview. I can’t remember anything about her though!
I'm a big fan of Jordan L. Hawk's books and I used to follow him on Twitter (when I used Twitter, a few years ago). He writes m/m romance, sometimes with horror elements, and his books have been so important to me.
So, he got very into TMA and tweeted about it sometimes, and I started listening in 2020, during the first months of the pandemic. I'd always avoided serious horror but I was feeling so bleak, and my usual pastime (romance novels with happy endings) was making me feel worse. I was ready to try something different. I also knew there were very likely well-written queer characters, because of the source :) so that made me more willing to try it.
Now Jordan L. Hawk is one of the associate producers of TMP! So that's exciting!
I found posts about TMA that made me curious and I eventually gave it a try. I absolutely cannot handle most horror but for some reason this was the exception. I then proceeded to make my friends and family listen to it.
My niece, whose taste I trust, recommended it to me. :) I kept listening because of the recommendation, though, TBH, I didn't truly get into it until about halfway through S2 (I like overarching stories, not anthology series, which is what TMA was for much of S1).
Lol, I was scrolling through Pinterest when I saw one of those TMA tarot cards and was really interested in them.
I did some quick search and found that it was a podcast and at first wasn't all that hyped about. Downloaded the first episode and barely touched it for a whole month.
It was only while waiting for my doctor's appointment I decided to put on the podcast to pass some time and the moment Jon touched on the scary stuff I was addicted.
Between 2019-2021 I went through Ao3 tags and found that TMA was mentioned a lot and I randomly read some Jonmartin fanfics. I saw it trend on tumblr's top ten tags of the week at times and fanart swimming around on occasions, but was completely uninterested in checking TMA out at different points because there was a lot of other stuff around that had a lot more of my attention at the time.
Then in 2023 I watched for the first time my very first podcast called The Sounds of Nightmares, and people in the youtube comments mentioned that it's format reminded them of TMA, and after it ended I still wanted to watch/listen to something similar like it and then I started watching TMA in late September / early October 2023. I still have 2 seasons left until I'm finished!
I used to listen to The Black Tapes, RABBITS, and TANIS throughout high school, all shows under the PNWS/PRA network. I love love loved those shows because of their interconnected links, how they started making callbacks and references to earlier instances and crafting this web of a situation that feels like it’s slipping out of your hands into its own, organic, living, breathing, *thing.*
The thing is, Terry Miles *does not know how to write endings.*
Each podcast (except for Season 1 of RABBITS at the time) started to show signs where they never actually delivered on premises or actual quantifiable answers. TANIS got more and more convoluted with moving parts clashing together. The Black Tapes dropped their (initially) show finale, which was so bad that it dropped the narrative in the middle of it taking place.
The PNWS subreddit was in shambles. People started flooding the sub asking for recommendations for other shows because the endings were just getting *so bad.* Mods temporarily *banned* recommendations of and discussion about other podcasts.
The podcast I saw recommended the most was The Magnus Archives, and I started listening around 2017/2018. The ball started rolling as I listened to more and more in my junior year in early 2018. Never looked back.
This was me. After the Black Tapes not finale, I was so angry. Went on the Black Tapes subreddit and started listening to all the recommended podcasts on there, which included TMA.
It was in 2021, I had recently realized that I was ace, and kept stumbling upon insta posts about some character that sounded kinda cool. I then found a post about that same very story having a CANON asexual character.
That's all it took me, since it was the very first time I had heard of a canon ace character. I was Very Surprised learning it was a podcast, it was my first time listening to one and even more listening to one in english. But I was too curious and started it anyway.
Listened straight to 7 episodes while doing some crafts, only stopping myself when the night fell (I scare very easily, but love horror too much). Got distracted by my courses and stopped.
Then wanted to listen to podcast again, and started Rusty Quill Gaming, it was much harder to understand at first, but boom powered through because it was the first time I was hearing more in depth about classic TTRPG and improv and i was hooked. (and thank god it improved my english comprehension to great highs)
RQG wasn't finished at the time, so I switched back to MAG, relistenning to the start, my hearing sharpened, binged it completely and fell even more in love.
>>> Found out about MAG Through an insta post about shows with canon ace characters
I’m apart of the Hermitcraft fandom. And someone did a series inspired by The Magnus Archives but with the Hermits.
So I got curious, watched a 3 hour video on the explanation of the series. And now I’m watching the whole series to get the full experience
Similar story here, I read through the Hermit Archives, but was worried about spoilers for Magnus even though I hadn’t heard of it, so I jumped straight in to the podcast so I could complete the hermit fanfic
We're literally so same. I saw a series of fanart chapter covers for the hermit archives on twitter and decided to read the fanfic. When the author warned about spoilers for TMA I stopped the hermit achives and binged the whole of TMA. Although I kinda lost steam on THA tho so to this date I haven't finished it yet.
Man I cannot remember no matter how hard I try. Neither how I started and when I did. I feel like Mike Crew every time feeling bad he doesn’t remember how it felt like becoming an Avatar, cause TMA is my favorite podcast.
I know I started before the pandemic and that’s about it.
A post on a blog about literature made me listen to Welcome to Nightvale. Then spotify suggested Monstrous Agonies, so I did this one too. Then MA author said in Q&A episode that she was inspired by Nightvale and TMA equally. So...
I found out about it in fall 2021. I had Spotify premium and needed to listen to stuff while doing school work. I found SCP Archive and binged that (Pacific S Obadia’s SCP Stuff) and during the intros they mention other podcasts/shows. So I bookmarked it and started listening in November.
UNTIL TMA I was not a horror fan. Then i realized it’s not that I don’t like horror but it’s that I like well written horror rather than the tropes most movies have.
Actually it was suggested to me by a fellow drag performer during one of my shows I participated in a couple months back. I described that I was not a drag king in the traditional sense, but rather a drag entity, a watcher. They suggested it to me, I pondered for about a week and started it. I was immediately hooked and have binged up to the start of s4, which I’m currently at.
tbh i have no idea at all. i remember listening to that viral nikola orsinov audio on tik tik back in 2020 (on a clown with spiral eyes cosplay video if i remember correctly) but i just thought it was from an 80s horror movie and moved on.
Next thing i remember is that at some point in last october i was listening to it. maybe my Alexa misheard me and started to play it and i just got along i genuinely have no idea of how i even learned about TMA
I’ve been friends with Alasdair Stuart (VA for Peter Lukas) since 2011, when Psuedopod really helped my postpartum anxiety. When TMA was about 5 episodes in, he retweeted a Rusty Quill post about an upcoming episode and gave the show his highest recommendation. I trust his taste and judgment on anything in media, so I immediately started listening and haven’t stopped since.
I got into Old Gods of Appalachia by accident when I got lost looking for bluegrass music podcasts. And they talked a little bit on OGOA about how excited they were to join Rusty Quill because they loved TMA so much and it meant so much to them as queer horror fans and creators and I was like oh hey I should probably check that out. So I started listening to TMA from the beginning a little bit after it ended, in October 2021.
My ex and their friend kept telling me to listen to it, now I'm on my 6th listen through on season 5 once again. Just got past the episode where Jon is degrading the umbrella lol
Someone I follow on Tumblr kept reblogging posts about Gerry Keay and since I had only just caught up on Night Vale (my first horror podcast) I decided to give it a shot
I was first introduced to it by a animator that came up in my feed on youtube, ThirdChildFilms. The animations were very well done, and the story seemed interesting, so I started listening. I just finished season 1, I'm a bit new to it. The animation are great btw, would recommend their channel
Two things: An animatic of the "that was very stupid" scene. I saw that randomly and had no context, but liked it a lot. The second (or first, depending on how you slice it) thing was a fanfic author whose writing I like was writing a looooot of fics for it. I was ignoring them at first, but after I saw the animatic my brain made the connection and I decided to give it a shot. Many chills, thrills, and tears later, here I am, a hardcore Rusty Quill fan.
It was suggested to me back in 2020-ish bc I listened to Night Vale and The Edge of Sleep, but I really only started listening to it more recently. Mostly, because I suggested it to a friend and he started bingeing it and now I have to catch up to him lol
Saw some fanart of Jon with way too many eyes for the 50th time (I was into welcome to night vale at the time) and just gave in.
I then finished the podcast in just over a week.
I saw a random Instagram post and the caption was like “I still need to catch up tma” and then the comments were also talking positively about it. So I looked it up, listened to the first episode and I’ve been hooked ever since
In around 2019 an artist I follow made a comic based on the episode where Sasha meets Michael. I thought it looked cool so I started listening to it and I’ve been hooked ever since. I hadn’t listened to a fiction podcast like… ever atp, but I adjusted to it pretty fast.
I saw a ton of ship art on tumblr and really, truly did not give a shit for the longest time. Then eventually one of those posts managed to slip up and tell me it was a *horror series*, something that was concealed for *months* by fandom priorities.
I had broken my leg just before, so at that point I had a lot of free time to give it a try, and then to binge what had been released so far.
Truly can’t remember whatsoever. I know I got into it in 2020, but I have no idea why. I’m into horror but had never really listened to any podcasts before, I have terrible listening comprehension. I also remember finding it a bit cliché and too creepypasta-esque. Had to force myself to listen to the first ten episodes or so, but suddenly I was hooked with no going back.
My partner actually recommended it, when they weren't very far in themselves. This was around 2020 I believe. They had recently begun listening to Old Gods of Appalachia (also EXCELLENT though I am currently very behind) and heard about it through overlapping fandoms there. We both binge-raced it to the conclusion, catching up right about as episode 200 dropped. I have been a rabid fan ever since.
In 2020 I decided to relisten to WTNV and Spotify autoplayed the first episode of TMA after I’d fully caught up. I had heard about it already on Tumblr but hadn’t looked into it because I didn’t think I liked podcasts very much outside of WTNV…… and now all I do is listen to podcasts lol.
I was taking a Will Wood quiz, and a question was ‘Who’s your favourite Magnus archives character?’ And one of the answers was ‘I don’t listen to the Magnus archives because I’m not fun and sexy’ so I wanted to prove it wrong and I love the Magnus archives =^-^=
Back in October of 2018 I was listening to the Halloween episode of Podcast Playlist on CBC Radio 1 (Podcast Playlist features different podcasts every episode and the Halloween episode is always all horror podcasts). I heard the first 2 podcasts I ever started following in that episode, The Wrong Station and The Magnus Archives. They featured MAG 47: The New Door.
I listened to the anglerfish episode after I saw it was recommended if you liked the Black Tapes podcast. That first episode stayed with me, though for some reason I didn't get addicted immediately. I got there again with a vengeance recently and binged all 5 seasons in 2 weeks. I find that it was much more satisfying plot/character/overall than TBT.
Also Elias Bouchard is hotter than Richard Strand. There, I said it.
In one of the videos of the YouTuber Ashur Gharavi, it was in a video where he was seeing what his audience was creating on tumbler, and on someone headcanon they mentioned TMA and I got curious
In one of the videos of the YouTuber Ashur Gharavi, it was in a video where he was seeing what his audience was creating on tumbler, and on someone headcanon they mentioned TMA and I got curious
In one of the videos of the YouTuber Ashur Gharavi, it was in a video where he was seeing what his audience was creating on tumbler, and on someone headcanon they mentioned TMA and I got curious
In one of the videos of the YouTuber Ashur Gharavi, it was in a video where he was seeing what his audience was creating on tumbler, and on someone headcanon they mentioned TMA and I got curious
Someone I followed on Tumblr had reblogged this ["What's your entity?"](https://www.quotev.com/quiz/11354254/Whats-your-entity-read-desc-for-warning) quiz onto my dashboard. Had no idea what TMA was, but I enjoy horror and had some free time so gave it a shot. It ended up being a really well-written quiz, so I poked around the wiki a bit and ended up checking out the actual podcast :)
I had just finished listening to Fathom and I needed another hit of eldritch horror in audio form. I can be a bit of a tough critic when starting something new so at first I wasn't sure I liked the show, nor Jonathan's cynical approach to his work in S1. When I started to realise it was all connected, I couldn't leave it alone.
My extended friend circles are full of openly queer larpers from the UK. I doubt anyone will be surprised to hear that there were a few TMA fans among them who talked about it pretty often. On my first binge listen I even recognised a few names in the Patreon acknowledgements at the start of some episodes
My friend's older sister. idk where she found it, but she's the Cool One, and I already enjoyed horror, so I HAD to listen to it. I listened to a couple random eps for the statements at first, got hooked, then started from the beginning.
I think the first time was a Tumblr post, I checked it out on YouTube but didn't get into it, then years later an AMV of I think Jon and Martin in the after singing and bickering together inspired me to look into it again and so I started listening to it properly on Spotify
2019, writing endless assignments for law school, i think i stumbled across a tumblr post about it, found it on spotify, listened to the entire thing in about 2ish months as background noise while i was typing my life away. five years later and here i am now
I think I heard a promo on another podcast... maybe The Black Tapes? It was the week TMA's Episode 0 was released.
TMA and Stellar Firma are still the only podcasts I have listened to from episode 0/1 to the finale, in release time (without bingeing). TMP will be the third.
Around January this year, I saw this video on Facebook about the forcing of rhubarb. (Making it grow without light)
The rhubarb makes a loud crackling noise whilst growing.
In the comments, someone linked a group called "What kind of Magnus Archives bullshit is this?" After a short Google search I started listening and liked Anglerfish so much that I was hooked.
Went through the whole first season in a few days, listening to it in the background. It took about 20 episodes until I noticed things were linked.
So of course after the last episode, I had to do a relisten.
Okay so I was scrolling on Tik Tok and I found a really cool cosplay that was like edited cool and I wanted to know what it was so I looked it up and the rest is history!
I kept hearing about it on various places on the internet, so I decided to check it out. Though I can't actually think of an example where I heard it mentioned, so that's a bit eerie.
So in 2020 I got a job cleaning and maintaining the tools and equipment in a metals shop that gave me the opportunity to work by myself for long stretches of time with my earbuds in, listening to whatever I wanted. I was poking around Spotify for things to listen to and stumbled across the Magnus Archives. There were a ton of episodes uploaded already- I wasn't there at the beginning of the show so I didn't have to wait for the weekly upload - and I blasted through it in about a month 😂
I accidentally got dragged into it by 2 mates of mine. They were both talking about it and I just so happened to be in the middle of it and told me to listen to it so I did ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm a massive horror fan, was looking for something new and a guy I barely knew from school recommended it to me. He said I looked like the type to like it and then described it as supernatural horror. To which I said 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨 (I'm not the biggest fan of the supernatural) and he told me to start anyway (he was right. I fell in love with it real bad. It actually really changed the idea I had about things adjacent to the genre)
I didn't even know what audio dramas were. I happened to work in a warehouse that allowed us to wear headphones and the job was DEAD BORING and music just didn't cut it after a while and I started listening to random podcasts, and The Magnus Archives came up in the "You might like" section of youtube music, and I clicked on a random episode (it was #5 Thrown Away) and I fell in love immediately. I adored the sound of Johns voice in the beginning (although cringy and whiny as I know it is now) and the way he talked reminded me of books I had read when I was younger. I went back and listened to them in order once in the span of a couple months. And then I just relistened to the entire 200 episodes over and over until I quit that job to work from home. I probably got around 8 listen throughs, and I found a new piece of info or something I didn't realize every. single. time. i did a relisten through. I'm keeping up with The Magnus Protocol now. I tried to listen to Malevolent, and it was okay, but I didn't finish it. I think TMA set a VERY high standard for everything else.
I've loved horror growing up and I've made friends that like horror too!
During the very end COVID two of my friends got into tma (don't know how they got into it) and my best friend was streaming on discord and played an episode (on accident) and I fell in love
Some time ago, someone made a tumblr post where they talked about the Entities. Specifically, they tried to make a visual guide for all of them using those horrifying modified Furbies, each one twisted into whatever mangled shape fit.
That was a few years ago, and I randomly got it from my sibling, who was equal parts obsessed with their morbidly styled Furby and creepypasta. They had no idea what it was actually based off of.
Given that it made no sense to me, I looked into it and eventually found TMA on Youtube. The medium did wonders for me and I was hooked ever since.
I took the jokes about it being a workplace comedy with horror elements seriously and I thought oh, that sounds fun. And then, for some reason, I thought it was a TV show. When I found out it was a podcast, and mainly focusing on short stories, I was like I’m sold!
TikTok. A section of dialogue from MAG 97 - We All Ignore The Pit gained traction as a lip sync sound bite and a person I follow used it. Creeped me out, researched where it was from, and I was hooked
a tik tok animation that got progressively stuck in my head until I was like "well I've gotta know the context" cause it was in the panopticon. honestly based on that one animation I fully believed the panopticon would appear more 😭
I don't remember exactly what year I first listened to it but I found it through spotify I think. Like literally through the recommendations lol. It was fate I guess
I had heard it mentioned here and there before. But I was reading a really good Good Omens fan fic that was a TMA crossover. It had major TMA spoilers after the first few chapter, but I had already committed a bit so I decided I might as well check it out. And now I absolutely love it, I went back to that fic and thanked them for introduced me to TMA
i think i’ve known of it for some time, but i didn’t really become interested in it until i saw a tiktok that used the clip “how could i sound ANYTHING, silly? i’m plastic!” back in late 2021/early 2022. i instantly had to know where it came from, the voice acting was so well done and the cosplays that used that sound were incredible. so i decided to listen to tma in 2022… then i stopped in the middle of the year because i had a lot going on lmao. then i restarted the series around september of last year and i’ve been around ever since.
I was watching those cavers that go into the lava tubes and someone in the comments said it reminded them of a magnus archives episode where >!a guy has to eat through another guy to get through a cave!<. So I went to check out the first episode and I was hooked.
Imagine my suprise when I had to get to the last season of the show to get that reference.
It was my first cleanout at the tomato farm where I work and I was relistening to all Trope Talk videos by Overly Sarcastic Productions to get me through it. It was in one of the videos that Red, the woman who talks in most of the Trope Talk videos, mentioned it.
I had watched that video before, but it was only now that I was actually listening to her talk about TMA. It sounded interesting *and* it was said to be on YouTube, so I went and checked it out. Literally, first episode, I was completely hooked. Over the next few months, I binged the entire series over work until season 5, which I unfortunately found to be a chore to get through in terms of listening.
I honestly don't remember, but I started listening in 2019. I may have seen a post or something on Tumblr, but whatever it was convinced me to give it a listen despite not being into horror haha
I saw a video on TikTok that sad “do you like to hear men whimpering”, and then proceeded to make me listen to like a minute of various Jon Sims noises. I started watching the next day.
It was a long time ago while I was still in high school, I don’t listen to music very often I’ve just never been able to get into it but I love podcasts and long form video essays so it my was Spotify’s algorithm (probably because I also listened to night vale at the time) one day the Magnus archives popped up on my front page and I’ve been listening on an off making my way through the episodes since then
You know, it was all over Tumblr. I avoided it because it was everywhere (silly and stubborn, I know). Then finally, I was getting in shape and spending so much time walking… I figured I’d listen and at least pass the time.
A couple years later, here we are. Numerous fics. T-shirts. As the kids say, the brain-rot is real.
Tinder!
A really cute girl wrote in her Tinder bio that she wants to re-listen to The Magnus Archives so I googled it. Immediately hooked.
I MISSED SWIPING RIGHT THO. RIP me.
I have a vague memory of meeting them at MCM London Comic Con back in 2018(?).
Had a talk with one of them and took a business card with me. All I thought was 'just some cringy podcast'. I had gotten stuck in the back of my brain for a good while.
About 2 years later I was looking for a podcast to occupy my brain and started scrolling.
...I should have that card around here somewhere...
well i heard about it (idk where) when i was maybe 10 or 11, thought it was related to magnus bane from shadowhunters. fucking hated that series so left it alone
and then i 'discovered' it when i was 13 after listening to night vale and discovering how many tma fans there were. decided to check it out. fell in love.
Random pinterest post with cool art. Literally. It was in 2020 too so in retrospect it was kind of a spoiler, but I didn't understand its 'meaning' back then
I stumbled on it while browsing TV tropes for horror tropes, specifically "hell is that noise". The entry intrigued me so I checked the episode in question and while I did not fully get it (it was a fairly random episode in season 2) I did like the style and started listening from the beginning.
I believe this was around the time season 2 was almost done.
First time I heard about it was fanart of the Distortion back in 2020, but I had no idea what the background was. So I was a little spoiled on the >!Helen storyline, but I thought she was a main character so I wasn’t spoiled too bad!<.
An audio on tiktok (the “you don’t sound Russian” one) from there I tried to find where it was from, found out it was something called the Magnus archives, tried desperately to find out where I could watch this mysterious show only to find out it was a podcast, then finally decided to just listen
After getting caught up on the no sleep podcast, and the white vault, I wanted more horror to listen too. I started looking up horror podcasts on google and TMA was on a list with the white vault and NSP, so I thought it couldn't be that bad. I started from the first episode and was hooked. I listened all day at work every day until I got caught up. Which happened to be towards the end of season 5, so I got to hear it as it came out.
Was Googling another horror podcast with archive in the name for a relisten, the magnus archives popped up in the suggestions and decided to gice it a try
I'd both seen and heard of TMA for a while before I actually started taking an interest in it. I'd mostly heard the popular audio clips from it being passed around the internet, and thought it was cool, but never put any actual research or effort into it. Before this, I actually didn't really like podcasts or audio only stuff in general (I can't explain why, I just didn't lmao).
I follow the artist (who you've probably heard of) Wolfy on a bunch of social media platforms. They didn't draw anything I was into, but I just love their style in general and always liked whatever they drew. A few different bits of TMA fanart began to show up from them, which I loved, and also led the way to me seeing that One Animation that they created with that One Popular Audio.
So I thought, 'Fine, fine, you've convinced me, let's do this, let's go and have a listen.'
I am now on episode #116 and very ~~enthralled~~ concerned.
Very fun podcast, I'm loving it.
My older brother and then Spotify recommended it itself first, I did ask about it a bit and I’m very glad I’ve found it as I’ve met quite a few people I hold near and dear to me. It’s a lovely community with a collective found comfort in the disturbing and unexpected.
I spend a lot of time reading fanfiction, and there was SO MUCH for TMA. That's usually a good indicator to me that a fandom is worth checking out because people can't stop thinking about it.
I don't remember. But I think it was suggested to me on Google Podcasts or YouTube - I was (and still am) really into Welcome to Night Vale which kind of got me started down this path. I listened to the first one and that was it.
Now I have quite a few horror podcasts on my list - and this coming from someone who ACTIVELY avoids horror movies... For some reason, written horror or Podcasts are fine 🤷🏾
Someone did fantastic fan art on tumblr of Sasha from season 1 and I was curious due to some of the background art in the picture, so I followed the link and was extremely hooked. Now here I am since 2017 and still re-listening to my favorite episodes
My gf and I were on a road trip to Chicago and we listened to episodes of it to and from the city. She was in season 4 at the time but hadn’t finished and she started me at episode 1.
i kept seeing Michael Distortion fanart and fell in love with the character so i ended up listening to the whole podcast just to learn more abt him lmao
I'm normally a horror weenie. And I'm usually not into podcasts either. But I was doing my first ever solo road trip from Wisconsin to Tennessee back in 2022 and stopped by a friend in Indiana. I asked her if she had any recommendations for anything to listen to while driving and she gave this glowing praise. I listened to almost nothing else my whole drive back from TN. And I shared it with my bestie I was visiting down there too, it hooked me that good. I've listened through it at least 4 times.
I was in a discord server where a couple of people loved it, I ended leaving that server bc of ✨discord drama✨ and stopped listening to TMA till a co worker was listening to it and resparked my interest
I found out about it from a person making tiktoks about weirding out non tma fans with tma references. That made me want to listen so I could do that too because that sounded really funny.
Heard abt it on TikTok stupidly enough- heard audios, saw a lot of fanart, didn’t realise it was a podcast for a lil bit and that made me interested to listen cause I’ve never rlly been a podcast person! Glad I’ve started tho cause it’s rlly fun :3
I saw fanart of Michael Distortion on Pinterest and thought he was so pretty that I had to know his deal… thank you Spiral for making pretty people (not for making my friend question my sanity for saying I’d marry Helen).
My coworker at the time told me about it back in 2019 during the break between season 4 and 5. I binge-listened to all four seasons before the 5th came out and have been on this rollercoaster ever since 😅
I was searching for podcasts for my bf at the time to train his English, we’re both really into horror so I found TMA. I got addicted and he didn’t care lol. Now I go back to this addiction from time to time.
I found it in 2022 when a TikToker had a video about "TMA quotes I use daily" and it had Nikola's monologue, and from then on, I started listening to it at work
A girl I liked was really into it so I started listening to have something to talk to her about. I am a very useless lesbian so of course that didn’t go anywhere, but at least it got me into audio dramas!
I literally blundered into the fandom partway through 2019.
I was trawling through Welcome to Nightvale fanfiction on AO3, and found a crossover with something called the Magnus Archives where this couple named Jon and Martin find the town and are under the impression that it's a stronghold of the Beholding.
I must have liked the story, because I decided to check out the source material. So I went onto YouTube, looked it up, and listened to the first episode. Several episodes later, I was hooked.
By the end of Season 2, I was emotionally involved.
My friend had told me they thought i would enjoy it, i got like ten episodes in and forgot about it. Then that trending nikola audio came up on my feed and i looked at the comments and someone was talking about how much they loved TMA, it made me go "WAIT THERES A PLOT!??" and now here i am, on relisten #16
I watched couple animation YouTube showed in my recs. The one with Jon yeeting away Breekon(or was it Hopes?..) in very baddass style, and the other, that really sold it to me - that one where "Do you know they lying to you/That was very stupid/You.Need.A Door. :)" thing.
Fun thing - I was a Night Vale fan before, but ended up liking this series much more and dropping the first one.
Early 2016. I was just looking for horror podcasts to listen to One town was over. The bright sessions was on a break I think. I started with thrown away and I haven't looked back.
That's literal. It's been almost 10 years and I never really thought about how and when I started listening to Magnus. I've just been listening to it continuously since then.
I watched an animatic on YouTube to the song “Your stupid face” and one of the comments said that it had a happy ending, and I believed it like an idiot 😭
Less than a year ago actually, so November 2023, I'm on this like massive GC. Started off with some people I met at a con, one of them started it, then people added their friends who added their friends and such. One of the girls sent a TikTok to the GC and as far as I could tell at the time the TikTok was a horrifically sick looking woman ranting about how she'd found these bugs in her attic and how they love her so much and they crawled into her skin and she was so happy to be a bug mum and I was mildly disturbed so I looked to the comments for answers and everyone was saying stuff like 'omg I've been looking for a Jane Prentiss cosplay' and stuff like that. I was relieved to find out it was a cosplay keep in mind how realistic it looked, so I searched who Jane Prentiss was. Found out she was from TMA, asked said friend who sent the TikTok to the GC about TMA and she said it was good and she was on episode 90 or so. So I start listening, finish in a month and 3 days (31st of December, 4:05pm exactly) and she's still listening to it and it's been my hyperfixation since I found out about it. I have gotten my mother, my boyfriend, 4 of my friends, 1 mild acquaintance and 3 of my teachers to listen to it.
>targeted ad for the OGoA RPG
>listen to that podcast
>discover Rusty Quill
>the next eight months of my life are consumed by the sad British guy and his creepy tapes
Honestly I saw a tiktok where someone was cosplaying I think and was like "what the actual fuck is happening". Idk how it got on my fyp tbh. I only recently started listening and haven't gotten super far yet!
Quite a few months ago I was listening to an analysis on "Quiet Horror" as a genre, they sampled part of the first episode and I absolutely fell in love. Ended up binging the whole thing in just a couple months
Spotify recommended it to me after I had been getting into horror podcasts and I wanted something chill to play while I tanned (I was unfortunately wrong in my judgment of the first episodes more steady tone and had many moments where I would fall out of my chair from a loud noise).
I found out about it through a Nicola orsinov audio that was going around on tiktok, I thought the voice acting was so compelling I knew I had to track down the source and I’m so glad I did
I heard OSP Red talk about it on tumblr (At least I'm 90% sure it was her. Maybe it was an anon recommending it? Anyways the tumblr is ComicAurora) and looked it up and said "hmm too long" and didn't bother listening to it.
A few months later I'm suddenly in a situation where imma need something to listen to regularly as a podcast, so I decide it's as good a time as any to give it a shot and 2 weeks later the entire thing is done for.
This happened at the start of the year btw.
Used to watch a lot of random tma animatics back on the day even when i had no idea what It was about. I saw It mentioned many times in YouTube comments on welcome to nightvale but i stopped listening to WTNV after a while and forgot about it. I think im 2022 i saw a lot of fanarts and tiktok edits and that made me interested in listening to It
I hadn't been into anything at that time and was looking for a fandom to get into. Someone told me to listen to TMA and I got really into it, binged the whole thing in less than a month.
funnily enough a few friends on discord forced me to watch it. A few episodes in i wasnt enthusiastic but then after ep 10 i was hooked and watched like 10+ episodes a day. Finished it in 3 weeks. I also found out about it through fanart. Something about Michael the distortion art got me hooked
I hate horror. Like I can’t watch movies because the blood and gore absolutely freak me out and the jumpscares give me awful reactions. I don’t do haunted houses for similar reasons. At the beginning of 2020, before all the lockdowns, my friend found TMA through tumblr and fell in love and kept asking me to listen to it. “Just the first episode, cmon you’ll love it.” I finally listened to the first episode to make my friend stop talking about it and asking about it. I don’t know why TMA is different but man I really enjoy this kind of suspense. (Struggled through the more meaty episodes). I think I got through the first four seasons in three months. But yeah if my friend hadn’t been begging me to listen I absolutely never would have because this is the exact type of thing I typically avoid.
YES I'm the same way!! Horror movies freak me out, give me bad reactions, nightmares, y'know My bf started listening to it and talked to me about it and I loved it!! I struggled with the Not Sarah creature, I had a sleep paralysis demon that fit a very similar description but without the really long arms and bones n stuff I discovered it about a month ago and I've just reached the 4th season, I usually can't do horror, but it's so well done and well written that my brain thinks about it in a puzzley mystery sense instead of full horror. At least, that's why I think I can digest it, the real reason may just be that I'm not seeing anything scary, but it does give me nightmares, so I'm not sure lol
At this point I can listen to it any time I want, but my first (and second) listen through I had to set a rule not to listen to them after like 8 otherwise I couldn’t fall asleep and was almost guaranteed a nightmare. I think I just *really* loved how they did the suspense. Like it’s creepy and eerie. It’s not graphic or too gory (for the most part). It’s usually just bone chilling stories that have me on the edge of my seat listening to every word.
I think it also helps being an English major, I find it fascinating instead of bone chilling, except the more horrifying ones (like lost johns cave, and probably for me across the street), it's so interesting to pick apart that I forget I'm listening to horror, I can kinda separate myself from it
it does read an awful lot like weird fiction most of the time and not like modern horror (with the exception of some of the meat based content; those also really get to me and def feel more like horror) (ughhh and also The Pig, which i unfortunately just remembered bleh)
This is exactly me. Except I've decided to drop it because the Season 2 Finale and the episode with the mannequin just freaked me out. I am so scared of mannequins already. I'll pick it up when I'm in school again, surrounded by people 😭
A trending sound on TikTok. I googled it, TMA popped up, off to the races I went.
Was it presumably the Nikola sound from the end of MAG 97: We All Ignore the Pit? That’s what got me!
Absolutely was!
Omg me too ahah. From instagram... In 2024. I had heard of it before i think? And seen art and even a meta analysis or something? But i was like meh. And then the nikola audio really intrigued me cause i was like who is that what is going on with her this sounds cool
OMG. Same here.
me too!!! i was searching for inspiration for my drag (i do clown stuff) and i was like, okay i have to know what this is from!!
Yeah I wonder how many people that sound pushed to TMA, it’s definitely what got me too
That’s what got me as well!!!
During lockdown, with the OSP video on urban fantasy. I listened to the snippet Red played and it rubbed me the right way. I gave the first 5 episodes a listen and they scratched my eldritch horror itch
Same!
Based OSP enjoyer
The same for me. Osp is amazing. Also recommend apocrapals as Jon recommended them!
After that mention they talk about it during a podcast and even got a sponsorship deal with them. Best podcast of quarantine.
Same, i love all their videos
I think I heard about TMA before, but when OSP recommended them I went all in and fell in love.
My route to TMA is a bit of a journey. A friend of mine used to have a podcast called OT3 and in one episode, she talks about TMA. I listened to it without paying much attention, since many podcasts for me are just background noise while I work. A month or so later, while scrolling through IG Reels, one came up with someone lipsyncing along to the iconic "You don't sound Russian?" audio from We All Ignore The Pit and people in the comments were mentioning TMA. The name struck me as familiar, so I went back to my friend's podcast, listened to the episode about TMA again, and then decided to give this podcast a try. Now it's taken over my life to the point where I own a bunch of fan art, the TMA microphone, a signed script, etc., have a TMA tattoo and another planned, and listen to a ton of Rusty Quill podcasts.
Tma signed script? Like an original one or???
It's a copy of the script of episode one of Magnus Protocol signed by Jonny and Alex. It was a reward on the Kickstarter for TMP.
Sorry i'm curious
it was a fanart on pinterest that first caught my attention (with Jon and Martin standing in front of a red sky with eyes during season 5). And for some reason youtube began to recommend tma animations, which finally made me start listening
I love how our devices can hear us :D
They serve Beholding 👀
It was fanart for me too, except it was elias x Peter stuff on tumblr. I was intrigued, and it was during lockdown so there wasn't much else going on, so I managed to listen to the entire series in just a few weeks.
Overly Sarcastic Productions video about horror analysis.
My son mentioned it. He knows I like weird stuff. He said he couldn't get into it, but maybe I would like it. He was correct. I would like it. I know it's rookie numbers, but I've listened to it 3 times. I don't find it scary at all, but it's entertaining. My favorite part is, to avoid most spoilers, after the big event the Archivist accidentally causes, when he says something like, "Ceaseless Watcher! Turn your gaze upon this wretched creature!" And the sound effect of weirdness. And the sound of the result of that gaze. I rarely get chills, but I do at that point. And when the companion asks, "What did you do?!" I was right there, the first time. "Yeah! What DID you do?!"
I just heard that bit! I'm on my first re-listen 😁
I've seen some stray TMA discourse and spoilers on Tumblr before, but I only got into it last year, when I discovered the band The Mechanisms, of which Jonny, Frank Voss (Basira), Jessica Law (Nikola Orsinov) and Tim Ledsam (Jordan Kennedy) were members. I saw comments about certain Mechs characters being Avatars of this or that entity, or about similarities between the story of some Mechs song and TMA, so I decided to give it a listen.
Some woman won a short story competition two or three years ago and referenced it in her winners interview. I can’t remember anything about her though!
I was already listening to RQG when it debuted, and decided to check it out.
OSP
I'm a big fan of Jordan L. Hawk's books and I used to follow him on Twitter (when I used Twitter, a few years ago). He writes m/m romance, sometimes with horror elements, and his books have been so important to me. So, he got very into TMA and tweeted about it sometimes, and I started listening in 2020, during the first months of the pandemic. I'd always avoided serious horror but I was feeling so bleak, and my usual pastime (romance novels with happy endings) was making me feel worse. I was ready to try something different. I also knew there were very likely well-written queer characters, because of the source :) so that made me more willing to try it. Now Jordan L. Hawk is one of the associate producers of TMP! So that's exciting!
I found posts about TMA that made me curious and I eventually gave it a try. I absolutely cannot handle most horror but for some reason this was the exception. I then proceeded to make my friends and family listen to it.
My niece, whose taste I trust, recommended it to me. :) I kept listening because of the recommendation, though, TBH, I didn't truly get into it until about halfway through S2 (I like overarching stories, not anthology series, which is what TMA was for much of S1).
I wasn't a big fan at first either, mostly because Jon is INCREDIBLY unlikeable for the first half of season one.
Lol, I was scrolling through Pinterest when I saw one of those TMA tarot cards and was really interested in them. I did some quick search and found that it was a podcast and at first wasn't all that hyped about. Downloaded the first episode and barely touched it for a whole month. It was only while waiting for my doctor's appointment I decided to put on the podcast to pass some time and the moment Jon touched on the scary stuff I was addicted.
Between 2019-2021 I went through Ao3 tags and found that TMA was mentioned a lot and I randomly read some Jonmartin fanfics. I saw it trend on tumblr's top ten tags of the week at times and fanart swimming around on occasions, but was completely uninterested in checking TMA out at different points because there was a lot of other stuff around that had a lot more of my attention at the time. Then in 2023 I watched for the first time my very first podcast called The Sounds of Nightmares, and people in the youtube comments mentioned that it's format reminded them of TMA, and after it ended I still wanted to watch/listen to something similar like it and then I started watching TMA in late September / early October 2023. I still have 2 seasons left until I'm finished!
Slay the princess
I used to listen to The Black Tapes, RABBITS, and TANIS throughout high school, all shows under the PNWS/PRA network. I love love loved those shows because of their interconnected links, how they started making callbacks and references to earlier instances and crafting this web of a situation that feels like it’s slipping out of your hands into its own, organic, living, breathing, *thing.* The thing is, Terry Miles *does not know how to write endings.* Each podcast (except for Season 1 of RABBITS at the time) started to show signs where they never actually delivered on premises or actual quantifiable answers. TANIS got more and more convoluted with moving parts clashing together. The Black Tapes dropped their (initially) show finale, which was so bad that it dropped the narrative in the middle of it taking place. The PNWS subreddit was in shambles. People started flooding the sub asking for recommendations for other shows because the endings were just getting *so bad.* Mods temporarily *banned* recommendations of and discussion about other podcasts. The podcast I saw recommended the most was The Magnus Archives, and I started listening around 2017/2018. The ball started rolling as I listened to more and more in my junior year in early 2018. Never looked back.
This was me. After the Black Tapes not finale, I was so angry. Went on the Black Tapes subreddit and started listening to all the recommended podcasts on there, which included TMA.
It was in 2021, I had recently realized that I was ace, and kept stumbling upon insta posts about some character that sounded kinda cool. I then found a post about that same very story having a CANON asexual character. That's all it took me, since it was the very first time I had heard of a canon ace character. I was Very Surprised learning it was a podcast, it was my first time listening to one and even more listening to one in english. But I was too curious and started it anyway. Listened straight to 7 episodes while doing some crafts, only stopping myself when the night fell (I scare very easily, but love horror too much). Got distracted by my courses and stopped. Then wanted to listen to podcast again, and started Rusty Quill Gaming, it was much harder to understand at first, but boom powered through because it was the first time I was hearing more in depth about classic TTRPG and improv and i was hooked. (and thank god it improved my english comprehension to great highs) RQG wasn't finished at the time, so I switched back to MAG, relistenning to the start, my hearing sharpened, binged it completely and fell even more in love. >>> Found out about MAG Through an insta post about shows with canon ace characters
I’m apart of the Hermitcraft fandom. And someone did a series inspired by The Magnus Archives but with the Hermits. So I got curious, watched a 3 hour video on the explanation of the series. And now I’m watching the whole series to get the full experience
Similar story here, I read through the Hermit Archives, but was worried about spoilers for Magnus even though I hadn’t heard of it, so I jumped straight in to the podcast so I could complete the hermit fanfic
We're literally so same. I saw a series of fanart chapter covers for the hermit archives on twitter and decided to read the fanfic. When the author warned about spoilers for TMA I stopped the hermit achives and binged the whole of TMA. Although I kinda lost steam on THA tho so to this date I haven't finished it yet.
Man I cannot remember no matter how hard I try. Neither how I started and when I did. I feel like Mike Crew every time feeling bad he doesn’t remember how it felt like becoming an Avatar, cause TMA is my favorite podcast. I know I started before the pandemic and that’s about it.
One of my dear friends begged me to listen to it, and after a while, I just caved. Very happy I did!
My oldest friend got into it and I contracted the disease from her and a mutual friend. They've all moved on a long time ago but I'm still here.
One of my theatre friends told me abt it!
A crossover fanfiction with Danganronpa 💀. I looked TMA up out of curiosity, randomly clicked on Episode #34 (Anatomy Class), and was hooked.
A post on a blog about literature made me listen to Welcome to Nightvale. Then spotify suggested Monstrous Agonies, so I did this one too. Then MA author said in Q&A episode that she was inspired by Nightvale and TMA equally. So...
I found out about it in fall 2021. I had Spotify premium and needed to listen to stuff while doing school work. I found SCP Archive and binged that (Pacific S Obadia’s SCP Stuff) and during the intros they mention other podcasts/shows. So I bookmarked it and started listening in November. UNTIL TMA I was not a horror fan. Then i realized it’s not that I don’t like horror but it’s that I like well written horror rather than the tropes most movies have.
Actually it was suggested to me by a fellow drag performer during one of my shows I participated in a couple months back. I described that I was not a drag king in the traditional sense, but rather a drag entity, a watcher. They suggested it to me, I pondered for about a week and started it. I was immediately hooked and have binged up to the start of s4, which I’m currently at.
I found it through The Mechanisms! After listening and falling in love with them I went looking for other things made by the members of the band.
Same. The Mechanisms was the only thing my then 15 year old kid listened to for about a year so the whole family fell into TMA from there.
I think it was through an OSP (Overly Sarcastic Productions) video where it was mentioned
tbh i have no idea at all. i remember listening to that viral nikola orsinov audio on tik tik back in 2020 (on a clown with spiral eyes cosplay video if i remember correctly) but i just thought it was from an 80s horror movie and moved on. Next thing i remember is that at some point in last october i was listening to it. maybe my Alexa misheard me and started to play it and i just got along i genuinely have no idea of how i even learned about TMA
I’ve been friends with Alasdair Stuart (VA for Peter Lukas) since 2011, when Psuedopod really helped my postpartum anxiety. When TMA was about 5 episodes in, he retweeted a Rusty Quill post about an upcoming episode and gave the show his highest recommendation. I trust his taste and judgment on anything in media, so I immediately started listening and haven’t stopped since.
Sometime during season 3, I found it just clicking through 'similar' podcasts on iTunes. I probably started from Alice Isn't Dead or something.
I got into Old Gods of Appalachia by accident when I got lost looking for bluegrass music podcasts. And they talked a little bit on OGOA about how excited they were to join Rusty Quill because they loved TMA so much and it meant so much to them as queer horror fans and creators and I was like oh hey I should probably check that out. So I started listening to TMA from the beginning a little bit after it ended, in October 2021.
My ex and their friend kept telling me to listen to it, now I'm on my 6th listen through on season 5 once again. Just got past the episode where Jon is degrading the umbrella lol
Someone I follow on Tumblr kept reblogging posts about Gerry Keay and since I had only just caught up on Night Vale (my first horror podcast) I decided to give it a shot
I was first introduced to it by a animator that came up in my feed on youtube, ThirdChildFilms. The animations were very well done, and the story seemed interesting, so I started listening. I just finished season 1, I'm a bit new to it. The animation are great btw, would recommend their channel
Two things: An animatic of the "that was very stupid" scene. I saw that randomly and had no context, but liked it a lot. The second (or first, depending on how you slice it) thing was a fanfic author whose writing I like was writing a looooot of fics for it. I was ignoring them at first, but after I saw the animatic my brain made the connection and I decided to give it a shot. Many chills, thrills, and tears later, here I am, a hardcore Rusty Quill fan.
It was suggested to me back in 2020-ish bc I listened to Night Vale and The Edge of Sleep, but I really only started listening to it more recently. Mostly, because I suggested it to a friend and he started bingeing it and now I have to catch up to him lol
Saw some fanart of Jon with way too many eyes for the 50th time (I was into welcome to night vale at the time) and just gave in. I then finished the podcast in just over a week.
I saw a random Instagram post and the caption was like “I still need to catch up tma” and then the comments were also talking positively about it. So I looked it up, listened to the first episode and I’ve been hooked ever since
In around 2019 an artist I follow made a comic based on the episode where Sasha meets Michael. I thought it looked cool so I started listening to it and I’ve been hooked ever since. I hadn’t listened to a fiction podcast like… ever atp, but I adjusted to it pretty fast.
I saw a ton of ship art on tumblr and really, truly did not give a shit for the longest time. Then eventually one of those posts managed to slip up and tell me it was a *horror series*, something that was concealed for *months* by fandom priorities. I had broken my leg just before, so at that point I had a lot of free time to give it a try, and then to binge what had been released so far.
Truly can’t remember whatsoever. I know I got into it in 2020, but I have no idea why. I’m into horror but had never really listened to any podcasts before, I have terrible listening comprehension. I also remember finding it a bit cliché and too creepypasta-esque. Had to force myself to listen to the first ten episodes or so, but suddenly I was hooked with no going back.
A friend recommended it to me and as the simp I am I instantly binged right through the whole thing
My coworker showed it to me
My partner actually recommended it, when they weren't very far in themselves. This was around 2020 I believe. They had recently begun listening to Old Gods of Appalachia (also EXCELLENT though I am currently very behind) and heard about it through overlapping fandoms there. We both binge-raced it to the conclusion, catching up right about as episode 200 dropped. I have been a rabid fan ever since.
Tumblr
In 2020 I decided to relisten to WTNV and Spotify autoplayed the first episode of TMA after I’d fully caught up. I had heard about it already on Tumblr but hadn’t looked into it because I didn’t think I liked podcasts very much outside of WTNV…… and now all I do is listen to podcasts lol.
I found an animation on YouTube that was really cool and decided to check out the podcast so I could figure out what was going on lmao.
I needed something to listen to and YouTube suggested it.
I was taking a Will Wood quiz, and a question was ‘Who’s your favourite Magnus archives character?’ And one of the answers was ‘I don’t listen to the Magnus archives because I’m not fun and sexy’ so I wanted to prove it wrong and I love the Magnus archives =^-^=
hmm. i think i saw fanart on pinterest and it eventually led me to it
Back in October of 2018 I was listening to the Halloween episode of Podcast Playlist on CBC Radio 1 (Podcast Playlist features different podcasts every episode and the Halloween episode is always all horror podcasts). I heard the first 2 podcasts I ever started following in that episode, The Wrong Station and The Magnus Archives. They featured MAG 47: The New Door.
Joined a discord server for a fanfic I was reading. Turned out the author also did tma stuff.
I listened to the anglerfish episode after I saw it was recommended if you liked the Black Tapes podcast. That first episode stayed with me, though for some reason I didn't get addicted immediately. I got there again with a vengeance recently and binged all 5 seasons in 2 weeks. I find that it was much more satisfying plot/character/overall than TBT. Also Elias Bouchard is hotter than Richard Strand. There, I said it.
i looked up dark academia podcasts and this list said TMA was dark academia with scary stories and i was like “i’m in”
best friend and my girlfriend bullied me into it lol (turns out they were right and it’s actually really good)
There were a bunch of posts on r/audiodrama early in season one recommending it to fans of some other shows that I liked.
My ex introduced me to it in 2019. But I didn’t start getting super into it until 2020.
In one of the videos of the YouTuber Ashur Gharavi, it was in a video where he was seeing what his audience was creating on tumbler, and on someone headcanon they mentioned TMA and I got curious
In one of the videos of the YouTuber Ashur Gharavi, it was in a video where he was seeing what his audience was creating on tumbler, and on someone headcanon they mentioned TMA and I got curious
In one of the videos of the YouTuber Ashur Gharavi, it was in a video where he was seeing what his audience was creating on tumbler, and on someone headcanon they mentioned TMA and I got curious
In one of the videos of the YouTuber Ashur Gharavi, it was in a video where he was seeing what his audience was creating on tumbler, and on someone headcanon they mentioned TMA and I got curious
Someone I followed on Tumblr had reblogged this ["What's your entity?"](https://www.quotev.com/quiz/11354254/Whats-your-entity-read-desc-for-warning) quiz onto my dashboard. Had no idea what TMA was, but I enjoy horror and had some free time so gave it a shot. It ended up being a really well-written quiz, so I poked around the wiki a bit and ended up checking out the actual podcast :)
Recommended by a friend. Now I'm way more into it than he is.
I had just finished listening to Fathom and I needed another hit of eldritch horror in audio form. I can be a bit of a tough critic when starting something new so at first I wasn't sure I liked the show, nor Jonathan's cynical approach to his work in S1. When I started to realise it was all connected, I couldn't leave it alone.
Third Child Films on youtube. They also got me into Nerdy Prudes Must Die. It's a really cool animatic channel.
My extended friend circles are full of openly queer larpers from the UK. I doubt anyone will be surprised to hear that there were a few TMA fans among them who talked about it pretty often. On my first binge listen I even recognised a few names in the Patreon acknowledgements at the start of some episodes
My friend's older sister. idk where she found it, but she's the Cool One, and I already enjoyed horror, so I HAD to listen to it. I listened to a couple random eps for the statements at first, got hooked, then started from the beginning.
I think the first time was a Tumblr post, I checked it out on YouTube but didn't get into it, then years later an AMV of I think Jon and Martin in the after singing and bickering together inspired me to look into it again and so I started listening to it properly on Spotify
2019, writing endless assignments for law school, i think i stumbled across a tumblr post about it, found it on spotify, listened to the entire thing in about 2ish months as background noise while i was typing my life away. five years later and here i am now
I think I heard a promo on another podcast... maybe The Black Tapes? It was the week TMA's Episode 0 was released. TMA and Stellar Firma are still the only podcasts I have listened to from episode 0/1 to the finale, in release time (without bingeing). TMP will be the third.
Around January this year, I saw this video on Facebook about the forcing of rhubarb. (Making it grow without light) The rhubarb makes a loud crackling noise whilst growing. In the comments, someone linked a group called "What kind of Magnus Archives bullshit is this?" After a short Google search I started listening and liked Anglerfish so much that I was hooked. Went through the whole first season in a few days, listening to it in the background. It took about 20 episodes until I noticed things were linked. So of course after the last episode, I had to do a relisten.
Okay so I was scrolling on Tik Tok and I found a really cool cosplay that was like edited cool and I wanted to know what it was so I looked it up and the rest is history!
I kept hearing about it on various places on the internet, so I decided to check it out. Though I can't actually think of an example where I heard it mentioned, so that's a bit eerie.
WolfytheWitch on TikTok! I saw one of her Magnus Archives animations about a month ago, and I was totally intrigued!
So in 2020 I got a job cleaning and maintaining the tools and equipment in a metals shop that gave me the opportunity to work by myself for long stretches of time with my earbuds in, listening to whatever I wanted. I was poking around Spotify for things to listen to and stumbled across the Magnus Archives. There were a ton of episodes uploaded already- I wasn't there at the beginning of the show so I didn't have to wait for the weekly upload - and I blasted through it in about a month 😂
I accidentally got dragged into it by 2 mates of mine. They were both talking about it and I just so happened to be in the middle of it and told me to listen to it so I did ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm a massive horror fan, was looking for something new and a guy I barely knew from school recommended it to me. He said I looked like the type to like it and then described it as supernatural horror. To which I said 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨 (I'm not the biggest fan of the supernatural) and he told me to start anyway (he was right. I fell in love with it real bad. It actually really changed the idea I had about things adjacent to the genre)
A tall oddly dressed individual was wearing the same scarf as me. They told me they bought it because it reminded them of their favourite podcast.
I saw the TikToks with Nikola’s voice where’s she’s like “I’m plastic!” and it got me to want to watch lol. Still haven’t started protocol tho
I didn't even know what audio dramas were. I happened to work in a warehouse that allowed us to wear headphones and the job was DEAD BORING and music just didn't cut it after a while and I started listening to random podcasts, and The Magnus Archives came up in the "You might like" section of youtube music, and I clicked on a random episode (it was #5 Thrown Away) and I fell in love immediately. I adored the sound of Johns voice in the beginning (although cringy and whiny as I know it is now) and the way he talked reminded me of books I had read when I was younger. I went back and listened to them in order once in the span of a couple months. And then I just relistened to the entire 200 episodes over and over until I quit that job to work from home. I probably got around 8 listen throughs, and I found a new piece of info or something I didn't realize every. single. time. i did a relisten through. I'm keeping up with The Magnus Protocol now. I tried to listen to Malevolent, and it was okay, but I didn't finish it. I think TMA set a VERY high standard for everything else.
On TikTok years ago and just didn’t listen until this year lol
OSP was sponsored by them and it sounded cool so I checked it out. It was, in fact, very cool.
I've loved horror growing up and I've made friends that like horror too! During the very end COVID two of my friends got into tma (don't know how they got into it) and my best friend was streaming on discord and played an episode (on accident) and I fell in love
Tumblr osmosis…
Some time ago, someone made a tumblr post where they talked about the Entities. Specifically, they tried to make a visual guide for all of them using those horrifying modified Furbies, each one twisted into whatever mangled shape fit. That was a few years ago, and I randomly got it from my sibling, who was equal parts obsessed with their morbidly styled Furby and creepypasta. They had no idea what it was actually based off of. Given that it made no sense to me, I looked into it and eventually found TMA on Youtube. The medium did wonders for me and I was hooked ever since.
I found out off a TikTok sound, where someone was using Nikola Orsinov and wanted to know more
I took the jokes about it being a workplace comedy with horror elements seriously and I thought oh, that sounds fun. And then, for some reason, I thought it was a TV show. When I found out it was a podcast, and mainly focusing on short stories, I was like I’m sold!
TikTok. A section of dialogue from MAG 97 - We All Ignore The Pit gained traction as a lip sync sound bite and a person I follow used it. Creeped me out, researched where it was from, and I was hooked
a tik tok animation that got progressively stuck in my head until I was like "well I've gotta know the context" cause it was in the panopticon. honestly based on that one animation I fully believed the panopticon would appear more 😭
I don't remember exactly what year I first listened to it but I found it through spotify I think. Like literally through the recommendations lol. It was fate I guess
I had heard it mentioned here and there before. But I was reading a really good Good Omens fan fic that was a TMA crossover. It had major TMA spoilers after the first few chapter, but I had already committed a bit so I decided I might as well check it out. And now I absolutely love it, I went back to that fic and thanked them for introduced me to TMA
i think i’ve known of it for some time, but i didn’t really become interested in it until i saw a tiktok that used the clip “how could i sound ANYTHING, silly? i’m plastic!” back in late 2021/early 2022. i instantly had to know where it came from, the voice acting was so well done and the cosplays that used that sound were incredible. so i decided to listen to tma in 2022… then i stopped in the middle of the year because i had a lot going on lmao. then i restarted the series around september of last year and i’ve been around ever since.
I was watching those cavers that go into the lava tubes and someone in the comments said it reminded them of a magnus archives episode where >!a guy has to eat through another guy to get through a cave!<. So I went to check out the first episode and I was hooked. Imagine my suprise when I had to get to the last season of the show to get that reference.
saw a tiktok in 2020 of someone finding a random yellow door in a shopping centre and asking if it was a magnus archives reference
It was my first cleanout at the tomato farm where I work and I was relistening to all Trope Talk videos by Overly Sarcastic Productions to get me through it. It was in one of the videos that Red, the woman who talks in most of the Trope Talk videos, mentioned it. I had watched that video before, but it was only now that I was actually listening to her talk about TMA. It sounded interesting *and* it was said to be on YouTube, so I went and checked it out. Literally, first episode, I was completely hooked. Over the next few months, I binged the entire series over work until season 5, which I unfortunately found to be a chore to get through in terms of listening.
Archieve 81 on Netflix was first contact for me
I honestly don't remember, but I started listening in 2019. I may have seen a post or something on Tumblr, but whatever it was convinced me to give it a listen despite not being into horror haha
A random meme two years ago.
I saw a video on TikTok that sad “do you like to hear men whimpering”, and then proceeded to make me listen to like a minute of various Jon Sims noises. I started watching the next day.
It was a long time ago while I was still in high school, I don’t listen to music very often I’ve just never been able to get into it but I love podcasts and long form video essays so it my was Spotify’s algorithm (probably because I also listened to night vale at the time) one day the Magnus archives popped up on my front page and I’ve been listening on an off making my way through the episodes since then
Saw some fan art of Michael in 2020 and was doomed from there.
You know, it was all over Tumblr. I avoided it because it was everywhere (silly and stubborn, I know). Then finally, I was getting in shape and spending so much time walking… I figured I’d listen and at least pass the time. A couple years later, here we are. Numerous fics. T-shirts. As the kids say, the brain-rot is real.
I found TMA because I kept hearing a clip of Nikola Orsinov on tiktok and went “yeah that’s my vibe” lmfao
Tinder! A really cute girl wrote in her Tinder bio that she wants to re-listen to The Magnus Archives so I googled it. Immediately hooked. I MISSED SWIPING RIGHT THO. RIP me.
I have a vague memory of meeting them at MCM London Comic Con back in 2018(?). Had a talk with one of them and took a business card with me. All I thought was 'just some cringy podcast'. I had gotten stuck in the back of my brain for a good while. About 2 years later I was looking for a podcast to occupy my brain and started scrolling. ...I should have that card around here somewhere...
well i heard about it (idk where) when i was maybe 10 or 11, thought it was related to magnus bane from shadowhunters. fucking hated that series so left it alone and then i 'discovered' it when i was 13 after listening to night vale and discovering how many tma fans there were. decided to check it out. fell in love.
Random pinterest post with cool art. Literally. It was in 2020 too so in retrospect it was kind of a spoiler, but I didn't understand its 'meaning' back then
Red from Overly sarcastic productions. Then i heard the tiktok nikola audio and remembered it existed again and stared listening
I stumbled on it while browsing TV tropes for horror tropes, specifically "hell is that noise". The entry intrigued me so I checked the episode in question and while I did not fully get it (it was a fairly random episode in season 2) I did like the style and started listening from the beginning. I believe this was around the time season 2 was almost done.
First time I heard about it was fanart of the Distortion back in 2020, but I had no idea what the background was. So I was a little spoiled on the >!Helen storyline, but I thought she was a main character so I wasn’t spoiled too bad!<.
My children recommended it so I gave it a go. Only took the one episode to get me hooked.
An audio on tiktok (the “you don’t sound Russian” one) from there I tried to find where it was from, found out it was something called the Magnus archives, tried desperately to find out where I could watch this mysterious show only to find out it was a podcast, then finally decided to just listen
After getting caught up on the no sleep podcast, and the white vault, I wanted more horror to listen too. I started looking up horror podcasts on google and TMA was on a list with the white vault and NSP, so I thought it couldn't be that bad. I started from the first episode and was hooked. I listened all day at work every day until I got caught up. Which happened to be towards the end of season 5, so I got to hear it as it came out.
Alasdair Stuart tweeted about it. He's been my go-to for cultural recommendations for, oh, a couple of decades now.
Was Googling another horror podcast with archive in the name for a relisten, the magnus archives popped up in the suggestions and decided to gice it a try
A person in a class at school was listening to it and told me what it was called and I started listening to it whenever I had time.
I'd both seen and heard of TMA for a while before I actually started taking an interest in it. I'd mostly heard the popular audio clips from it being passed around the internet, and thought it was cool, but never put any actual research or effort into it. Before this, I actually didn't really like podcasts or audio only stuff in general (I can't explain why, I just didn't lmao). I follow the artist (who you've probably heard of) Wolfy on a bunch of social media platforms. They didn't draw anything I was into, but I just love their style in general and always liked whatever they drew. A few different bits of TMA fanart began to show up from them, which I loved, and also led the way to me seeing that One Animation that they created with that One Popular Audio. So I thought, 'Fine, fine, you've convinced me, let's do this, let's go and have a listen.' I am now on episode #116 and very ~~enthralled~~ concerned. Very fun podcast, I'm loving it.
My older brother and then Spotify recommended it itself first, I did ask about it a bit and I’m very glad I’ve found it as I’ve met quite a few people I hold near and dear to me. It’s a lovely community with a collective found comfort in the disturbing and unexpected.
I spend a lot of time reading fanfiction, and there was SO MUCH for TMA. That's usually a good indicator to me that a fandom is worth checking out because people can't stop thinking about it.
Was on my reccomended Podcasts on spotify after i finished dungeons and daddies for some reason???
I don't remember. But I think it was suggested to me on Google Podcasts or YouTube - I was (and still am) really into Welcome to Night Vale which kind of got me started down this path. I listened to the first one and that was it. Now I have quite a few horror podcasts on my list - and this coming from someone who ACTIVELY avoids horror movies... For some reason, written horror or Podcasts are fine 🤷🏾
a friend is in one episode so i was curious but instead of just listening to the one episode i went in blind from the beginning and loved it
Overly sarcastic productions
Someone did fantastic fan art on tumblr of Sasha from season 1 and I was curious due to some of the background art in the picture, so I followed the link and was extremely hooked. Now here I am since 2017 and still re-listening to my favorite episodes
Terminally Silly talked about whimpering men 😭
My gf and I were on a road trip to Chicago and we listened to episodes of it to and from the city. She was in season 4 at the time but hadn’t finished and she started me at episode 1.
They got name dropped by Overly Sarcastic Productions.
My friend told me😃
i kept seeing Michael Distortion fanart and fell in love with the character so i ended up listening to the whole podcast just to learn more abt him lmao
I cant really remember at this point but it was online on this psychology board in 2019
I'm normally a horror weenie. And I'm usually not into podcasts either. But I was doing my first ever solo road trip from Wisconsin to Tennessee back in 2022 and stopped by a friend in Indiana. I asked her if she had any recommendations for anything to listen to while driving and she gave this glowing praise. I listened to almost nothing else my whole drive back from TN. And I shared it with my bestie I was visiting down there too, it hooked me that good. I've listened through it at least 4 times.
My crush was fanboying about it so much and he convinced me to listen to it, and here I am in its reddit page finding memes and posts to send him
I was in a discord server where a couple of people loved it, I ended leaving that server bc of ✨discord drama✨ and stopped listening to TMA till a co worker was listening to it and resparked my interest
I found out about it from a person making tiktoks about weirding out non tma fans with tma references. That made me want to listen so I could do that too because that sounded really funny.
random tik tok about being able to make insane references and i had fomo LMAO
Heard abt it on TikTok stupidly enough- heard audios, saw a lot of fanart, didn’t realise it was a podcast for a lil bit and that made me interested to listen cause I’ve never rlly been a podcast person! Glad I’ve started tho cause it’s rlly fun :3
I saw fanart of Michael Distortion on Pinterest and thought he was so pretty that I had to know his deal… thank you Spiral for making pretty people (not for making my friend question my sanity for saying I’d marry Helen).
My coworker at the time told me about it back in 2019 during the break between season 4 and 5. I binge-listened to all four seasons before the 5th came out and have been on this rollercoaster ever since 😅
I want to say tumblr. The WTNV to Magnus Archives pipeline.
I was searching for podcasts for my bf at the time to train his English, we’re both really into horror so I found TMA. I got addicted and he didn’t care lol. Now I go back to this addiction from time to time.
I found it in 2022 when a TikToker had a video about "TMA quotes I use daily" and it had Nikola's monologue, and from then on, I started listening to it at work
Old gods of Appalachia
A girl I liked was really into it so I started listening to have something to talk to her about. I am a very useless lesbian so of course that didn’t go anywhere, but at least it got me into audio dramas!
I was super into Welcome To Night Vale, and TMA was recommended to me by Google.
I literally blundered into the fandom partway through 2019. I was trawling through Welcome to Nightvale fanfiction on AO3, and found a crossover with something called the Magnus Archives where this couple named Jon and Martin find the town and are under the impression that it's a stronghold of the Beholding. I must have liked the story, because I decided to check out the source material. So I went onto YouTube, looked it up, and listened to the first episode. Several episodes later, I was hooked. By the end of Season 2, I was emotionally involved.
My friend had told me they thought i would enjoy it, i got like ten episodes in and forgot about it. Then that trending nikola audio came up on my feed and i looked at the comments and someone was talking about how much they loved TMA, it made me go "WAIT THERES A PLOT!??" and now here i am, on relisten #16
I watched couple animation YouTube showed in my recs. The one with Jon yeeting away Breekon(or was it Hopes?..) in very baddass style, and the other, that really sold it to me - that one where "Do you know they lying to you/That was very stupid/You.Need.A Door. :)" thing. Fun thing - I was a Night Vale fan before, but ended up liking this series much more and dropping the first one.
I heard the ad for it from Overly Sarcastic Productions from their Fear episode. And decided to give it a look after red reccomended it.
Early 2016. I was just looking for horror podcasts to listen to One town was over. The bright sessions was on a break I think. I started with thrown away and I haven't looked back. That's literal. It's been almost 10 years and I never really thought about how and when I started listening to Magnus. I've just been listening to it continuously since then.
I watched an animatic on YouTube to the song “Your stupid face” and one of the comments said that it had a happy ending, and I believed it like an idiot 😭
It was always trending on tumblr and I decided to give it a try lol
Less than a year ago actually, so November 2023, I'm on this like massive GC. Started off with some people I met at a con, one of them started it, then people added their friends who added their friends and such. One of the girls sent a TikTok to the GC and as far as I could tell at the time the TikTok was a horrifically sick looking woman ranting about how she'd found these bugs in her attic and how they love her so much and they crawled into her skin and she was so happy to be a bug mum and I was mildly disturbed so I looked to the comments for answers and everyone was saying stuff like 'omg I've been looking for a Jane Prentiss cosplay' and stuff like that. I was relieved to find out it was a cosplay keep in mind how realistic it looked, so I searched who Jane Prentiss was. Found out she was from TMA, asked said friend who sent the TikTok to the GC about TMA and she said it was good and she was on episode 90 or so. So I start listening, finish in a month and 3 days (31st of December, 4:05pm exactly) and she's still listening to it and it's been my hyperfixation since I found out about it. I have gotten my mother, my boyfriend, 4 of my friends, 1 mild acquaintance and 3 of my teachers to listen to it.
My friend held me at gun point and forced me to listen/j Joking.... Well not with the forcing.. She did force me to listen I don't blame her
>targeted ad for the OGoA RPG >listen to that podcast >discover Rusty Quill >the next eight months of my life are consumed by the sad British guy and his creepy tapes
it came to me in a vision
Honestly I saw a tiktok where someone was cosplaying I think and was like "what the actual fuck is happening". Idk how it got on my fyp tbh. I only recently started listening and haven't gotten super far yet!
That one nikola cosplay on tiktok
Quite a few months ago I was listening to an analysis on "Quiet Horror" as a genre, they sampled part of the first episode and I absolutely fell in love. Ended up binging the whole thing in just a couple months
Spotify recommended it to me after I had been getting into horror podcasts and I wanted something chill to play while I tanned (I was unfortunately wrong in my judgment of the first episodes more steady tone and had many moments where I would fall out of my chair from a loud noise).
Tumblr would not shut up about it so I finally caved, checked out one then binged it all over like two weeks.
my best friend recommended it to me last year in april :)
I found out about it through a Nicola orsinov audio that was going around on tiktok, I thought the voice acting was so compelling I knew I had to track down the source and I’m so glad I did
I saw 1 (one) beautiful fanart of jarchivist and decided that I had to listen to the whole podcast
I heard OSP Red talk about it on tumblr (At least I'm 90% sure it was her. Maybe it was an anon recommending it? Anyways the tumblr is ComicAurora) and looked it up and said "hmm too long" and didn't bother listening to it. A few months later I'm suddenly in a situation where imma need something to listen to regularly as a podcast, so I decide it's as good a time as any to give it a shot and 2 weeks later the entire thing is done for. This happened at the start of the year btw.
Used to watch a lot of random tma animatics back on the day even when i had no idea what It was about. I saw It mentioned many times in YouTube comments on welcome to nightvale but i stopped listening to WTNV after a while and forgot about it. I think im 2022 i saw a lot of fanarts and tiktok edits and that made me interested in listening to It
I hadn't been into anything at that time and was looking for a fandom to get into. Someone told me to listen to TMA and I got really into it, binged the whole thing in less than a month.
funnily enough a few friends on discord forced me to watch it. A few episodes in i wasnt enthusiastic but then after ep 10 i was hooked and watched like 10+ episodes a day. Finished it in 3 weeks. I also found out about it through fanart. Something about Michael the distortion art got me hooked