"what If Noel Is Catfishing Mischa As Talia" What If I Throw A Brick At Your Head

yeah

"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.

Does anyone have an update on where things are at with the writers strike? It's disappeared from my various feeds and algorithms.

enjolras is really the character of all time. he's the most attractive man ever. he's a virgin. his girlfriend is france. he's gay. he was born into wealth. his entire purpose in life is to lead a violent rebellion. he has a martyr complex. he loves his friends so much. he leads them to their deaths. he's angelic. he's only human. he's deeply repressed. he's entirely full of love for humanity. he understands violence to be necessary to the cause. he abhors it. he can be quite unthinkingly cruel. he's a charming young man. he's capable of being terrible. he's even blond

Just learned about garden path sentences.

They’re basically a literary prank– the sentence starts out in such a way that you think you know where it’s going, but the way it ends completely changes the meaning while still being a complete and logical sentence. Usually it deals with double meanings, or with words that can be multiple parts of speech, like nouns and verbs or nouns and adjectives.

So we get gems like

The old man the boat. (The old people are manning the boat)

The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. (The apartment complex is home to both married and single soldiers, plus their families)

The prime number few. (People who are excellent are few in number.)

The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississipi. (The cotton that clothing is made of)

The man who hunts ducks out on weekends. (As in he ducks out of his responsibilities)

We painted the wall with cracks. (The cracked wall is the one that was pained.)

Lesgles truly is the character ever because he’s bald and unlucky and that’s pretty much the only thing that anyone really pays attention to but then you start to investigate literally any detail that Hugo ever wrote about him and you begin to unravel like a multiverse of puns and wordplay about French history, religion, and politics and then you start to ask yourself, well, wait a minute, why did Hugo put so much thought into this background character who has a few witticisms and doesn’t really do much and so you start to investigate what exactly his deal is, like, what does baldness mean in a Hugolian context and what’s with his Bad Luck and hey, wait a minute, what do his “persecutions on the part of fate” imply in the broader context of Les Misérables, and so now you’re questioning core tenets of the rules of the narrative and then you look at his role in the book and the way that his misfortune is tied to the fortunes and fates of everyone he interacts with and the impact that he has on the events of the story and then you realize that the Bad Luck bit and the puns are really just a way to distract you from the fact that Laigle de Meaux is in fact some small god of the Les Mis universe.

bitches be like "I no longer have a solangelo hyperfixation" and then go and get hyperfixated on jerejean and snowbaz

supernatural, all hell breaks loose pt.2 / ginger snaps (2000)

Belle de Jour (1967) dir. Luis Buñuel

No guys I can actually fix him. Just give me some estrogen and lock us in a room I swear I can do it