I’m bored so here’s a ranking of the Magnus Archive fears from my favorite to least favorite: (Except I’m mostly ranking based on vibes if I’m being honest.)
1: The Eye - To the shock of no one, the person who really likes overanalyzing the Magnus Archives and whose favorite characters are Jonathan Sims and Gerard Keay thinks The Eye is the most engaging fear.
What draws me to it personally is that it’s the only fear that I think I would be enticed by in TMA universe. I’m admittedly super nosey, and on top of that I’m 100% a “I enjoyed this thing. I have to know everything about it now,” type of person. The idea that there was a mystery just outside of my grasp would make me worse so fast.
I want to think I would make better choices than Jonathan Sims but I wouldn’t.
2: The Vast - I don’t think there’s a single Vast statement that I don’t love, to the point where when reading the series for the first time anytime the words “heights” was mentioned early on I would get good and settled in because I knew the statement would end up as one of my favorites. And I was always right.
Plus, I think Michael Crew is a super engaging avatar. My one and only complaint about him is that I wish we got significantly more of his character because he was such a weird little freak in the most enduring way possible.
3: The Web - The Web does a great job of scaring me and I love it for that regard. It’s so eerie that we spend so many hours thinking The Eye is the big bad, only to be slammed with “Jon was marked by The Web first and has unintentionally been weaving it’s web the entire series.” It’s as good as a twist at is eerie to know that the cast of TMA was much more puppets on a string then they knew.
Plus, Anabelle Cane saying “Or maybe I’ve never even been to a beach,” is easily a standout line in the series for me. And while I personally think her backstory was real, I love that we never get to know. Regardless if she’s manipulating with a truth or a lie, she successfully pushes Jon in the direction she wants him to go all the same. And that’s what The Web is all about.
4: The Spiral - I really love the sheer bizarreness of The Spiral. I really like having a fear that you can’t actually understand because it can be too many things at once yet nothing at all in the same breath. I feel like all the Spiral statement are really good at making you FEEL disoriented too. The one about “The Man Who Wasn’t There” does such a good job at making you feel like you’re understanding what you’re reading but also…not at the same time.
Plus, who doesn’t love Michael and Helen? I really enjoyed the “Kinda on your side but not really because I’m a liar” dynamic that they both had with The Institute. Also I could analyze about where Michael and Helen start and where The Distortion stops forever. It’s not often we get unwilling avatars who were put in that position fully against their will. (Expect for Agnes, but we don’t get to meet her so we don’t really explore that concept with her directly.)
5: The Stranger - The Not! Them is super creepy. The skin stealing is super creepy. Not being able to trust that you’re loved ones are your loved ones is super creepy. The clowns and circus aesthetic are super creepy.
But so engaging to hear about it. I love all The Stranger plotlines from the statements, to The Not! Sasha debacle, to Tim’s story, and to the gorilla skin plot that makes us learn more about Gertrude. If nothing else The Stranger knows how to set up a story.
6: The Extinction - It’s just one of the more unsettling fears for me and I love how unique all the (possible) Extinction related statements are. Yeah from here on all my explanations are going to be short because I’m going mostly on vibes.
7: The End - Oliver Banks is the love of my life and the way The End manifests compared to other fears is so interesting. Please tell me more about prophetic dreams and weird tendrils. I’m interested in hearing it. (Plus! I really like the role The End plays in The Apocalypse, but that’s going to be a long analyze at some point.)
8: The Hunt - The hunter’s instincts to hunt is just me when I’m hyperfixating on something.
9: The Slaughter - All in all I really enjoy slaughter based statements. But that’s not shocking considering I love history and slasher horror movies.
10: The Desolation - This is one is weird for me to rank because I don’t really care all that much about the cult stuff to be honest, but Agnes’s story is so good that it doesn’t really matter. The Desolation deserves to be in the top ten for being so connected to Agnes’s story. (Though I don’t really have a lot of feelings toward it compared to the other fears to be honest.)
11: The Corruption - I’m torn between really loving The Corruption, and being too disgusted to relisten to any of it’s stories. I was full on clutching my pearls during the story about picking up a body from a nursing home…but like, not totally in a bad way. More in a “This is a great but I never want to hear about it again,” type of way.
12: The Lonely - The Lonely is a weird one for me because without psychoanalyzing myself too much I really relate to the way Martin feels The Lonely and I can see from a personal level how it would draw someone in. But it still never really had that kick for me like the higher ranking fears did. Why? IDK. I think it almost felt too relatable to me to enjoy fully, and with that said I’m not going to think about it a lot more because I do not have money for a therapist right now.
13: The Buried - Yeah this one’s cool. I don’t have a lot to say outside of that.
14: The Flesh - This fear ended up being unintentionally funny to me a lot of the time. Apparently I find the concept of random meat really funny, which I can safely say is not something I would have learned about myself with TMA.
15: The Dark - Maybe I’m just not super into cult stuff but The Dark just never really connected with me as an entity. It’s not at the bottom because I don’t like it or think that it’s poorly written, it’s at the bottom because I’m pretty indifferent towards it and it’s stories TBH.