“jon turned into the monster that destroyed his childhood” close. jon turned into the book that destroyed his childhood. he functionally became a leitner. jon’s not just any devouring monster, he’s an archive of stories, he’s the frame device of the podcast (Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, Jon. You are a record of fear—MAG 160), he eats his victims the way those books did. every leitner has a story to tell, and often its victims end up trapped inside it, becoming a part of the tale—this is exactly what jon does as the archivist, when he reads/takes/compels (eats) a statement he is re-experiencing and storing within him the subject’s fear, each new victim is then incorporated into his mental collection of nightmares (You are a chronicle of terror). elias’s murder of leitner then has another layer of narrative meaning to it. it’s a marking of territory, of course, because jurgen is about to reveal important information to jon which will presumably ruin elias’s plans for him.
mag 80 - “librarian” / mag 160 - “the eye opens”
but it’s also about the transition from a world with artefacts as a source of isolated horror consuming and transforming individuals, which leitner and his books are symbolic of, to one where one being - the archive (jonah magnus’s archive), which has been marked by every fear and therefore holds within it the essence of every fear—devours and reshapes the entire world.
once again there’s a spider statement immediately followed by a leitner statement (mag 16 - “arachnophobia” -> mag 17 “the boneturner’s tale”). elias probably considers this enrichment. the archivist is getting a little too comfortable in his fake skepticism, time to remind him of his childhood trauma. he was scheduling those weekly reminders the way he did his budgeting.
thought some more about mag 16 - “arachnophobia”, it’sthe first proper web-only statement and spins a story which deliberately mirrors jon’s own life, even outside the fear of spiders and that fear originating from an unfortunate childhood memory—carlos vittery is described as a smoker and works as a data analyst at an online betting company, which. is probably a job that functions and exists on the exploitation of other people, similar to jon’s own position of head archivist at the magnus institute. he also keeps a cat. which feels like an inconsequential detail but in this case likely isn’t. the statement obviously stands out because it’s about something which jon too fears deeply—for once he’s not experiencing someone else’s fear, but being reminded of his own. which is why i feel the opening of “i hate spiders.” which then leads up to mr vittery’s inevitable end, can be read as an early example of jon’s voice being appropriated for the beginning of a narrative he’s in apparent control of and in agreement with (jon hates spiders), but the ending is all wrong. the ending is unacceptable. it can’t be him (which is all analogous to season five, right - the web taking jon’s voice, an act which begins with his voluntary choice to record statements and ends in a plan he wants no part of). the statementisn’t a simple reminder of a guest for mr spider, it doubles as a pointed scare. here is someone so very much like you and the spider eventually ate him. it will eat you too.
