2022-11-03 22:44:49 ¶ ●

‘I’m made of plastic, silly!’ elicits a very specific image to a modern audience. One of shiny, brightly coloured modernism. Perhaps of cheap animal figures, and barbie dolls; harmless childhood toys.

But bear in mind this is said by a creature of the past. Have you ever held an antique baby doll? a weakly cast action figure? Even the case of an old typewriter? You can feel the brittle plastic, cold and rough; it feels as if it would snap under your fingers and its deceptive strength leaves your hands unsure of the density and your mind trying to figure it out.

Have you ever seen an old automaton? I read a book about them once, it was the first time I ever felt truly afraid of a puppet. Not the brash, fluffy, celebratory animal things of America, but the original European circus pieces.

One of the primary reasons a circus succeeds is spectacle: the creation of something so entirely awestriking that audiences have no choice but to gawp, and pay their fees. There’s something so terrifying about not being able to look away. Sometimes not being able to see really is a good thing.

To see something that isn’t a person move and talk like a person is horribly unnerving. It’s far too common in this modern age, but can you imagine the terror of seeing these things firsthand for the first time, in a world where technology is scarce beyond an idea?

That fear is enough to power a thing for years to come. Enough to give it more power than a thing like that should ever have.

2022-11-19 17:09:17 ¶ ●

Being a tma fan is great, of course it is! Who wouldn’t love such a good podcast. But it also brings some experiences into a terrible, cursed, supernatural new light.

Like the other day I was out around Kings Cross with a friend, and we stumbled upon an antique shop! It looked small and we’d never noticed it before so we decided to go in. There was only one other person in there, a guy. I initially thought he was the owner but I noticed he was holding a camera and looking around, so he probably wasn’t. It was bigger on the inside than it had looked from the outside, and had several rooms. We went into the nearest one, and it was absolutely filled with mannequins.

I started to notice that barely anything had price tags on it. At this point I got a little creeped out, that many fake eyes angled towards you tends to have that effect, so we decided to leave. The other guy in the shop was blocking the exit slightly, and i didn’t want to be rude and ask him to move, so I pretended to be looking at something to pass the time. That’s when I noticed that he was looking at me.

Now I’m no stranger to being stared at, my fashion style involves chains and mini skirts so you can imagine how often I get looked at in all kinds of ways, but this was different. At first I thought he was looking past me, but even as I smiled and we made eye contact it was very clear, that look of slight, dull intrigue; he was looking at me like I was an antique, a static object, something he wanted to buy.

Needless to say, this freaked me out even more, and i left very quickly indeed. After this, the power of The Stranger makes even more sense than before… There’s something so morbid about being reminded that when it comes down to it, all you are is an object, and an object is what you shall be made into; how much power do you really have over your own body when it really comes down to it? And how can you tell who, or perhaps what, a seemingly normal fellow patron is.