2023-01-02 2:17:22 ¶ ●

MAG 1 - ‘Angler Fish’ - Jon’s professional aggression.

It’s highly notable that in his introduction to his first recording Jon is angry, stuck up, and incredibly defensive. In almost every sentence he exclaims his hatred, disappointment, and disapproval of something or someone. This level of aggression, presented under the guise of genuine academic concern is not in line with real aggression, but much more closely aligned to fear.

Jonathan Sims is scared. He’s totally not qualified for the job he’s landed himself in, he’s creating an access mode into the archives for many future researchers, and he’s got absolutely no idea how he found himself in this situation. He’s backed into a corner and lashing out feels safer than settling down, but there aren’t many ways to lash out and simultaneously keep your job.

Being snarky with Martin; hating the tape recorders; complaining about Gertrudes standard of work; it’s all irrelevant when it comes down to it. The whole introduction pretty much sets us up for his failure, it’s not so much an introduction as it is a premature excuse for future mistakes.

It’s all so enamoured with that clunky, embarrassing, flushed feeling at the start of a new job where its all going wrong and you’re totally sure you’re gonna be sacked. He’s already been unable to record statements to his computer, entirely quashing his plans for a digital archive, and there’s already tension among his staff, probably making him feel like a totally inadequate boss!

What a way to start a job: inadequate, insecure, and totally aware of the reality of the supernatural horrors you try so hard to ignore.

2023-01-03 3:18:10 ¶ ●

MAG 2 - ‘Do Not Open’ - When doing the wrong thing is the right move.

The statement of Joshua Gillespie is truly iconic amongst those of survivors; he’s not someone who made a good choice, he’s not somebody who particularly deserved to survive, and unlike many he had almost complete choice in getting himself into his predicament. As paranormal encounters go I’d say this is just about as close as one could get to the opposite of Jon’s encounter with Mr. Spider, both of which took place in Jon’s own hometown.

To be presented with the statement of somebody who did everything wrong and suffered not a single consequence? Its a bitter and unpleasant thing to face, especially so early into the thankless task of reorganising the archive.

Jon, a child, a true innocent, suffered greater than a drug addled, privileged, stupid uni graduate. And worse still? He’s handed conclusive proof that these things, these horrible fates can be avoided with simply enough effort, enough critical thinking. A man who’s devoted all of himself to intelligence and capability is plainly told that he (for how well can we separate ourselves from the child we once were?) could have saved the boy that pulled him from the ready jaws of the web had he just been quicker, smarter, more alert.

What intense frustration to see that somebody who made one good decision in a situation that he could not, was spared. The unbelievable foolishness of a man willing to store a coffin in his home for over a year was beaten by the one good decision to store the key out of his reach.

What if Jon had the good sense to get rid of the book? What if he’d noticed there was something wrong with it- he should have, after all; he was an absent-minded child but not a fool. He could have figured it out. One good choice could have spared him the childhood trauma that led him to this job that’s steadily becoming more and more odd, falling more out of his control.

To be beaten by a fool is never a good thing, to sit defeated whilst a clown who made one right choice lives on is just intolerable. Perhaps Jon’s utter denial of it came not from the lack of reliable, but from the fact that if it wasn’t true it would also be false that his own encounter could have been avoided.

2023-01-04 2:59:38 ¶ ●

MAG 3 - ‘Across The Street’ - Unspoken commitments and their undoing.

This statement is one that very effectively displays much of the awkwardness of the unspoken commitments we share with friends, acquaintances, the natural rules of society; and of course in true Magnus archives nature, what happens when supernatural forces interfere with these things.

Amy and Graham’s relationship is certainly a common one; I’m pretty sure any of us could name plenty of people we know well enough to wave to but wouldn’t particularly want to have an in depth conversation with. It’s natural, not every pair of people will get along famously, but the interesting thing with this is how strong the unspoken commitments we make are, even in these distant half-friendships.

Having lived in London my whole life I can only comment in depth upon these odd commitments I’ve experienced here- I couldn’t claim to speak for other cultures or individuals.

British Middle class society generally is, as is wonderfully presented in the episode, painfully polite. Not every relationship is polite, of course, but once the expectation is established (as it nearly always is in a mature academic setting) it must be followed. I’ve known many people to be completely cut out of groups for not being polite enough, and I can’t say I was eager to get them back. Once you break that mask of decency it’s nobody’s job to uphold it, and you’ll often lose the courtesy yourself.

In this same vein, it makes complete and utter sense for Graham to agree to look after Amy, however begrudgingly, after her accident. It’s a societal expectation, and in most cases a personal one. This opens up the discussion of how much of society is a pantomimed act instead of an effort to feel comfortable in the world, but I fear that’s too deep a topic to completely explore in a text post.

Needless to say, to make these obligated situations more comfortable, one must employ their humanity. Graham makes an effort, sharing his life, his interests, and he offers up perhaps more than he’d have liked to. It does seem to comfort Amy to some extent, but of course, someone suffering a head injury is not in any way obligated to reciprocate.

It is interesting though, that Graham should be the one to lose his humanity when he displays it so strongly. Amy crosses boundaries and tears away from what would generally be considered basic human decency by so recklessly spying on Graham; and in the end it is Graham who has his humanity so harshly torn away.

Balance is restored though of course. Witnessing a thing like this instills that bone deep fear that those otherworldly powers so desire, and what is more human than intense fear?

The stranger is clever in its game with Amy, not only does it force her to come to terms with her friend no longer being human for all intents and purposes, but it also forces her to confront how she’s changed, how far removed her daily sessions of watching Graham were from her, or who she once was.

Whoever was there that was pretending Graham was wrong, and what better time is there to see that when maybe you yourself have become wrong too.

2023-01-04 19:07:35 ¶ ●

##

I'm curious, do you view the Joshus Gillespie story the way you wrote it out, or are you looking at it from Jon's perspective? Do you think his survival was unfair?

To answer your question and to respond to several others who were upset:

It was very much written from an imagined perspective about how Jon would feel about the situation and perhaps Joshua himself, I unwisely thought this would be clear from the highly emotional language of the piece but I think a few people read it as if from my point of view, and we’re consequently offended.

I think it’s neither fair nor unfair that Joshua survived, and that’s the beauty of it! One aspect of TMA as a whole that I love is its in depth exploration of just how irrelevant what we deserve really is; we’ll get what’s coming to us either way. It’s one of the reasons I really like the episode, it further emphasises just how much our perception of right and wrong, fair, and deserving don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things; Carlos Vittery killed a spider as a child and eventually died for it, Joshua Gillespie took £10,000 from a stranger to do something he thought was illegal and escaped relatively unscathed. None of it matters, because its not about the individual, its about what those (people or fears) that are above us want.

What I was excited to dig into in the analysis of mag 2 is that Joshua didn’t do anything in particular that made him deserve to survive, this does not necessarily mean that he deserved to die. I suppose this is a good lesson in how misunderstanding can entirely shape our opinion of a person. Plainly and honestly I don’t think there’s a quantifiable way to judge who does and doesn’t deserve to live, and it’s useless to try; but often heightened emotions give us the sense that we know, that we could be that judge.

And more important than any of this they’re fictional characters! I would never impose this kind of speculation onto real living people but since neither of them are real I thought it’d be interesting to explore the nuances of the fascinating parallel in the writing, and compare information that we’re given early on to plot points that happen later.

This wasn’t an attempt to moralise or insult people or behaviors! Simply creating an interesting speculative piece of writing based upon my perceptions of how one character might view another.

2023-01-16 2:48:39 ¶ ●

MAG 4 - ‘Page Turner’ - The odd attraction of antiques.

This statement has a lot of significance to me as an antique book collector. Being able to relate so clearly to that experience goes a long way to making the whole thing more unnerving. A collector of any object will be able to relate to the burning, jittering urge to acquire an object for your collection, but there’s something else with antiques, books in particular.

The knowledge that not only does the object matter now, but it’s mattered for decades, centuries, even. Its touched the souls of many through the years, and has reached through time and holds its hand out to grasp yours. A thing- an object, yet it outlived its creators and owners; a subtle defiance of the natural order, or so it feels.

But a book? It’s all this and more. A tome that’s educated its readers and is imbued with information and knowledge that someone was so desperate to share that they went to the effort of publication. A story or a theme that was so important an individual asked for it to outlive them. It’s pages marked with fingerprints, coffee stains, annotations, even blood- all of them out of the control of whoever left them.

And that is just a book. Though the idea of 'just a book’ does make me chuckle, the idea of a book with real, tangible, undeniable power does not. 'From the library of Jurgen Leitner’, a mark of terror and rightly so. Some people are of the nature that means they’re drawn to books, but a book with the power to draw in those that aren’t? That’s dangerous. Even outside of the awful power those books posses, a book in the hands of the wrong person can be a terrible weapon.

But can you imagine the feeling of having real power, control, otherworldly means of action. It’s addictive, as proven by many other statements, it’s hard to let go of if you end up with the right one. If the power fits the soul of the hands it ends up in then can it ever be released?

Even though the book wasn’t supposed to be for Dominic Swayne he had a connection to it, it affected him. Micheal Crew is proof that if the book fits, it can do all sorts of things to you.

This, to me, poses an interesting question. If it was you, and if the book really spoke to you, however evil, would you be able to hand it over? To watch its destruction?

I don’t think I would.

2023-01-18 1:22:05 ¶ ●

MAG 5 - ‘Thrown Away’ - Nonspecific accusations.

Conceptually, this episode is not particularly scary. There’s no horrible monster, no universal risk of death, no massive terrifying reveal; its a highly specific experience. Yet it still hits that place of fear, causes that nagging feeling, the type that makes you cover your ears or close your eyes, to hide in some small way.

I think one of the reasons for this is that it starts by taking about you. The listener. Even the most devout anti-waste activist has thrown something away before, and almost anyone in a position to be listening to a podcast has ended up with their waste in the hands of a binman. The statement doesn’t start with information on the setting or the thing the statement is about, but rather on you.

This reach out towards the audience puts you on a back foot. You don’t expect to be confronted with considerations about your own, mundane life, during a horror podcast, and it weakens your defence. It’s easy to gloss over the scary parts in any piece of horror if you stay true to the 'that could never happen to me’ mentality, but it’s a hard one to maintain when you’re initially forced to think about yourself, what you throw away.

Although the statement is very clearly angled towards the stranger or the spiral with its doll heads, inexplicable teeth, religious texts, and final gift for the initial victim, as an audience experience it leans also towards the eye. That subtle reminder that you’re being watched in ways you would never consider, that even if you never really leave the house its impossible to escape perception.

You, the audience, are being watched by one just like the statement giver, and there’s no way you can opt out.

2023-01-18 1:40:24 ¶ ●

MAG 5 - ‘Thrown Away’ - Expected failure.

In the conclusion of this episode Jon talks about Martin conducting the follow-up interview, and immediately afterwards explains how he expected it to fail. This brings up an interesting possibility.

Sometimes when we assign assumptions to people, we subconsciously adjust our behaviour towards them to make it right. It’s like the concept of the self-fulfilling prophesy but placed upon another. In Jon’s case, this seems to take place in the form of giving Martin tasks that will probably be useless, or likely to fail. It’s easy to keep believing things about a person if they’re not in a position to prove you wrong.

This would be just as harmful, if not worse for Martin himself. He already has a low self esteem, and even if you figure out that you’re being guided down a path to failure its hard not to blame yourself. Martin’s obviously very good at talking to people, and seeing himself unable to obtain useful information (even if nobody else would’ve been able to get it) would be confusing and frustrating; this, inadvertently causing him to feel the same way that Jon feels in his job.

They say that you shouldn’t jump into the water to help someone who’s drowning, as their instinct will be to push you down to pull themself up… Perhaps this also applies in emotional contexts.

2023-01-22 3:48:23 ¶ ●

MAG 6 - ’Squirm’ - Speculations on parasitic infection.

This statement has many interesting aspects, but one that catches my attention is the subtle details of just how Prentiss’s parasites seem to infect.

Harriet says she felt like she was stabbed, but doesn’t mention worms or obvious rot on Prentiss, which would have been noticeable even in a moment of shock. This, and the fact that she wasn’t wounded implies that the spreading of the sickness is not only caused by the worms.

From their description, Prentiss’s worms are more like larvae than your standard worm, and the thing about larvae is that the eggs they emerge from are small, delicate. Anyone that’s dealt with maggots knows that you can’t just get rid of the maggots, you need to destroy the eggs too, but this brings me to another point.

Because of how delicate the eggs of a fly are, its common for them to lay them on things, and even in things; this is sometimes called flystrike. When I was a child I had a bright green pet caterpillar, I kept him in a jar and fed him leaves, and was so excited for him to turn into a butterfly! He never did though, instead I watched him torn in half from the inside out as fly larvae crawled from his corpse. If a fly laying its eggs under the skin of a caterpillar could do that, imagine what a human could do to another with this mutated, powerful, fear-driven parasite.

Harriet’s eventual demise wasn’t all that different from that of my pet, but as all things are with humans, it was undeniably messier. This dramatic end also puts me in mind of Ohiocordyceps unilateralis, more commonly known as the zombie ant fungus. After its host has served its purpose it very dramatically blooms, spreading the infection further to keep its species alive.

The parasite being spread by intercourse implies that either extended physical contact or transfer of bodily fluid can also cause infection. To me it makes more sense that it’s fluids, as I think Timothy Hodge would have noticed anything physical, he seemed to be quite perceptive. The parasite being spread by fluids is interesting, as that could mean it has more fungus-like properties and spreads it’s spores through the bloodstream, thereby affecting everything else.

This would mean that the methods of infection are: transfer of bodily fluid, flystrike, and the traditional worm burrowing. Correlating it as best I can, it seems to me that the worms exist as both parasite and fungus- something obviously not possible in reality, but definitely pleasing to the otherworldly fear entity of rot and filth!

Prentiss, as the source of it all, seems to have the ability to plant the eggs, which in turn can grow the worms. Whilst a host grows these perhaps the spores inside of them can spread others that they become physical with. I like to think that then the spores could grow and change into the worms, which in turn can infest others, leaving spores to create even more, creating the perfect flesh hive.