darchildre: a candle in the dark.  text:  "a light in dark places". (Default)
This post exists to try to get myself past a silly anxiety hurdle. I would private lock it, but I think saying this semi-publicly will be helpful to me. It's dumb though, so feel free not to read it.

here we go )
darchildre: stylized white drawings of eyes on a black background (beholding)
So, my mom decided she wanted to listen to The Magnus Archives and of course I said, "Oh, let's do it together - that will be super fun!" It is super fun - she is entirely unspoiled for everything* because she only knows about the show through me and I have basically only described it as "sarcastic British man with a nice voice tells you spooky stories". We have listened to the first 8 episodes and are making it a thing that we do on Thursday nights and I'm so excited to see all of her reactions.

However! I am still working very slowly on my personal relisten and am about midway through season 4. Listening to both season 1 and season 4 simultaneously is a hell of a trip, you guys.






*Which is not an experience I had - I came in while season 4 was airing and was spoiled for, say, [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER] before I even started listening.
darchildre: a crow being held in one hand.  text:  "bird in hand" (bird in the hand)
I got new spinning fiber in the mail yesterday, it is a beautifully grey and blustery day, and all I want to do today is spin and listen to podcasts - I am going to make enough yarn to knit a light-weight cardigan (as I have no good light-weight cardigans) and I have finished The Magnus Archives, which means it's time to relisten to The Magnus Archives but this time take notes. (I have many silly things I want to track because I am bad at paying attention to dates and don't always notice the beginning of important plot elements until seasons later and also I want to know if the color yellow is actually significant or if it just stuck in my head after MAG20 and now I have confirmation bias.)

I have to go to work instead.

At least today is my late-start day (actually this time, unlike last week), so I can at least start my spinning.
darchildre: stylized white drawings of eyes on a black background (beholding)
A conversation from today:


Me: ::relays an incident I witnessed earlier, wherein a mother told her two children Wrong Information about otters in front of me and I had to restrain myself from correcting her::

Katie (my sister): Oh no, you can't do that!

Me: I will admit that I have done that, but only in zoos.

Katie: Parents are allowed to be wrong sometimes.

Me: Parents are allowed to be wrong sometimes. They are not allowed to be wrong in the zoo when the informational plaque is right in front of them.

Sean (Katie's husband and the one person I've recommended The Magnus Archives to who has actually become a fan): That is the most Jonathan Sims thing I've ever heard a real person say.



I am recording this conversation for posterity because I've never felt so simultaneously flattered and vaguely horrified at myself.

Also, if you're going to give misinformation to children because you are too lazy to read something a foot away from you, then you don't deserve to be at the zoo.
darchildre: ninth doctor and rose viewing earth from space (...and i feel fine)
Things:

- My supervisor changed my start time today to two hours before I normally start on Tuesdays (when all of our start times are normally set in stone and also after I have been on vacation for the last week) and did not say anything to me about it or send me an email or anything. The first I heard about it was when I got a text message from my manager after I'd already been - unbeknownst to me - half an hour late. So I got to work an hour after I was scheduled but an hour before I would have normally started and I'm so stressed about everything right now.

Happier things:

- I spent my Christmas money from my grandmother on spinning fiber. Last year taught me that I can spin enough yarn to make a sweater in about half a year (less, if I spin more regularly) and I see no real reason why I should do so again this year. This time, it will be a cardigan.

- Also, I am currently knitting a big cabled fisherman's sweater in a soft grey natural wool and I'm so pleased with how it's coming out. It's slow knitting because of the cables but I'm enjoying it.

- I finished listening to the extant episodes of The Magnus Archives on Sunday, which means that now it's time to do the relisten-but-take-notes-this-time! To be finished before the new seasons starts in April. Good times.

- I'm rereading Always Coming Home by Ursula K LeGuin right now and you guys, this book is still so good.
darchildre: a mad scientist lady doing mad science (malita is doing SCIENCE)
When I first started listening to (read: "consuming as though I were starving") The Magnus Archives, I mentioned that I was braced for the small disappointment of a continuing plot with connections and answers, because those make a story less scary.* And yeah, that is happening because that sort of thing is inevitable in a story with a continuing plot and yeah, the connections do make it less scary, but I appreciate that the writer has acknowledged that and is clearly doing his best to avoid those moments of letdown.

For example! Today on my lunchbreak, I listened to episode 61, which calls back to the second episode of the podcast, in which there was a mysterious locked box. In episode 61, the box is opened. Now, of course, any horror fan can tell you that, no matter how scary something you can see is, it is always less frightening than the thing you can't see, can't identify or quantify. Seeing inside that box was almost inevitably going to be a disappointment. Spoilers! ) That's so good! As a person who enjoys the sensation of a good horror story, I am pleasingly unsettled and as a person who enjoys the craft of a good horror story, I am pleasantly impressed.









*Connections mean that, on some level, a thing can be fully tied together and possibly described, which means it can be understood, and understanding inevitably diminishes fear and, in conclusion, that's why there are conspiracy theorists.

**spoilery footnote )
darchildre: a crow being held in one hand.  text:  "bird in hand" (bird in the hand)
In which it is confirmed that The Magnus Archives was made for me, specifically:

So I'm listening to the Q&A after season 1 and the writer is talking about influences, mentions Old Time Radio horror and specifically references the ironized yeast tablet ads on Lights Out, which I have also mentioned to anyone who has ever stood still long enough for me to talk to them about radio horror.

Jonathan Sims, do you know about Quiet, Please? I think you would really enjoy Quiet, Please.
darchildre: moody black-and-white crow looking thoughtful (crow is thoughtful)
Things:

- I have now finished episode 22 of The Magnus Archives. I promise I will stop constantly talking about it soon but soon is not now, so I'm going to mention how consistently excellent the sound design is on this show. There aren't sound effects as such, but the very slight tape recorder distortion during all the statements is very effective and god, I love the little changes to the background music that reflect the story being told. The bell in episode 20 really got me, as did the slight skittering noises in 22. It's very good.

- Also, episodes 19 and 20 (which are, unusually, a two-parter) were lovely, because they were a flavor of horror that I don't see nearly enough of, which is spiritual horror - the horror of being cut off from god. The Exorcist has a little of that with Father Karras' whole thing, and I'm sure I'm missing some other obvious works, but I'm hard pressed to think of a story that dealt with that flavor of horror so directly. Maybe I would enjoy possession horror more if more of it were from the possessed person's point of view.

- Actually, this may be a place where I am displaying my ignorance: I have not enjoyed much of the possession horror I have read/watched so I tend to avoid it. Is there other possession horror from the possessed person's point of view? It seems like most of what I've seen tends to be otherwise.

- Relatedly: I've had to take my WWI and horror book back to the library half-finished, as it has a hold. I'm not sure that I will try to get it again to finish it. While parts of it were very interesting, the author's thesis is far too broad to my mind (while obviously influential in terms of early horror film and thus some of the tropes that survive to this day, I don't really believe that all 20th century horror is about WWI and the author did not make his case on this point convincingly). Also, he does a thing that I've seen other horror scholars do before and which always irritates me, which is decide early on that all horror ultimately boils down to fear of one's own bodily death and then continue to try to interpret every work of horror through that lens. Which is obviously nonsense: I can think of all sorts of horrific things that have very little to do with the fear of bodily death. The author at several points tried to argue that all of Lovecraft's work is about fear of bodily death and I had to physically put the book down for a few minutes due to the weight of all that wrongness. This dude wrote a Lovecraft biography! I don't understand! In conclusion, I cannot finish this book because it would end with me writing the author a long and angry letter about how wrong he is and I cannot be that person.

- I have my D&D meetup scheduled for tonight, but only two out of the six players have said they could make it. Which means I'm going to spend the rest of the day anxiously wondering if they're going to come or if I should try to reschedule for next week. It is a trial.
darchildre: graffiti of a crow saying, "listen" (listen)
Dear the makers of The Magnus Archives,

Thank you for providing transcripts of your podcast. Both because this is, in general, a good thing to do and because there is no fucking way I am going to finish episode 15. That's it, you got me, you've found my weakness - I've been listening to this podcast before bed for the last few nights with no problems, but 10 seconds of an electronically distorted human voice repeating the same words over and over and I'm out.

(This is the worst stupid horror weakness because aesthetically I love this sort of thing - I love motif-of-harmful-sensation horror - but I cannot tolerate it at all when it's sound-based. See also: that time I tried to watch Pontypool in the middle of the day in a brightly lit room and had to give up about 30 minutes in.)

The next episode is apparently about spiders. That sounds much more restful.
darchildre: sepia toned, a crow perched on a gravestone (gravestone)
Continued listening to The Magnus Archive on my lunchbreak and have come to a potentially disturbing realization about myself, to wit:

If, in the course of my day, I found a garbage bag full of human teeth, my first thought would not be, "Oh gross!" or "I should probably report this to the police," but "...can I take this home with me?"

I mean, I probably wouldn't for reasons of hygiene and would probably stumble on the idea of reporting it to somebody eventually but the desire to own a garbage bag full of human teeth would still be there.
darchildre: sepia toned, several crows on a scarecrow (scarecrow)
I started listening to The Magnus Archives yesterday - played episode 4 in my car on the way to work - and am enjoying it so far. It is precisely the right kind of spooky for me.

However. I am aware that eventually there will be some kind of continuing plot and characters and I'm sure I will also enjoy that but right now, it's a modern podcast version of Quiet, Please, with just one voice reading me unrelated spooky first-person stories with no explanation of the spooky bits* and I am worried that the overplot will give me too much explanation and ruin things.

This is, of course, the problem with any long work of horror. The author eventually feels that answers have to be provided which inevitably diminishes the horror. I think that's why horror is the only genre in which I really enjoy short stories, because they allow for a lack of explanation.

I mean, I'm going to keep listening to The Magnus Archives, as it's quite good, but I am braced for that inevitable small disappointment.







*Favorite unexplained spooky bit so far: the guy in episode three eating his notebooks.

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