Magnus Archives Relisten 5, MAG 5 Thrown Away
Trash apple teeth! Is this anything
Spoilers ahead!
Facts: Statement of Kieran Woodward, regarding items discovered in the refuse of 93 Lancaster Road, Walthamstow. Given February 23rd, 2009.
Statement Notes: There are so many posts out there comparing The Magnus Archives to the Twilight Zone because of Jon's narration and the serial creepy story format, but this episode really stands out in mind as Twilight Zone-esque. Like the Twilight Zone, some Magnus Archive episodes deal with things like childhood guilt and cult-behavior, like MAG 4. But other episodes just kind of say "Damn, isn't that fucked up? Anyway," like this one.
I do love Kieran as a character. He's just so weirdly chill and realistic about everything. There's are some statement givers who are still being tormented by the fears, some who cause fear, some who are reporting on things that happened to people they know, but there's also this interesting category of people who survived because they played the game right. When the audience says "don't go in the basement" or "call the cops," they listen. Woodward gets through this statement unscathed because he moves on from the creepy dolls heads and reports the teeth, then destroys the "gift" left for him and tries to move on. Alan can't let go, Alan doesn't know the rules of the genre, that's why he doesn't make it out.
My two new favorite characters in the series are "Matt, who was raised Catholic and never shut up about it," because he is me, and David who "broke the silence by vomiting loudly into a nearby drain," because he is the most realistic horror character of all time.
Entity Alignment: Whenever I think of this episode, I think of it as the "teeth in a bag" episode. I actually 100% forgot about the metal heart. Now, when you think of those things, it kind of sounds like a Flesh episode.
But, let's all remember our favorite bio majors and their special gift to their professor. The Stranger has a history with teeth. The description of the dolls heads is very "uncanny valley," which is the Stranger's real niche. The thing that really sells me though is Jon's last line in the statement, "All two thousand seven hundred and eighty of them were the exact same tooth." The exact same tooth, apparently from the exact same person, repeated over and over again to the point that the examiner can date them because of their differing stages of decay. You know what that sounds like to me? Someone has been practicing.
The metal heart also says Stranger to me. I know it has a little Flesh energy, but it really reminded me of the hospital episode from season 5. The way the character describes feeling like her body was not her own, that parts of her had been replaced, substituted. The metal heart as the only remanent of Alan feels like that same kind of fear. It's not his, it's not him, but it's all he's got.
Speaking of Alan, does his obsession with watching the house to the point he goes without sleep for days, isolates his friends, and is presumed dead remind you of anyone? He must be influenced by the Eye at least a little bit.
But ignoring entity alignment for a second, Jonny does consistently uses obsessive characters really well. There's a lot of horror media where, in real life, it would make more sense for the characters to give up on their investigations of the supernatural or to ignore it in entirely in the first place. The audience is usually (and rightfully) able to suspend reality for the sake of the story in these situations. But what's so interesting about Jonny's writing is that he explicitly states characters like Alan, like Amy Patel, like Jon, can't stop themselves. It's obsession, it's all consuming, they know it's bad for them, but they just can't stop. It really adds to the audience fear because you're not the only one telling them turn back, their mind is screaming it too, but they still won't listen.
Character Notes: The post-statement in this episode is just 90% Martin hate. Absolutely unhinged behavior. What if you worked at a restaurant at the end of receipts your boss just wrote "This waiter is a goddamn loser and I hate him." Wild man Jonathan Sims everybody.
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Barry takes his glasses off and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. He’s been staring at his computer for far too long today. The computer in question sits on the couch next to him, screen obscenely bright in his dim living room.
He’d been ignoring the emails that infiltrated his inbox with growing frequency and urgency, all of them riddled with subject lines like “Payment Plans for Upcoming Semester,” and “Payment Due Soon,” and “Seriously, You Owe Us Tens of Thousands of Dollars and We Aim to Collect.” You know, normal stuff.
He’d always figured that actually doing the coursework would be the hardest part of grad school, not figuring out how to fund it without owing his soul and first-born child to the federal government. But the fact of the matter is that he’s reached a dead end; most of everything his mom left him was used to pay off his undergrad loans some years back. His university has mentioned scholarships and work study but he’s convinced the scholarships are a myth and also his university declined to mention that the work study they offer doesn’t actually pay him in money, rather they just pay for three course credits. Don’t get him wrong, that’s better than nothing but that doesn’t help pay his rent or buy textbooks.
Once again he mourns the fact that the only applied arcane theory program that accepted him just had to be a private university many states away.
He returns his glasses to his face and pulls his laptop closer to him. He’s about three modules into his ten-module long loan counseling. It’s basically an online program that explains in excruciating detail just how deeply the federal government has his future in their pocket. “Oh, hey Barry! If you Ever fall behind on your loans, we can garnish your wages that already probably won’t be able to pay for a studio apartment in Neverwinter and also you’ll be paying these back for anywhere from ten to twenty five years! You also cannot declare bankruptcy because you live in hell!! Only way to get off the hook for these is if your school shuts down before you get your degree or you die! Now sign on the dotted line after you hyperventilate a little when you look at just how much money you’re going to be responsible for!”
The whole process makes his stomach hurt; there’s no good reason education should be this much. He’s going to be saddled with loans worth more than any yearly salary he could hope to have and now he’s gotta pay them back or die.
Wait.
He rereads the loan forgiveness terms. “If your loan servicer receives acceptable documentation of your death, your federal student loans will be discharged,” he reads to himself.
He's got it.
He lets loose a laugh that borders on maniacal and roots around for his phone. It rings once before someone picks up on the other end.
“Lup!” He whoops.
“Bear? What’s up? You sound extremely excitable right now.”
“Okay, remember when you wanted to get married for tax benefits?”
“I do! I also remember you turned me down because you didn’t want to our marriage to be for convenience.”
Barry laughs to himself. “Yeah, I still stand by that.”
“You sap,” she sighs fondly.
“Well, I think I found a way to scam the federal government through a loophole.”
“Gods I love when you talk dirty to me!”
“We can talk more when you come home but I can almost promise you neither of us are paying off our student loans.”
“Barry, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about and I can’t wait to hear your devious plan. Love you!”
“Love you.” He clicks end on the call and looks around for his theoretical necromancy notes from a few semesters ago.
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Oh yeah, I'm going to get into crochet. I'd been thinking knitting originally, but in looking it up, I realized crochet would be more in line with what I want to try to make. I want to learn how to make cute little yarn animals. & I need to learn a hands-on hobby besides Legos, bc as fun as Lego model building is, it's not exactly sustainable as a main hobby 😂 too expensive. Fun treats when I get a new model! But I'd like smth to just Do with my hands while I'm watching things or w/e. It's calming. I think it'd help me a lot.
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all fluttering and dancing in the breeze
🍃written for @nobamaki-bigbang🍃
“Great! Okay, so I’m assuming we all know how to play baseball, right?” Maki asked.
Everyone was nodding, and Nobara was about to scoff and say duh, was about to proudly announce that she was actually a fantastic baseball player. But…
But then she glanced at Maki—sweet, gorgeous, Maki with a determined fire blazing in her eyes—and she had an idea. A terrible, devious, but quite possibly genius idea.
“Um, actually,” she spoke up, much louder than necessary, “actually, I, uh… I don’t know how to play baseball.” She fluttered her eyelids and smiled shyly, grabbing a strand of her hair and twirling it around her fingers as if she were the epitome of innocence.
[or: nobara pretends that she doesn't know how to play baseball so she can spend time/flirt with maki]
🍃11,157 words | nobamaki🍃
🍃art on tumblr here & here🍃
🍃art on twitter here & here🍃
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