Statement Begins (Magnus Archives listen-along)

[Fetian]

I don't remember how far I got on my first Magnus Archives listen, but pretty far. A while back I started a re-listen and got about thirty episodes in. Let's try it again! This time ash is going to re-listen along with me, anyone else who wants to is welcome to join us

I expect a pace of one or two episodes every couple days, and I also don't expect to have A Lot to say about these early episodes but will nonetheless note them here to keep everyone on the same page

[Fetian]

I am going to start by complaining about the pre-launch and launch trailers, starting with the fact that "0.1 Seed" used to actually have content and is now 3 minutes of nothing but advertisements for other shows. Advertisements that I assure you I will be complaining about again because I already hate them. Even worse is that this is literally the first thing in the show feed, so talk about putting your worst foot forward, and also let me pivot this into a side rant about how I hate so so so so so so so so much, when podcasts have updating ads, you know, where the ads that were on the episode when it released are replaced with new! Modern ads! Of whatever is being advertised in the most recent episodes. For one this makes an awful listening experience when you're listening to more than one episode at a time because it means you're getting the same ads over and over again, but also -- and I know I'm weird about this -- but it really rubs the media preservationist in me the wrong way. I hate when old versions of things are treated as outright replaceable, and especially hate that apparently this sometimes means just replacing an entire "episode" of something with, again, three minutes of ads for other shows.

And hey speaking of that, why the fuck are you putting ads on your teasers/trailers anyway, that's asinine, knock it off. It's already an ad.

[Fetian]

1: Angler Fish

Okay but an actually strong start with this one. I'd forgotten Angler Fish was literally the first episode -- I'd thought it was a few episodes in -- and this is, to me, the quintessential Magnus Archives episode, at least for the first arc. The acting certainly has room for improvement, though, and the writing needs to trust the audience more. But it's a spooky episode about a spooky guy that doesn't overstay its welcome, just a Wouldn't It Be Fucked Up If? that lands really well.

In summary it's about a drunk man encountering a creepy stranger in a dark alleyway, and the stranger turns out to be a lure for an anglerfish-like-entity. The visuals are very strong, the concept is very strong, the pacing is excellent aside from dwelling too hard on making sure the audience Gets It (I am capable of coming to the conclusion that the cigarette on the ground means someone else was captured by the monster without you outright stating it). I very get the vibes that this is an episode that was written further in and then pushed back to be the first episode, which is perhaps why I always think it's further into the series than it is

There's some ties in this episode to future episodes, but since this is the first one the audience of course wouldn't have picked up on them and so I won't note them yet.

[knightofcups]

(I'm going to relisten tomorrow to have fresh ears on the actual writing and content, but for now this)

Ok, so. This episode gets so fucking much praise and I just do not get it.

Like, it's good! I enjoyed it! But I very nearly bounced off the show entirely because of it. Like you said, it feels like we're being dropped into the middle of something, but not in a way that I enjoy. In a way that... It made me worry I'd skipped the actual opening episode. It doesn't do a good in media res where there are all these things I want to know about, and am dying to hear more about. It's... a lot of stuff that probably builds onto other stuff and it feels like we're supposed to know that stuff.

But people online are really vocal about how much they love it, and how it's this brilliant episode, and how they were hooked from the first second!

And maybe they were! I do not doubt some were! But I feel pretty strongly that people's opinion of the first episode are very colored by their enjoyment of the rest of the series. They come back to the first episode having listened to more/all of the show, and of course it seems brilliant b/c there's all this... extra stuff. None of this is bad. But it does just.... I don't know if it annoys me, precisely... But it feels... I want people to look closer at what they like and why they like it.

Something I want to do with the mall horror thing (The afterIMAGE Project, henceforth TaP) is intentionally look at how nostalgia shapes the way we think about things. How we paint them much more brightly in retrospect, and how we kind of... lose the ability to take stuff on their own merit. Which also is fine! I just think about it a lot.

...this didn't really go anywhere useful or interesting. Just. A thing I think about.

I really want to see if I can find any comments about what people thought when the show first started, what their opinions were on the opening ep without any other knowledge.

[Fetian]

I just asked you in chat if you listened to the teasers before Angler Fish or just jumped straight to it when you first listened, and you think you probably skipped them which could explain some of your feeling like you're missing something, because the teasers do set up the premise of the series -- Jonathan Sims is recording statements made to the Archive on a tape recorder, because attempts to digitise them have so far proved fruitless and they need to be categorised/preserved

I totally don't blame you for skipping it if you did (it's extremely silly to label crucial setting information 'pre-launch teaser'), and I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if you didn't skip them and still just didn't feel fully informed/didn't enjoy Angler Fish as much as everyone else does.

Anyway though this is yet another reason why it's pretty upsetting that one of the teasers has been replaced with, once again and ad nauseum, three minutes of ads for other shows

I can say that I enjoyed Angler Fish even the first time I listened to it, and that the tie-ins it has to future episodes don't affect my enjoyment at all because I don't remember them (one of the reasons I wanted to relisten to the series was because I am awful with names (as is the series, honestly, I did note that Angler Fish includes Another Michael) and by the time I got to where-ever I'd gotten to the first time I was actually extremely lost, so I wanted to go back to the beginning and listen with the aid of a fanwiki to keep me and my audio comprehension issues on track).

But different strokes! I think we've talked about this before, but I have a much higher tolerance for figuring out things through context than most people, and you prefer to have more context to work with, so we're of course going to have different opinions about being dropped into a series in media res. I'm curious what you'll have to say about it after a fresh listen

[knightofcups]

I did enjoy it! And while it didn't hook me super well, it did intrigue me enough!

Also, I remember now! I did listen to the teasers the first time. But I didn't the second or third listen. (This is listen 4 for me. I really like the show, obviously.) I think that not relistening definitely made for not remembering that they"d set stuff up.

THAT SAID though, the context I wanted wasn't the show premise. I knew what was happening and why he was reading stuff. I just... didn't care really. I dunno. I'm going to hold further comment till I relisten.

I also do just in general think that the first ep gets way more praise than it deserves. It's a great series (see three prior relistens) but I think people really, really need it to be excellent from the first episode, and talk themselves into it.

[knightofcups]

Listened to 1 and 2 today.

Thoughts on 1 basically what you said. Good story, kinda driven into the ground to be sure we Get It. Very enjoyable! Still think it's given too much credit for being The Best Shit.

But I have stuff to say about episode 2!

Episode 002: Do Not Open

As soon as this one started I remembered that it was the episode that locked me into the show for real, and made me know I was going to really enjoy it.

Because this episode sets up the fact that there are Rules, and that you can play by them. (I know this changes later, but it's really far later and by that point I've been taken on a journey that made that work too.) And even more than there being Rules, it told me the show was smart enough to think through things for real.

Summary:

Guy on vacation in Amsterdam meets a guy who gives him 10K to "hold a package for him till he comes to get it." Guy says yes, then freaks out b/c he thinks he just agreed to smuggle drugs. He did not. He goes home, gets a new appartment, forgets about it. Then a year later some guys deliver him a box. It's a coffin wrapped in a big chain, with "DO NOT OPEN" scratched on it and a padlock with a key in it. Box is creepy. It makes him feel bad. There are scratching sounds inside if someone sets something on it. The box moans when it rains. Guy agreed to keep it though, and is frankly more scared of what happened if he didn't keep it at this point, so he just sticks it in a corner of his living room and tries to ignore it.

Starts to sleepwalk, and finds himself with the key in hand trying to open the lock in his sleep. He's pretty sure that'd be a terrible idea, so he goes to greater and greater lengths to make sure he doesn't do that. (Also has a sleep study and talks to his doctor.) Eventually he puts the key in a bag of water and freezes it. He still tries to get to it in his sleep, but the cold wakes him up so nothing happens.

A year and a half later, the original guy and the delivery guys come to get the box. They are surprised main character is still there. They go into the room where it is. There is screaming. Delivery guys take the box and go.

I loved this episode because the writers were smart and let their people be smart. I think this was an excellent second episode specifically because it sets the parameters for the world and teaches us quite a bit of stuff we needed to know. I really, really like my horror to have Rules. And I like it when the Rules bind the Horrors just as much as the people. (I also like when horror is entirely thoughtless and senseless and rulessless, but that's a different thing)

Letting someone win this early let us know that it was possible to win, for at least some values of winning. It let us know that whatever The Horrors were going to be, they weren't omnitient. They could be outsmarted. And it gave us a character being NOT an idiot in response to the horrors. Like, he clearly felt horrified and terrified and etc, but also he went through it, and that's something I feel like not enough creators use.

As much as being a fun story, the episode gave me insight into the creators, and how they were going about the world of the show, and what they valued, and etc. It was a really good teaching episode, and also a fucked up story.

(and also I am so fucking much within the Domain of The Buried. Even though this didn't quite get into what really fucked me up yet, it gave me an immediate sense of deep dread and forboding.)

[erikavonkaiser]

I have never Magnused an Archive and know literally nothing about it, should I listen to an episode or two for a bonus completely unqualified opinion to throw in here

[Fetian]

2: Do Not Open which opens with five and a half minutes of ads

So I also like this one! Some of the shine on it has definitely come off, though, it does not do as well on a re-listen as it did when it was all fresh and I didn't know what was going to happen. The complaints I'd have about it are petty, though -- a lot of the writing has redundancies or other awkwardnesses that could be edited out ("though I wasn’t quite as bad as some of my friends who had a hard time handling themselves at times" "This may have been why I headed out alone that morning [...] and I decided to head out into the beautiful sunshine of that Netherlands morning and take a walk")

This works for a Spooky Story but does strain credulity a bit, that the narrative voice buries the lede a lot in a (not a real example) 'she was tall and beautiful and oh yeah also she was covered in blood' sort of way.

There are an additional almost five minutes of ads at the end. At least they haven't started sticking ads in the middle, but it does mean that if you're listening to the episodes in a row you are getting ten minutes of ads in between (:

[Fetian]

Because this episode sets up the fact that there are Rules, and that you can play by them. (I know this changes later, but it's really far later and by that point I've been taken on a journey that made that work too.) And even more than there being Rules, it told me the show was smart enough to think through things for real.

There's definitely a Fae Vibe in this one, in a classic folkstory sense, that it also joyfully does not hammer over your head (it is never explicitly stated that the delivery happened because Joshua finally spent some of the payment for it, nor conversely that it didn't happen before then because he hadn't). I'm a big fan

I loved this episode because the writers were smart and let their people be smart.

Agree -- this is a good example of a person in a horror story doing everything right and being rewarded for it, clearly to the chagrin of the person who roped him into said horror story

(Also Fae Vibes -- I know we learn more about the coffin and the entities behind it later but don't remember those details, but for right now I choose to believe that this is a situation where John (original coffin-owner) was in Josh's position, knew how it was Supposed to end, and used Josh to try to avoid meeting that end. Because Josh defied convention and didn't open pandora's box, though, John failed to uphold the new deal and so reverted to the old deal, as it were)

And also I love the key-in-a-bowl-of-ice, it's an actually clever solution instead of a solution the narrative is trying to convince me is clever.

I think Angler Fish is a very good first episode because it's a very lean scary story that's well-told, to grab you. But similarly I think Do Not Open is a very good second episode because it gives you a reason to keep listening past it.

I have never Magnused an Archive and know literally nothing about it, should I listen to an episode or two for a bonus completely unqualified opinion to throw in here

It would be great to get a completely fresh take on it! I genuinely don't know if it'll be your thing at all, but as ash and I are saying it starts off really strong so -- aside from the acting, which I promise does get better, and they also eventually get more than one voice actor -- you'll know within a few episodes if it's worth continuing, I think