#he and Martin can bond over practical applications of corkscrews and CO2

[lamiralami]

TMA Retro 2: Do Not Open

It’s really too bad that today’s episode doesn’t deal with the Desolation, haze from the Queensland bushfires has made everything smell like a campfire. The pathetic fallacy that could have been! Oh well.

Sit down, relax, and rest your feet on your coffin table, it’s MAG 2: Do Not Open

Here we go! The man, the myth, the legend! It’s Coffin Table guy! Mr. Bowl of Ice himself!

the narrative is trying to ease us into the spooky by having “John” suddenly appear at the cafe table and be generally odd and indescribable, ooh pretty scary - except by his own admission our boy Joshua has been sat in this cafe in Amsterdam for several hours and no longer recognises the linear flow of time. or knows what his hands do.

“The man introduced himself as John, and asked how I was. I replied as best I could, and he nodded, saying he also was an Englishman inside a foreign land.” I am DYING picturing this guy trying the whole spiel with this uni grad who’s been high for two straight weeks at this point.

John: Oh Hullo, A Fellow Traveler. Well Met!

the twitching sweaty mess across from him: fkool. Yrrs? mmam Nglsssh.

John: Ah, A Fellow Englishman! Perhaps We Could Do Business Together.

guess supernatural verbal contracts remain binding no matter how blasted you are on dank kush

our boy Joshua claims the encounter cast a pall over the rest of his trip, but also notes he doesn’t remember most of that time and was still high when he got back to England. glad he didn’t let his eldritch freelance contract interfere with what really matters: blazing it.

(I’m going to assume Joshua is high at all times going forward unless otherwise indicated)

Joshua doesn’t even launder the money before spending it, just waits a year. also thinks the beard he grew renders him unrecognisable. Bad Joshua! you’re supposed to be the smart one!

I think his reaction to the coffin delivery is quite realistic - namely, freaking the fuck out for a solid day, remaining jumpy and nervous for a week or so, then getting used to it. that’s just how the human brain does

the coffin would prefer if you used a coaster.

“I decided against doing any further experiments, and instead made the very deliberate decision to ignore it. I felt at that point I either needed to use the heavy iron key to open it and see for myself what was in there, or follow the gouged instruction and resolve myself to never look inside. Some might call me a coward, but I decided on the latter, that I would interact with it as little as possible while it lived in my house.” this is a callout post for Jon.

no but really, this whole statement serves as something of a - warning? foreshadowing? Jon even notes that it takes place in his hometown. Did you notice, Jon, how Joshua Gillespie didn’t indulge his curiosity about supernatural objects and as a direct result emerged from this encounter alive and relatively untraumatized? Did you mark down how he doesn’t do further investigation no matter how tantalizing and mysterious the coffin gets? ARE YOU LISTENING JON? (I know you’re not listening. I know.)

the whole sequence where the coffin starts to sing on a dark and gloomy day is wonderfully atmospheric. you really feel how wigged out yet helplessly resigned he is.

this is where Joshua comes out swinging with the intelligence modifier. turning up music to drown out the singing! encasing the key in ice so the cold shocks him out of his suicidal trance! that’s our boy!

(Oh hey, Jon, prolonged exposure to spookiness changing your sleeping habits and trying to cause harm! Look at that Jon! I know you’re not looking.)

“It’s funny how fear can just become as routine as hunger” - such finely aged foreshadowing

Joshua loses some points for getting shouty at the crew when they come to collect. surely that can wait until after the scary men who know your name and where you live and who retain ownership of a nightmare box are out of your flat. stick the landing Josh!

also negative points for breaking the bowl. you could have just run some hot water over the back until the ice popped out. bowls aren’t free.

the perfect cherry on top of this sundae of a statement is picturing the looks on the faces of John and Breckon & Hope as they stand in the entry of the flat. John must have thought he found the easiest mark of all time in some pot-addled recent graduate. and ninety nine times out of a hundred he would’ve been right. he managed to pick the one stoned English tourist in Amsterdam with a maxed critical thinking stat. bad luck, John. now get in the coffin.

so we’ve definitely got the Stranger and the Buried here, but a case could be made for the Lonely lurking nearby. the coffin’s presence keeps Joshua from making connections in a new town and at a new job, and he is in fact alone in the entire building

one does wonder if Gertrude ever thought to recruit Joshua Gillepsie as an archival assistant. he’s clearly got good instincts when it comes to dealing with the supernatural.

(certainly the Archives in its present incarnation could do with an infusion of his brand of common sense.)

but then, survival instincts weren’t exactly what Gertrude looked for in an assistant.

or maybe after Elias, Gertrude had had enough of people who indulge in the devil’s lettuce. we may never know.

(Oi! Jon! You know what other “eerie story” that happened “nearly twenty years ago” in Bournemouth also had a “lack of corroborating witnesses”? Do you know?)

(Why do I even bother.)