#no agency as cosmic horror i understand but the execution doesn't do anything for me

[magnuspanoptes]

re lrb i have to re-listen but there's always been a good theme of exploiting other people's trauma in the podcast, what jon does in season one as head archivist (and everyone else before him) — interrogating people's worst memories and then filing them away as data while not offering help of any sort, which is what keeps the institute running (in a literal sense obvs since it's a temple to the eye but even before that reveal this is also just true in an administrative sense), is simply a corporate version of what he does later as a terror eating vampire. the apathy has turned into a physiological urge now. and ofc jon himself was exploited by the entities, because what was guest for mr spider if not a traumatic episode which drove him in time to the magnus institute in search for answers, and where he would eventually help fulfill the web's designs.