#the idea jonny sims has of 'its a horror podcast ! bad things HAVE to happen' leads to a horror podcast where good things dont happen

[ashtreelane]

"I dont like Jonny Simms" is kind of a catchall 2 me of like . I just dont like how he approaches horror . I dont know enough abt him as a person to actually form a deep like or dislike LOL

[shut-up-danny-kun]

Magnus Archives - theoretical film adaptation

Okay, let me begin by admitting that it's probably a bad idea. MAG was made specifically for a podcast format - some things wouldn't even work if we could see what's happening. For example, it would've been practically impossible not to notice that Sasha has been replaced.

But let's say, *Ben Shapiro voice* let's say, for the sake of argument, that Magnus Archives became as popular as Harry Potter and people were demanding a film adaptation. How should one even approach the task?

I’d say the two most crucial elements of the podcast are its horror and its characters (yeah, there’s pretty much nothing else). The characters, if cast well, would not suffer from the visual format at all, so we’re fine on that front. The horror, however...

See, MAG is based on “cosmic horror” or “Lovecraftian horror”  - fear of the unknowable, incomprehensible, something that contradicts reality itself. Sure, some of the episodes are about beetle sex, but those aren’t the most plot-relevant or impactful ones. When giving statements, people often struggle to describe what they experienced, resorting to metaphors or analogies, because language doesn’t even have the terms needed to explain the Dread Powers.

The question is - how do you film something you can’t understand by definition? Like, “the sky ate my son”. Sure, CGI is amazing, but don’t you think it would be kind of underwhelming if, like, a giant mouth opened in the sky and ate a dude? Okay, actually, it would be kind of hilarious ngl.

But you get it. No visual tool is better than imagination, and Jonny Sims knows that very well - that’s why he made a podcast, not a show. 

If the whole event was shown using special effects, it would be disturbing - but not as scary as the podcast. Remember, the fear comes from not knowing how it could possibly be. Cutting away at the most important moment would not only be disappointing, but also undermine the whole purpose of a film adaptation. 

I have two potential solutions to this problem (I have no idea what I’m doing I'm trying to have fun please don’t harass me):

Go full arthouse.

Lighten the tone.

By the first point I mean reject all cinematic norms. I think that in that case, the visuals should only be used to enhance the effect of the narration, sort of like a music video instead of a film. I think it would work if normal life was animated and supernatural stuff would be live action, stop motion or something like that, just to enhance how wrong it all is. A good director could make it really scary, and it would preserve the vibe of the source material, however, most people don't like arthouse - there's a reason why it's not mainstream.

The other option would certainly be more popular. I say if we can see the monster, we can fight the monster! Then we don't need the supernatural elements to be so scary and incomprehensible. MAG could be something more akin to...well, uh, Scooby Doo, where there's an option to actually do something instead of just hoping you get lucky. Yeah, that would kind of undermine one of the main themes of the podcast, but consider how fun it would be. Also, it doesn't mean that it wouldn't be scary, and the beloved characters would still be there.

So, once again - MAG is a podcast and should prooobably stay that way, but we could turn into arthouse or make a monster hunting show)))

Anyway I'm not a director or anything

[okayto]

Magnus Archives Thoughts

Semi-liveblog, as I’m jotting these down as I go but only posting occasionally after the fact.

I got up through episode 97 before I stopped for a long time, so read through the transcripts to re-acquaint myself with everything that had happened up to this point. (as a note: transcripts, excellent. Also helpful if I start getting too creeped out.)

Under the cut (for spoilers), episodes 98-102

(I’m not promising DEEP thoughts, I just needed somewhere to jot things down in case I take another break, with or without meaning to)

Episode 98 (Lights Out): MAXWELL RAYNER, ALWAYS A CREEP.

Awww, Martin, you’re recording statements and it’s Doing Things to you. Poor baby.

Also, ever since rereading episode 80 (Jurgen Leitner’s statement, and Elias’s murder of him), every time Elias appears I just want to shout RAT BASTARD at him.

Episode 99 (Dust to Dust): Totally thought “Boise” being pronounced as “boys” was an error (which still would’ve worked fine for the character, not an issue), but it turns out that Boise City, Oklahoma does in fact pronounce it “boys.” (As opposed to the more well-known Boise, Idaho, which is pronounced “boy-see”.)

Makes sense, though I spent the entire episode thinking she was mispronouncing Boise, ID, and also wondering if the Dust Bowl really got that bad in Idaho.

More interesting: MICHAEL?!?! Michael was a

real person

???? I kinda like him as we’ve met him, thanks to his...y’know, lack of outright hostility and consistent murdery plots, but

MICHAEL????

OH NO WHAT HAPPENED.

I know I know it’s a horror podcast bad things happen I WANT GOOD THINGS TO HAPPEN THOUGHT IT’S A PROBLEM

John. JOHN. oh no.

I am going to probably need so much Happy AU fanfic when this is over aren’t I.

Episode 100 (I Guess You Had to Be There): Oh. Ahahaha. Basira’s a decent interviewer, but I nearly choked on my tea when this guy was like “oh yeah so I’m in this mysterious spiral that appeared out of nowhere and looks very old and there’s an old man crying in the distance but then I realized I was late for dinner, so I left.” [Dumbfounded Basira aura in the background.]

Poor Brian :(

Peter Lukas you bastard. “Sent you to an alternate realm. Hope you didn’t work for the guy I’m going to see, he gets touchy about his people. You don’t? Great. Cheers!”

Episode 101 (Another Twist): The person voicing Nicola Orsinov is excellent at that uncanny brightness. And I’m enjoying Jonny Sims’s excellent muffled voice acting.

MICHAEL?!

MICHAEL STATEMENT!!!

Look, I know Gertrude Robinson wasn’t a nice person, but she was undeniably badass. Still, I feel very bad for Michael Skelley.

And I love Michael the Distortion. Top tier character. Interested in seeing what happens now with Helen, but I’ll miss Michael a lot.

Interesting that Michael has usually been pretty truthful, for the embodiment of something that’s just deceptive, huh? I don’t quite understand the ritual that Gertrude interrupted--the Distortion taking its own shape, embodied (but not as Michael), in the human world? A Distortion version of the Unknowing? I’m too afraid of spoilers if I look up more now, so I’ll have to wait. I do still have like half the series to go.

Episode 102 (Nesting Instinct): John vs. Rat Bastard. Rat Bastard’s all “telling you things would just be a crutch and--” CRUTCHES ARE HELPFUL TOOLS THAT HELP PEOPLE SURVIVE RAT BASTARD.

This show does keep making me laugh when I least expect it though.

ARCHIVIST I get, I get that you hate being here, Melanie, but do you really want to trade it for prison?

MELANIE No! But the way I see it, the police seem really keen not to investigate crimes committed here.

ELIAS That’s actually fair.

ARCHIVIST Shut up!

Rat Bastard: YouGotMeThere.meme

And like two seconds later,

John: Melanie, your desire to murder our boss is very, very understandable and rational but not a good idea right now, let’s talk about how to handle him later.

Elias: I am still here you know.

The acting when John finishes the statement. The starting and stopping to speak. The sheer weariness even as he still clearly freaked out by being able to read in a language he doesn’t speak. Fantastic.

Martin is also a good character. Wanna give him a hug.

[discountdyke]

I know nothing about TMA but I’m a gossip pls release the rant if you’d like 👀

firstly id like to say this ask is a christmas gift in itself, i LOVE an excuse to rant about tma. this is gonna be long tho so lets head under the cut

tma is a podcast produced by rusty quill which really means that it started with a few white guys, and as such, the voice cast is almost completely white and its one of those media with “aracial” characters. however, they’re clearly written as white bc, well, there wasnt any effort to do otherwise. so this is the beginning of many problems.

the biggest instance of racism is with a family of avatars of the flesh - a horror power involving flesh/meat. the family is chinese, and sells ppl human meat in their chinese restaurant. this is extremely and overtly racist, and back then they didnt have any sensitivity readers or common sense i guess, so they just. did that. one of the episodes involving them had a “horror” element in which one of the characters speaks in english. this is supposed to be scary bc “how could a chinese person know english??” in order to avoid addressing this, in a later episode the characters only refer to them vaguely without names. this issue was unaddressed for YEARS before an apology was given, only for them to do what? more racist shit.

two of the main characters in tma are cops and as such are a heavy-handed metaphor for police brutality. one of them, daisy, commits violent atrocities bc she is an avatar of another power called “the hunt”. she basically just kills whoever the police tell her to. her cop partner, basira, excuses her actions bc “they were criminals”. its clear that these characters are supposed to be bad but then things get weird - theres an entire arc about whether its morally correct to kill daisy. bc she has a little redemption arc. unfortunately, if ur a cop, u dont deserve a redemption arc. so theres this big thing about “well shes a better person now” etc coming from all of the characters, not just her partner. it really waters down the message imo.

so, what do you do when you write a horror podcast with themes about capitalism and police brutality? you write an episode about a white person going to prison and experiencing police brutality. i cant even begin to express how inappropriate that is - especially since its a lazy attempt at horror. their excuse was “well, 2020 is unprecedented”. uh, cops have been committing police brutality since their invention. the blm movement started in 2013 - no excuse for saying ‘we wrote the eps in advance and theyre just hitting close to home”. 

and, tbh, it could have been written well but it just wasnt? and then there was a high profile police brutality case in the us so they delayed release until the next week - bc police brutality only happens once in a while, right? imo it wasnt the episode itself that was the most offensive, it was the idea that black ppl are only murdered by cops every once in a while and its just a topical issue, not something that happens every day.

i started off with the racism bc i think thats tma’s biggest problem, but the thing about it is this: tma is well written. or it was, up until season 5. but when season 5 started airing it was bad. it was really bad. it throws away the entire formula that it used for the first 4 seasons, has a couple that constantly argue and try to undermine each other, the main character has suddenly flipped into full murder mode so that each week they just kill off another character. it became extremely bland, the horror which was generally surreal - random doors appearing, uncanny valley creatures, skies that never ended - into everyday horror. it was a huge tonal shift and now instead of hearing about an endless neighborhood with no people, it became “capitalism sucks. the government sucks. the police suck.” over and over again which, while true, does not a good horror podcast make.

the point of this is: when you look at how bad season 5 is, you realize how bad the rest of it is as well. it doesnt hold up under its own writing. little details that could be ignored, or even huge problems like the continual racism suddenly became glaring issues. not to mention character arcs which had developed slowly suddenly took huge turns in s5 out of nowhere. 

the worst example (which i stopped listening so ive only heard this second hand) is a character who was a spooky woman who had a weird door that made u crazy, turns out to be politcally conservative the whole time. and she was about how, like, you think you know ppl, and then theyre conservative. or something. just, really bad political analysis. 

id also like to point out that in the prison episode in s5 which is a culmination of the “police are evil and bad” theme ends with the characters talking about how this one guy deserves to be in prison. liberalism at its finest here. 

there are a lot of narrative issues in tma but it really boils down to this: we excused a shitload of racism bc there was good writing. and now theres no good writing. also jonny sims singlehandedly created the most annoying gay characters to ever exist.

i dont think that jonny is a bad guy but he is woefully inequipped to deal with the big real world problems and themes he built on. its sad, tbh, bc its something that COULD have been really amazing. 

he tweeted once that the s5 finale would be a “chocolate torte of tragedy” where i assume hes going to kill off either one or both of the gay characters, but the real chocolate torte was the way he ruined his own podcast.

tldr; tma’s writing built up to something it couldnt actually do. and that made the whole thing collapse. also its really, really racist.