Magnus Archives as Comedy
Jul. 24th, 2020 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitI really like that liveshow! I mean, sure, the majority of it is statements we were already familiar with-- it's like a fix-up novel, two statements we already knew with a frame story. But the frame story is *hilarious* (Rosie is no longer the ghost; she's finally put in an appearance!).
It's delightful to see precisely how seriously everyone else takes Jon-- which is to say, not at all; you get the impression Rosie thinks Jon is kind of pompous and annoying, and she's aware that he's patently unqualified; she may even be aware Sasha got passed over. (Her reaction when Jon says he doesn't believe in ghosts!) And this also explains a *lot* about Martin and Jon's season 1 relationship-- like, Jon always seemed unreasonably annoyed in season 1 for what we saw Martin actually *doing*. While he definitely overreacted, Jon has demonstrably *never* been able to handle unexpected events at any point in this show; it's part of why making him neurodivergent is such a popular fanfic thing. So if his introduction to Martin was the sudden added work of solving what is undeniably a problem *plus* the unexpected fact of having a third assistant dumped on him at *all*, it makes sense that it takes him a while to let this go and form a new opinion.
Also how we got started on tape recorders! The Archive before everyone realized the problem wasn't the laptop! (Still no explanation for why we're recording everything to audio media as an archival thing. Like, why was it an organizational problem in the first place that he couldn't get it on his laptop, before he's realized that the archives are weird?)
Squeeing aside, it's also interesting to re-listen to what were the very earliest episodes-- statements one and two-- and realize that I've adjusted. When I first started listening to this show I was on edge for each episode and it sometimes took me a bit to get through a whole one, and even when I got past that and started racing through them, I was still very emotionally wrought by each one. I don't think it's just that I've now heard these ones before and so know how they go, or even that now I know the world so I know what the angler fish was after and what the deal is with that coffin. I think I've also just listened to enough Magnus Archives at this point that I'm acclimating to horror. I'm beginning to write the occasional horror (well, I tend to walk the line between Dark Fantasy and horror) and I'm starting to admit that I like horror in general, or at least certain types of horror, and with that admission and exploration I'm getting less jumpy at every story.
It's delightful to see precisely how seriously everyone else takes Jon-- which is to say, not at all; you get the impression Rosie thinks Jon is kind of pompous and annoying, and she's aware that he's patently unqualified; she may even be aware Sasha got passed over. (Her reaction when Jon says he doesn't believe in ghosts!) And this also explains a *lot* about Martin and Jon's season 1 relationship-- like, Jon always seemed unreasonably annoyed in season 1 for what we saw Martin actually *doing*. While he definitely overreacted, Jon has demonstrably *never* been able to handle unexpected events at any point in this show; it's part of why making him neurodivergent is such a popular fanfic thing. So if his introduction to Martin was the sudden added work of solving what is undeniably a problem *plus* the unexpected fact of having a third assistant dumped on him at *all*, it makes sense that it takes him a while to let this go and form a new opinion.
Also how we got started on tape recorders! The Archive before everyone realized the problem wasn't the laptop! (Still no explanation for why we're recording everything to audio media as an archival thing. Like, why was it an organizational problem in the first place that he couldn't get it on his laptop, before he's realized that the archives are weird?)
Squeeing aside, it's also interesting to re-listen to what were the very earliest episodes-- statements one and two-- and realize that I've adjusted. When I first started listening to this show I was on edge for each episode and it sometimes took me a bit to get through a whole one, and even when I got past that and started racing through them, I was still very emotionally wrought by each one. I don't think it's just that I've now heard these ones before and so know how they go, or even that now I know the world so I know what the angler fish was after and what the deal is with that coffin. I think I've also just listened to enough Magnus Archives at this point that I'm acclimating to horror. I'm beginning to write the occasional horror (well, I tend to walk the line between Dark Fantasy and horror) and I'm starting to admit that I like horror in general, or at least certain types of horror, and with that admission and exploration I'm getting less jumpy at every story.
